Adam Small

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Adam Small (born December 21, 1936 in Wellington , South Africa , † June 25, 2016 in Cape Town ) was a South African writer and humanities scholar. He was the only Colored in the avant-garde movement of the on Afrikaans writing sestigers . In 2012 he was the first non-white person to receive the Hertzog Prize .

Life

When Small was one year old, the family moved to Goree near Robertson , where his father Jan Small - formerly Jan Dampies - worked as a teacher and wrote plays for the Sunday school there. In 1938 his sister was born. In late 1944 the family moved to Cape Flats for retreat , where his father became headmaster. Through his father's work, he came into contact with the subject of poverty; his mother, Fatimah Suliman, was a Muslim, so he came into contact with Islam . Both factors influenced his work.

He attended the Catholic St. Columba School in Athlone in Cape Flats, briefly studied medicine and then philosophy at the University of Cape Town , where he obtained a master’s degree with a thesis on Nicolai Hartmann and Friedrich Nietzsche . He began his career in 1959 as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Fort Hare . In 1960 he was appointed head of the philosophy department at the newly founded University of the Western Cape (UWC), which had been specially set up for Coloreds. In the early 1960s he was the only non-white member of the Sestigers, whose goal was to change the content and form of the Afrikaans-language literature. From 1963 to 1965 he studied at Oxford University . As a result of his political commitment to the Black Consciousness Movement , he had to leave the UWC in 1973 and was unemployed for a time before he found a new job as head of the Student Body Services at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg . In 1979, several of his fellow writers, including Etienne Leroux and Elsa Joubert , resigned from the South African Academy for the Sciences and Arts because they refused to accept Small. In 1984, Small was appointed professor and head of the social work department at UWC. In 1993 he became a senior professor at UWC, and in 1997 he retired.

Small wrote poetry, dramas, and a novel. He was the first poet to use Cape Afrikaans, the typical language of the Coloreds in the Cape Flats. He wrote in English for a while during the 1970s. The focus of his work is the role of the colored in apartheid . He often used satire, irony, and sarcasm in his poems. His best-known drama is Kanna hy kô hystoe (German: "Kanna: he comes home"), in which a colored family is described. The son Kanna studies in Canada and wants to lead the family to prosperity, but has to return to Cape Town because of a death, so that his dreams are bursting.

In 2012, Small received the prestigious Hertzog Prize for his stage pieces, which is awarded for literature in Afrikaans.

Adam Small had four children from two marriages.

Works

  • 1957: Verse van die liefde (poems), Culemborg, Kaapstad.
  • 1958: Klein simbool ( prose poetry ), HAUM, Kaapstad.
  • 1961: Kitaar my kruis (poems), HAUM, Kaapstad.
  • 1961: The first steen? (Essay), HAUM, Kaapstad.
  • 1963: Sê sjibbolet (poems), Perskor, Johannesburg.
  • 1965: Kanna hy kô hystoe (stage play), Table Mountain, Kaapstad.
  • 1973: Oos wes tuis bes Distrik Ses (poems), with photos by Chris Jansen, Human & Rousseau, Kaapstad.
  • 1975: Black, bronze and beautiful. Quatrains ( quatrains ), AD Donker, Johannesburg.
  • 1978: Orange earth (radio play), only published in print in 2013, Table Mountain, Kaapstad.
  • 1978: Joanie Galant-hulle (stage play), Perskor, Johannesburg.
  • 1978: Hey, smile with me (stage play)
  • 1979: Heidesee (Roman), Perskor, Johannesburg.
  • 1983: Krismis van Map Jacobs (stage play), Table Mountain, Kaapstad.
  • 1992: Kanna he is coming , Garland, New York.
  • 2004: District Six, with photos by Jansje Wissema, Fontein Publishing, Johannesburg.
  • 2013: Klawerjas, Table Mountain, Kaapstad.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Writer, poet Adam Small dies
  2. ↑ a b c d Francois Cleophas: Adam Small - Familiengeskiedenisse, aanlope en vroëer invloede. (Afrikaans, PDF), accessed on February 2, 2014
  3. ↑ a b c d e Adam Small on the website of the Tafelberg Verlag (English), accessed on February 2, 2014
  4. ^ A b André Brink : A fork in the road. Harvill Secke, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-846-55244-1 , p. 209.
  5. ↑ Etienne Leroux at diesestigers.wordpress.com (English), accessed on February 2, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Small, Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African writer and humanities scholar
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Wellington (South Africa)
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 2016
Place of death Cape Town