Song of the Broken String

by Watson, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781878818430
• ISBN10: 1878818430
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-12-01
• Publisher: Sheep Meadow Pr

Summary

The /Xam Bushmen, hunters, gatherers, some poets among them, were a stone age people who survived nearly 5,000 years in the region now known as the Cape Province of South Africa. By the turn of this century they had completely disappeared, destroyed finally by the murderous European settlement of the interior. Song of the Broken String has its provenance in the oral tradition of this ancient culture. In the 1860s, a German linguist named W. H. Bleek become aware of the genocide in progress. Taking into his service three /Xam Bushmen he found working as convict laborers in a chain gang, he set about preserving a small part of their heritage. After devising a phonetic notation of the /Xam's language, he transcribed the personal narratives, songs, and folktales of these three men and translated them into English. Housed in an archive at the University of Cape Town, the 12,000 pages of the Bleek and Lloyd Collection are all that remains of this people and their language.
Stephen Watson, a contemporary South African poet, has explored this archive, "re-translating" Bleek's word-for-word English prose into poems in which something of the power of those original voices lives on, however filtered through the 19th century ethnographer and the 20th century writer. The results not only offer a path into a powerful oral tradition, but also raise questions about the ways in which we listen to and "translate" cultures that are distant or lost. Song of the Broken String does not bring back the /Xam, it is not a collection of artifacts. Something survives here that is almost monumental, certainly beautiful.

Table of Contents

Introduction
In a Far-Off Place	p. 3
The Rain-Sorcerer	p. 4
Rain in a Dead Man's Footsteps	p. 5
Sun, Moon, and Stars	p. 6
Prayer to the New Moon	p. 7
The Sound of the Stars	p. 8
Throwing Fire at the Stars	p. 9
The Girl Who Created the Milky Way	p. 10
The Sun, the Moon, and the Knife	p. 12
What Happens When You Die	p. 13
The Nature of /Kaggen	p. 14
The Dawn's Heart Star: Two Fragments	p. 15
Song of the Dawn's Heart Star	p. 16
Blue Mist Like Smoke	p. 17
The Origin of the Moon	p. 18
A Feather Thrown into the Sky	p. 19
Song of Four Winds	p. 20
What Is the Moon?	p. 21
The Maiden and the Rain	p. 22
Rainmaking with a Bow-String	p. 24
The Abandoned Old Woman	p. 25
The Anger of the Moon	p. 26
Catching a Porcupine	p. 28
The Rain that Is Male	p. 30
Presentiments	p. 31
Sneezing Out a Lion	p. 32
Sorcerers Are Like Lions	p. 33
The Powers of the Dead	p. 34
The Wild is One with the Man	p. 36
Jackal Clouds	p. 37
The Lost Tobacco Pouch: A Song	p. 38
Our Blood Makes Smoke	p. 39
The Story of Ruyter	p. 40
Song of the Broken String	p. 41
Xaa-ttin's Lament	p. 43
Kabbo's Road into Captivity	p. 44
The Name of My Place	p. 47
What Is Your Name?	p. 48
The Meaning of a Sneeze	p. 49
Cows and Twigs	p. 50
Kabbo Tells Me His Dream	p. 51
Kabbo's Request for Thread	p. 53
Return of the Moon	p. 54
Index of Poems by Narrator	p. 59
Notes to the Poems	p. 61
Appendix of original transcripts	p. 69
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.