Is T.T. Cloete ’n Calvinistiese digter?

Abstract

Is T.T. Cloete a Calvinist poet?T.T. Cloete has had a strong influence on contemporary Afrikaans poetry, particularly as a religious poet with a fanerotic world view. Some critics have characterized him as a Calvinist poet, and the validity of such a description is discussed in this article. It is pointed out that Cloete's Biblical orientation as well as the importance given to the so-called general or creational revelation of God in his poetry, is typically Calvinist. The panentheistic trend in his view of the relation between God and cosmos, the aesthetic mysticism that distinguishes his experience of God and the consequent discomfort in his poems about the meaningful ness of death in the dispensation of God, are, however, indicated as motives deviating from a typically Calvinist world view. In these respects his views, as expressed in his poetry, show similarities with those of the Catholic tradition, even with those of the Eastern Christian church.