Modernizing Tradition/Traditionalizing Modernity: Reflections on the Dhlomo-Vilakazi Dispute

Abstract

Between June 1938 and July 1939, a dispute took place in the pages of Bantu Studies and South African Outlook between H. I. E. Dhlomo and B. Wallet Vilakazi, arguably at the time the most eminent figures in the field of Zulu literature.1 vituperation produced by the disagreement seems at first to be disproportionate to the subject at hand: the place of rhyme in Zulu poetry. That the argument became overheated was the result of the fact that the two figures involved were rivals, as inter? preters of tradition and pathfinders in the development of a modern Zulu literature. But apart from questions of rivalry and temperament, which certainly played a role, the dispute was significant because it touched symptomatically on crucial questions for black writers of the day.2 conflict had its origins in the MA thesis Vilakazi submitted to the University of the Witwatersrand on The and Development of in Zulu, a portion of which was published in the same university's recendy founded journal Bantu Studies. this time (1938), Vilakazi's poetry was well known, since it had been published in Ilanga Lase Natal and the Native Teacher's Journal, followed by the collection, Inkondlo kaZulu (Zulu Songs, 1935). In Inkondlo, Vilakazi's most striking project had been to experiment with rhyme, following a range of English models of versifi? cation from the eighteenth century onwards?the couplet, rhyming quatrains, etc. For these efforts he earned skeptical notice, as he acknowledges in the article Conception and Development of Zulu Poetry three years later: By trying to adopt this rhyming I have found that there is a feeling among that Zulu can achieve only a limited success with rhyming, since most of the words in Zulu end in [unstressed] vowels, and thus do not permit variety of sound that makes successful rhyming possi? ble (78). European critics meant J. Dexter Taylor, whose review of Inkondlo was entirely complimentary except for this minor disagreeable note (An Appreciation 163-165).3 However, though Vilakazi may have been chastened, he was defensive: he justifies the use of rhyme with refer? ence to the abundance of alliterative derivatives in isiZulu, many of which take similar forms; he draws on examples of existing successful rhymed compositions, notably hymns, and he clarifies his position by saying that it is not only the final syllable that should rhyme, but the penultimate one with its preceding consonant, iphaba with ubaba and ukubaba, vela with fela, amatata with amathatha and amadada, etc. In laying out this theory, he is meticulous in drawing distinctions between successful and unsuccessful rhymes, paying attention to such elements as nasalization, fricatives, and clicks (77-81 ).4