D.J. Opperman’s Klipwerk poems—especially “Man met flits”—aren’t mere stylistic exercises. There’s something deeper at play, a philosophical charge that lingers. The image of the klein wit kol resonates profoundly with me. It evokes the edges of perception, that moment just before clarity disintegrates. It’s not a gimmick—it’s the ladder Wittgenstein speaks of, the one you climb and then must discard once you’ve seen beyond.
That links, too, to what Jan Rabie said—or paraphrased from somewhere/someone—that “die einde van my taal is immers die einde van my wêreld.” I feel that. Language isn’t just a tool—it’s a boundary. And when it breaks down, the self frays at the same seams.
*Switching languages mid-poem can be more than a mere postmodern tick. There’s something to be said for the way code-switching allows different registers of self to surface, can use counterpoint to bring out texture, temperature, hue, chroma through implicit contrast. The in-between spaces. English and Afrikaans weaving together not as decoration, but as necessity—carrying nuance that neither language alone can quite hold.
I don’t have the time, energy, or perhaps the madness to pursue a full-on Klipwerk-style literary game right now. But maybe that same impulse—the play of masks, personas, and philosophical inquiry—can find form in my painting practice. Maybe that’s where I can lean into the slippage, the flicker, the failure of words. Maybe that’s where I can chase the edges of what I think I know.
Ultimately, limits fascinate me, draw me—the edges of expression, of being, the smoky mirror, the place where image or gesture might do what language can’t, or language what image can’t. Where fetish isn’t mere flaw, but flows into feature in the most delightful way, ‘but for a moment’.
