SOURCE: Review of Lewendood, in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 3, Summer 1986, p. 511.

In the following review, Toerien calls Breytenbach's Lewendood both "rich and generous" in its poetic intentions.

Breytenbach's fourth published volume of poems written while he was held in South African prisons bears the cryptic title [Lewendood] Life and Death, which can also be read as "Living Death." It is the first part of the overall prison series The Undanced Dance and consists of poems written shortly after his incarceration and while in solitary confinement in the Pretoria jail. Surprisingly, the poems are in no way sad or despondent; on the contrary, they pulsate with vitality and an inner joy. There is a dispassionate look at his condition, a Dantesque descent into lower circles as he makes poems of graffiti found on the prison walls, of prison routines, the warders' activities, the rare sight of the moon...