“Lyric is my medium, not chronicle”

In J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, Magda’s contention that “[l]yric is my medium, not chronicle” reflects a recurring theme in the novel—the mutability of time. Magda’s time-orientation in the novel is unconventional: She makes a sharp distinction between the chronological time of her father (which travels along “arrow-straight paths”) and her own, “mythical” time. Her narrative does not follow a linear track—forward movement is instead often disrupted by “speculative” histories, digressions, repetition, and reversals. I would like to propose in this article that Magda’s resistance to the discourses of patriarchy and colonialism is framed primarily through her temporal reconstructions, and that her lyrical mode of narration reconceives temporality in both the novel’s narrative organisation and its thematic concerns.