Saturday 26 July: It has been a thoroughly Schreiner day! The first session of Saturday’s events featured the launch of The World’s Great Question: Olive Schreiner’s South African Letters, edited by Andrea and me and published in a magnificent volume by the Van Riebeeck Society.  This was a very special occasion, for there was no need to ‘explain’ who Olive Schreiner was and why she is important, for this audience was a very knowledgeable one, something we all felt. Andrea and I spoke about why we did the book, the differences between it and the Schreiner Letters Online and that the print edition has enabled us to provide much more about the social and political context of Schreiner’s letter-writing. We also read extracts from some of Schreiner’s letters, about the Karoo, about a man beaten to death but his murderer unpunished, about Cecil Rhodes, and one written not long before her death admonishing Jan Smuts for his limitations.

The event following was the formal opening of a wonderful new exhibition at Schreiner House, which also included an excellent talk about times of landscape and place in Schreiner’s writings by Dirk Klopper of Rhodes University.

And then for us THE event of the day was our ascent of Buffels Kop to Olive Schreiner’s sarcophagus, a very very special place. It took well over an hour to be driven off-road to about 400 metres short of the summit, then a rockly climb to the sarcophagus. The views around were breath-taking, but for me the dominating feeling, with my hand on the sarcophagus warmed by the afternoon sun, concerned proximity to the mortal remains of Olive Schreiner. This was a very strange feeling for I have never been moved by graveyard visits before. It was the starkness of the tomb, the wildness of the place, the breath-taking beauty of the landscape around, and that odd feeling of proximity, that combined. And the place and its stark beauty really is very special.

Last updated: 27 July 2014