'Against extremity': Eben Venter's Horrelpoot and the quest for tolerance

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by Phil van Schalkwyk

'Productive reference'

Ricoeur (1991: 121) holds that a work of fiction ought not to relate to the world reproductively, but rather in a productive manner. In this regard he uses the term 'productive reference'. Fictional works, according to Ricoeur (ibid), momentarily detach the reader from reality, and in this state of 'non-engagement we try new ideas, new values, new ways of being-in-the-world. Imagination is this free play of possibilities. In this state, fiction can ... create a redescription of reality' (ibid: 128). The author 'creates a new mythos of ... reality. Thus mimesis is not simply reduplication but creative reconstruction by means of the mediation of fiction' (ibid: 134). Critical of the South African literary tradition of the spectacular, our own Njabulo Ndebele (1994: 53) has called for a new kind of narrative, 'designed to deliberately break down the barriers of the obvious in order to reveal new possibilities of understanding and action.' Does Horrelpoot succeed as a genuinely progressive work of art, or should it rather be seen as limited, even regressive, also on account of its heavy reliance on the older text, Heart of darkness?

I would like to argue that the gloom of Horrelpoot is, after all, in a paradoxical way, connected to the 'play of possibilities' that Ricoeur (1991) has written about, in that the continuous exposure to Horrelpoot's darkness and evil kindles in the reader a true desire for, and a renewed appreciation of, light, illumination, hope, and good. Van Schalkwyk's (2004: 187) research has demonstrated that the ubiquitous contemporary discourse on 'positive thinking' actually forms part of the nihilistic tendency toward non-engagement with reality, since negative, stark or disconcerting facts are 'denied' or 'suppressed'. In this sense, Horrelpoot stands out as an authentic work of art through its bold engagement with the real, with the historic moment. It may be postulated that Horrelpoot constitutes a profound demonstration of the value of sombreness, a gloom intensified by its close ties with Heart of darkness, which, apart from its almost universally admired narratological and stylistic delights, is not a text with pleasant, positive connotations.

Fear and tolerance

As far as Conrad's image of Africa is concerned, Heart of darkness has, in later years, been severely criticised, most notably by Chinua Achebe (1988) who forthrightly called it racist. I am in partial agreement with Peter Firchow (2000: 23) who counters this charge by arguing that Heart of darkness should not be taken as an attempt to portray the 'real' Africa. It much rather aims to capture the collective envisioning of Africa rooted in the deepest psychic fears of Conrad's (initial) readers and, perhaps, of Conrad himself. In these fears there is, undeniably, an element of racism. Fincham (1990), however, warns against a too simplistic and reductive conflation of Conrad and his narrator Marlow. She holds that it is Marlow who projects those fears and desires which he cannot tolerate in himself, onto the African Other, giving rise to a distorted picture. This may explain why Marlow encounters a white man, an emaciated (and distorted) version of himself, (25) at the very heart of Africa. Perhaps this is meant to suggest that his (and 'our') fear is, as it turns out: white, blank, void. Venter's Horrelpoot is, likewise, a confrontation with fear, in this case, contemporary, largely unspoken fear, rooted in the age-old dread of the ancestors, and an attempt at getting it out of the system. In this sense, Horrelpoot may be described as a cathartic text, for the reader as much as for the author. And this is dearly needed in contemporary South Africa: we need to be purged of fear, because fear obstructs tolerance.