«Staring at Variations» - The Concept of 'Self' in Breyten Breytenbach's Mouroir. "Mirrornotes of a Novel"

The category of the 'self' is central to Breyten Breytenbach's Mouroir. Mirrornotes of a Novel. After outlining the circumstances of the emergence of the text the traditional concept of self is contrasted by the changed sense of self that emerged during the author's imprisonment in South Africa. The recurrent feature of fragmentation dominates the formal structure of Mouroir, the scenario of "characters", the level of contents and the narrators' points of view.
The novel gains a sense of coherence in recurring images and situations. This book offers valid strategies for the reading of innovative texts of literary postmodernity. The aesthetics of Mouroir are inseparable from ethics and political commitment in No Man's Land, apartheid South Africa.