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Link Love: New Literary Magazine Prufrock Launches http://t.co/IwlK032ija

Tim Cartwright Recounts the Story of Uys Krige’s Enduring Friendship with Roy Campbell

Remembering Roy CampbellRoy CampbellTim Cartwright has written an article for The Times that looks at long friendship between writers Uys Krige and Roy Campbell that began in France in 1932 when Krige paid Campbell an unexpected visit.

Cartwright’s piece is drawn from an account written by Krige:

Tim Cartwright tells of the inspirational day when two great South African poets met each other in France

Roy Campbell, in the opinion of most South African literary people, is still the best poet the country has ever produced. As a young man, he won the respect of the UK’s literary elite — including TS Eliot — in the late 1920s. This was based initially on his epic poem Flaming Terrapin, written shortly after his marriage to Mary Garman.

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Recent comments:

  • <a href="http://kelwynsole.book.co.za" rel="nofollow">Kelwyn Sole</a>
    Kelwyn Sole
    August 27th, 2012 @08:08 #
     
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    Don't get me started on Campbell. Supporter of the Falangists (even wrote an epic about their war), once held his wife out of a 3rd story window by her ankles, etc etc. And at times sounds suspiciously like Rimbaud.

    And people still try and glorify this cretin.

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  • <a href="http://jameswhyle.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">James Whyle</a>
    James Whyle
    August 27th, 2012 @14:34 #
     
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    His naked skin clothed in the torrid mist
    That puffs in smoke around the patient hooves,
    The ploughman drives, a slow somnambulist,
    And through the green his crimson furrow grooves
    His heart, more deeply than he wounds the plain,
    Long by the rasping share of insult torn,
    Red clod, to which the war-cry once was rain
    And tribal spears the fatal sheaves of corn,
    Lies fallow now. But as the turf divides
    I see in the slow progress of his strides
    Over the toppled clods and falling flowers,
    The timeless, surly patience of the serf
    That moves the nearest to the naked earth
    And ploughs down palaces, and thrones and towers.

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  • <a href="http://jameswhyle.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">James Whyle</a>
    James Whyle
    August 28th, 2012 @16:19 #
     
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    THE THEOLOGY OF BONGWI, THE BABOON

    This is the wisdom of the Ape
    Who yelps beneath the Moon -
    Tis God who made me in His shape
    He is a Great Baboon.
    Tis He who tilts the moon askew
    And fans the forest trees,
    The heavens which are broad and blue
    Provide him his trapeze;
    He swings with tail divinely bent
    Around those azure bars
    And munches to his Soul's content
    The kernels of the stars;
    And when I die, His loving care
    Will raise me from the sod
    To learn the perfect Mischief there,
    The nimbleness of God.

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  • <a href="http://jameswhyle.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">James Whyle</a>
    James Whyle
    August 29th, 2012 @13:43 #
     
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    I love to see, when leaves depart,
    The clear anatomy arrive,
    Winter, the paragon of art,
    That kills all forms of life and feeling
    Save what is pure and will survive.

    Already now the clanging chains
    Of geese are harnessed to the moon:
    Stripped are the great sun-clouding planes:
    And the dark pines, their own revealing,
    Let in the needles of the noon.

    Strained by the gale the olives whiten
    Like hoary wrestlers bent with toil
    And, with the vines, their branches lighten
    To brim our vats where summer lingers
    In the red froth and sun-gold oil.

    Soon on our hearth's reviving pyre
    Their rotted stems will crumble up:
    And like a ruby, panting fire,
    The grape will redden on your fingers
    Through the lit crystal of the cup.

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  • <a href="http://jameswhyle.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">James Whyle</a>
    James Whyle
    August 29th, 2012 @13:53 #
     
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    cretin [ˈkrɛtɪn] n
    1. (Medicine / Pathology) a person afflicted with cretinism: a mentally retarded dwarf with wide-set eyes, a broad flat nose, and protruding tongue
    2. a person considered to be extremely stupid
    [from French crétin, from Swiss French crestin, from Latin Chrīstiānus Christian, alluding to the humanity of such people, despite their handicaps]
    cretinoid adj
    cretinous adj
    Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

    Interesting that the original meaning was Christian.

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