Murder your darlings: Breytenbach, die dood en die vrou

Abstract

The poet Breyten Breytenbach establishes a very specific relation between death and the art of poetry, a relation which is affirmed and elucidated in his literary essays, to such a degree that one could refer to his poetics as a death-conscious aesthetics. This is a position that is not wholly uncontroversial, especially in the light of feminist critique viewing the coupling of creativity and death as a male preoccupation that is almost always pursued to the exclusion and elimination of women. It becomes even more problematic when death is expressly linked to the woman, as Breytenbach often does, and this article views the poet’s linkage of death, women and art against the backdrop of theoretical stances and the development of cultural viewpoints in this regard.