Classical Dialogue: Allusion and intertextuality in Charl-Pierre Naudé’s Against the Light

Abstract

The contemporary Afrikaans poet Charl-Pierre Naudé is one of the most promising voices in South African poetry today. Following two award-winning Afrikaans collections, Naudé s debut collection in English, Against the Light (2007), demonstrates learned intertexual references to classical literature, particularly the Roman poets Horace and Catullus. These Latin poets become competing models for Naudé’s own poetics, either passionate and personal, or political and pastoral. In post-apartheid South Africa, after a period of dramatic social change, ultimately Catullus offers himself as the more compelling poetic model for this South African writer.