Miriam’s Circle
A circle of creative spirituality and ritual for women.
Dear friends,
The May full moon rises on Saturday 25th
This is the date of our next gathering
Theme: Olive Schreiner
According to one of her biographers, Moore Ritchie, “Olive Schreiner was not only a creative artist, but one whose comprehensive mind was such as to entitle her to rank as one of the greatest women of the age, and incontestably the most formidable interpretive intellect that South Africa has produced…”
We will look at some of Olive Schreiner’s writing, voicing her ‘efforts to keep larger sympathies alive’, as Cherry Clayton put it in her introduction to a book of allegories and stories.
She was not just a one-book person. Apart from The Story of an African Farm , she covered a wide and diverse range of writing, handling different genres, which included pamphlet, allegory, satirical sketch, political speech, expository ideology, the broad sweep of history and geography, lyricism and prophecy, descriptive realism, melodrama and pathos, as well as stories for children.
A brilliant complex mind,
but it is the human voice that reaches one most fervently as e.g. in her letters:
For example, what she writes about getting married (written from the farm Krantz Plaas) to a friend: “We were married very quietly on Saturday and came straight home here, getting here in the starlight at about eight o’clock. – My hope for the long journey on which my husband and I are setting out lies in the fact that we are ‘chums’. We are more like two children playing together than a man and a woman.” And to her brother she writes: “I am very happy, dear. My daily life is happier than it has ever been in my life before, and my Husband becomes dearer and closer to me day by day. One has to live with him to realize how strong he is. I don’t mean strong in the shallow external strength, but strong in that deep SELF-governing sense, in which those stronger externally, are often weak …
There are said to be over 4800 letters carefully preserved in the Olive Schreiner Archives.
How do we feel about saving letters from special people in our lives…
Those handwritten letters that were posted in envelopes with stamps…
Those carefully phrased sentences… because letters took time to be delivered…?
Please bring a letter to share
Time: 19:0 0 – 21:00
Place: Betsy & Dina’s house
Sagewoman: Gertrud Strauss
RSVP: 031 2095895/ 0739612445
Hope you can come!
New friends are welcome
To cover costs: R10