Longing, radicalism, sentimentality: reflections on Breyten Breytenbach'sa season in paradise

Abstract

A Season in Paradse' is an account of a three-month visit that Breyten Breytenbach, the celebrated Afrikaans writer and painter living in exile in Paris, made to South Africa with his French-born Vietnamese wife, Yolande, in 1972-73. Breytenbach had left South Africa in 1959, not as an exile, but as a young, would-be artist, eager to test himself and make his mark in Europe. In 1961 he settled in Paris, and later that year he married Yolande. The effect of this marriage, as Andre Brink has recorded, was to transform Breytenbach's 'sojourn in Europe into permanent exile.'2 As a Vietnamese, Yolande was officially classed as 'non-white' under South African law, and this rendered her marriage to Breytenbach in contravention of the provisions of the Mixed Marriages Act, which prohibits marriage 'across the color line'. Yolande was persona non grata in South Africa, and this meant that, assuming he stayed married to her, Breytenbach could no longer look forward to returning to South Africa to live. To all intents and purposes, he had become a permanent exile. Strange though it may seem, it appears that when he married Yolande, Breytenbach was ignorant of the implications of the marriage under South African law. In 1964, Breytenbach was awarded the Afrikaanse Pers Beperk (Afrikaans Press Corporation) prize for his first two publications, a book of poems called Die ysterkoei moet sweet, and a collection of short stories, Katastrofes. 3 He was eager to return to South Africa to receive this award in person, but the authorities denied Yolande a visa to accompany him. The denial evidently took Breytenbach by surprise.4