Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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Another Work by Giannina Braschi
“Three Prose Poems.” Translated by Tess O’Dwyer.
The Literary Review: An International Journal of
Contemporary Writing 36, no. 2 (Winter 1993):
147–49.
Works about Giannina Braschi
“Giannina Braschi.” The Literary Review 36, no.2
(Winter 1993): 14.
“Yo-Yo Boing!.” Publishers Weekly 245, no. 35 (August
1998): 49.
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau (Lawson
Edward Brathwaite)
(1930– ) poet, critic,
short-story writer, teacher, historian
Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, Brathwaite was ed-
ucated at Harrison College in Barbados. He won a
Barbados scholarship in 1949 to Pembroke Col-
lege, Cambridge, where he read history. After grad-
uating in 1953, Brathwaite stayed on one more year
to earn a Certificate in Education.
In 1955, Brathwaite left England for Ghana and
worked as an education officer for seven years.
There he founded a children’s theater and wrote
plays, later published as Four Plays for Primary
Schools (1964) and Odale’s Choice (1967). He also
published multiple poems in Cambridge Univer-
sity journals and West Indies periodicals, such as
Bim and Kyk-Over-Al. In “Timehri” (1970), Brath-
waite remarked on his Ghanaian experiences:
“Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to a sense of identi-
fication of myself with these people, my living di-
viners. I came to connect my history with theirs,
the bridge of my mind was linking Atlantic and an-
cestor, homeland and heartland.” The historical
and geographical themes expressed in these state-
ments reappear in many of Brathwaite’s works.
Returning to the Caribbean in 1962, Brathwaite
worked as a tutor for the University of the West In-
dies in St. Lucia. One year later he became a lecturer
in history at Mona, Jamaica. He completed his first
book of poetry, Rights of Passage, during his first
year there, and it was published in 1967 as the first
volume of a trilogy. The Rights of Passage, Brath-
waite states on the record sleeve, is “based on my
own experience of that old triple journey: in my
case, from the Caribbean to Europe, to West Africa
and back home again....It is a rite and the posses-
sion of the Negro peoples of the New World.” Masks
(1968) and Islands (1969) soon followed. In the del-
uge of reviews and commentaries generated by the
publication of Islands, the trilogy was named one of
the most ambitious aesthetic and ethical poetic
projects from the Antilles. A Sunday Times review
of Islands positioned Brathwaite as “one of the
finest living poets of the Western Hemisphere.”
Published as The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy
in 1973, all three volumes examine African roots to
recover West Indian identity. The trilogy explores
many themes examined in later works—commu-
nity, tribal concerns, spiritual growth, and history.
Later works, many in dialect, incorporated musical
elements of popular culture, such as folk music,
jazz, and religious hymns, as well as speech
rhythms. Some claimed Brathwaite inadequately
recorded intended rhythms in his verse but admit
he reads his verse brilliantly.
In subsequent years, Brathwaite successfully
published scholarly as well as creative writing. In-
terested in the relationship of jazz to Caribbean
writing, he published Jazz and the West Indian
Novel in Bim in 1967. Other notable scholarly
works include The Folk Culture of Jamaican Slaves
(1969) and The Development of Creole Society in Ja-
maica 1770–1820 (1971). Brathwaite’s work posi-
tioned him as one of the Antilles’ most consistent
and important English-speaking critics.
Multiple collections of poetry followed, but
they received less critical attention than The Ar-
rivants. Dissatisfied, some critics said Other Exiles
(1975) merely collected poems not included in The
Arrivants. Brathwaite’s use of violent demonic im-
agery to explore Rastafarian subculture and urban
slum experiences in Black and Blues (1976) earned
him a prize at the Cuban Casa de las Américas po-
etry competition. Critics also quickly recognized
Brathwaite’s poetic talent in Mother Poem (1977).
As Brathwaite writes in the preface, “This poem is
about porous limestone, my mother, Barbados.”
58 Brathwaite, Edward Kamau
Like Mother Poem, Sun Poem (1982) is autobio-
graphical: Brathwaite universalizes his cyclical
masculine experiences. One year after publishing
Sun Poem, Brathwaite was appointed professor of
social and cultural history at the University of the
West Indies. Lecturing and reading his poetry al-
lowed him to travel widely in Europe, Africa,
North America, and the Far East.
More recent works, including The Zea Mexican
Diary (1993), Trench Town Rock (1994), and Dream-
Stories (1994), employ what Brathwaite calls the
Sycorax writing style. They alter font, type size, and
margins,“allowing [Brathwaite] to write in light and
to make sounds visible as if [he is] in video,” as
stated in an interview with Kwame Dawes in Ta lk
Yuh Talk: Interviews with Anglophone Caribbean
Poets (2001). Although Brathwaite’s poetry has been
translated into Spanish, French, German, and the
Sranantongo language of Suriname, he recently ad-
mitted, “My big regret is that Caribbean criticism
has almost totally disregarded my work since The
Arrivants as long ago now as 1973.”
A comparative-literature professor at New York
University, Brathwaite divides his time between
New York and Barbados. To quote editor and in-
terviewer Kwame Dawes, Brathwaite’s “critical
work is virtually foundational to an examination
of a Caribbean aesthetic; his experimentation with
music, popular culture, and various forms of po-
etic expression has proved influential for a signif-
icant number of writers. Brathwaite’s work is
challenging because its meaning resides as much
in the sounds of his words as in their semantic
construction.”
Other Works by Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Ancestors: A Reinvention of Mother Poem, Sun Poem,
and X/Self. New York: New Directions, 2001.
Third World Poems. London: Longman, 1983.
Words Need Love Too. Philipsburg, St. Martin: House
of Nehesi, 2000.
Works about Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Brown, Stewart, ed. The Art of Kamau Brathwaite.
Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales: Seren, 1995.
Reiss, Timothy J. For the Geography of a Soul: Emerg-
ing Perspectives on Kamau Brathwaite. Trenton,
N.J.: Africa World Press, 2001.
Savory, Elaine. “The Word Becomes Nam: Self and
Community in the Poetry of Kamau Brathwaite,
and its Relation to Caribbean Culture and Post-
modern Theory.” In Writing the Nation: Self and
Country in the Postcolonial Imagination. Edited by
John C. Hawley. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996: 23–43.
Brathwaite, Lawson Edward
See BRATHWAITE
, EDWARD KAMAU
.
Braun, Volker (1939– ) poet, playwright
Volker Braun was born in Dresden, Germany, less
than four months before the start of World War II.
His father, a soldier in the German army, was killed
in the last year of the war. After completing his
schooling, Braun worked as a printer’s assistant, a
machine engineer, and a construction worker. In
1960, he joined the Communist Party in East Ger-
many and enrolled at the University of Leipzig,
where he studied philosophy for four years. After
college, Braun worked as a writer and producer
for the Berlin Ensemble, the City Theater of
Leipzig, and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.
Braun wrote several works of poetry and prose
but achieved his greatest fame as a playwright. His
influences include Bertolt
BRECHT and Friedrich
SCHILLER. Braun frequently portrayed the individ-
ual’s struggle for identity in the face of contrary so-
cietal expectations. As an idealist, Braun sought to
promote a greater acceptance of socialism with his
early plays. He opposed reunification in 1989, hop-
ing for the continuance of an East Germany com-
mitted to social justice and the environment.
Braun’s awards include the Heinrich Heine Prize,
the Heinrich Mann Prize, and Germany’s National
Prize.
Another Work by Volker Braun
Das Wirklichgewallte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2000.
Braun, Volker 59
A Work about Volker Braun
Bothe Kathrin. Die Imaginierte Natur des Sozialismus:
eine Biographie des Schreibens und der Texte Volker
Brauns (1959–1974). Würzburg: Konigshausen &
Neumann, 1997.
Brecht, Bertolt (1898–1956) dramatist,
playwright
Bertold Brecht was born in Augsburg, Germany.
His father was an administrator of a paper com-
pany. Brecht began writing while he was very
young and published a few poems at the age of
16. In school, he developed a reputation as a
hooligan and a troublemaker. Despite the con-
stant disciplinary problems, he graduated from
school and entered the University of Munich in
1917 to study medicine. His studies were inter-
rupted by the outbreak of World War I, and Brecht
enlisted in the German army as a medical orderly.
After the war, Brecht briefly resumed his studies
but eventually abandoned them to pursue a
writing career.
In 1919, Brecht joined the Independent Social
Democratic Party and began his lifelong associa-
tion with communism. Starting in 1920, he began
to work as a dramatist and playwright at various
theaters throughout Germany. Although his early
plays were not directly engaged with politics,
Brecht often mocked the conventions of bourgeois
sensibility and lifestyle. His political engagement,
his indictment of capitalism, and his epic style es-
tablished Brecht as one of the most radical play-
wrights in Germany.
After Brecht officially joined the Communist
Party of Germany in 1929, his works assumed an
even more radical stance and directly addressed
important political issues. Brecht’s affiliation with
the Communist Party made him an unpopular fig-
ure with government censors and other officials.
Many of Brecht’s works were banned in Germany
even in the years before Hitler came to power.
The political atmosphere in Germany became
dangerous for Brecht during the 1930s because
of the rise of the Nazis, who were opposed to
communism. His works were banned through-
out the country, and he was forced into exile.
Brecht lived in Denmark, Finland, Russia, and fi-
nally the United States. While living in the United
States, Brecht tried to write screenplays for the
movies, but he had difficulty getting his work ac-
cepted. He also found the atmosphere in Holly-
wood intellectually stifling. In 1947, Brecht was
investigated by the anti-Communist congres-
sional Committee on Un-American Activities. Al-
though the committee did not establish any
definitive charges against Brecht, his reputation
was damaged and he could no longer produce any
work in the United States.
In 1948, Brecht returned to Germany, settling in
Communist East Germany. Brecht founded his
own Marxist theater in East Berlin, where many of
his plays were produced. Brecht also experimented
with many theatrical conventions, such as lighting,
sound, and set. Brecht’s reputation spread beyond
the borders of Germany, and he became an inter-
nationally renowned dramatist. In 1955, he was
awarded the Stalin Peace Prize, the highest recog-
nition in the Soviet Union, for his contribution to
drama.
Critical Analysis
Brecht’s drama reflects his view that theater should
provide a forum for social and political change,
rather than serve a purely aesthetic function geared
toward entertainment. Brecht formulated a new
style of acting based on the “alienation effect.” He
wanted his audience to become objective specta-
tors by disassociating themselves from the charac-
ters of the play. Moreover, Brecht argued that
actors should disassociate themselves from the
characters they portray. Instead of creating an il-
lusion of reality, Brecht wanted his audience to un-
derstand that the play is not a reality but a forum
for social debate. Brecht believed his style of pro-
duction would make the political lesson more ap-
parent to the masses.
Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), one
of Brecht’s most famous historical plays, set during
the Thirty Years’ War, presents a series of conflicts
60 Brecht, Bertolt
that occurred between Catholics and Protestants in
central Europe between 1618 and 1648. Mother
Courage is a woman who depends on the contin-
uation of the war for her economic survival. She is
nicknamed Mother Courage for courageously pro-
tecting her merchandise under enemy fire. She has
three children who die in the war, one by one. Yet,
she continues her career as a war profiteer. Staged
in East Berlin, the play attracted instant critical at-
tention for its controversial portrayal of war and its
dehumanizing effects on people.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948), an adapta-
tion of a medieval Chinese play based on the para-
ble of the chalk circle, centers on a land dispute in
a small commune in the Soviet Union after World
War II. The main action revolves around the con-
flict of two women over a child. It is similar to the
biblical tale of King Solomon who must resolve a
dispute between two women, both of whom claim
to be the mother of a child. The play was warmly
greeted by audiences and received international
recognition.
Among Brecht’s most famous plays was The
Threepenny Opera (1928). This adaptation of John
Gay’s Beggar’s Opera presents a universe of beg-
gars, thieves, and prostitutes, a world bereft of
honor or trust. Kurt Weill’s inventive score adds to
the experience of this brittle world, an allegory of
Germany’s Weimar Republic, the period before
Hitler took power. The popular song “Mack the
Knife” is from this play.
The Good Woman of Setzuan (1940) tells the tale
of three gods who are in search of a truly good per-
son. Their choice is Shen Te, a prostitute. They give
her money to start a new life, but she finds that a
truly good person cannot survive, so she creates a
nasty alter ego, her “cousin” Shu Tai.
Galileo (1939) deals with the historical figure of
the famous astronomer, Galileo, who discovers that
Earth is not the center of the universe. He holds his
findings for eight years but finally reveals them to
the pope. The pope subjects Galileo to the Inquisi-
tion, and Galileo recants his theory. The play dealt
with many political and social issues. The freedom
of the individual is juxtaposed against oppressive
society, which is dominated by the religious leaders
who are not interested in scientific truth because it
threatens to overturn their supremacy.
Brecht is also among the finest poets of the 20th
century, a talent overshadowed somewhat by his
success as a playwright. Brecht published more
than 1,500 poems that span more than 30 years, in-
cluding both world wars. Brecht’s poetry combines
lyricism with an epic and Marxist view of society
and history. In the poem “1940,” for example the
speaker says that his young son asks him why he
should learn mathematics, French, or history, and
the speaker wonders why indeed when “two pieces
of bread are more than one’s about all you’ll end
up with” and language is unnecessary to convey
hunger—a groan will do—and history does not
teach us how to survive. Still he tells his son, with
false optimism, to study.
Bertolt Brecht is considered to be among the
most influential writers of the 20th century. His
theoretical works changed the face of the modern
theater, and his emphasis on social responsibility
of the individual inspired many playwrights to
write works of social significance.
Other Works by Bertolt Brecht
Baal. Translated by Peter Tagel. New York: Arcade,
1998.
Brecht on Theater: The Development of an Aesthetic.
Translated by John Willett. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1994.
Drums in the Night. New York: Methuen Drama,
1988.
Works about Bertolt Brecht
Esslin, Martin. Brecht, a Choice of Evils: A Critical
Study of the Man, His Works, and His Opinions.
New York: Methuen Drama, 1984.
Munsterer, Hans. The Young Brecht. New York: Paul
and Co., 1992.
Brentano, Catarina Elisabetha
Ludovica Magdalena
See ARNIM, BETTINA VON.
Brentano, Catarina Elisabetha Ludovica Magdalena 61
Breton, André (1896–1966) poet, novelist,
essayist
André Breton was born in Tichenbray, France. He
studied medicine in Paris and was assigned to a
military hospital, where he worked primarily in the
psychiatric wards during World War I.
Breton studied the works of Sigmund
FREUD,
and Freud’s notion of free association greatly in-
fluenced Breton’s experiments with automatic
writing. Aided by French poet Philippe Soupault,
he began to work with this concept. He was
searching for a higher form of reality that, he as-
sumed, was present at the point where dreams and
reality converged. Together, he and Soupault
founded the journal Littérature, in which they
published the works of such writers as Louis
ARAGON. Breton also used the journal as a vehicle
to express his own views, which he went on to
publish in a series of three surrealist manifestos
in 1924, 1930, and 1942.
The first of Breton’s surrealist manifestos is
considered to be the founding text of the surrealist
movement. Breton assumed a position of leader-
ship within the movement as a result of this text,
and he was joined by numerous talented poets and
visual artists, all of whom shared the beliefs he had
set forth in his text, causing the movement to gain
momentum and eventually to spread beyond Eu-
rope.
Critical Analysis
In the middle of this creative tempest, Breton pub-
lished what is considered critically to be his finest
work, Nadja (1928), which is based, in part, on
firsthand experiences. Breton met and spent time
with an unknown girl who was living her life in the
same manner that Breton had advocated: She
made no distinction between factual reality and
fictional reality. Her behavior, however, was not so-
cially acceptable, and she was ultimately placed in
an asylum.
Surrealism as a movement was eclipsed after
World War II by
EXISTENTIALISM and was vehe-
mently attacked by such new voices as SARTRE and
CAMUS
. Breton was subjected to political derision
for having denounced the 1936 Moscow trials, thus
making himself an enemy of the Communist Party
as well as forcing him into conflict with several of
his former friends and colleagues, such as Aragon
and Paul
ÉLUARD, who rejected surrealism and fer-
vently promoted communism.
Breton continued to proclaim his theme of the
need for artists to focus on individual freedom, to
develop an anarchist regime in the arts that func-
tions as the exact antithesis of Stalinism and SO-
CIALIST REALISM and their attempts to harness
creativity under totalitarian rule. In particular, he
viewed socialist realism, as enforced by Stalin, to be
the negation of freedom and was angered and dis-
heartened to see that it could be supported by
someone he had respected as much as Aragon. He
denounced the idea of artists falling victim to a
blind allegiance to repressive ideology. His essay
“The Tower of Light” (1952) is solid evidence of
Breton’s continuing detachment from materialism
and his increasing move toward utopian philoso-
phy. He expresses the idea that revolution, to ef-
fect change on society, must first promote change
in the mind of the individual.
Breton believed that very little had actually been
learned as a result of World War I. In a 1942 ad-
dress to French students at Yale University, Breton
expressed these concerns. He also expressed his
hope that the outcome of World War II would be
different. This vision was shattered, however, by
the emergence of the cold war and the added po-
tential of nuclear weaponry to annihilate the
human race. In response, Breton’s essay “The
Lamp in the Clock” (1948) called for a radical re-
consideration of exactly what was at stake: the con-
tinued survival of humanity.
Breton also expressed his views through poetry.
These works, collected as Selected Poems (1948;
translated 1969), reflect the influence of other
poets such as Paul
VALÉRY and Arthur RIMBAUD.
Breton continued, throughout his life, to focus on
the importance of revelation and the links that can
be made through the arts between that which is
concrete reality and that which exists solely in the
realm of the imagination.
62 Breton, André
Other Works by André Breton
Break of Day. Translated by Mark Polizzotti and Mary
Ann Caws. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1999.
Poems of André Breton: A Bilingual Anthology. Trans-
lated by Jean-Pierre Cauvin and Mary Ann Caws.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
Works about André Breton
Caws, Mary Ann. André Breton. Boston: Twayne,
1996.
Polizzotti, Mark. Revolution of the Mind: The Life of
André Breton. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1995.
Breytenbach, Breyten (1939– ) poet,
novelist, short-story writer, essayist
One of the most controversial figures in South
African literary history, Breytenbach was born to an
affluent Afrikaner family in the Cape Province. His
ancestors settled in South Africa in the early 1700s.
Breytenbach has written wistfully about the
poignant beauty of Cape Province. In several of his
works, he has written about childhood memories
and about the ancestral memory of his people. For
example, his great-grandmother, his father, and his
mother figure prominently in the retrospective
novel Dog Heart: A Travel Memoir (1998). His
eventual rejection of the Afrikaner tradition
echoes all the more loudly because of the depth of
his family’s connections to the Dutch-settler her-
itage Afrikaners treasure.
He was seen, even at a young age, to possess
great literary and immense talents. His early writ-
ings, all written in Afrikaans, such as those in his
collection Catastrophes (1964), explore his sense of
himself as distant from his own people and their
traditions. While he was in college in Cape Town in
the early 1960s, he was troubled by the encroach-
ing control of the many apartheid laws and chose
to go to Europe, where he met and married an
Asian woman named Yolande Lien, who figures
prominently in his poetry. Breytenbach was trying
to return to South Africa in 1965 to accept a liter-
ary award when he was told that his marriage was
a serious breach of South Africa’s law against inter-
racial marriage. His general distaste for apartheid
had become personal, and Breytenbach became a
founder and organizer of a group called Okhela,
meaning to “set fire to.” The goal of this group was
to persuade white South Africans that the
apartheid regime could only be brought down
from within.
Issues of personal identity, especially regarding
the relationship between art and life intrigued
Breytenbach even before the frankly autobio-
graphical writings that would develop from his ex-
periences in the 1970s and 1980s. In poetry written
during the 1960s, Breytenbach used only lowercase
letters, referred to himself in his own poems, and
used profanity. All of his writings stress the fic-
tional nature of “real” life.
Since 1961, he has made his home primarily in
Paris. Breytenbach entered South Africa illegally in
1975, using the name Christian Jean-Marc
Galaska, and was arrested as a terrorist. His trial
was an international event, although most of the
proceedings occurred within the limitations and
secrecy imposed by the Nationalist government.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison, and he
served seven. His imprisonment became the sub-
ject of some of his major works: a loosely struc-
tured collection of fragmentary narratives entitled
Mouroir: Mirror Notes to a Novel (1984) and the
autobiographical novel The True Confessions of an
Albino Terrorist (1984). Another novel, A Season in
Paradise (1980), and several collections of poetry,
notably Judas Eye (1988), also investigate Breyten-
bach’s time in South African prisons, although
they are not all specifically concerned only with his
prison experiences. Pressure from the interna-
tional community, especially by the then-president
of France, François Mitterrand, led to Breyten-
bach’s early release from prison, with the provision
that he leave South Africa.
Breytenbach has returned to South Africa since
the institution of democratic elections, and he has
recently championed the cause of the Afrikaner in
South Africa as a political minority. In this way,
Breytenbach, Breyten 63
one can see a consistency in Breytenbach’s political
ideology: The oppression of dissident groups,
whether that of a minority holding a minority in
check or that of a willful majority, should not be
allowed to pass unremarked.
Critical Analysis
Breytenbach occupies a unique position in the
African literary tradition. Like André BRINK and Na-
dine GORDIMER he has often written of political op-
pression and his distaste for the apartheid regime
in South Africa. Breytenbach and Brink are also the
most well-known writers who publish in Afrikaans,
the language of the Dutch settlers, and those most
often, and sometimes unfairly, vilified for all of
apartheid’s wrongs. Like another countryman, J. M.
COETZEE, Breytenbach often plays with language at
multiple levels. Their willingness to experiment
with language, reveling in the multiplicity of possi-
bilities for confusion and misunderstanding, is re-
ferred to as “postmodernism”: a celebration of
fragmentary, rather than unified, meaning, the pur-
pose of which is meant to make readers think about
not only what they read but also what they believe.
This “playfulness” has often been criticized and
stands as one end of the spectrum of opinion on
Breytenbach. Ultimately, Breytenbach stands alone,
like so many of the protagonists of his novels. Isola-
tion, introspection, scathing self-analysis, and a re-
fusal to use fictions as a crutch for existence mark
both his poetry and his prose. For example, in Dog
Heart: A Memoir (1999), he writes that he needs to
see the child he once was to determine how he has
become the man he is: “Why, after all these years,
do I feel the urge to go and look for the other one,
the child I must have been?”
J. M. Coetzee has commented on Dog Heart in
his collection, Stranger Shores: Literary Essays
1986–1999 (2001). He sees Breytenbach’s text as
typical of those narratives which mine his, and
South Africa’s, past: “Like Breytenbach’s other
memoirs, Dog Heart is loose, almost miscellaneous,
in its structure. Part journal, part essay on autobi-
ography, part book of the dead, part what one
might call speculative history, it also contains
searching meditations on the elusiveness of mem-
ory and passages of virtuoso writing ...breathtak-
ing in the immediacy of their evocation of Africa.”
Even in what are recognizably novels, Breyten-
bach melds the real with the fantastic. For example,
Memory of Snow and Dust (1989) concerns itself
with fables of identity and the uncertainty that lies
underneath our solid sense of who we are. The plot
involves an Ethiopian journalist who meets and im-
pregnates a mixed-race South African woman while
they are in Switzerland for an arts festival, a “neu-
tral” cultural and political space carved out by both
custom and art. The journalist agrees to act as a spy
for an antiapartheid group and goes to South Africa
under an assumed name. But the identity under
which he is traveling is accused of murder, and the
would-be spy and absentee father cannot clear him-
self without revealing his own identity and betray-
ing his political comrades. Fictions such as Memory
of Snow and Dust call into question the seemingly
simple injunction that the lives and works of artists
are cleanly and clearly separate.
Breytenbach’s contributions and importance to
world literature are linked to the combination in
his works of the personal, political, and cultural in
ways that force readers to acknowledge the natu-
ralness of the connections.
Other Works by Breyten Breytenbach
In Africa Even the Flies are Happy: Selected Poems,
1964–1977. London: Calder, 1978.
Return to Paradise: An African Journal. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1993.
A Work about Breyten Breytenbach
Jolly, Rosemary. Colonization, Violence, and Narration
in White South African Writing: André Brink,
Breyten Breytenbach, and J. M. Coetzee. Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1996.
Brink, André (1935– ) novelist, essayist,
playwright
André Brink, a white South African, writes in
Afrikaans, a national South African language de-
64 Brink, André
rived from Dutch. His first two novels, A Dry
White Season (1969) and Looking on Darkness
(1973), were banned because of their political im-
plications, which prompted Brink to write in Eng-
lish as well.
Brink is part of the Sestiger group (also known
as the Sixtyers), a loose network of Afrikaans writ-
ers who began their careers in the 1960s and whose
works combine Afrikaans literature with European
literary trends and an antiapartheid political con-
sciousness. The Sestigers depicted sexual and
moral matters and examined the political system
in a way that rapidly antagonized the traditional
Afrikaner reader. The group opposed the rising au-
thoritarianism of South Africa and provided a
voice against racism in the language of the domi-
nant National Party. Brink’s works are the most
politically committed of the group’s collective
writings, which led to many of his works being
banned until the end of apartheid in the early
1990s.
Much of Brink’s work deals with the structures
that informed apartheid, such as slavery, interra-
cial relationships, and abuse of police power. In
Cape of Storms (1992), he uses allegory and myth,
which he calls “African magical realism,” to depict
a historical relationship and the social transition
of South Africa. Some critics saw this book as a
confused search for identity. His later book, On
the Contrary (1993), seemed to have an easier
time finding its voice within history, perhaps be-
cause of Brink’s narrative technique, which is
based in the oral tradition of African culture. The
narrator, Estienne Barbier, speaks to an imaginary
woman—an escaped slave whose name might be
Rosette and who might or might not exist. The
doubt and lack of permanence inherent in the
narrator’s tale determines the reader’s perception
of Barbier’s life. Her stories, as Brink tells them,
seem to determine the content and style of
human lives.
Another of Brink’s texts, The Rights of Desire
(2001), deals with racial conflicts. The protago-
nist, Ruben Olivier, a 65-year-old librarian, is
cared for by his black housekeeper, Magrieta, and
Antje of Bengal, the ghost of a 17th-century slave
who was executed for murdering her master and
his wife. Olivier’s children force him to take in a
lodger, who appears to bring Olivier out of the
books and into life. Olivier, thus, represents an
Africa that needs to be brought out of the past and
into the present.
Brink is a professor of Afrikaans and Dutch lit-
erature. In April of 2000, he received two literary
awards: the Hertzog Prize for Afrikaans Literature
and the National Book Journalist of the Year
award. Brink had previously won the Hertzog Prize
in 1994, but turned it down because, he said, “at
the time the Akademie appeared to be wholly ‘un-
transformed’ and unrepentant about it [apar-
theid]. To accept the prize seemed like allowing
myself to be co-opted into an establishment (the
cultural wing of the apartheid regime) with which
I could not accept to be identified” (Monday
Paper). He has now accepted the award because the
academy can no longer represent the “old
Africaner establishment because that establish-
ment no longer exists” (Monday Paper).
Other Works by André Brink
A Chain of Voices. New York: Morrow. 1982.
A Dry White Season. New York: Morrow. 1980.
Writing in a State of Siege. New York: Summit Books.
1983.
Works about André Brink
“André Brink Wins Literary Double.” Monday Paper
(University of Cape Town) 19:12, May 8–15,
2000.
Jolly, Rosemary Jane. Colonization, Violence, and Nar-
ration in White South African Writing: André
Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J. M. Coetzee.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996.
Brinkmann, Rolf Dieter (1940–1975)
poet, short-story writer
Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was born in Vechta, Ger-
many. After completing high school, he worked in
a variety of temporary jobs. He began writing at a
Brinkmann, Rolf Dieter 65
young age and published his first collection of
poems in 1962. He studied at the Teachers’ College
in Cologne for two years before dropping out. In
the late 1960s, Brinkmann edited and translated
three anthologies of American post–beat-genera-
tion poets. He studied at the Villa Massimo in
Rome from 1972 to 1973 with a scholarship from
the German government and in 1974 was a visiting
lecturer at the University of Texas. The following
year, he was killed in London by a hit-and-run
driver.
American beat and underground poetry were
Brinkmann’s heaviest literary influences. The lead-
ing German-language pop poet of his day, he
helped introduce American pop culture to his
country. Brinkmann hoped to free German society
from inhibitions and constraints. His poems ex-
hibit a thematic and stylistic break from German
tradition. Brinkmann used everyday speech geared
to the senses to describe the transitory occurrences
of daily life. Scholar Peter Demetz explains that
Brinkmann “wanted to quicken the demise of old
forms and metaphysical attitudes by a new kind of
imagism ‘catching momentary impressions’ in
‘snapshots,’ precise, firm, and ‘translucent’; he ad-
vocated ‘no more big emotions,’ but ‘small mo-
mentary excitations.’”
Largely ignored in his lifetime, Brinkmann at-
tained fame after his death. His last collection of
poems Westwärts 1 & 2 (Westward 1 & 2, 1975),
published posthumously, won the Petrarca Lyric
Prize and became a best-seller. In the 1980s, critics
recognized Brinkmann as a precursor of postmod-
ernism and an articulator of his generation’s con-
sciousness.
Another Work by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
Keiner weiß mehr. Berlin: Kiepeheuer & Witsch,
1968.
A Work about Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
Schafer, Jorgen. Pop-literatur: Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
und das Verhaltnis zur Popularkultur in der Liter-
atur der Sechziger Jahre. Stuttgart: M & D Verlag
fur Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1998.
Broch, Hermann (1886–1951) novelist,
dramatist
Herman Broch was born to Jewish parents in Vi-
enna, Austria. His father Josef Broch, a flannel
merchant, and his mother Johanna Schnabel were
both wealthy. In 1904, Broch graduated from the
kaiserlich-königlich Staats-Realschule (Imperial
and Royal State Secondary School). Acceding to his
father’s wishes, Broch studied to be a textile engi-
neer at the Spinning and Weaving School in Alsace.
He also studied philosophy and mathematics for a
semester at the University of Vienna. In 1909, he
converted to Catholicism to marry Franziska von
Rothermann, a sugar heiress. He became director
of his father’s Teesdorf textile factory that same
year.
As part of the Vienna intellectual scene, Broch
became concerned with the disintegration of val-
ues. Influenced by Friedrich NIETZSCHE and Im-
manuel KANT, Broch published his first articles on
philosophy in 1913. In 1925, he resumed his study
of mathematics and philosophy at Vienna Univer-
sity. Three years later, he left the Teesdorf factory to
write full time. His first major work was the trilogy
Die Schlafwandler (The Sleepwalkers, 1930–32). He
wrote several novels, dramas, and essays in the
1930s, but his works did not fare well financially,
due to opposition from the anti-Semitic govern-
ment. Broch was arrested by Nazis in 1938, but in-
fluential friends arranged for his emigration to the
United States. In America, Broch wrote his best-
known novel, Der Tod des Vergil (The Death of Vir-
gil, 1945), a lyrical prose recounting of the last
hours of the famous poet’s life.
Broch’s powerful works address the issues of
mass psychology, moral decay, ethics, and death.
Although an industrialist, he had socialist tenden-
cies and worked to help laborers, needy children,
and refugees. He wrote didactic fiction, hoping to
improve the condition of humanity and society.
In the words of German literary scholar Theodore
Ziolkowski, Broch “was conscious of a mission in
life, to which he devoted himself with absolute
consistency and an almost messianic zeal” (Her-
man Broch, 1964).
66 Broch, Hermann
Other Works by Herman Broch
The Guiltless. Translated by Charles Wharton Stark.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974.
The Unknown Quantity. Translated by Willa and
Edwin Muir. Marlboro, Vt.: Marlboro Press,
1988.
Works about Herman Broch
Lützeler, Paul Michael. Hermann Broch: A Biography.
Translated by Janice Fureness. London: Quarter,
1987.
Ziolkowski, Theodore. Herman Broch. New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1964.
Bruman, Simone
See SCHWARZ-BART, SIMONE.
Bryusov, Valery (1873–1924) poet,
novelist, critic
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was born in Moscow,
Russia, to an affluent middle-class family. He was
educated at Moscow University and could speak
and write fluently in several European language,
including French, English, and German. He was a
fundamental figure in the establishment of the
Russian symbolist movement (see SYMBOLISM),
outlining the movement’s aesthetic goals in his
book The Russian Symbolists (1894). Despite being
a prolific poet and novelist, Bryusov today is
mostly remembered for his role as the editor of
the symbolist publication Vesy between 1904 and
1909.
Bryusov’s verse has often been described as so-
phisticated and graceful, yet marked by frequent use
of cryptic language that praises sensuous delights
and bodily pleasures. Stephanos (1906) is perhaps
the best known of his poetry collections. In addition
to composing his own poetry, Bryusov produced a
number of magnificent translations of American,
French, and Armenian poets into Russian.
Bryusov wrote two novels, The Fiery Angel
(1908), a mystical novel that depicts a cult of prac-
titioners of black magic in 16th-century Germany,
and Altar of Victory (1911–12), an obscure post-
symbolist novel.
In 1908, after a bitter disagreement with other
symbolist writers, Bryusov disassociated himself
from the movement. He devoted himself to teach-
ing and to writing a number of respected schol-
arly works. After the communist revolution,
Bryusov indirectly joined the Bolshevik cause and
worked for the Soviet literary establishment as a
director of several artistic and educational institu-
tions, mainly as a bureaucratic administrator.
Today, Valery Bryusov is mostly remembered
for his initial guidance of the symbolist movement
and as a literary scholar. His own works are mainly
forgotten and only studied in the context of the
symbolist movement. His corpus of literary criti-
cism and translations is still respected and used in
Russian academic institutions.
Other Works by Valery Bryusov
Diary of Valery Bryusov, 1893–1905. Translated by
Joan Delaney Grossman. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980.
The Republic of the Southern Cross and Other Stories.
Translated by Stephen Graham. New York: Hyper-
ion Press, 1977.
A Work about Valery Bryusov
Grossman, Joan Delaney. Valery Bryusov and the Rid-
dle of Russian Decadence. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985.
Büchner, Georg (1813–1837) dramatist
Georg Büchner was born in the Hessian village of
Goddelau. At the age of three, he moved to Darm-
stadt with his father, Ernst Karl Büchner, a physi-
cian, and his mother, Caroline Louis Reuß
Büchner. In 1831, Büchner graduated from the
Darmstädter Großherzogliches Gymnasium, one
of the finest schools in Hesse, and then studied
medicine and natural sciences at the University of
Strasbourg. In 1833, he continued his studies at the
University of Gießen. Sympathetic with the social
misery of the peasant class, he founded a student
Büchner, Georg 67