Presentation and positioning in Van Wyk Louw: 'n Lewensverhaal by JC Steyn/ Voorstellings en posisionerings in Van Wyk Louw: 'n Lewensverhaal deur JC Steyn

In this article, I attempt a critical reading of Steyn S widely acclaimed biography (1998, named above) by using diverse critical frameworks and theories. In accordance with views advanced in narratology, writing a historical narrative is seen as a venture that cannot escape subjectivity, despite the historicist's being bound by factual writing and oral accounts of chronicles and facts. In a previous study (Van Coller 2019a), history-writing has been compared with the process of translation because the historian also has to choose between two modes of presentation, namely foreignisation and domestication (Venutti 1995). The present study, however, focuses on another influential and important translation theory, namely the skopos theory, propounded by the German scholar Christiane Nord (1991; 2006). According to this theory, translation is function-driven and the translator has no free play in translation. The translator is bound by "loyalty"--loyalty towards the initiator who commissioned or assigned the translation (the translation brief), the target audience and the source text. It follows that any strategic choices exercised are closely related to the needs (values and knowledge) of the target audience. These insights apply mutatis mutandis to the biographer, who has the same loyalty to the initiator, his target readers and, particularly, the subject of his biography. In a recent study (Van Coller 2019b), I also reviewed Steyn's biographies of Piet Cillie, former newspaper editor (ofDie Burger) and influential political analyst, and MER (Miemie Rothman), an Afrikaans journalist, writer and member of the Carnegie commission of inquiry (1929-1932) into extreme poverty among white people. The conclusion in that study was that although both biographies can be regarded as thorough, the presentation of especially Piet Cillie was skewed because key aspects of his life have been manipulated in the sense that many of his obvious shortcomings were underplayed or treated in a manner to present him in a more positive light. This could perhaps be ascribed to the fact that the Cillie biography was commissioned by Naspers (which, at the time, also paid Steyn's salary, while Cillie was one of the pivotal-figures in the organisation). Likewise, MER also had close ties with Naspers. In the present study, one of the findings is that Truida Louw, widow of NP van Wyk Louw, apparently strongly influenced the Van Wyk Louw biography as she reportedly favoured Steyn as the biog