Abstract

War poetry by South Africans represents the embodiment of angry poetic bodies. These bodies are conduits for Fanonian “muscular demonstrations”. They embody reaction and resistance to world conflicts and colonial oppression of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and carry textual traces of intergenerational memory construction and trauma. The construct of poetic bodies serves as a conceptual framework through which to analyse the war experiences of civilians and soldiers. In this article, the major forms and themes of South African war poetry are discussed as embodiments of these poetic bodies, which consist of language and memory traces within various historical milieus. These contexts include the South African War (1899–1902), the 1906 Zulu rebellion, the First World War (1914–1918), the Second World War (1939–1945), the civil war in the townships (ca 1961–1994), and the Angolan/Namibian Border War (ca 1966–1989).

摘要

南非人的战争诗歌代表了愤怒的诗体的化身。这些身体是法农式“肌肉示范”的管道。它们体现了对 19 世纪末和 20 世纪末的世界冲突和殖民压迫的反应和反抗，并带有代际记忆建构和创伤的文本痕迹。诗歌身体的建构作为一个概念框架，通过它来分析平民和士兵的战争经历。在本文中，南非战争诗歌的主要形式和主题被讨论为这些诗体的体现，这些诗体由各种历史环境中的语言和记忆痕迹组成。这些背景包括南非战争（1899-1902）、1906 年的祖鲁叛乱、第一次世界大战（1914-1918）、第二次世界大战（1939-1945）、