About DJ Opperman

(Painting by Philip Terblanche)

Diederik Johannes Opperman (1914 - 1985) was a member of the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at Stellenbosch University from 1960 until his retirement in 1979. As lecturer and supervisor he introduced several generations of students to the secrets of Afrikaans and world literature; as lecturer he also started a ‘Literary Laboratory’ in which he guided young writers and critics. As poet he published nine ground-breaking volumes of poetry and three important verse dramas; as academic he published one of the most important studies about the Afrikaans poets of the nineteen thirties and a series of influential essays; as role-player in the literary domain he published a series of anthologies of poetry (among which the several editions of the Groot Verseboek which became an important instrument canonizing Afrikaans poetry); and as reader for different publishing houses he played a prominent role in the formation of poets.

After Opperman’s death in 1985, Prof Lina Spies, at that time a faculty member at the University of Pretoria, started investigating the possibility of instituting a memorial lecture in Opperman’s name. On the initiative of the then professors in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, Johan Smuts, Merwe Scholtz, Johan Combrinck and Fritz Ponelis, and with the approval of Mrs Marié Opperman, the biannual DJ Opperman memorial lecture was instituted in 1986. The first of these memorial lectures was delivered by Prof Lina Spies on 8 May 1987. Since that date, the following lectures have been delivered to honour Opperman’s contribution. (Click on the icon to access the full text or view the video.)