Eugene Marais
Encyclopedia
Eugène Nielen Marais was a South Africa
n lawyer
, naturalist
, poet
and writer
.
, the thirteenth and last child of his parents, Jan Christiaan Nielen Marais and Catharina Helena Cornelia van Niekerk. He attended school in Pretoria, Boshof
and Paarl
and much of his early education was in English, as were his earliest poems. He matriculated at the age of sixteen. After leaving school he worked in Pretoria as a legal clerk and then as a journalist before becoming owner (at the age of twenty) of a newspaper called Land en Volk (lit. Land and (the Afrikaner) People). He involved himself deeply in local politics. He began taking opiates at an early age and graduated to morphine (then considered to be non-habitforming and a safer drug) very soon thereafter. He became addicted and his addiction ruled his affairs and actions to a greater or lesser extent throughout his life. When asked for the reasons for taking drugs, he variously pleaded ill health, insomnia and, later, the death of his young wife as a result of the birth of his only child. Much later, he blamed accidental addiction while ill with malaria in Mozambique
. Some claim that his use of drugs was experimental and influenced by the philosophy of de Quincey. He married Aletta Beyers but she died from puerperal fever
a year later, eight days after the birth of their son, Marais' only child. In 1897—still in his mid-twenties—he went to London
, initially to read medicine. However, under pressure from his friends, he entered the Inner Temple
to study law. (He qualified as an advocate). When the Boer War
broke out in 1899, he was put on parole as an enemy alien in London. During the latter part of the war he joined a German expedition that sought to ship ammunition and medicines to the Boer Commandos via Portuguese East Africa
(now Mozambique). However, he was struck down in this tropical area by malaria and before the supplies could be delivered to the Boers, the war ended.
("Water mountain"), an area of wilderness north of Pretoria and wrote in his native Afrikaans
about the animals he observed. His studies of termites led him to the conclusion that the colony should be considered as a single organism. In the Waterberg Marais also studied the black mamba
, spitting cobra
and puff adder
. He also observed a specific troop of baboon
s at length, from which numerous magazine articles and the books "My Friends the Baboons" and "The Soul of the Ape" originated. He is acknowledged as the father of the scientific study of the behaviour of animals, known as Ethology
.
As the leader of the Second Afrikaans Language Movement, Marais preferred to write in Afrikaans and his work was translated into various international languages either late in his life or after his death. Southern Africa is the only place in the world where Afrikaans is spoken to any degree, although it can be understood by Dutch and Flemish people.
His book "Die Siel van die Mier" (lit. "The soul of the ant" but usually given in English as the "Soul of the White Ant") was plagiarized by Nobel
laureate Maurice Maeterlinck
, who published "The Life of the White Ant" in 1926, falsely claiming many of Marais' revolutionary ideas as his own. Maeterlinck was able to do this because he was Belgian and, though his mother tongue was French
, he was fluent in Dutch
, from which Afrikaans was derived. It was common at the time for worthy articles published in Afrikaans to be reproduced in Flemish
and Dutch magazines and journals.
Marais contemplated legal action against Maeterlinck but gave up the idea in the face of the costs and logistics involved.
The social anthropologist Robert Ardrey
said in his introduction to The Soul of the Ape, published in 1969, that "As a scientist he was unique, supreme in his time, yet a worker in a science unborn." He also refers to Marais work at length in his work ' African Genesis.'
Marais was a long-term morphine
addict and suffered from melancholy, insomnia, depression and feelings of isolation. The theft of his ideas weighed heavily on his mind and some say this caused his final demise, although others argue that the issue had an energizing and invigorating effect. Certainly it brought him back into the public eye in a favorable way. In 1936, deprived of morphine for some days, he finally borrowed a shotgun (on the pretext of killing a snake) and shot himself in the chest. The wound was not fatal and Marais therefore placed the end of the weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. This occurred on the farm Pelindaba
, belonging to his friend, Gustav S. Preller. For those who are familiar with the dark moods of certain of Marais' poems there is a black irony here; in Zulu, Pelindaba means "the end of the business" – although the more common interpretation is "Place of great gatherings".
and was repeatedly acknowledged as such by Robert Ardrey
and others), gained less public attention and appreciation than his contributions as a literalist. He discovered the Waterburg Cycad which was named after him (Encephalartos eugene-maraisii). He is amongst the greatest of the Afrikaner
poets and remains one of the most popular, although his output was not large. Opperman described him as the first professional Afrikaner poet; Marais believed that craft was as important as inspiration for poetry. Along with J.H.H. de Waal and G.S. Preller, he was a leading light in the Second Afrikaans (language) Movement in the period immediately after the Second Boer War, which ended in 1902. Some of his finest poems deal with the wonders of life and nature but he also wrote about inexorable Death. He was (sometimes) a religious man and in certain of his works (such as "Job") the influence of the Bible is obvious. Although an Afrikaner patriot, Marais was sympathetic to the cultural values of the black tribal peoples of the Transvaal; this is seen in poems such as "Die Dans van die Reën" (The dance of the rain). The following translation of Marais' "Winternag" is by J. W. Marchant:
"Winter's Night"
O the small wind is frigid and spare
and bright in the dim light and bare
as wide as God's merciful boon
the veld
lies in starlight and gloom
and on the high lands
spread through burnt bands
the grass-seed, astir, is like beckoning hands.
O East-wind gives mournful measure to song
Like the lilt of a lovelorn lass who's been wronged
In every grass fold
bright dewdrop takes hold
and promptly pales to frost in the cold!
While the above translation is generally faithful, and is a fine poem in English, it does not quite capture the terse directness of the Afrikaans language, which makes Afrikaans poetry so bittersweet and evocative, striking straight to the heart and soul. Below follows a translation by Farrell Hope, which may closer reflect the original Afrikaans idiom.
"Winternight"
O cold is the slight wind,
and keen.
Bare and bright in dim light
is seen,
as vast as the graces of God,
the veld's starlit and fire-scarred sod.
To the high edge of the lands,
spread through the scorched sands,
new seed-grass is stirring
like beckoning hands.
O mournful the tune
of the East-wind refrain,
like the song of a girl
who loved but in vain.
One drop of dew glistens
on each grass-blade's fold
and fast does it pale
to frost in the cold!
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
.
His early years, before and during the Boer War
Marais was born in PretoriaPretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
, the thirteenth and last child of his parents, Jan Christiaan Nielen Marais and Catharina Helena Cornelia van Niekerk. He attended school in Pretoria, Boshof
Boshof
Boshof is the administrative town in the goldfields region of the Free State province, South Africa. The town was formed in 1855 on the Vanwyksvlei farm. It was named after Jacobus Boshoff who became the 2nd President of the Orange Free State on the 27 August 1855.The local commando was involved in...
and Paarl
Paarl
Paarl is a town with 191,013 inhabitants in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Its the third oldest European settlement in the Republic of South Africa and the largest town in the Cape Winelands. Due to the growth of the Mbekweni township, it is now a de facto urban unit with Wellington...
and much of his early education was in English, as were his earliest poems. He matriculated at the age of sixteen. After leaving school he worked in Pretoria as a legal clerk and then as a journalist before becoming owner (at the age of twenty) of a newspaper called Land en Volk (lit. Land and (the Afrikaner) People). He involved himself deeply in local politics. He began taking opiates at an early age and graduated to morphine (then considered to be non-habitforming and a safer drug) very soon thereafter. He became addicted and his addiction ruled his affairs and actions to a greater or lesser extent throughout his life. When asked for the reasons for taking drugs, he variously pleaded ill health, insomnia and, later, the death of his young wife as a result of the birth of his only child. Much later, he blamed accidental addiction while ill with malaria in Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
. Some claim that his use of drugs was experimental and influenced by the philosophy of de Quincey. He married Aletta Beyers but she died from puerperal fever
Puerperal fever
Puerperal fever or childbed fever, is a bacterial infection contracted by women during childbirth or miscarriage. It can develop into puerperal sepsis, which is a serious form of septicaemia. If untreated, it is often fatal....
a year later, eight days after the birth of their son, Marais' only child. In 1897—still in his mid-twenties—he went to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, initially to read medicine. However, under pressure from his friends, he entered the Inner Temple
Inner Temple
The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...
to study law. (He qualified as an advocate). When the Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
broke out in 1899, he was put on parole as an enemy alien in London. During the latter part of the war he joined a German expedition that sought to ship ammunition and medicines to the Boer Commandos via Portuguese East Africa
Portuguese East Africa
Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa was the common name by which the Portuguese Empire's territorial expansion in East Africa was known across different periods of time...
(now Mozambique). However, he was struck down in this tropical area by malaria and before the supplies could be delivered to the Boers, the war ended.
After the war
From 1905 he studied nature in the WaterbergWaterberg Biosphere
The Waterberg Biosphere is a massif of approximately 15,000 square kilometers in north Limpopo Province, South Africa. Waterberg is the first region in the northern part of South Africa to be named as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. The extensive rock formation was shaped by hundreds of millions of...
("Water mountain"), an area of wilderness north of Pretoria and wrote in his native Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
about the animals he observed. His studies of termites led him to the conclusion that the colony should be considered as a single organism. In the Waterberg Marais also studied the black mamba
Black mamba
The black mamba , also called the common black mamba or black-mouthed mamba, is the longest venomous snake in Africa, averaging around in length, and sometimes growing to lengths of...
, spitting cobra
Spitting cobra
A spitting cobra is one of several species of cobras that have the ability to eject venom from their fangs when defending themselves against predators. The sprayed venom is harmless to intact skin...
and puff adder
Bitis arietans
Bitis arietans is a venomous viper species found in savannah and grasslands from Morocco and western Arabia throughout Africa except for the Sahara and rain forest regions. It is responsible for causing the most fatalities in Africa owing to various factors, such as its wide distribution and...
. He also observed a specific troop of baboon
Baboon
Baboons are African and Arabian Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio, part of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. There are five species, which are some of the largest non-hominoid members of the primate order; only the mandrill and the drill are larger...
s at length, from which numerous magazine articles and the books "My Friends the Baboons" and "The Soul of the Ape" originated. He is acknowledged as the father of the scientific study of the behaviour of animals, known as Ethology
Ethology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
.
As the leader of the Second Afrikaans Language Movement, Marais preferred to write in Afrikaans and his work was translated into various international languages either late in his life or after his death. Southern Africa is the only place in the world where Afrikaans is spoken to any degree, although it can be understood by Dutch and Flemish people.
His book "Die Siel van die Mier" (lit. "The soul of the ant" but usually given in English as the "Soul of the White Ant") was plagiarized by Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureate Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
, who published "The Life of the White Ant" in 1926, falsely claiming many of Marais' revolutionary ideas as his own. Maeterlinck was able to do this because he was Belgian and, though his mother tongue was French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, he was fluent in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, from which Afrikaans was derived. It was common at the time for worthy articles published in Afrikaans to be reproduced in Flemish
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
and Dutch magazines and journals.
Marais contemplated legal action against Maeterlinck but gave up the idea in the face of the costs and logistics involved.
The social anthropologist Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey was an American playwright and screenwriter who returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s....
said in his introduction to The Soul of the Ape, published in 1969, that "As a scientist he was unique, supreme in his time, yet a worker in a science unborn." He also refers to Marais work at length in his work ' African Genesis.'
Marais was a long-term morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
addict and suffered from melancholy, insomnia, depression and feelings of isolation. The theft of his ideas weighed heavily on his mind and some say this caused his final demise, although others argue that the issue had an energizing and invigorating effect. Certainly it brought him back into the public eye in a favorable way. In 1936, deprived of morphine for some days, he finally borrowed a shotgun (on the pretext of killing a snake) and shot himself in the chest. The wound was not fatal and Marais therefore placed the end of the weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. This occurred on the farm Pelindaba
Pelindaba
Pelindaba is South Africa's main Nuclear Research Centre, run by The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, and was the location where South Africa's atomic bombs of the 1970s were developed, constructed and subsequently stored...
, belonging to his friend, Gustav S. Preller. For those who are familiar with the dark moods of certain of Marais' poems there is a black irony here; in Zulu, Pelindaba means "the end of the business" – although the more common interpretation is "Place of great gatherings".
Legacy
Marais' work as a naturalist, although by no means trivial (he was one of the first scientists to practice ethologyEthology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
and was repeatedly acknowledged as such by Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey was an American playwright and screenwriter who returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s....
and others), gained less public attention and appreciation than his contributions as a literalist. He discovered the Waterburg Cycad which was named after him (Encephalartos eugene-maraisii). He is amongst the greatest of the Afrikaner
Afrikaner
Afrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...
poets and remains one of the most popular, although his output was not large. Opperman described him as the first professional Afrikaner poet; Marais believed that craft was as important as inspiration for poetry. Along with J.H.H. de Waal and G.S. Preller, he was a leading light in the Second Afrikaans (language) Movement in the period immediately after the Second Boer War, which ended in 1902. Some of his finest poems deal with the wonders of life and nature but he also wrote about inexorable Death. He was (sometimes) a religious man and in certain of his works (such as "Job") the influence of the Bible is obvious. Although an Afrikaner patriot, Marais was sympathetic to the cultural values of the black tribal peoples of the Transvaal; this is seen in poems such as "Die Dans van die Reën" (The dance of the rain). The following translation of Marais' "Winternag" is by J. W. Marchant:
"Winter's Night"
O the small wind is frigid and spare
and bright in the dim light and bare
as wide as God's merciful boon
the veld
Veld
The term Veld refers primarily to the wide open rural spaces of South Africa or southern Africa and in particular to certain flatter areas or districts covered in grass or low scrub...
lies in starlight and gloom
and on the high lands
spread through burnt bands
the grass-seed, astir, is like beckoning hands.
O East-wind gives mournful measure to song
Like the lilt of a lovelorn lass who's been wronged
In every grass fold
bright dewdrop takes hold
and promptly pales to frost in the cold!
While the above translation is generally faithful, and is a fine poem in English, it does not quite capture the terse directness of the Afrikaans language, which makes Afrikaans poetry so bittersweet and evocative, striking straight to the heart and soul. Below follows a translation by Farrell Hope, which may closer reflect the original Afrikaans idiom.
"Winternight"
O cold is the slight wind,
and keen.
Bare and bright in dim light
is seen,
as vast as the graces of God,
the veld's starlit and fire-scarred sod.
To the high edge of the lands,
spread through the scorched sands,
new seed-grass is stirring
like beckoning hands.
O mournful the tune
of the East-wind refrain,
like the song of a girl
who loved but in vain.
One drop of dew glistens
on each grass-blade's fold
and fast does it pale
to frost in the cold!
The Marais name
The progenitors of the Marais name in the region were Charles and Claude Marais, from the Paris region of France. The Marais name has retained its original French spelling and pronunciation in South Africa.Footnote
According to the Afrikaans version of this article in Wikipedia (as translated by J. W. Marchant in June 2009) Marais' perceived manifestations of Anglophobia may have been overstated in an exercise of political correctness, in which later critics with vested political interests sought, after the death of Marais, to sideline his writings in English. Marais was without doubt a genius and, as with Smuts, he could turn a phrase in English as well as in his native tongue. These issues are flagged here out of an abundance of caution but remain to be elaborated by dispassionate scholars.External links
- Eugene Marais the Poet Some key poems by Eugene Marais (in Afrikaans)
- Encounter South Africa Article
- The Soul of the White Ant online
- The Soul of the White Ant New 2009 edition (print)
- The Soul of the White Ant New 2009 edition (Kindle)
- sahistory.org.za Entry on Eugene Marais