Die boek Job as bron van intertekste vir ‘Wie weet?' (<i>Die waarheid gelieg</i>, 1984)

Abstract

The Book of Job as a source of intertexts for T.T. Cloete’s short story ‘Wie weet?’ (Die waarheid gelieg, 1984) T.T. Cloete’s account of a woman's physical and spiritual agony in the short story “Wie weet?” ffrom Die waarheid gelieg, 1984), read within the South African/Afrikaans cultural context, presents several indicators that the Book of Job is its intertext, the most explicit pointer being the role of the sufferer’s sister-in-law. Intertextuality in Cloete’s oeuvre often takes the form of a creative reworking or rereading of texts (cf Scholtz, 1984; Botha, 1984; Roos, 1986). Roos comments on the caricatural treatment of theme in Cloete’s “Veg om te verloor” (Cloete, 1984), highlighted by the rereading imposed on the reader of Van Melle’s well-known story "Die joiner”, creating distrust in the implicit author of the Cloete text. The argument in this essay is that the explicit engagement of the intertext, as in "Wie weet?”, also serves as an affirmative complement to the negative incompleteness of the rereading. Thus the desperate questioning of "Wie weet?” becomes an integral part of a reading of Cloete’s oeuvre as a hymn to God’s omnipotence and mercy, epitomized in the poem "Van Horn en my” (Jukstaposisie, 1982).