Arthur Nortje
Arthur Nortje was a South African poet born on December 16, 1942, in Oudtshoorn, Cape Province. The circumstances of his birth, as the illegitimate child of a black mother and a Jewish father who disowned him, shaped his identity and experiences within the context of apartheid, which classified him as "colored." Despite being a talented student, he faced significant limitations due to the segregated educational system and felt compelled to leave South Africa in search of greater opportunities. After winning the 1962 Mbari Poetry Prize, he moved to England on a scholarship to Oxford University in 1965, where he struggled with feelings of alienation as he navigated his identity as an African living in a foreign land.
Nortje's work often reflected themes of absence, division, and loss, and he experienced a complex relationship with the antiapartheid movement, choosing to express his frustrations through poetry rather than activism. His writings included poignant reflections on the plight of the marginalized, though he faced criticism for his perceived detachment from political struggles. His life was marked by personal battles with loneliness and substance use, culminating in his tragic death on December 10, 1970, just before his 28th birthday. Nortje's legacy endures as he is remembered for his haunting contributions to South African literature and the exploration of identity and exile.
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Arthur Nortje
Poet
- Born: December 16, 1942
- Birthplace: Oudtshoorn, Cape Province, South Africa
- Died: December 10, 1970
- Place of death: Oxford, England
Biography
Arthur Nortje had a tortured existence, due in part to the circumstances of his birth but also because of internal demons that plagued him throughout his short life. The second illegitimate child of a black woman, Cecilia Potgieter, and a Jewish father who disowned him, he was born on December 16, 1942, in Oudtshoorn, Cape Province, South Africa, and immediately classified as “colored” according to the emerging apartheid movement.
Nortje knew early on that he had to leave his beloved homeland, a place that awarded voting rights to whites only and enforced a system of separate education. Though a fine student, he was relegated to a segregated school where the challenges were few. Winning the 1962 Mbari Poetry Prize from Ibadan University did not lessen his resolve to leave. The repressive conditions in his country were killing the literary renaissance of the 1950’s and 1960’s, with artists and political thinkers being imprisoned and exiled. In late 1965, after teaching for two years, Nortje accepted a scholarship to Oxford University and headed to England. The move heralded the beginning of a new life, the end of the old and, ultimately, an end to his own.
To dispel the fears of visiting friends who were sure he would become a white Oxfordian, Nortje would dance and sing loudly in the streets. However, his posthumously published journal showed he was concerned with learning the language of the ruling class. The journal contained short lists of words, such as “frisson,” and “manque,” to use when in elevated company. Nortje never resolved the sense of displacement that came from being an African in England and of being neither black nor white in his native land. He suffered from alienation, the kind that only one in forced exile could experience. He had close friends and was often the life of the party but this life was manufactured and sustained through an increased reliance on alcohol and experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs.
In many ways, however, his sense of exile came long before the actuality of exile. He was a lonely wanderer who wrote of things far away. He withheld active support of the antiapartheid movement, observing in his poem “Native’s Letter” that “some of us must storm the castles /some define the happening.” His seeming reticence toward the antiapartheid movement angered some activists, but he could not comfortably align himself with the kind of anger and possible violence inherent in such protests. He chose instead to save his anger, despair, and loneliness for his creative endeavors. He was a poet of absence, division, loss, and alienation. He treated blackness as a “stain,” but his later poetic activism became apparent with his references to blacks as “bacteria,” “residue,” and “auto- toxins,” with the implication that life for the poor might be at the lowest level, but the potential for subversive action was there. He created some of the most haunting, most important works in the history of South African literature.
A night of drinking, followed by the downing of twenty-five prescribed pills, led to his death on December 10, 1970, a few days short of his twenty-eighth birthday. He may have died accidentally, or perhaps his death was a suicide, his last bid for control over his own destiny. The coroner’s report listed the cause of death as undetermined.