William Ewart Gladstone Louw (31 May 1913 in

Sutherland Sutherland ( gd, Cataibh) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the Highlands of Scotland. Its county town is Dornoch. Sutherland borders Caithness and Moray Firth to the east, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire (later ...

, formerly

Cape Province The Province of the Cape of Good Hope ( af, Provinsie Kaap die Goeie Hoop), commonly referred to as the Cape Province ( af, Kaapprovinsie) and colloquially as The Cape ( af, Die Kaap), was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequen ...

, now

Northern Cape The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi T ...

Province in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

– 24 April 1980 in

Stellenbosch Stellenbosch (; )A Universal Pronounc ...

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

Province, South Africa), was an Afrikaner poet and is in the main known to the literary world merely as W.E.G. Louw. He was the younger brother of the poet

N. P. van Wyk Louw Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw (11 June 1906 in Sutherland, Cape Colony – 18 June 1970 in Johannesburg), almost universally known as N.P. van Wyk Louw, was an Afrikaans-language poet, playwright and scholar. He was the older brother of Afrikaan ...

. William Louw matriculated at the S. A. College School in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

. He studied at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

from 1931 -1935 and was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts with a dissertation on the poetry of

J. H. Leopold Jan Hendrik Leopold (May 11, 1865 – June 21, 1925) was a Dutch poet and classicist. Leopold was born at 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. After living in Arnhem he moved to Rotterdam early in 1892, where he became a teacher of classical languages ...

. He continued his studies in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

, where he was admitted to the degree of D.Lit. Louw returned to Cape Town in November 1938. Here he completed another doctorate with a dissertation on the influence of Gorter on Leopold (Die Invloed van Gorter op Leopold). In 1944 he married the composer

Rosa Nepgen Rosa or De Rosa may refer to: People *Rosa (given name) * Rosa (surname) *Santa Rosa (female given name from Latin-a latinized variant of Rose) Places * 223 Rosa, an asteroid *Rosa, Alabama, a town, United States * Rosa, Germany, in Thuringia, ...

. In 1945, together with his brother

and H. A. Mulder, "W.E.G." founded the independent magazine "Standpunte" ("Points of View"). W.E.G.'s first academic position was as professor of Afrikaans and Nederlands at

Rhodes University Rhodes University is a public university, public research university located in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is one of four universities in the province. Established in 1904, ...

Grahamstown Makhanda, also known as Grahamstown, is a town of about 140,000 people in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated about northeast of Port Elizabeth and southwest of East London, Eastern Cape, East London. Makhanda is the lar ...

. In 1957 he accepted the post of Arts Editor at ''

Die Burger ''Die Burger'' (English: The Citizen) is a daily Afrikaans-language newspaper, published by Naspers. By 2008, it had a circulation of 91,665 in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces of South Africa. Along with ''Beeld'' and ''Volksblad'', it is ...

'' (a newspaper in the Cape) and remained there until the end of 1966. From 1967 he served as professor of Dutch Literature at the

University of Stellenbosch Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

, until his retirement in 1978. Louw's 1934's collection of poems entitled ''Die ryke dwaas'' ("The rich fool") might perhaps be seen as the start of the Dertigers movement within Afrikaans literature.¹

His poems

Pale Falcon White is the world
of historical mourning
and tragic the waltz
of the sea at day's dawning
dew on the dunes, no zephyr that wakes
just a falcon that sings in the circles he makes... (Translated by J. W. Marchant).

His influences

The South African composer

Cromwell Everson Cromwell Everson (28 September 1925 – 11 June 1991) was primarily known as a composer during his lifetime. He was brought up as an Afrikaner by his mother, Maria De Wit and father, Robert Everson. He continued this tradition and all his childr ...

constructed a song cycle, "Vier Liefdesliedjies" ("Four little love songs"), that found inspiration in a poem that W.E.G. had entitled "Nooit Nog" ("Never again").

References

¹Lindenberg, E., et al. "Inleiding tot die Afrikaanse Letterkunde". Pretoria and Cape Town: Fifth edition, 1980.

External links

Picture and brief biography

1913 births 1980 deaths Afrikaans-language poets People from Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality Afrikaner people South African people of Dutch descent South African poets Hertzog Prize winners for poetry 20th-century poets Alumni of South African College Schools {{SouthAfrica-poet-stub