Abstract
M.A.
In his poetry, Tom Gouws, in the first instance, uses the journey motif as a means to escape from prior literary influences in order to develop his own poetical voice. Secondly, he portrays his religious awakening and growth via the journey motif. The journeys described in Diaspora and Troglodiet and the yet unpublished volume Syspoor, depict the stages of his religious development.
In his initial poetry, as manifested by Diaspora - where a Christian religious consciousness is not yet evident - the journeys are portrayed based on the models from the Greek Classic mythology, followed by examples taken from the Middle Eastern mythology. Once the needs for his spiritual quest extend beyond the limits of the mythology, he abandons the mythological journey. Therefore, in his second volume, Troglodiet, he adopts the persona of the archaic shaman, the primitive magician and medicine man, priest, mystic and poet, to depict the poet/traveler's spiritual conflict and development.
The unpublished volume, Syspoor, deals with his renascence as a Christian and
his journey with God. The journeys depicted in this volume differ from those in
previous volumes. There is no longer talk of a journey with an end and destination - his "walk with God" has become a goal in itself - a process of initiation in God. Throughout this volume, the examples for his journeys are taken from the Bible. These journeys culminate in the poet's transcendence in God.
The separate volumes, as well as the oeuvre as a whole, display a particular interrelated structure. The visual aspects of the cover pages, also the multiplicity of meaning introduced by titles and mottoes, are important keys to the understanding of the poetical journeys. Attention is paid to the metaphors "umbilical cord" and "uterus", regularly appearing in all three volumes. The way, in which these metaphors are transformed, marks the various stages in the poet's religious development. By using the metaphors, the important line of development from chaos and disintegration to healing and unity, from darknenes to light, is composed. These metaphors are therefore seen as one of the
strongest means of binding the volumes into a unit, apart from their mutual
interrelationship.
By the end of the third volume, Syspoor, it can be concluded that the poet
succeeded in achieving the objectives he set himself in the first volume,
Diaspora. Gouws developed his own poetical voice. By adopting the Christian
religion as his personal faith, he could bring order to the chaos and heal the
disintegration in his own life. Most important, he succeeded in returning to his
spiritual home and in experiencing transcendence in God.