Nawerkings van Herman Gorter se Mei (1889) en Verzen (1890) in die Afrikaanse digkuns

Abstract

The epic-lyric poem Mei and the collection of sensitivistic verse Verzen are deemed, in both the Dutch and Afrikaans literary systems, to be the central achievements of Gorter's oeuvre - as of the work of the Dutch Literary Generation of the Eighteen Eighties as a whole. His sensitivistic poetry would gradually surpass Mei in the after-effects it has since had on both Dutch and Afrikaans poetry. Especially in the form of creative work, i.e. with poets, admiration for and imitation of Gorter as a sensitivist keep on manifesting. Anbeek (1991) therefore describes the position of Verzen within the Dutch poetry system as an "extremely important" one. Within the Afrikaans literary system, the echoes of the said works by Gorter are usually considered to be more or less restricted to some of the work by the Afrikaans Poets of the Nineteen Thirties (Opperman, 1953) - like the Dutch literary generation to which Gorter belonged, a grouping with revolutionary intent (Van Coller, 2015). In this article, however, it will be shown that Gorter's poetical Influence reaches substantially further into the history of Afrikaans poetry than is generally appreciated.