’n Nuwe lewe: Olga Kirsch se studentegedig “Resurrexit” / A New Life: Olga Kirsch’s Student Poem “Resurrexit”

• Authors: Thomas Minnaar , Egonne Roth
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The poem “Resurrexit” published by Olga Kirsch in 1945 in the student paper WU´s VIEWS has been all but forgotten. It is, however, a beautiful and an important poem with a pantheistic character. It commemorates the death of the young Jewish flight navigator lieutenant Alec Medalie, whose fighter plane was shot down by German antiaircraft fire near the Yugoslavian coast in 1944. Psychoanalysis opens the poem up to a reading which turns the typical male symbolic order’s death and men’s chaos caused by war into the young man’s rebirth as a new form of being. This happens through the maternal earth’s uterine sea. The fallen is absorbed by the sea and after a period taken up into the clouds to return to the mother and the earth, albeit in a new form. The concept of the chora plays a part in this resurrection which offers consolation to all who are subject to the inevitable uncertainty of the human condition and those who stay behind after a sudden death.

Keywords

EN

Afrikaans poetry; Olga Kirsch; Sigmund Freud; Julia Kristeva; Alec Medalie; pantheism; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; psychoanalisys; chora; abject; death; Resurrexit; resurrection; Messiah; Zionism; World War II

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Werkwinkel
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 59-72

Dates

published

2014-11-01

online

2014-12-30

Contributors

author

Thomas Minnaar

• 42 Lympleigh Road, Plumstead 7800, South Africa

author

Egonne Roth

• Department of English, Bldg 404, “Wolfson Building”, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel

References

• Crous, M. 2008. “Portrette van en gesprekke met vaders: die vader-dogter-verhouding in die werk van enkele vrouedigters.” LitNet Akademies: Desember. 23 Okt. 2014. .
• Du Buisson, M.S. 1959. Die mens-godverhouding in die Afrikaanse Poësie. Johannesburg: Voortrekkerpers Beperk.
• Echtermeyer, T., en Von Wiese, B. 1993. Deutsche Gedichte. Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag.
• Freud, S. 2001 [1913]. Totem and Taboo. New York: Routledge.
• Kirsch, O. 1944. Die soeklig. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik.
• _____. 1945. “Resurrexit.” WU´s VIEWS. Universiteit van die Witwatersrand. 31 Aug. 1945.
• _____. 1948. Mure van die hart. Johannesburg: Afrikaanse Pers Boekhandel.
• _____. 1976. Geil gebied. Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau.
• Kristeva, J. 1982 [1980]. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
• _____. 2002. The Portable Kristeva - Updated Edition. Ed. K. Oliver. New York: Columbia University Press.
• McAfee, N. 1993. “Abject Strangers: Toward an Ethics of Respect.” Ethics, Politics and Difference in Julia Kristeva’s Writings. Ed. K. Oliver. Londen en New York: Routledge. 116-134.
• Opperman, D.J. 1953. Digters van dertig. Kaapstad: Afrikaanse Boekhandel Bpk.
• Van Reeth, A., et al. 1994. Ensiklopedie van die Mitologie. Vlaeberg: Vlaeberg Uitgewers

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/werk-2014-0012