THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS - The Works of F. N. Lee

cross in that southern constellation, was the "bloodiest" and reddest star that he had ever seenanywhere in the skies. Of course, God Himself put it there -- right in the "head" of the SouthernCross!Once again Celliers:"O land of love,here taste I peacewhere stone towns in the silent nighterect their rockeries of mightand bitterness melts through thesand."There is also the great poet C. Louis Leipoldt. He was born and raised near the Hantam Mountainsin South Africa not far from where my wife herself grew up. As a very famous paediatrician, hereturned to that place from Cape Town -- and there picked up a handful of gravel and someshrivelled-up old leaves. As he looked at them, he wrote these words:"A handful of gravel and dried upleavestell me so much of those wonderfulyearswhen the world of the Hantamwas the whole world for me.I was poor the day before yesterday--but today, I am rich as a king!"Then there is the great Eugene M. Marais. He, by the way, according to the American writer RobertArdrey, author of African Genesis, has written quite the best study in the world about the behaviourof ants. Proverbs 6:6f! Marais also wrote a beautiful poem about the winter nights on the rollingfields and plains of the Transvaal. Just some of those words are to this effect:"It's cold; the little wind is thin.The fields stretch outas wide as the mercy of theLord!"It is nice to hear of the wideness of God's mercy being proclaimed by Calvinists -- who are oftenalleged to be not always appreciative enough of the wideness of that mercy! One could go on. Butthat is just to give you something of the flavour of some of the more important literature thatappeals to me in the Afrikaans language.Coming now to more plastic and visual arts, the Afrikaners have been rather sternly Calvinistic. Formany decades they have gone into "Still Art" -- painting things like fruit in a bowl, and especiallythe wide open spaces in the rocky mountains of the uninhabited areas of the country. There weregreat painters like Pierneef, of the more classical modern school.Then you have poetry such as Gerdener's "Elijah" and the other works I have already referred to.More recently, one encounters the work of the great Preacher-poet Isak de Villiers (an oldclassmate of mine). He is now regarded as perhaps the finest contemporary poet in South Africa.His works are written not just from a Calvinist perspective, but from a Calvinist Preacher's