Until recently Arthur Nortje was often referred to rather sentimentally as South Africa's "forgotten poet." Nevertheless most students of South African culture have never lost sight of Nortje's importance as a poet and as a symbol of resistance to apartheid. Ever since Nortje's apparent suicide in December 1970, a few days before his twenty-eighth birthday, writers and critics alike have been struggling to come to terms with the haunting poetry he left behind. In his career, his poems, and the manner of his death, one sees exemplified the problem of reconciling aesthetics and political commitment, for the essence of Nortje's life and work is struggle--struggle to forge a personal and poetic identity in the face of dehumanizing political forces that eventually drove him into exile. Most important of all, perhaps, Nortje represents a part of South African history that was conveniently effaced and which is only now being painfully...