Bientang’s cave: A trans-disciplinary study of marginality in the epic in Afrikaans

Abstract

This reflexive essay has a creative and an in-depth research component. I sought to write an Epic poem about a marginalised woman known as Bientang. Bientang was a Khoisan, or ‘strandloper’ as Khoisan people were known, in the coastal region of the Southern Cape, featured in several legends from this area. The legends tell of a woman who was supposed to have lived in a cave situated in the Old Harbour in Hermanus. Since then, the cave has had many incarnations and is currently a restaurant called Bientang’s Cave. Writing an Epic poem about a marginalised character is in some ways a contradiction. Therefore, I examine the terms ‘marginalised’ and ‘Epic’ in various ways: firstly, through research into issues of marginalization and creolization, more specifically of fishing communities in the southern Cape; secondly, through research into the characteristics, changes, and manifestations of the Epic in Afrikaans literature, in particular; thirdly, through writing my original Epic poem itself – an accepted form of practice-based research; and fourthly, through translating parts of the poem into English.