>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. 
^M00:00:03
^M00:00:22
>> Patricia Baine: Good afternoon. 
>> Good afternoon.
>> Patricia Baine: Welcome to Compositions with African Poets and Writers. We're glad to see you all. We -- today, in addition to our featured speaker, we have his Excellency, Ambassador Malanga [phonetic] from the Republic of South Africa. Let's give all of us a round of applause please. 
^M00:00:40
[ Applause ]
^M00:00:45
Showcasing African writers whose work has contributed to increasing the knowledge about the continent of Africa and her people is the objective of this series; Conversations with African Poets and Writers. It's a partnership of the African Poets and Writers Division of the Library of Congress, the African and Middle Eastern Division, the Howard University, and the African Society -- four partners. This unique opportunity that you will experience offers you the ability to peer into the richness and diversity and creativity of African writers. You -- it will allow you to sort of peer into African life and culture. Now, all our past programs can be found on the Library of Congress website for your viewing. You're going to have a fantastic program today. Enjoy the program. We're headed to South Africa, a fabulous, rich country. So please silence your cell phones, as usual -- you know the housekeeping items -- and engage your imagination, and enjoy yourselves. And now I will invite Rob Casper, who is the head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. Thank you. 
^M00:02:01
[ Applause ]
^M00:02:06
>> Robert Casper: Thank you Patricia. It's been a joy to work with you and to have you lead the summit as we continue this series, Conversations with African Poets and Writers. This is the beginning of our sixth year of the series. It's been a wonderful partnership with the summit and with the African Middle East Division and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. I'll tell you a few things about the Poetry and Literature Center; we are the home to the US Poet Laureate. Our current Poet Laureate, the twenty second, is Tracy K Smith. We host programs like this all throughout the year with a number of divisions at the library. We're most delighted to partner with the next person who will get up here and tell you a little bit about the event and the whole division with this series, but if you want to find out more about our programs you can visit www.llc.gov/poetry. This program and this series wouldn't exist without the great, wonderful support of Mary-Jane Deeb, the chief of this division. It's so inspiring to be here among all these books and to think of the great authors we've had come through here and connect to us, champion the range of writing -- diasporic and writing from the continent -- that we want to support and want to sort of get greater knowledge of. Big thanks to Mary-Jane Deeb for doing that. And she'll come up here and welcome our next introducer. Mary-Jane. 
^M00:03:33
^M00:03:36
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: Thank you. Thank you Rob and thank you Patricia. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the African Middle East Division, which is responsible for recommending, reserving, serving the connections of 78 countries -- including the entire continent of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucuses -- and for organizing programs -- such as the one today -- that highlight the contributions of writers from the countries and regions we represent. Our partners have been absolutely fantastic. The person you just heard before, Robert Casper -- the head of the Poetry Center -- has been with us from the very beginning in funding the series. Patricia Baine, President of the Africa Society, has been with us the whole way from the very beginning. And Professor Mbye Cham is our newer -- newest partner from the University of Howard. Our series has become well-known and well-established and has brought to the library, and to our patrons and readers as well to all those who access the library's webcast around the world, some of the best writers from Africa. From those who are no longer with us, like Chinua Achebe and Ali Mazrui -- the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at Binghamton University -- to Poet Laureates like poet Kigo Sitsin -- [phonetic] the Poet Laureate to the new generation of writers like Emma Dukone -- [phonetic] from the Codebuer -- [phonetic] Nigerian writer Igoni Barrett, the poet of the Congo, de Banga, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tisian Salat, [phonetic] the Gambian poet, and so many -- so many -- more. And today we have with us a great poet, a great writer, from South Africa, -- Antjie Krog. And she will be introduced by our partner in arms and the supporter and co-sponsor of this series, Professor Mbye Cham of Howard University. Mbye Cham. 
^M00:05:56
^M00:05:59
[ Applause ]
^M00:06:04
>> Mbye Cham: Thank you Mary-Jane. Good afternoon. It's a distinct pleasure to be a partner in this very important series. My name is Mbye Cham. I'm a faculty member at Howard University in the Department of African Studies and I'm also the Director of the Title Six National Resource Center for African Studies, which is one of 10 Africa area studies -- Title Six -- funded by the Department of Education -- US Department of Education. It's my distinct honor to introduce Miss Antjie Krog. And it is where Antjie Krog's iconic status, as well as South Africa's most popular critically acclaimed and politically courageous poets, began when she was 18 with her first collection entitled, "Daughter of Jephta," 1970. Within the next two years she published a second collection entitled, " Januarie-Suite." Since then she has published more than 10 volumes of poetry, much of which has dealt with love, apatite, the role of women, and politics of gender and has been translated into several languages, including English and Dutch. Krog started publishing prose in the 1990s, developing a unique form of autobiographical writing, which combines factual and fictional analytical elements. The best known of these is her account of reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, entitled, "Country of My Skull," 1998. Some of you may have seen the film version of that, with Samuel Jackson. It was here first work to be published in English and brought her international recognition. She has also written a play and I'm going to take a stab at this here in Afrikaans; [foreign language]. How did I do? [laughter] I'm sure she will probably provide a translation there. And this play was performed at the Arts Festival in South Africa in 1999. Antjie Krog has also been a journalist and edited many years -- for many years -- the independent African journal, "Die Suid-Afrikaan," cofounded with Hermann Giliomee in 1984. She also joined the South African Broadcasting Corporation, SABC. And for two years contributed to the radio program, "AM Live," which she reported on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She's also an academic, having joined the Arts Faculty at the University of Western Cape in 2004. Krog's many works, both poetry and prose, have received almost every award available in her country for poetry, translation, and non-fiction. Among them, the esteemed Hertzog Prize for "Lady Anne," 1989 and for "Synapse," 2014. The Oliver Shreiner prize for, "Country of My Skull," 1998. And the Vita Poetry Award for, "Down to My Last Skin," in 2000. Internationally she has also been awarded this second award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture as well as the Open Society Prize from the Central European University, previous winners of which were Yogen Harbormast [phonetic] and Vaklav Havelo. [phonetic] Since 2004 Antjie Krog has been an extraordinary professor of literature and philosophy at the University of the Western Cape. Bucknell University Press is proud to be the publisher of the first English translation of Antjie Krog's "Lady Anne: A Chronical in Verse." It's a distinct pleasure to welcome her to here, Library of Congress, and to this series. Thank you. Welcome. 
^M00:10:41
[ Applause ]
^M00:10:46
^M00:10:56
>> Antjie Krog: Pero, [assumed spelling] I feel I lie because I blatantly indulge in words and uses Eros. In the face of so much injustice if poetry perseveres as luxury it also becomes a lie. I live on the other side of injustice, therefore I have the time to tune chords precisely around the private gland. And why not? This country has already been ruined. Then the order comes. "Words should be AK47s, should always fight. Poetry should be useable, DEET, relate the struggle, take sides. Weeds are mightier than roses." Tortured poetry grows wild in phonetic rain. How can I safeguard this poem against the stupidity of politics? Distressed I stand, looked upon with suspicion, my most ordinary words refused. But I'm ashamed by the poet's unheard of poetry, which screams on the other side of all breath. There, will your eyes stop now gravel road spasa? [phonetic] Someone may have disappeared before dawn. The wind moves as if in war. Children kick a ball in the townships where three quarters of the world lives and waits, rightly so, for equality. Shy like you, brave or stupid, or perhaps all of really lazy and corrupt like us. From the hands hangs this treacherous carpet of hope and hunger and dream. But the poet stands aside. He hears of the petitions; Moses, motions of injustice. He has stopped writing poems. No poetry. The thoughtful poet stands smoke blue with cold. Barely audible she repeats her arrest. Her sentences melt from her tongue. Not in print. Not in photographs. Not in statistics. Every fear it is damp. Rumors of disappearances, torture, and anonymous deaths. The struggle filters through with inaudible fierce noises, into the shady suburbs and we have become a country of rumors. If my senses cannot wean the cries from the leaves or the blood from the barricades of grossities or pick up murder from the blockades near my desk I will die hardened in the crossfire of pencil and paper, which always fight back to the truth. All the writers are dead aren't' they? They can't write about or of the oppressed. And the oppressed writer is drowning in anger. This is what's being said. Aesthetics is the only ethic. They say as well, "But the demands do not tolerate neutral ground." Between evils I choose nothing. I was born of a guilt of greed and scorn where I felt myself at times apart. A hedge between myself and them, myself and the slaughter, nothing ever prepared me for hunger and homelessness, lanklessness. I tried to find a bridge, but everything is burning and I'm looking for a guide. Beware of propaganda, rhetoric, coarse change of words under the whip of lies without even the charm of consciousness. Is aesthetics ever useful? I never stopped studying survival. With this fragile, most light-hearted category I diligently investigate every relation to breathe. Yes, to breathe. The language has never been useless or fake, but only -- although the poet may desire indulgence and the procreation of political words, the injustice is real. And whatever I write, which will survive, sprouts from this very futile clash between luddite and lie. 
^M00:16:40
^M00:16:44
So to find the bridge I tried to find a metaphor in terms of Lady Anne Lindsay. In 1797 Lady Anne's husband, Andrew Barnard, was sent to the Cape of Good Hope as secretary to Lord Macartney, the first British Governor of the Cape Colony. Barnard was given this post by the Secretary of War in Colonies, Henry Dundas. Lady Anne was well connected to both Dundas and the Prince of Wales, accompanied her husband and became the First Lady of the Colony in the absence of Lord Macartney's wife. Her letters and diaries are filled with acute observations and assessments of the situations and people she came across in and around the Cape during her period of residence from 1797 to 1802. She also produced hundreds of drawings and paintings, of which most are in Balcarres House, her ancestral home in Scotland. So the volume opens with her on ship on her way to Cape town and it's a letter to Henry Dundas. Who is it that bloody-well sends me downwards to the south to foreign soils? And above all, why? Fabricated from an abundance of stains and knobs my highland origin always matters to me. Stony gators and mist, an intimacy there where water lists the only reflection. Like you sir, I was purified for castles. On deck, under my blanket, my senses sting. I am suspended grim swine in the rigging of sound and salt. My fingers fondle blocks of amber, carmine and new cinnabar marked down by Newman's in London to pound this retched life of yours and mine into dignity, into blains of poetry and paint. Suddenly, out of the sea, slightly to one side, a parasol of crystal shimmering over skin of a whale. My husband fires his gun, a jet of bubbles vibrates thunderously from a spout. Will this whale surface sheariously [phonetic] beneath the ship so that we tumble, sucked into a vortex with blank-eyed animals, sails billowing under water, wobbling deck, cannon snouts pointing upwards under fleeces of hair -- mine a blond, combless fern of fin in a ring of roses slowly sinking to the dregs. 
^M00:20:12
^M00:20:18
But of course I find her quite useless as a guide. I wanted to live a second life through you, Lady Anne Barnard, show it is possible to hone truth with the pain, to live an honorable life within so much privilege, weave a language of revolution and conspiracies, liberate slaves, clinically plunder royalty, and with your expedition through the interior, cleave the Boors to the bone. But from your letters you immerge, hand on the hip, talented but a frivolous fool. Then in crafty ink, snob, naive liberal, being swayed away from your principles by your useless husband's pampering. You never had real pluck and now that your whole puerile life has arrived on my desk I go berserk. As metaphor my lady, you are not worth a fuck! 
^M00:21:27
^M00:21:36
An inscription in her journal, from -- she lived in the castle of the Good Hope and when ships came in they brought letters from families and newspapers, etcetera and you can send something back to your families. From the ship anchoring to the side I hastily prepare parcels and letters. The coming and going of ships, high ranking officers movements lie like an umbilical cord to the castle. Sweeping my eye across Table Bay has become second nature and the thrill of locking my door and slowly, mouthful by mouthful, tasting the post, the latest in newspapers, letters, the written word the only harbor of the travelling heart. But then the smell hits us. Unearthly, so putrid, it seems the most primordial of stenches. "It's coming from the bay," says the cook. But by midday everyone knows, a slave ship is unlawfully looking to put to land 609 Congolese. My husband suspects the hold is underwater. A few have drowned. Rice, nuts, manioc is finished and the obviously greedy upstart captain of the ship implies that Governor Young planned it all, while he apparently hissed, "Did you have to hang this maggots nest for all and sundry at the Cape to see?" But why does it smell so? "Annie, in the ship," this is my stalwart husband, "they are lying row upon row, packed, shackled to form full three strings, shelf upon shelf. The doctor does not dare go down because of diarrhea, heat, stench, and the deck, slippery from mucus and blood." I turn the dessert spoon over and over on the tablecloth, silver, expensively heavy, and catch myself for days staring from every window at the doomed ship in the bay. At dusk a lament drifts towards the castle, a kind of howl, subbing from that abdomen of that pleading cargo of misery. Through my telescope I see on the deck shackled groups swaying to and fro in a macabre treaty against death. A shoal of fins circling the ship, waiting for the stiff tussle of bodies cut loose every morning and thrown overboard. After I had seen that for many days my brain rushed forth with a dim and determined sense of unknown modes of suffering. In my thoughts was a darkness, call it solitude, a blank desertion, know familiar shapes of trees, of sea or sky, no colors of green fields, but huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men move slowly through my mind by day and were the trouble of my dreams. Haunt me. Haunt me like a fever. 
^M00:26:03
^M00:26:13
This poem's about the first state of emergency in South Africa, not the second state of emergency in South Africa. So the bard that writes about Lady Anne has to account in her own way for the things that are happening in her own life. And how do you write? How do you hold yourself as a poet and as a privileged white person accountable in that time? So Lady Anne then goes back to the -- just a second.
^M00:27:06
^M00:27:10
Sorry, I'm just trying to get the right poem. 
^M00:27:14
^M00:27:18
She goes -- they go back to England and then her husband gets a job to come back to Cape Town. She is very anxious because they don't have money that she can go back with him. So he has to go alone. But I want to conclude the bard's story with a poem about the soul fish. And the soul fish is a -- in Afrikaans we call it a tongue fish, but the soul is born like this. It moves down to the bottom because it gets eaten. So to escape being eaten it moves down. The one part becomes the other part. The one eye moves from the one side to the upper side. The mouth changes. The upper side then becomes darkened and so that fish then survives on the bottom because it has adapted. So I have written a poem about my children and this image of the soul fish which Lady Anne for the first time describes in one of her diaries. The light over my desk streams into darkness. I await my visitors on paper. My four children, finely balanced between anal and dorsal, tiny fins at the throat, constantly stirring, their eyes uncommonly soft. In the shallow, brackish water your mother treads, playing with the metaphors. Come here across dictionaries and blank pages. How I love this delicate little school, these fish of mine in their four strong flotilla lured so close now. What should I feed you? Dear child of the lean flank, yield to the seabed. Yes, the stretching makes you ache, but mother holds you to her. Mother is here. The eye beneath, like father's wondrous blue, migrates cautiously with a complex bunching of nerve and muscle until it's up beside the other. Pert little mouth, almost pulled out of shape, with time the tongue will settle in its groove. Pigment of the upper flank begin to darken. And up to the surf between sand and stone you lie, meshed with bedrock and never again to pray or take flight. I press my mouth against each distended face. Mother knows you will survive the tide. 
^M00:30:27
^M00:30:32
Lady Anne lets her husband then go alone and she worries about him. She writes a letter from London. Where will this letter find you, best beloved? If I could choose again I would not have you return you to the Cape. May fair winds attend you and blow you back soon. I travel everywhere with a small picture of your face. At times your eyes look saddened. And I think about you in the warm Cape and memories of that mountain, that seven foot percolate up, and how I took all the wrong tubes of watercolor. Oh, how I -- misjudged that brutal and blissful light. Look after yourself. I miss you. My days are ailing without you. He writes back. I shudder when I think what space there is between us. Pray for me sometimes dearest love. I never fail to do so for you. Andrew Barnard. And then of course he dies there and she gets the message. The six walnut trees in pots and my hands dirty when the message came. But how could it be? I had a letter yesterday. How can it be? How can it be that that day passed over me as if it was any other day that I sleep, have tea, laugh, add water while half of me is already dead. 
^M00:32:18
^M00:32:22
The slave brought me a handful of relics that they found with your body; a locket with my hair, the green purse I knitted for you, your medicine. You died of fever says the slave, near Sternenbosh. [phonetic] The doctor from the Cape was too late. There was no one with you. You were buried on the road to Green Point, a small funeral and wind from the sea. 
^M00:32:56
^M00:33:00
Tonight everything speaks through the dead towards me. Your brittle bundle of bones, my longest loved beloved lies lonely and longingly cradled somewhere lost and [inaudible]. I'm overwhelming awake tonight. Of me so little has become. You are all I had in this world, beloved deathling. Alone and cold it is behind my ribs. Africa had me giving up all. It is so dark. It is so bleak. Soft beloved torture, of me so little has become. I'm down to my last skin. 
^M00:34:08
^M00:34:12
[ Applause ]
^M00:34:17
^M00:34:20
>> Laverne Page: My name is Laverne Page. I'm an area specialist here in the African Middle Eastern Division. And I work with the Southern African countries and it's my honor to be here today to converse with -- I've been practicing [foreign language]. [laughing] I studied Afrikaans for a while years and years ago, oh yes. So for those of you who don't know much about the library I would just like to tell you that we have a vast collection of research material about and from the African Continent. And within that there's an amazing amount from and about South Africa in all formats -- so newspapers, government publications, films -- all topics -- education development, literature, poetry, drama -- and in the nine official languages of South Africa -- such as Afrikaans, so the first language of our speaker. We have quite a bit of her work in our collections. If you search our online catalogue by keyword there are at least 54 hits of -- for monograph records -- about her. So to start off our question and answer period I'll only ask for questions because I know that you have questions and I want to offer you my time. So I'll ask four questions -- two we always ask and then the other two I'll start off asking about "Lady Anne," which was first published in 1989 and was recently republished by Bucknell University Press, the first time a complete volume of poetry of yours has been translated from Afrikaans into English. So I'm wondering if you could tell us how you used Lady Anne as a metaphor to talk about social issues of the 1980s and how do you the present English poems speak to continuing issues of power, class, privilege, and racial injustice that disfigure our world? -- 
^M00:36:50
^M00:36:52
>> Antjie Krog: Thank you for such an honor [inaudible] African writers that [inaudible]. Lady -- at the end of the 80s -- that was before the [inaudible] of Nelson Mandela [inaudible]. The issue was the discrepancy, the difference, between white and black, rich and poor. And it was the whites were [inaudible] the black or whatever. So the volume is obsessed with; how do you deal with the whites standing of privilege? So I'm trying to use her I think to deal with that and I abused her. There are -- I appropriate her, which if she was black or if she was not white and royalty would have been a problem, but since the British kills her maybe [inaudible] I can't feel too bad. [inaudible] Yes, that is how I [inaudible]. Then Nelson Mandela happened and I was a bit ashamed of this poem because it was talking about these top issues and here was this unbelievably wonderful, forgiving period. And -- but when I retranslate -- when I translated them now yeah, I realize; no, it was just a poem. It was a wonderful poem. [inaudible] that we are still at that point and that issue will now be fought out. 
>> Laverne Page: Okay, thank you. I'd like to ask you something about language, which is a very sensitive issue everywhere. I was told that you are passionately committed to the indigenous languages. So I'm wondering what that means. South Africa has nine official languages and most, it appears to me in written form, are not thriving. So are they endangered? At one point our division had to be quite selective in what we acquired in Afrikaans because there was really so much material that was coming. Now it's less and less. And I'm wondering if it appears that way to you too, that there's less Afrikaans literature that's being produced? So my question is; is Afrikaans endangered? 
>> Antjie Krog: Afrikaans literature? Is it endangered? Okay, maybe just divert to the [inaudible] poem [inaudible] then I'll come to the second poem. [laughing] The University of Western [inaudible] seeing a large project that's received by the National Institute of Humanities Research. To translate classical text from indigenous languages into English and the classical text has been identified by scholars in those areas of languages. And so two novels from closer variety [inaudible] famous [inaudible] constantly are quoted from, but 90 percent of the people -- you know even people who speak situtu, [phonetic] are -- don't necessarily [inaudible]. So those two novels are being translated. There's two novels in Zulu, also a classical one by [inaudible] and then another one that is more current, about the fight between the [inaudible], they are wonderful, wonderful thriller of a novel [inaudible]. And another novel in Situtu -- a play in Situtu and then an anthology of poems from those languages. And what all those texts have in common is wideness either in the back of it or it's encroaching or it is already eroding. So it's -- African intellectuals who are educated, could write well, were read and they were responding, I want to say, to the black era of that language. You see it was a strange time in South Africa where you could feel that people were writing for the white era. Mainly explanations and mainly -- and this is -- it's absolutely fantastic text and I'm not sure if it's this what they [inaudible] [laughter] Afrikaans is -- was for many years already in language with English. It had a [inaudible] who supports English. You know English is supported by the world. So you don't -- a government need not support English. So the apatite [inaudible] supported Afrikaans, dictionaries were excellent. You know we had our own newspapers, we have two or three publishing houses. We have our own universities, etcetera. Now that has changed after 1994 because the table now has to be shared with the non-indigenous languages and that has had several consequences. Well, maybe we publish less, but I think art that is being written in Afrikaans is very, very interesting. It's -- there are voices -- because Afrikaans -- 60 percent of Afrikaans speakers are not white, hey? It's -- in South Africa they would be termed "colored." Here we -- I'm not sure, but -- so they speak Afrikaans, they're not white, and they are derived from other areas -- from another background. And [inaudible] coming from that. 
>> Laverne Page: Okay. Okay, thank you. To get to the two questions that relate to African literature in general, I would like know who your favorite new South African poets and writers are. And what do you think makes their work distinctly African?
^M00:43:54
^M00:44:00
>> Antjie Krog: [inaudible] let me just start with [inaudible]. There's a young poet takes us between old [inaudible] poet. [inaudible] She performed [inaudible] But some effectively -- and such -- had built up such a fan-base and she didn't even mind that she was not published or whatever. And then one day someone had heard her and contacted her and said, "Anyone published you?" "No." And so he has published her. It's a small, tiny print and gave money to publish [inaudible] poetry. And before the book came out there were already 2,000 orders.
>> Laverne Page: And that press is? 
>> Antjie Krog: June. [assumed spelling]
>> Laverne Page: That's okay.
>> Antjie Krog: That's okay. Her name is Kolega Putuma. [phonetic] And she is an oror [phonetic] before who also writer -- of course [inaudible] She is bringing a non-easy remembering of the past. So it's not always that the past was perfect or the past was just bad. That's a very complex situation. Then we have wonderful writers. And in our language and in English our rappers and poets of the word on one side, on the other side are poets of the page and poets of the stage. It's a very big division. But in Afrikaans we've managed to keep everybody impressed. And so there are some wonderful rappers in Afrikaans. It's a wonderful [inaudible]. He's a tall guy and he just -- it just thumps out under [inaudible]. Yes. We have -- and yes. [inaudible] a wonderful, young black students who now are at top universities are writing their experience of being trapped in this also privilege. And you know it. 
^M00:46:18
^M00:46:22
And don't feel easy about it. Feel in one way they earn it and in another way they can't live with it. 
>> Laverne Page: Oh, thank you. Right. Okay, lastly; what do you think is the future for African literary writers? Both diasporic and from the continent? And what steps need to be taken to bring more recognition from the international community? 
^M00:46:48
^M00:46:53
>> Antjie Krog: I once asked them [inaudible] Who is English language spies? Who goes out and says, "This book needs to be translated into English"? And they looked at me and said, "They will find us. They will find us." As if suggesting that good books were being translated into English, it's not necessary to go out there and find them. I think that's one of the problems that people who buy books or who advertise books or whatever, they don't go out to look what is available in indigenous languages as well as English. And at least these texts that are now being translated that I think there are so many other books from South Africa like Shocka, [phonetic] or Thomas Bufulmu [phonetic], the lynch man from Peter Malensbook. [phonetic] The two -- the only two books that have been written in an indigenous language that have been classed as the top 100 books written by Africans in the twentieth century. That is actually a fantastic list. And one most successful books have in common I think is to -- is another anthology. 
^M00:48:07
^M00:48:11
The world is bankrupt, hey? And the whole issue of humanity is bankrupt, mostly in the world. And from that continent comes text that provides an alternative to that. It's not necessarily respected because in many ways the world kneels down to individualism to [inaudible] and to a richness and all of that. And here is another completely other way of looking at life and at nature and at the cosmos that I think --
^M00:48:51
^M00:48:56
People are starving for. 
^M00:48:57
^M00:49:02
Laverne Page: Well -- [laughter] Thank you. I've had my turn. Now would you like to ask a question? Okay. 
^M00:49:16
^M00:49:24
>> Yes, thank you very much for your readings. I'm curious about the writings that is done in Afrikaans by the author Kans. [assumed spelling] Does it reflect some kind of [inaudible] Does it embrace the presence or is it used by the African artist as a resistance to the present? 
>> Antjie Krog: Oh, that's such a good question. And [inaudible] And [inaudible] What I'd say now is for Afrikaans, as well as for English, we also [inaudible] So he writes about [inaudible] So most people write about the parts they are being resistant to the parts because that's a part of South Africa they think, "Oh, I understand well." So I -- everyone can be -- everyone understands. There's one Afrikaans writer that writes about now. He has [inaudible] and he does a [inaudible] And he is [inaudible] And he writes [inaudible] I think he's [inaudible] And that is the closest you might come to one of these [inaudible] There's no other [inaudible] Sometimes people will imagine a place where [inaudible] doesn't work it just -- if you write [inaudible] it's actually white people but just black scenes, which then creates another kind of a problem. Or, what I found [inaudible] most famous South African [inaudible] was a futuristic hope taking place in South Africa, but because he took a jump of 14 years he could bring in black people, colored people, white people, bring it all in under a crisis with a past that they could [inaudible] And that's the only remarkable effort that has come from about now. Another thing is [inaudible] 
^M00:52:17
^M00:52:27
>> I have so many questions. I also want to say that [inaudible]
>> Antjie Krog: Yes.
>> And [inaudible]
>> Antjie Krog: I'm very sorry. [laughter]
>> But I wanted to ask you about -- not to get too personal -- but I wanted to ask you about the idea of translation as being perhaps a negative political act if it were rushing the [inaudible] into English. Are we losing their original intent? Are we losing the indigenous languages? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. It just seems as though there's more being published in these indigenous languages and it's such an exciting thing. Should those be translated for our consumption?
^M00:53:11
^M00:53:16
>> Antjie Krog: -- My personal obsession with translation is when I close my eyes and when I listen to the South -- what I call the South African sound. This is all the literature, all the poems, all of it. Then there's this absence of work done in the indigenous languages. Afrikaans is there and why are we there? Because we are being translated. And no one was interested in translating Afrikaans during apatite because you had [inaudible]. Since 1994 Afrikaans writers care. The publishers are not interested in having published every single writer, pay someone to publish her or him into English and you become part. That's how you end it and now you are part of the sound of the imagery, of the stories, of the South African. But all night I've been aware that initially just poetry, but the older I got about novels that exist in these languages that you can't buy anymore because they're out of print, no one reads them. There's also another problem that most of these indigenous novels have been written in what is called classical post novel, classical [inaudible]. And now the African can't read it. There's also many of the young black students that go to modern city schools where they learn no indigenous language and can't read that. But this -- so these translations would bring those voices back and maybe create real attention that, "Okay, let's go there and see how badly this is translated." You know? Or how truthfully this is being translated. So I -- for me translation is the act of reconciliation. It's a way of reaching each other -- because we have to have advanced language, write a book in which we can imagine each other. We can't now because there's these absences. And what I love actually most is that there's a lot of suspicion against these early black intellectuals that they sold out, that they were under the influence of missionaries, that all kinds of them you don't really need to know what they say because they are tainted. You -- and when you read these -- it's not so bad. The quality of [inaudible] is just unbelievable. The kinds of descriptions and things [inaudible] So I'm -- yeah, so it's an important issue for me and I think maybe that is the saving grace of English. So many other worlds enter it. And if a country decides not to buy books translated from Chinese or -- I don't read books from the East. Sometimes I feel [inaudible] in my lifetime is more than enough, you know? I can't accommodate that, you know? You -- yeah, and it's wrong, right? It's wrong and it's -- you need to take it all up -- in. 
^M00:56:50
^M00:56:56
>> I read that [inaudible] is kind of the way [inaudible]. Has any [inaudible] [laughter]
>> Antjie Krog: Yes, you know sometimes I feel I could have died at 18 because actually I would have died [inaudible] And it's difficult now there's a scandal [inaudible] Because we know what other kinds of scandals [inaudible] did survive [inaudible] volume on the 18 female body. And I was asking a [inaudible] do you know of any photograph of an old woman's body that is not disgusting? And he said to me, "No." He can't get older women to pose for him. So I said, "Okay, I have a friend. I will ask her." And she lets him. And so they go over where they took an unbelievably beautiful -- and it's not a photo shopping. It's all the moss, all the [inaudible] old woman. So that was on the cover of that volume, [inaudible] Oh, my goodness. The shops didn't want to put it on the shelves. Someone said to me, "How can I give a volume with this on the front cover for my father?" Someone else said to me, "[inaudible] I was too ashamed to read it on the plane." [laughter] You know? Because it's also a wise old woman's body. So now you know. I think maybe if it was a black old woman's body people would feel it's a political act [inaudible]. Now no one cares about the old woman's body. [laughter] So I can -- it also didn't sell well. Although it's very [inaudible] Which for me meant a lot that it created such -- that people realize how actually discriminating one is to once the older body. I may [inaudible] website, sex between old people, and that is truly disgusting. 
^M00:59:26
[ Laughter ]
^M00:59:35
>> [inaudible] I noticed that I happened to be [inaudible] And I noticed that Lost -- I noticed that lots of books were [inaudible] published in South African and Afrikaans and English. So it's not -- and then I don't know whether original is Afrikaans or in English, you know? And so that is, to me, Afrikaans is not dying. It's still there. And also, one thing is that I [inaudible] and accidentally I ordered a book that is in Afrikaans. So it was translated from English to Afrikaans. So that means that still a lot of people read Afrikaans. 
>> Antjie Krog: Yeah. No, there's a lot of readers [inaudible] buy the Afrikaans speaking book. Initially [inaudible] South Africa. [inaudible] 94 was politically [inaudible] And in the end I voted back because they say Afrikaan speakers come in and are looking for their books in their language, but they most often they find other books or order English books. But they don't come to your shop if you don't have a shelf. So that was it. The reason why Afrikaans is under threat at this stage is there was one University left who taught an Afrikaans [inaudible] you know you could do anything in Afrikaans. And they decided to step away from that, that they want to be more South African University. That they want -- yeah, an English -- they want to appoint lectures to someone that speaks English and so on. And that -- it means that the third tier function of that language is now completely under threat because people go, "Why would you go to a high school in Afrikaans if all universities are in English?" [inaudible] I want to say that it has become so strange, this translation between -- that some people have written books in English and then the publishing house will say, "But this is actually an Afrikaans story." Later it's translated in Afrikaans because they sell more. So because Afrikaan speakers buy that and it's [inaudible] English speakers. So there are some [inaudible] one famous that was written in English, but it was such a free state book that it was translated into Afrikaans by the [inaudible].
>> I have [inaudible] actually [inaudible] that you did [inaudible] I think it was on [inaudible] of desire. Where you were making a statement of [inaudible] Some kind of [inaudible] story was about crime, fear for whites, [inaudible] stories that [inaudible] promotionally very successful [inaudible] So I was wondering [inaudible] or if you see that as a trend [inaudible] writing in South Africa [inaudible] Afrikaan community [inaudible] interested in film and your [inaudible] what is your relationship with [inaudible]?
^M01:04:26
^M01:04:32
>> Antjie Krog: There's a [inaudible] before 1994 the writing was [inaudible] I have to say, it's -- since 1990 the decision with people like Nelson Mandela and his first cabinet, people were [inaudible] were turning to the bank, turning to their [inaudible] to find black heritage that means something for them. And there's a [inaudible] I think you put it, of -- a wave of literature about some black man or some good person in the past who has affected -- he wasn't even being -- white children have been brought up by black women. And so there is a whole new movement of trying to find her. You already knew her white name, where is she? And so they found the children of that person [inaudible] find photographs. There's a website where you can post photographs of you and your black [inaudible] and ask whether anyone knows anything about them. 
^M01:06:05
^M01:06:11
So it's -- I think there's a desire to redefine one's self and redefine one's self as a profoundly South African person and not as a European subject.
^M01:06:27
^M01:06:33
Yeah. And the problem is with things going so bad [inaudible] so there are these texts that sell out [inaudible] Africa [inaudible] to be resurrected. I have no [inaudible] although Afrikaan [inaudible] There are mostly all black [laughter] [inaudible] This is an industry that creates a lot of jobs. It's [inaudible] that is in Afrikaans. And all of it must include -- if I want to look at it now, if I want to find something now it's on television. Completely, you know bizarre but [inaudible] And so on. So you find that on TV. [inaudible] You also find individual art and in music there's a lot of cross fraternization.
>> Laverne Page: We should wrap things up now. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for coming. It has been a very, I think intriguing session here today. Things I've never thought about, never knew. I just think that this was very good for all of us. Quite informative. So thank you very much. If you have questions that you'd like to ask, we invite you to come back to our conference room and you can ask questions. We also have copies of "Lady Anne" for sale in our conference room. And we'd welcome your coming back. So thank you very much. Thank you.
^M01:09:06
[ Applause ]
^M01:09:10
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. 
^E01:09:16