Word formation in the poetry and letters of Peter Blum: a glossary

Abstract

This article, titled “Word formation in the poetry and the letters of Peter Blum: A glossary” is a provisional account of the meaning of the plethora of newly minted words found in Peter Blum’s poetry compilations – Steenbok tot Poolsee (1955) and Enklaves van die lig (1958) – and the collection of letters Briewe van Peter Blum (2008). Taken together however, these words can hardly be neatly categorized into any one linguistic category such as neologisms, since very few of the words and their purported meanings have been formally lexicalised. Through extensive referencing – to include English, French, German, Middle Dutch and Latin dictionaries as well as etymological dictionaries of Dutch and Afrikaans – and by using lexicology as a broad theoretical underpinning, it is revealed that Blum depended heavily upon loan translation and the creation of highly context-dependant words in terms of their meaning. This glossary is mainly demarcated along those words with an opaque meaning, regardless of linguistic category.