Sunday Times: A great voice is stilled
Vanuit Digitale Etienne Leroux Projek
Skrywer: Charles Malan
Publikasiedatum: 1990/01/07
By Charles Malan, chairman of the Afrikaanse Skrywersgilde, who is busy writing a biography of Etienne Leroux
With the death of Etienne Leroux at 67, Afrikaans literature has lost its most eminent novelist. As one of the leading Sestigers, his work on the one hand has been the centre of controversy since the '60s, yet it received international recognition.
Etienne Leroux was in fact Stephanus (Stephen) le Roux who published the first of 11 novels in 1955. After receiving an LLB degree from the University of Stellenbosch, he farmed near Koffiefontein.
With his first wife, the well-known painter Renee le Roux, he had three children (Helize, Cherie and Stephen). he later married concert pianist Elizabeth Joubert.
The son of Mr Stephen le Roux, respected Minister of Agriculture in the first National Party Cabinet of 1948, the young writer initially supported the party. For some time he was also a deacon in the NG Church.
His first three novels did not receive much attention, but the awarding of the Hertzog Prize in 1964 for Seven Days at the Silbersteins resulted in a public outcry and a virtual witch-hunt. Leroux's novel was seen as an attack on Afrikaner morals and ideology.
CONDEMNED
This spearheaded the wide-ranging questioning of Afrikaner thought and apartheid traditions by the influential Sestiger group, including André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, Jan Rabie and Bartho Smith.
Seven Days, with its satirical examination of the "brave new world" created by capitalism on the Cape farm Welgevonden, was condemned by four NG synods and many Afrikaner organisations. The pattern was to repeat itself when Magersfontein, o Magersfontein! was banned in 1977, yet two years later he was again awarded the hallowed Hertzog Prize.
Seven Days was described as "a superb comic fantasy, a work of art" by Graham Greene and "a masterpiece - the best thing that has yet come out of South Africa" by Stuart Cloete, who echoed the views of many critics abroad.
Together with the other novels of the trilogy, One for the Devil and The Third Eye, it firmly established Leroux's international reputation. The trilogy was published in Penguin's Modern Classics series, one of the highest honours to be bestowed on a South African writer.
While Leroux was seen as "one of the truly great writers of our time" by Charles Larson and others, he had to do battle with the moral indignation of his own people who had no stomach for the "immoral" situations in a number of his books. His portraits of a South African society which had lost or perverted its myths did not allow his local readers any comfort.
Leroux was deeply and adversely influenced by the banning of Magersfontein in which he drew parallels between the heroism of the Anglo-Boer War and contemporary myth-mongering.
Although the novel was eventually unbanned, the fact that he could be silenced this way, and the extreme reactions of large sections of the community caused him so much stress that he could not write for a number of years.
True to his nature, however, his next novel, Onse Hymie, was a biting satire on apartheid. The same approach was continued in the novel which he was unable to finish before his death, Die Kaping.
His writing abilities and his warm humanity earned him the respect of his well-known literary friends such as Graham Greene, Paul Theroux, WF Hermans and others. "Like a great conjurer, Leroux is most enjoyable when it is most baffling," said Theroux.
In spite of all the opposition, both locally and in academic circles, recognition came in the form of three honorary doctorates and five major literary prizes. Eight books of criticism and more than 40 theses are devoted to his work.
As one of the most respected members of the Afrikaanse Skrywersgilde, he was strongly committed to the guild's ideals of helping create a progressive culture for a nonracial, democratic South Africa. He constantly criticised all structures of power and any curtailment of individual freedom.
COMPASSIONATE
Leroux has done more than any writer to confront the Afrikaner with the dark forces in his own psyche. Yet his criticism was never without compassion.
In a 1979 article, In Search of Self, he wrote: "I think all writers, in a certain sense, all serious writers, are suffering for the rest of humanity - in a psychological sense. And isn't that the essence of creation then?
"The writer or the artist is the ape of God, in a sense, because he is imitating God. You see, we are kicked out of Paradise because we are particularly hubristic in order to imitate God."
Leroux will be remembered as the gifted ape of God, but most of all as the very humane writer who, like James Joyce, set out to forge the "conscience of his race" while remaining loyal to those members of the volk who so constantly rejected him and refused to see themselves in the mirrors of his novels. The writer is dead; long live the writer.
