Abstract
In the process of text transmission between Afrikaans and Dutch, many actors and agencies play a decisive role. One such figure is Alfred Schaffer, whose diverse identities and occupations as poet, translator, reviewer, lecturer and organizer, initiate a multifarious engagement with the inter-linguistic transmission process.
This contribution draws on the concepts of liminality and the liminal state to consider Schaffer as "in-between" figure, both from an institutional and a poetic perspective. Schaffer's poetry searches for liminal personae and revisits the experience of moving in the transition zone between the pre-liminal and post-liminal phase.
The article considers these articulations of transience alongside data on Schaffer's various literary-institutional activities and his presence in the Low Countries and South Africa. Proceeding from close reading of a selection of genre-hybrid texts, the article argues that Schaffer's problematization of identity and his awareness of functioning at the intersection of two literary poly-systems, creates a sense of being both somewhere and nowhere.
This ultimately sheds specific light on the agency of the poet as bridgehead or cultural mediator.