Based on the above, I can say with reasonable certainty that a study that concentrates specifically on the representation of the concepts of home and exile in Breytenbach’s oeuvre is yet to be concluded. A contemplation of the nature of the concepts of home and exile, and the related issues of identity and belonging have led me to examine how Breytenbach expresses the complexity of the constructs of home and exile in Memory of Snow and of Dust. The writer’s engagement with such issues illustrates a preoccupation with important aspects of contemporary life and an attempt to understand the world in which we live. Breytenbach believes that the writer is in a position to give the general public added insight into contemporary experience. As a writer who has experienced exile, he points out that “in a century of Displaced Persons and exiles and those fleeing famine or torture, you [the writer] are in the position to share in and contribute to an historically important, and vital, human experience. (Not to say experiment)” (1986:212). My study aims to explore how, in Memory of Snow and of Dust, Breytenbach has contributed to our changing perceptions.
The novel is set in Europe, Africa, and South Africa, and depicts characters who, having left a previous home, are unable to belong in their new surroundings. The book consists of two parts. In
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Part One, titled “Utéropia” – a mixture of “‘Europe’ and ‘Ethiopia’, ‘uterus’ and ‘utopia’” (Jacobs 2004:167) – we are introduced to Meheret, an Ethiopian journalist and aspiring writer, who is living in Paris. She becomes romantically involved with Mano, a ‘coloured’ South African actor, who is recruited on an undercover mission back to South Africa where he is arrested and sentenced to death. Part One consists mainly of Meheret’s recollections of the past, as she – now carrying Mano’s child – writes down her and Mano’s story, interrupted by descriptions of her Ethiopian family, in an attempt to preserve these memories for their child. Barnum, another exiled character, acts as a mentor to Meheret, instructing her in the writing process. Part Two, titled “On The Noble Art of Walking in No Man’s Land”, mostly comprises letters that Mano compiles while in Pollsmoor Prison, in which he reveals his insights into belonging and finally a place to call ‘Home’.
In my study of the novel I will explore the categories of home and exile in separate chapters:
“Home” as Chapter One and “Exile” as Chapter Two. Although I have chosen, in my exploration of these two themes, to make a distinction between home and exile, this distinction is merely for the sake of structural clarity. In an age in which concepts are intersecting and becoming increasingly blurred, it is difficult to separate the two concepts from one another as, by their very nature, they intersect in the double vision that is experienced by the migrant. Ashcroft et al. (2000) give the following definition of exile: “The condition of exile involves the idea of a separation and distancing from either a literal homeland or from a cultural and ethnic origin” (92). If there is a loss of home, that implies exile; whereas exile implies the absence of an environment in which a sense of belonging is experienced – a home. The conventional separation of home and exile in my study is based on my understanding of home, as becoming a non-home in conditions of exile. Thus my concept of home is a negating one which implies the absence of a homely feeling; the loss of a familiar environment. This is the focus of the first chapter and, as it inevitably implies exile, it leads into the second chapter which is an examination of the experience of exile in which the awareness of no longer belonging anywhere is pervasive. In Chapter Three, titled “‘The Paradox of Wonder’: the
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Transformation of Homelessness into Home”, I extend my exploration of the themes of home and exile in a study of Breytenbach’s sense of a multi-layered, alternative home. It is in this last chapter that the overlapping nature of home and exile receives a more focussed attention, as anticipated by discussions in both the first and second chapters.
Although (as indicated by the subsection on “The Age of Migration and ‘Double Vision’”) I am interested in the migrant’s double vision, I will not discuss this condition in Chapter One. Rather, Chapter One will focus on the difficulty of locating a home in either Europe, or Africa, while Chapter Two will consider the double vision of the migrant as part of the experience of exile. Chapter Two will, therefore, focus on the ‘in-between’ nature of the exile’s life that is the result of the double vision occurring when living between ‘homes’.
Furthermore, in Chapter Three I identify an alternative vision of home: a home-in-exile, exile-as- home. In this regard, my study recognises the new approach in recent literary debates that, in an age in which binary categories are increasingly called into question, we need to move beyond either/or distinctions. Moreover, I take into account the difficulty of applying binary categories to the work of exiled writers such as Breytenbach or Lewis Nkosi – for example. Chapman makes the following comment in an article in which he compares the work of Breytenbach and Nkosi. He argues that in a world in which local and global are increasingly becoming blurred, we need to approach both authors in a way that recognises conceptual overlapping in contemporary society. He points out that Breytenbach’s (and Nkosi’s) work offer an “ongoing exploration of home and exile, where inward belonging and global dispersion are set not in either/or contrast, but in the both/and of multiple encounters” (2006:354). It is this focus on a more inclusive approach that is particularly relevant to my study, as it takes cognisance of a world in which the boundaries of ‘home’ and ‘exile’ do not lend themselves to simple definitions.
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In conclusion, my study argues that we need to reconsider Memory of Snow and of Dust in an age of migration: in which migrants experience a double vision, as well as an acute awareness of what constitutes home and what exile. The themes of home and exile emerge strongly in the novel, as the characters grapple with finding a sense of belonging in a world in which they are disowned, dislocated and alienated. This year signals 21 years since the publication of Memory of Snow and of Dust (1989) and I suggest that a new approach to the novel within current developments in postcolonial theory yields not only relevant, but new insights into the experience of migrancy.
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