Sat 16 Aug: The Pringle diaries in their many boxes have been dispatched back to the stacks, at least for the moment. But the mind rumbles and splutters on, coming to a halt only slowly. The overwhelming experience of reading these diaries has been, nothing much happened except that life went on, sheep were dipped, visitors called, letters to daughters were written, fields were weeded. Read against the ‘big events’ of South African history, with very few exceptions (1960 and its troubles being key here) there is a dislocation. Those ‘big events’ I have looked for in my skim-reading just did not register, in this area of the Baviaans River, on this farm, by this diarist, writing these diary-entries. Thus my interest in farmer Strick in 1849-51 and his ‘is this a war or just life?’ diary-comments, for Strick’s puzzle is closely related to my puzzle.

Reading Elias (eg. in The Society of Individuals), he says that the specificity of life and historical events interconnect because the latter is made up of many of the former, with two examples he uses being a house/thousands of bricks, and a melody/hundreds of separate notes. Well, pah I say. Pah, pah, pah. What there is, with some exceptions, is a disjuncture, dislocation, separation, difference. Having noted this dislocation many times over in past research I’ve done, in the WWW project I’m going to do something about it. And what my mind rumbled and spluttered over last night is – the Pringle diaries! I shall set to and compile a timeline from 1911 to 1960 with major S. African historical events on it, and then work though the diary-entries for the relevant dates and time-periods. And having done this for Mr Pringle’s many diaries over this lengthy period, I can then add to it other diaries and letters by other people and what these write or don’t write about ‘the history’.

Last updated: 16 August 2014