Abstract:
Examines the work of the South African poet, Sydney Clouts (1926-1982). The study traces the development and thematic direction of the Collected Poems and examines the oeuvre of Clouts's work in the light of new, previously unpublished, material. It adopts a broad-based critical approach, using archival material pertaining to the production and publication of Clouts's poetry, the poet's own critical commentary to inform much of the general argument and previous texts with extensive reference to other poets' work. The thesis attempts to answer the three main problem areas most often critically levelled at the poetry. It looks in the first instance at Clouts in terms of the South African literary tradition in an effort to establish his importance within its canon. It reveals Clouts's dependence on European late Romanticism. Next it attempts to answer the question of why Clouts is such a "difficult" poet and finds its answer in his adoption of abstruse poetic precursors who are, commonly, Symbolist poets; and in his sense of the limitations of language to facilitate the ideal of pure self-presence. The development of the theme of language is traced in the poetry to suggest that Clouts's sense of language as inadequate becomes intensified. This introduces the notion of "silence", and more particularly political voicelessness. The prominent absence of political content in the poetry can be ascribed, it is argued, to Clouts's own socio-political position which contrives to avoid engagement with, and therefore acknowledgement of responsibility for, the material world of contemporary South Africa. The thesis concludes with the recognition that the implicit metaphoric thread that binds Clouts's work together is the myth of rootedness in Africa, the lack of fulfilment of which accounts finally for the lack of poetic production in Clouts's later years.
