In Memory of Snow and of Dust the characters are portrayed as dislocated individuals in an environment in which they move on the peripheries. Mano and Walser, on a walk through Paris, are described as “nomads moving through *the+ city-state without being part of it...they can be found on a bench in a public garden on the edge of Chinatown” (1989:72). This peripheral existence is summed up in Breytenbach’s description of the exile as a “borderline case” (1986:75), living on the
‘edges’ of society. The pervasive sense of a loss of ‘home’ remains with exiles, preventing them from finding a sense of stability and belonging in their surroundings. Mano uses the following poetic image to illustrate the nature of the dislocation: “an exile lives abroad as a moon does in a lake”
(1989:23). Unable fully to immerse themselves deeply enough in the foreign environment, although
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they attempt to become a part of their surroundings, exiles have to be content with a surface- belonging. Breytenbach likens this experience to being a translation. He states that “‘you will be a translation...a translated version of yourself’” in your surroundings (in Dimitriu 1996:98).
Mano realises that he is not fully functional in his Parisian surroundings. He comments on “living the imitation (mutation) of a normal life so far from his natural environment *Africa+” (1989:24).
Furthermore, he describes exile as “the living proof that death doesn’t kill” (25). The psychological effect of the emotions caused by a rootless existence in a culture of which you will never be a part results in a kind of death for the characters: they are forced to accept their peripheral existence and surface-belonging in Paris, as a new way of life. They long for the stability and security they once knew, in a culture in which they were once fully immersed. However, it becomes increasingly clear to the characters that “exile...is fundamentally a discontinuous state of being...*that+ cut*s+ *one] off from *one’s+ roots, *one’s+ land, *one’s+ past” (Said 2001:177).
The novel itself can be seen as a fictional representation of the dislocation generated by exile. As I have noted, the reader is relentlessly ‘alienated’ by the fragmentary style. The novel unfolds un- chronologically, shifting between times, forms, places, and narrators, frequently interrupting itself and then resuming the narrative again, at a later stage. According to Anker (2007), who has undertaken a study of the nomadic subject in Breytenbach’s work, the use of this artistic strategy – a characteristic of Breytenbach’s work – is a simulation of the unsettledness of the dislocated lifestyle of the exile, and a rejection of a view of life that embraces any form of unity or fixity (2007:355). In Memory of Snow and of Dust we are given an insight into the exile’s life that debunks the romantic vision of the exile, revealing instead pain and a sense of loss.
The sense of loss is further compounded by the loss of the mother-tongue. Breytenbach explains that, as an exile in a ‘foreign’ environment, “‘you are in fact translating yourself all the time, you have to interpret yourself. People around you cannot experience you instinctively. You have to
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explain yourself. Because you are a foreigner to them, you are an intruder to them’” (in Dimitriu 1996:98). Having lost the option of communicating in the mother tongue in their new surroundings, exiles are forced to use the language of the environment in which they find themselves. The “lack of fit between the language available and the place experienced” (Ashcroft et al. 2000:181) – a postcolonial concern that is illustrated in Memory of Snow and of Dust – highlights the impossibility of a unified existence.
The inability to use one’s mother-tongue in foreign surroundings leads to what Meheret identifies as a loss of “the daily bread of self-knowledge” (1989:113). In this sense, one experiences a loss of
‘home’ for a second time, as one can no longer use the language in which one previously ‘lived’. In time this affects one’s ability instinctively to feel, think and live in one’s mother-tongue. One learns to express oneself in another language. The (mother) tongue becomes “a bleeding stump”
(1989:61), making the experience of exile “doubly difficult, choked up as it were, spitting a reddish substance in the toilet bowls of his dreamwakes” (1989:61). Cut off from the mother-tongue, exiles become “voiceless” (1989:61); “caught in a cleft mouth” (Breytenbach 1986:211) as they are forced to use a language that is foreign to navigate their environment, their lives, and their emotions.
The use of Afrikaans expressions in the book, as translated literally from Afrikaans into English, is a textual representation of the dislocation that the exile experiences. Expressions like: “snothead”
(61); “‘Now I long for people I never met in my whole goddamn life’” (220); and “we exchanged little cows and calves as our saying goes” (1989:227) are direct translations into English of Afrikaans expressions: ‘snotkop’; ‘Nou verlang ek na iemand wat ek nog nooit in my hele lewe ontmoet het nie’; and ‘praat oor koeitjies en kalfies’. These expressions show how Breytenbach is literally translating his language, as well as himself, into a different environment. The use of these literal translations in the novel emphasises the dislocation that the exile experiences. The translations in the text represent “‘a kind of permanent exile’” (De Man, in Bhabha 1994:228) of the mother tongue in the exile’s environment. Bhabha explains that
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*t+he ‘time’ of translation consists in that movement of meaning, the principle and practice of a communication that, in the words of de Man ‘puts the original in motion to decanonise it, giving it the movement of fragmentation, a wandering of errance, a kind of permanent exile’. (1994:228)
The nuances of the Afrikaans language, and the idiomatic expressions, are permanently exiled once another language is used, as these are aspects that cannot be captured by another language in the same way as expressed in Afrikaans. Breytenbach’s use of nuances that are characteristic of the Afrikaans language, as noted by Viljoen (1995), and the visible movement between Afrikaans and English in his writing, as commented on by J.M. Coetzee (2001), illustrate the attempt to retain certain aspects of the mother-tongue in his writing. This practice fictionally represents the longing for the mother tongue in an environment in which it cannot be used to communicate.
Lastly, when the exile reverts back to the mother tongue, the experience is no longer pure, for now
“*y]ou end up speaking all languages with an accent, even the distant one of your youth, the one you kept for love and anger” (Breytenbach 1996:43). Thus, part of “the anguished awareness of exile”
(1989:113) – as identified by Meheret – is a loss of language, not just in your new environment, but also to a degree in the old one.
The loss of language contributes to feelings of alienation and dislocation that become a permanent part of the exile’s existence in an environment that cannot instinctively be experienced as home. The characters in the novel move around in the Parisian milieu without being able to experience a sense of belonging; instead, they carry around with them an acute awareness of their dislocation and ‘un- belonging’.
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