Romantic Polyphony in Herbert I.E. Dhlomo’s Valley of a Thousand Hills

Hailed as a masterpiece of African epic poetry, Herbert I.E. Dhlomo’s "Valley of a Thousand Hills’ (1941) was also praised for its political merits as a contribution to the shaping of a modern national spirit in South Africa. Getting out of the box is here coupled with genre experimentation: the poem is based on a masterly polyphonic interweaving of different genres that resembles the texture of The Waste Land, and in inspiration it largely draws on Dhlomo’s conflation of British Romantic voices. Examining the circulation of British Romantic poetry among 1930s-40s New African intellectuals, the essay argues that the driving inspiration heavily stemmed from Dhlomo’s inventive appropriation of Shelley’s reformist and stylistic ideals in the light of his belief in the role of music in creating an absolute language that may defy the constraints of verbal discourse, while Keats seemed to influence the South African writer with his faith in the ‘epistemic value of suffering. This imbrication of genres, voices, and allusions leaves textual scars which, despite causing multiple narrative fractures, produce a polyphonic effect that documents Dhlomo’s tormented attempt at negotiating between cultures at a literary as well as at a political level.