Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

( ~ ~I'IPI>I(, L S ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ / l ~ ~ ~ / h Tioo Women Critics and South Afiiciln English 1ite1,arji Stlln'les
bliltou, and the South African piay\vright F1.W.D. Manson. Along wi
will gradually gain ground (19 July 1948~).
I with \vIioln she enjoyed a lifelolig friendship--\/an Hcyningen
iigul-c i ~i lhc irni-ile~nentalion of the techriiqucs of practical critic is^^^ in So
T:ilgIish iIepil~-iinents i r Ihc ~ 1940s anti 1050s'.
As regards Van I-Teyningen's attitude to politics, hcr most consistent con
was an opposition to totalitarianism of any fonn. Van ileyningeil was partict
troubled by the support shown by members of the Afrikaans corn^^
Gel-many. Fiercely opposed to all forms of ideological and politic
identified tvith the values of de~nocracy and individual freedom, and dev
considerable !ilne and energy to their defence. 'i'liese commitments are
su~nniarisetl in her. response to the enormons growth ofpro-Nazi ideas an
in South Africa in the early 1940s. In 1941, she published a petition in the Cepe A
whicli was signed by eighteen other colleagues at the !Jlliversity of Stcllenbosch.
petition, ~vhich was also published in the Szl~duy Times, the Cr~pe Srrn and
an independent thinker, Van Heyningen formulated her critical position in
to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Q.D. Leavis, and Denys Thompson, and whilst
reeing with individual contributors, the assun~ptions of the Scrzlfiny
remained an important critical touchstone. She owed a principal
bt to F.R. Leavis (with whom she corresponded on a number of
and reiterated his sense of cultural and intellectual decline, and his
wards popular culture. Like Leavis, her efforts were principally directed
training of a critical vanguard capable of appreciating and promoting Great
d resisting cons~~lner culture. Van Hcyningen assigns a central function to
nd interpretation of poetic works. Poetly, like all literature, is valued
difficulty, and because of its transfortnative power. The reading of poetry
wrillen in protest against 'the slavish imitation of foreign methods o of the utmost momerrt ... [flor poetry. partly because it dernaniis so much of
warfare, blind prejudices and bitter intolerance' (1941a:5) amongst the Afrik
speaking com~nunity. The signatories argued for the need to protect 'persotial free
us, of thc whole man. not merely his brain. his emotions or his body. is
perhaps the most valuable activity ofthe human spirit' (1 945: 16).
and autonomy, and rejected excessive state intervention. it also gave an i~
to the role of education:
Being a student nleans, in the first place. studying, acquiring knowledge. for
tlie purpose of translating his knowledge into deeds later on in life. A student
\vho does not study will be a man who does not know. and such al-1 ignorant
person. is of course, tlie best subject of a totalitarian state (194 1a:5).
is a difficult pursuit calling into play 'incessant movement and "vigilance" of the
. brain and emotions' (I 945: 16). , ' and because it is concerned with the proble~n of
'-of its affirmation, 'renewal, and definition in an ever-changing world-the
'is forced to go through the same pi-ocess, to reconsider, to renew, to re-affirm the
lues thatwe live by' (1 945: 16).
Van Heyningen's literary cl-iticism also reveals a pervasive concern with
ividual ~norality and personal responsibility. For her, both life and art are subject to
For Van Heyningen, the training in critical thinking is an important antidote
operation of absolute moral laws: The artist has a prirnary 'duty of giving direction'
against the propagandist tactics of Fascist ideologues. This commitment extended t
946a: 17), in the process disclosing the universal moral order in hislher work. She
the post-war period when as a founder member of The Johannesburg Educatio
League-an organisation established to combat government indoctrination by mea
of pamphlets and letters-Van Heyningen resisted attempts by the Institute
Christian-Nationalist Education to enforce religious and cultural instruction in schoo
Notwithstanding her corn~nit~ne~it to active political involvement, she retained a faith
the inevitable spread of liberal ideas. Responding to a demand by the University
Cape Town's SRC in 1948 that a unilateral decision bemade on the question ofwheth
or not Africans should be allowed to participate in the social and sporting life oft
university, she criticises UCT for 'not lettling] sleeping dogs lie', arguing instead that
what she regards as the modern tendency to blur distinctions between 'good'
'. Macbeth himself, she argues, understands the lie of the witch's claim that
ul, and foul is fair':
That foul is not fair his soul knew in its unknown depths, and the kno~sledge
wrecked liisncrve. and turned him into the insatiable bloody tyrant he became
.... To Shakcspeal-e good and evil were not dead, nor can I think of any great
writer who has not accepted the responsibility. explicitly (11- implicitly. of
choosi~ig between them. and who has not made the affir~~iation of values his
chiefriglit andf~~riction as all artist (1946a: 17)'.
if nothing more is said on the question. non-Europeans will be accepted as Heyningen's nloral preoccupations lead her into difficulties when she attempts to
eq~tals in those places that ire liberal enough not to mind, and the letter oftlic uate the work of an author whose values she feels compelled to reject. In a
law will be carried out in the illiberal places. and that in this way liberal itfeas cussion of the novels of Heniy James, she criticises his implicit acceptance of
moral' and 'dishonourable' (1946~: 16) behaviour, and sums up his achievement in
For ;i siio1-t biogl-aphy of' Mi11 t~cyniugcn. sec [lie in[~-oduclion to the collcctiotl of essays
cdited hy J.A. Bertoud and C.O. (;arcine1.(1969).
For triore on Van Heyningen's Shakespeare criticism. see Johnsoti ( 1996: 159- 161 )