Chapter 16 - South Africa

Summary

South African First World War poetry is unique in its inclusion of Africanised metaphors, metonyms, and images, and the distinctive form and fluid structure of the indigenous war izibongo or praise poetry. White soldiers metamorphose into supple springbok antelope and black soldiers into powerful bull-calves to dispel the reality of battlefield rot. An Africanised bush and sea are superimposed on metaphysical and Romantic literary landscapes and seascapes in an effort to hide the corpse of war deep inside their ambiguous beauty. Furthermore, the indigenous war izibongo’s fluidity of form and dynamic orality allow the corpse of war to slip farther from psychological view. However, in the war poetry, the image of the monster Adamastor lurks that symbolises physical and psychological breakdown within an alien wartime and colonial milieu. Significantly, war poets used satire, irony, and imagist verse to foreground wartime jingoism and blunder, and war- and colonial-induced trauma.