The Low Countries. Jaargang 7

Home , Abcoude, Berg Castle, Capture of Delfzijl, Cornelis van Vollenhoven, Dutch Coast, Flemish Parliament

bron The Low Countries. Jaargang 7. Stichting Ons Erfdeel, Rekkem 1999-2000

Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001199901_01/colofon.php

i.s.m. 12

photo by Stephan Vanfleteren.

Shapes of Landscape

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Landscape and Space in the Low Countries Reflecting the Differences between North and South

It is no coincidence that the first part of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean (La méditerranée, 1966) is entitled ‘The Role of the Environment’. In this work he describes the physical geography of the area: geological development, coastlines, mountains and flatlands, soil and basins. But he pays much more attention to physical geography and how people deal with their physical environment; how and why they started to engage in fishing and agriculture in a particular place; how, why and where they drew political and cultural frontiers across the landscape and at the same time organised cross-border transport; where and why they built towns and cities and how they catered for the surrounding countryside. In short: how a physical landscape became a cultural landscape. For Braudel and many other historians, sociologists and philosophers, the cultural landscape is the point where mankind and the natural elements come together; the scene of the battle between man's urge to civilise and nature's unruliness. A landscape therefore reveals history as well as geography. Landscape lends history

The ‘Afsluitdijk’. This dike turned the Zuiderzee into the IJsselmeer: from sea into lake. a spatial dimension because it bears the traces and impressions of the past, and those traces and impressions of a past civilisation are precisely what give the landscape a historical dimension. The landscape of the Low Countries is no different. Flanders and the Netherlands both bear the marks and scars of the past. All along the coastline from Diksmuide to Delfzijl and far inland, especially in the Netherlands, the landscape is defined by the struggle against the sea, while the political, cultural and economic history of the Flemish towns is set in stone in towns and cities such as Bruges and Ghent. Deventer and The Hague breathe the Hanseatic mercantile spirit and the spirit of early political citizenship. The former coastline of the Zuiderzee and the mining regions of Belgian and Dutch Limburg bear witness to a closed chapter of economic history. The Westhoek and Breendonk, the Waalsdorpervlakte and Westerbork show the scars of a recent military past. Landscape, according to Ton Lemaire, is therefore an explicatio culturae: the history of a culture and the culture of a people are stored and ‘laid out’ in the cultural

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 landscape.1. The landscape lays bare our cultural history - a history which is more than a fossilised and silent past. We remember that

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The Flemish open-air folkmuseum in Bokrijk. history; we cherish, relive and reinterpret it - and we choose to do that in places which are important to us in cultural-historical terms. And when we cannot do that, we visit and remember elements of historical landscape - architectural heritage in particular - which we were in danger of losing, and have brought together as relics. Families, for example, pay Sunday visits to open-air folkmuseums in Arnhem, Bokrijk or Spakenburg in search of their history. Grandfathers explain to the youngsters what a flail is, or a fishing smack; veterans tell the young about the Dodengang entrenchment in Diksmuide; guides in Ghent relate the history of the Gravensteen castle to visitors. Commemoration is often a matter of conservation: historians local and national fight for the preservation of old mines and the villages of the Zuiderzee. Ecologists and environmental organisations fight for the landscape along the Scheldt. Our history is contained in the landscape; if we preserve our landscape, we preserve our culture too.

Landscape as a contemporary creation

Landscape is more than a historical and cultural creation: we form the landscape every day, and try to mould it to our own requirements in the eternal struggle between nature's unruliness and man's urge to civilise - or should we call it the urge to take control? The theme of the struggle has changed over time. Flood defences, of course, are still important, but the financial and technological resources with which we tackle the problem in the Low

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Countries make a disaster increasingly unlikely. That is, unless we become overconfident. Building on the flood plain of the River Maas is asking for trouble, as we saw recently in the Netherlands after the floods of 1993 and 1995. Or unless we become careless: drainage channels should be regularly maintained, as we saw in 1998 in Flanders - also after flooding. Nature is quick to punish forgetfulness. During the last fifty years, the emphasis has been on organising the landscape so that it can accommodate every citizen, every industry and all our infrastructure, while preserving a habitable environment which has space for agriculture and, if possible, ‘green’ areas. These demands are not unique to the Low Countries; they are priorities in physical planning throughout Europe. The Low Countries, however, are something of an exception in that these requirements have to be met with a population density of 400 / km2, high levels of income and welfare, and high-technology economies and unsurpassed mobility. In this already ‘crowded’ space, more housing is needed for increasingly smaller households, more industrial areas while many old sites are irremediably damaged by pollution, more roads and railways and new and larger airports, more recreation areas. In addition to all that, we demand real ‘natural’ landscape which - and this is an example of true human arrogance - we then proceed to remould.2. All these claims on space, when that space is already so densely occupied, lead to tensions and conflicts. This is certainly the case with all forms of new travel and transport infrastructure; throughout Europe there is a drive to provide faster links for road traffic, and particularly for faster air and rail travel. For the Low Countries this means above all the expansion of Schiphol

The Maas flood plain near Rotterdam.

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The Diegem cloverleaf near Brussels National Airport.

Airport and - for the moment less controversial - the development of the Belgian airport at Zaventem on the one hand, the building of track for the TGV on the other. In the Netherlands there is also the construction of the Betuwe route. Given the existing massive pressure on the available space, it is no coincidence that precisely these new demands should have given rise to all manner of conflicts, not only between ordinary people and the govemment but also between different government bodies. For these large-scale infrastructural projects currently serve as a focus for the many conflicting claims on space. Consequently, they also provide an incentive for experiments in new methods of participation and decision-making. At the same time it has to be made clear that by reason of their international nature these projects are actually beyond the capacity and competence of the individual countries.

Landscape and space in the Netherlands and Flanders

So the landscape, already ploughed up and changed so many times over the centuries, has to be reconstructed again; rearranged and adapted to the needs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Anyone who is familiar with Flanders and the Netherlands will know that they approach this problem very differently - in almost contradictory ways. As a result, the two historical landscapes are becoming even more distinct. From a satellite only one natural frontier is visible in the landscape of the

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Schiphol Airport in 1995.

Low Countries: the east-west band of major rivers. Although the course of the rivers has hardly shifted since the last Ice Age, the historical importance of the unruly rivers for the Dutch landscape cannot be exaggerated. The second frontier, the political border further south between the Netherlands and Belgium (and between the Netherlands and Flanders) is not visible from a distance. Furthermore, the areas of the Kempen, Brabant and Limburg, which are the most important in terms of homogeneous physical geography, extend across both sides of the national border. But from here physical geography and cultural geography diverge: the state border, not visible at a distance, is unmistakable to anyone who cares to take a closer look. No-one travelling by train between Essen (Flanders) and Roosendaal (the Netherlands), or by car between Antwerp and Breda, could fail to see where the border lies. As the Flemish writer Geert van Istendael says, you can tell where the border lies by the appearance of the houses on either side - the windows, curtains, doors, roofs, paint and even the colour of the bricks are different. The differences are even more noticeable if one takes a walk from Slenaken in the Netherlands to Teuven in Flanders - a distance of less than one kilometre. Tidy Dutch houses done up with a sense of orderliness and beauty give way to sloppily-maintained Flemish houses with built-on kitchens, extensions, aviaries and rabbit hutches, all descending in a visual line to the dustbin. Neat, precisely-measured driveways in two colours of stone give way to patches of tarmac and very uneven patches of gravel for parking the car. The sharp white lines at the side of the road fade into nothing.... The way in which houses and roads are maintained is also explicatio culturae.

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Cluttered building - note the extensions to the houses - in Klemskerke, Flanders.

The Netherlands: Wieringermeerpolder with Lely pumping station and the three main canals.

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Anyone arriving at Antwerp Central from Roosendaal or, worse, the even newer station at Berchem, will experience a culture shock: the orderliness of the Dutch station, with its clean platforms, uniformly-designed logos, legible signs and well-maintained appearance gives way to an inhospitable badly-maintained greyness with a cacophony of messages and signais. In Belgium, public areas are badly neglected; in the Netherlands they are over-organised. In short, the cultural landscapes of Flanders and the Netherlands, although they evolved in a similar environment, have vastly different characteristics and features. The differences reflect the differences in culture. To the average foreigner, the Dutch landscape - with a few exceptions - is monotonous and boring. This is true of many landscapes in the north, west and south-west. They are a product of the centuries-old battle against the sea, and of twentieth-century land consolidation: flood defences and agriculture, functionality and efficiency. The ‘new landscape’ of the Flevopolder takes the prize here: planned to the last detail, so devoid of spontaneity or surprise, so ultimately functional and so soul-destroyingly monotonous.

Orderliness is next to godliness: housing in Almere, Flevoland, The Netherlands. Photo by Stephan Vanfleteren.

In the Netherlands it is not only the landscape that is so lacking in variety: roads, car parks and stations are also remarkably similar. Housing is uniform and monotonous and the villages are copies of each other, with their neat parking spaces and endless repetition of bank logos and trade outlets. Much that was unique has disappeared from rural areas now colonised by chain stores. Visitors to Flanders, however, find a landscape rich in diversity. From the Westhoek to the Flemish Ardennes, from the Waas region to the Kempen, from Hageland to the Herve; rolling hills and surprising views with an endless variety of open and closed spaces and a rich variety of villages, properties and houses. Flanders in Creative Contrasts was the title of Patricia Carson's photographic and textual eulogy. But that eulogy makes an abstraction of the creation (or perhaps destruction?) of the Flemish cultural landscape since the Second World War: the ugliness of ribbon development; the parcellation of the countryside, its disfigurement by the building of large numbers of pseudo-rural dwellings in a wide variety of styles, the Atlantic Wall of apartment buildings that stretches along the entire coast; but also the chaotic traffic-sign systems, the confusing junctions, the neglected cycle paths and the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 ‘motorways’ which have become ‘shop-highways’. In short, this is the diverse ugliness of Flanders where, apparently, anything goes.

Spatial development: managed organisation or the creation of building plots?

The north / south differences in the cultural landscape of the Low Countries are, as we said above, principally historic in origin. The landscape of the Netherlands was formed, to put it simply, in the centuries-long struggle to protect a large silted plain from the sea, and from tidal and river floods. That struggle - recently written about and illustrated to commemorate the bicentenary of the Directorate-General of Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) - has produced a system of canals and watercourses, dikes and polders, drainage areas and land outside the dikes which is truly impressive from a cultural-history point of view. At the same time, there was

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 20 a national awareness of the need to maintain that system: drainage and dikes were and are literally a matter of life and death. This gave rise to that interesting political phenomenon, the water board (waterschap) - a truly modern form of collective government over common property. Speculation it may be, but that pervasive cultural history cannot fail to have (had) a significant influence on the sense of responsibility for communal territory which is so strongly developed in the Netherlands, and which applies not only to water, protection against water and space for water, but also to public domains in general. Awareness of this is essential for understanding the contemporary cultural landscape in the Netherlands - and for understanding Dutch physical planning policy. A similar historical context is almost entirely absent in Belgium. Water boards have never acquired the status of collective public utilities, and their influence is only visible in West Flanders. Is this the result of successive foreign conquerors who showed little respect for the cultural landscape? Does it explain the anti-statism in the political culture of both Belgium and Flanders? That is speculation, too. But, in any event, protection of the collective domain is not a central feature of the cultural pattern there. This is not only unlike the situation in the Netherlands, but also unlike England and Germany, where rural conservation is a traditional part of national culture, and where it is also seen as cultural preservation. Physical planning developed throughout Europe after the Second World War. It was the policy par excellence which would shape a country; the instrument for processing and assessing the many conflicting claims on the scarce space available, and making decisions on them. That happened in the Low Countries too, but, as will be clear from the above, the political-historical contexts in Belgium and the Netherlands meant that planning would develop along very different lines. In retrospect, physical planning in Belgium and Flanders was based on

The Netherlands versus the sea: high waves near Vlissingen.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 21 widely differing - even contradictory - motives. In the Netherlands, the emphasis was placed on creating space for new housing to meet quantitative as well as qualitative needs. For reasons which we will not explore further here, housing was considered to be a government responsibility in the Netherlands. Rapid population growth and war damage made the situation even more urgent. However, at the same time preservation of open spaces or, to put it another way, regimented urbanisation and suburbanisation, was also a priority. In this context large well-considered, spatially concentrated housing projects were realised in urban expansion areas and a number of new towns. In Flanders, too, housing was a problem in the post-war years, albeit much less a matter for public concern. Government responsibility extended to providing sufficient space for the private housing industry. There was no national policy: local authorities had to make ‘building land’ available - and did so to an exaggerated extent in every possible location, with all manner of motives and supported by declining agriculture and pushy developers. In Flanders, the creation of employment space (read: the development of industrial estates) was almost more important than housing. These objectives were accurately reflected in the slogan ‘local work!’: the modernisation of the Flemish economy and its expansion into every corner of Flanders. This involved building roads and universities, and every town acquired its own ring road and motorway.

Fragmented parcellation versus orderly physical planning: the archetypes of two policies

There are differences not only in the physical planning policies in Flanders and the Netherlands, but also in the actual objectives and results. As far as the results are concerned: a walk from Slenaken to Teuven, a train journey from Roosendaal to Antwerp, or a car journey from Breda to Antwerp could hardly show those results more clearly. The cultural landscape of the Netherlands is more monotonous; developed areas are more uniform and the landscape, although more tedious, has been respected. The town / country frontier is clearer; sometimes razor-sharp. The cultural landscape of Flanders is much more varied. Developed areas are very diverse, and the countryside is almost entirely fragmented by development. Often it is virtually impossible to distinguish between what is town, what is village, what is urban area and what is countryside. There are, as mentioned above, historical reasons for this, and they have influenced planning policy. This can perhaps be clarified by comparing two instruments of planning policy in the north and south. In my opinion, these are the archetypal mechanisms of recent physical planning in both countries. Since the early 1960s, physical planning in the Netherlands has been based on extensive government reports, which analyse the implications of expected social developments (e.g. increasing wealth and mobility or, as in recent years, increasing individualisation) for the environment; in other words, in terms of the space they will require. The government formulates policy objectives on the basis of such

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 analysis. The most recent of the reports, the VINEX (short for the ‘Fourth Report (Extra) on Physical Planning

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 22 in the Netherlands’, 1990), predicted that in the coming decades, hundreds of thousands - perhaps even a million - new houses will have to be built. As a result, a number of locations, known as VINEX locations, have been identified, fully in line with earlier policy which allowed certain areas to be redesignated for urbanisation. A large number of such areas have been identified adjacent to existing urban centres, principally for housing projects which are part government-funded and part privately funded. The development of these projects will involve an extended process of information, consultation and participation. Building is already under way in some locations. This organised process, typical of physical planning in the Netherlands, has recently come under heavy criticism. In the first place, more and more people believe that the government has systematically overestimated housing needs, and therefore also the space required. Pressure from developers and financiers has undoubtedly played a role in this. In the second place, all the efforts to encourage participation have had little influence on the original plans. In the third place, these giant building projects only seem to be making Dutch housing more and more monotonous. For visitors from Flanders who, given this inconceivable uniformity, were already wondering about the scale of public housing, a VINEX location (criticised even by the Dutch themselves for its lack of creativity) must represent the epitome of an uninhabitable environment. One advantage, however, is that the question of public housing has been collectively considered. The locations have been discussed and, although the reserved areas of land are too large and the consultation process intended to protect nature and the environment has hardly been successful, the surrounding countryside has suffered no irreparable damage. Dutch physical planning policy is large-scale and collective; lengthy and cumbersome. It produces strict rules and uniformity, but it protects the open landscape. The situation in Flanders is very different. There was no national plan until the publication of the Physical Structure Plan for Flanders in 1996. Regional plans were drawn up from the early 1970s onwards specifying the

Emerald VINEX location in Delfgauw, The Netherlands.

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The Belgian coast: apartment buildings galore in Knokke, Flanders. purpose and regulating for the layout and use of every piece of land. Thanks to the decentralised nature of these plans (each one covered only part of a province) and lack of national co-ordination, it was comparatively easy to influence them. It is now clear to everyone that, apart from a number of spectacular illegal criminal examples, the regional plans have in fact encouraged chaotic development (e.g. ribbon development, destruction of rural areas and the dunes) in Flanders - and have even provided it with a legal framework. In recent decades, the central mechanism in Flemish town and country planning has been - and still is - fragmented parcellation. It works like this: suppose the owner of, for example, agricultural land, wishes to convert it to building land. The owner draws up plans for the land, and a number of streets, and then submits his proposal to the local authorities. The developer involved has, of course, made sure that the land in question has been marked as a residential zone or housing expansion zone in the regional plans. If this proves too difficult it is possible - with a little political will - to amend the provisions of the regional plan via a local plan. Political will is not often a problem: the previous owner (farmer or landowner) is usually keen to see the designated use of the land change, because its price will change as a result. The local authorities gain new houses and inhabitants, and the supervising administrative body pursues a policy in which until very recently, the priority was ‘to avoid worse’. Mayors, who are often MPS and heavily involved in ‘rendering services’, are more than willing to drag a troublesome proposal before the authorities. This inspired Peter Renard to give his book about Flemish spatial planning the title What Can I do for You? (Wat kan ik voor u doen?). The fragmentation of Flanders' landscape is the result of this policy mechanism: a private initiative and relatively short procedure. The system

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 24 produces large - sometimes obscenely large - plots of building land (if the plots are too ‘small’, wealthy citizens purchase two adjacent plots), as well as considerable freedom in building style and location. This, in turn, produces a rich diversity of colour and design - even visual pollution. Parcellation is a non-interventionist planning policy which results in extensive encroachment on rural areas. A painful footnote: in many Flemish municipalities along the Dutch border, the largest plots of land and the largest houses are being bought up by wealthy Dutch people looking to become tax exiles in Belgium.

The landscape: reflectio culturae

The landscape and space of Flanders and the Netherlands reflect the differences in the history and culture of both countries. Both landscapes, with all their differences, can be read both as cultural geography and cultural history. But history and culture are not an alibi: they do not simply happen - we create them ourselves. So we will have to watch very closely to see whether Flanders' physical planning policy really heralds a new spatial culture. The spectacle surrounding the demolition of several illegally-built houses in December 1998 may be a signal or it may be a smoke screen. And it remains to be seen whether the kitsch bank buildings recently constructed in and on the periphery of towns and cities in the Netherlands are really the answer to architectural monotony. Landscape preservation is not only a struggle against nature's unruliness, it is also a struggle against the unruliness of our own culture.

PIETER LEROY Translated by Yvette Mead

Bibliography

BENDELER, G., et al., Nat & Droog - Nederland met andere ogen bekeken. Amsterdam, 1998. BOSCH, A. and W. VAN DER HAM, Twee Eeuwen Rijkswaterstaat. Zaltbommel, 1998. BRAUDEL, F., The Mediterranean (Tr. Siân Reynolds). New York, 1972-1973. CARSON, P., Flanders in Creative Contrasts. Tielt / Leuven, 1989. GYSELS, H.: De landschappen van Vlaanderen en Zuidelijk Nederland. Leuven / Apeldoorn, 1993. ISTENDAEL, G. VAN, Het Belgisch labyrint of De schoonheid der wanstaltigheid. Amsterdam, 1989. LEMAIRE, T., Filosofie van het landschap. Bilthoven, 1970. RENARD, P., Wat kan ik voor u doen? Ruimtelijke wanorde in België. Antwerp, 1995.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Eindnoten:

1. See this volume: pp. 53 2. See this volume: pp. 42

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Nature Teaching Art Painted Landscapes in the Low Countries

Landscape painting, and especially the realistic rendering of the physical landscape we see around us, is a speciality that has always thrived particularly well in the Low Countries - ever since landscape became accepted as a subject in its own right, which was during the Renaissance. This view was expressed as early as the sixteenth century by the Italian Giorgio Vasari, theoretician of art and biographer of artists. As specialists in realistic landscape painting, he says, artists front the Low Countries have ‘their brains not in their heads but in their hands’. This was not an unqualified compliment, since in Vasari's view art should concern itself first and foremost with the figurative piece, or historia - and there the Italians are better than anybody else. But when it came to lesser kinds of painting, where the rules of decorum and composition need not be so strictly adhered to nor the subject so weighty, the work of these landscape painters is among the best that art has produced (though here too Vasari ultimately awards the prize to an Italian: Titian). This judgement, that the Dutch and Flemish landscape as a realistic depiction of nature does not have any great intellectual depth, but that it does free the artist's hand to record his personal impressions of nature, subsequently became an unquestioned tenet of art history. Even today it is still the general view, with those ‘personal impressions’ of the artist taken to mean mainly the experience of beauty or the ‘mood’ of the natural scene. This ‘mood’ element is then sought primarily in the style, the brushwork, as the expression in pure paint of the artist's personal experience. In this article we shall retell, yet again, this story of the Flemish and Dutch painters' exceptional talent for realistic ‘picturesque’ landscape by discussing a personal choice of outstanding works. The examples have been selected in such a way as to make it clear that we are here dealing with a tradition which continues, albeit with interruptions, to the present day. Other types of landscapes - those which owe more to the imagination, or to idealised images of the Italian campagna or other far-away lands - will not be discussed here, nor will the supposed lack of intellectual content (which in many cases should be taken with a grain of salt).

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A symbiosis of man and nature

The series The Seasons which Pieter Bruegel painted in 1565 for the residence of an Antwerp merchant are the earliest examples of Dutch landscape painting in which nature itself plays the leading role. In this series Bruegel depicts the cyclical changes which take place in nature over the course of the seasons. In each painting the choice of landscape motifs, human figures, animals and even weather conditions is determined by the need to give the most characteristic picture possible of nature in that particular season. Hunters in the Snow and The Harvesters show us landscapes typical of, respectively, the winter months November and December and the summer months July and August. The winter months are represented by a landscape entirely under snow, extending from the bare trees on a hillside in the foreground through the ice-covered flooded meadows in the middle distance to the bleak, inhospitable crags in the background. This wide, wintry expanse itself gives the viewer a sense of the icy cold that has man and beast and nature in its grip; but this is reinforced by the insignificance of the human figures in the distance, the thinness of the hunting dogs accompanying the band of hunters in the foreground, their weary tread, their meagre catch, the tonality of the white fields and the cool blue-green of the sky and the ice, the huge icicles hanging from a bridge and the lonely swooping flight of a bird. The summer landscape, by contrast, is one of gentler rolling hills, covered as far as the eye can see in golden cornfields and trees laden with ripe fruit. The shirt-sleeved labourers who are bringing in the harvest form a motif that harks back to the late-medieval tradition of ‘Labours of the Months’ found as marginal decorations in Books of Hours. Here the motif serves primarily to emphasise the torpor induced by the heat - the man lying sleeping (and visibly snoring) under a tree, legs spread and mouth open, is exactly what one associates with a ‘typical’ summer's afternoon. The slight haziness of the pale blue sky, increasing towards the horizon, is another realistic feature which, centuries later, can still be felt as ‘exactly right’. This fusion of man and nature, or rather, their shared experience of the changing seasons, is the

Pieter Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow. 1565. Panel, 117 × 162 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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Pieter Bruegel, The Harvesters. 1565. Panel, 118 × 160.7 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. real theme of these paintings; and behind it one can sense a deeper awareness, permeated by religion, of the coherence of macro- and microcosm. This theme is not something that can be pointed to in the picture, or pinned down to one or more specific motifs; it can only be sensed in the depiction of the landscape as a whole (‘holistically’, as we say nowadays), in what we call the ‘mood’ of the landscape. Moreover, Bruegel is the first artist to give seemingly trivial and insignificant clements in nature - undergrowth, the branches of a tree, a few houses set harmoniously into the natural contours of a hill - a major role in the evocation of this mood. The way the paint is applied also plays its part, especially in the foreground: in the winter scene smooth and cool, in the summer one coarser, more thinly applied and more stretched, as though the very surface of the paint showed the effects of the summer heat.

Fast painting and ominous nature

In the seventeenth century it was mainly Dutch painters who, building on Bruegel's ‘Flemish’ legacy, popularised the painted landscape. Rough estimates suggest that in this century, in the Northern Netherlands alone, hundreds of thousands of landscapes must have been painted and eagerly snapped up, helped by their generally modest prices, throughout the European export market of the day. Here we must mention two of these Dutch masters. The first is Jan van Goyen who, not uncommonly for the time, had several professions; he was not only a painter but also a housing developer, a speculator in tulips and a valuer. Over 1,200 of his paintings still survive,

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Jan van Goyen, A Windmill by a River. 1642. Panel, 29.4 × 36.3 cm. National Gallery, London. most of which must have been produced for the free market. The ‘rapid painting method’ he used - a loose, wet-on-wet technique, limited (‘tonal’) palette, simple, standardised composition and, compared to earlier landscapes, a marked reduction in the amount of detail - did not prevent him producing a great many masterly landscapes which, particularly in their evocative portrayal of the ‘characteristic’ mood and geography of the Dutch countryside, build on the foundations Bruegel had laid. Van Goyen's small A Windmill by a River (1642) in the National Gallery in London is one of the finest examples of his art and artistry. The entire work is painted with quick, rough brush-strokes which allow something of the underlying brown ‘dead-colour’ to show through and are clearly visible as such, most notably in the sky, where they add to the suggestion of wind-driven cloud masses and atmospheric turbulence. Below the dark-grey mass of cloud in the left background these brushstrokes even acquire a concrete pictorial function as wind-blown sheets of rain hanging over the flat countryside. This sky occupies the greater part of the composition, reinforcing the image of the Netherlands as a flat riverine landscape - an image that has become a commonplace partly because of Van Goyen's paintings. Apart from a few small figures, a mill, some poles, a sailing ship, a few birds, some flat roofs and vague outlines of buildings (from some where near Arnhem), the landscape contains not a single recognisable feature: all the shapes merge together in

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 29 a rolling brown-yellow and sea-green mush of paint which very effectively evokes a sense of immense space. The tension between the ‘coarse’ brushwork and painting technique on the one hand, and on the other the delicate touches of silver-grey, the shifting light and dark tones and the almost palpably damp rendering of the Dutch atmosphere which can be produced with this brushwork and technique, is something that the artist must have deliberately set out to achieve and which ‘amateurs’ (as the art-lovers of the time were known) must have valued as such. Jacob van Ruisdael, perhaps the greatest of the Low Countries' seventeenth-century landscape painters, followed Pieter Bruegel even more closely than Jan van Goyen in one respect - in depicting the ominous, overwhelming power of nature. In his landscapes man's insignificance and the triviality of his everyday existence are often set against the might and forces of nature, revealed in the murky sultriness that signals an approaching storm or in the mercilessly harsh lighting of a lone, bare, weathered tree-trunk. The church towers often to be seen in the distance in his panoramas provide the only indication that the natural forces that rage over the earth are not totally irrational, but are an instrument in God's plan for man's salvation. Ruisdael's Dunes in Stormy Weather, in Zurich, which dates from the late 1650s, is an example of the type of landscape painting which, because of nature's role as a dramatis persona, is elevated to what one might call a ‘natural historia painting’. Here we have a purely secular subject - the dunes of the Dutch coast, under attack by the elements - but the drama and subtlety of the setting is none the less powerful for that. In the foreground we see a small group of people on the crest of a dune, hunched up against the fierce

Jacob van Ruisdael, Dunes in Stormy Weather. Late 1650s. Canvas, 26 × 35.2 cm. Foundation Prof. Dr. L. Ruzicka / © Kunsthaus, Zurich.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 30 wind and looking out to sea. Heavy streaks of cloud race past them across the sky; these clouds allow passage to a couple of brilliant shafts of sunlight, one of which strikes the bare crest of the dune. Despite this harsh lighting, the coloration of the whole landscape is confined to one basic yellow and grey-brown tone, thus increasing the sense of aggression and threat. This is raised to even greater heights by a masterly pictorial rhetoric using the pure landscape itself. All the human figures and signs of human activity (such as house-roofs and sailing boats) are cut through by the amorphous mass of the dunes, and so almost hidden front the viewer; the stage has been swept clean, left to nature itself. Even if one chooses not to see the gaping jaws of a sea-monster in the dark cloud-formation - probably too far-fetched an association for seventeenth-century viewers - one cannot escape the impression that this cloud is the tangible metaphor for the threat of natural violence to which the unprotected, harshly lit top of the dune is exposed.

The individual perception

In this brief survey we shall pass over the eighteenth century, which was in general less concerned with the realistic-picturesque idiom, and come to two landscape painters, one Dutch and one Flemish, who were both exponents of the nineteenth century's renewed interest in the faithful depiction of landscape. In their choice of motifs, brushwork, palette etc. these painters often drew on examples from the past, and above all the Dutch masters of the Golden Age (a ‘historical concept’ which, not coincidentally, is also a nineteenth-century invention). In one respect, though, their way of working was radically different. Where their predecessors had only made sketches from nature and then created their pictures entirely in the studio, the nineteenth-century landscape artists - aided by the invention of easily portable tubes of paint - began to paint whole pictures in the open air, from their own direct observation. This made it much easier for them to take note of all the fleeting natural phenomena associated with changes in the weather and to capture them with rapid strokes of the brush. An excellent example of this is Vegetable Gardens near The Hague, painted around 1878 by Jacob Maris, one of the best-known painters of the Hague School. Although it was produced in the studio, not on location out of doors, it still gives the impression of being painted directly from nature. While it is recognisably a view of The Hague, the artist is concerned less with topographical accuracy and more with conveying the ‘feel’ of the landscape, which he does by means of an extremely subtle rendering of atmospheric conditions. The composition is dominated by a vast, highly dynamic sky arching over a flat pastoral landscape which stretches to the horizon. The rich variety of tones in the grey and white rags of wind-driven cloud racing across the sky finds its parallel in the compartmentalised landscape with its fenced vegetable gardens, small fields and meadows, rows of pollard willows and a waterway whose winding course we can follow into the distance by the sun's reflections on its surface. The whole composition, including the accent of a single structure on the horizon projecting high above its surroundings (here it is a windmill), is clearly inspired by Jacob van Ruisdael's panoramic views of seventeenth-century Haarlem with its Church of St Bavo. But to a greater extent even

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 than his seventeenth-century predecessors (compare Van Goyen's A Windmill by a River), Maris makes his portrayal of the moisture-laden atmo-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 31

Jacob Maris, Vegetable Gardens near The Hague. c. 1878. Canvas, 62.5 × 54 cm. Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. sphere, which hangs in the vast space like a living being, into the real subject of the painting. The salty light, the countless touches of silver-grey, the windswept autumn sky, the mist that shrouds the contours of the land, particularly towards the horizon, the delicate nuances of the alternate sunlight and shadow on the land below - all these contribute as much to this impression as the broad impasto brushstrokes that transform the sky into a sea of flecks of paint. The few bare, scrawny trees on the left and the hair-fine glinting line of water in front of the city in the background provide the only lines in this turbulent brushwork, and this contrast serves to enhance the delicate balance of static and dynamic forces which sets the tone of the whole composition. The painters of the Hague School, some of whom were in contact with colleagues in Antwerp and Brussels, had their counterparts in a number of nineteenth-century Belgian painters who also brought new life and popularity to the realistic landscape. An early Seascape of about 1880 by James Ensor is evidence of this. For Ensor the essence of landscape lies in the light rather than in the quality of the atmosphere. Here, more even than in the Dutch painters, the brushwork, the paint applied with brush and palette knife that attests to the painting process, is a means of recording on canvas the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 32

James Ensor, Seascape. 1880. Canvas, 31,7 × 47 cm. © Christie's Images Ltd. 1999 / © SABAM Belgium 1999. artist's personal impressions of the particular circumstances of time and place as he observes them in nature. Not only are many brush-strokes individually recognisable as such, in many places the priming and even the weave of the linen are still visible. Apart from a few touches of paint to indicate some small sailing boats out on the horizon (whose sole purpose is to indicate the picture's spatial dimensions), no individual details, or even individual motifs, can be discerned. The bands of pink-brown, white-yellow and blue in the lower half of the painting allow sand, surf and open sea to merge into each other with no clear boundaries between them, while in the sky one can only vaguely trace the outlines of a few clouds in the lively paintwork of blue and green and white. This technique of Ensor's, for all its rapidity, is extremely effective in suggesting the subtle colour-tones to be found in a sky above the sea. In its attention to the many colours of light itself and to the material qualities of the painting, and in its colour-tone, this work by Ensor stands midway between the artistic ideals of two groups of his contemporaries: the French Impressionists and the Hague School.

The landscape of tension

If we again jump almost a century, we find that this landscape tradition, with its competing elements of subjective mood and objective portrayal of nature (respectively, the material components of the painting - paint, brushwork and composition - and its non-material, realistic-pictorial components), is still alive today in the Low Countries - albeit in new forms. Again, we can illustrate this with one example from the South and one from the North. The Flemish artist Luc Tuymans strives in his work for simplicity of means and method, a limited number of motifs, and a powerful mental charge. In his

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 33 painting A Walk (1989) he uses these means to evoke an image of a snow-covered landscape. Only a few vaguely recognisable shapes loom up out of this white world - a tree, the walkers, a house, a street? At the beginning of this century, Mondrian had taken landscape forms as the starting-point for abstract compositions using blocks of colour which have their own internal dynamic. Here, by combining it with these few recognisable forms, Tuymans restores to the flat surface with its large areas of white (and here and there grey) the capacity for spaciality and, to some extent at least, transforms abstraction back into a three-dimensional depiction of mood. Thus the walkers, over their ankles in snow, seem to move towards the viewer, as though they had entered the painting through a doorway (the black area in the background); around the tree on the right one even seems to discern in the thinly applied white paint broad shapeless humps of snow which conceal from us objects lying beneath them. The element of mood in this painting is more complex, less innocent and carefree, than in many a seventeenth- or nineteenth-century winter landscape depicting ‘ice sports’. While the suggestion of a thick blanket of snow evokes associations with something soft and woolly and snugly all-enveloping, the strident black and yellow colours, particularly on the group of walkers, together with their long coats and the

Luc Tuymans, A Walk. 1989. Canvas, 70 × 55 cm. Photo courtesy Zeno x Gallery, Antwerp.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 34

Arie Schippers, De Gooyer. 1995, Canvas, 28 × 25 cm. Photo courtesy Arie Schippers. long stake-like branches of the bare tree, have an ominous quality reminiscent of the sombre tension in the winter landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, and those of Pieter Bruegel. This conscious play with a dialogue of opposites also finds expression in the tension between old and modern, hard and soft, space and flat surface, in the painting De Gooyer (1995) by the Dutch artist Arie Schippers. The left side of the painting evokes an image from the past: the windmill outlined against the misty air and the colourful light of an (evening?) sun, together with the homely clutter of the houses, roofs and trees in the foreground, reminds one of earlier paintings, from Ruisdael to Mondrian, which had made the windmill a canonical motif of the traditional Dutch landscape. The right side, however, transports us into the present day: all the viewer can see here is the side-wall of a block of 1990s flats, executed in garish colours, whose aggressive starkness and its concrete cut at an angle to conform with postmodern conventions radiate hard, cheap commercialism. Schippers forges this landscape, with its internal contradictions and ruptures, into a tight whole; in doing so, by the way he cuts through many buildings and parts of buildings, he gives these forms a new pictorial-architectonic function, turning them into the building-blocks of his composition. It is in paintings of this kind, in which Schippers carries on a dialogue with the realistic-‘picturesque’ landscape in Dutch painting (while also to some extent making fun of it) that this tradition, as also in Tuymans' work, convincingly regains its topicality in an age when in the real landscape of the Low Countries genuine nature is fast vanishing over the horizon.

REINDERT FALKENBURG Translated by Tanis Guest.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 35

No Paradise without a Surveyor Landscape in Literature

Landscape exists. Nature, I'm not so sure. Pure ‘nature’ is wilderness. And where in the Low Countries will you still find wilderness, apart from that which has been carefully planned and laid out? Judith Herzberg gave laconic expression to our intimate-but-detached relationship with ‘nature’:

We're aware just how the grebe transports her young upon her back and how the trees grow new leaves each according to its nature

We sit in brightly lighted institutes and confer together as to their future

In 1946 the Dutch poet Jacques Bloem wrote a famous sonnet, ‘Dapper Street’ (‘De Dapperstraat’; translated by James Brockway). In it he captures with great lyrical matter-of-factness the attitude to nature and landscape of the dweller in the urbanised Low Countries:

Nature is for the empty, the contented. And then, what can we toast of in this land? A hill with a few small villas set against it, A patch of wood no bigger than your hand.

And he goes on provocatively:

Give me instead the sombre city highroads, The waterfront hemmed in between the quays. Clouds that move across an attic window, Were ever clouds more beautiful than these?

Town and country, space and boundaries and infill, are inextricably bound up together. Landscape is not ‘nature’. It is always created, organised.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 36

Generations work at it patiently, reshape it, turn it into the only landscape there is: the ‘cultured landscape’. And there they settle. They are defined by it and they define their place in it. No landscape is so organised as that of the Netherlands: ‘(...) their tireless hands manufactured this land, drained it and trained it and planed it and planned’, James Brockway says with ironic admiration of the Dutch in his poem ‘God Made the World but the Dutch Made Holland’. A journey through the Netherlands is a journey through the first books of Euclid, wrote Aldous Huxley after visiting the Netherlands in the twenties. Once, geometry meant measuring how much agricultural land was flooded by the Nile in Ancient Egypt. And there you have it. There is no paradise without a surveyor. But geometry won't get you far in Flanders. There the horizon is closer, the roads are not as straight and the water is not such an overwhelming presence. Here everything is on a smaller scale and more cluttered than in the Netherlands. Messier certainly, sometimes more charming. But these distinctions vanish like morning mist as we observe poets from North and South going in search of their own Arcadias. And sometimes they find and capture them. On paper.

LUC DEVOLDERE Translated by Tanis Guest. H. Marsman (1899-1940) Landscape

In the pastures the peaceable beasts are grazing; the herons sail over glittering lakes, the bitterns stand by pools of dark water; and out in the meadows the horses are running with rippling tails over rippling grass.

From Collected Poems (Verzamelde gedichten, 1974) Translated by Tanis Guest.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 37

Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953) The Bridge at Bommel

I went to look at the new bridge at Bommel. I saw the bridge. Two facing banks there were, which once seemed each of them to shun the other, now neighbours once again. Lying there idle for a while in the grass, after I'd drunk my tea, my mind filled with the landscape all around - let me from that infinity perceive a sound, a voice filling my ears which spoke to me.

It was a woman. The boat that carried her came downstream through the bridge, steady and calm. She was alone on deck, stood at the tiller, and what she sang, I heard then, was a psalm. Oh, I thought, oh, that there went my mother. Praise God, she sang, He'll keep you from all harm.

From New Poems (Nieuwe gedichten, 1934) Translated by Tanis Guest.

M. Vasalis (1909-1998) The Sea Dike

The bus rides like a room across the night. The road is straight, the dike is without end. At left the sea, tamed but recalcitrant. A little moon distils a delicate light.

In front of me the young, close-shaven necks Of a couple of sailor boys. They do their best To stifle yawns, they stretch their arms and legs, And on each other's shoulders drop to rest.

Then dreamily there drifts into my ken The ghost of this bus, transparent glass Riveted to ours, now clear, and then again

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Half drowned in the misty sea. The grass Cuts straight through the sailors. Then I see pass Myself as well. Only my face Is drifting on top of the surface swell And moves its mouth as if it would tell A story and could not, a mermaid distressed. There is to this journey, I feel somehow, Neither start nor finish, only at best This strangely split unending Now.

From Parkland and Deserts (Parken en woestijnen, 1940) Translated by A.J. Barnouw.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 38

Hugo Claus (1929-) West Flanders

Thin song dark thread Land like a sheet That sinks

Springland of farmsteads and milk And children of willow-wood

Fever and summerland when the sun Grows big with her young in the corn

Blond palisade With the deaf-and-dumb farmfolk by the cold hearths Praying ‘God grant us forgiveness for What he has done to us’

With the fishermen who burn on their boats With the spotted beasts the mouth-foaming women Who sink

Land you're getting to me My eyes are splinters I in Ithaca with holes in my skin I draw on your air for my words Your bushes your lime-trees lurk in my language

My letters are: West Flanders dune and polder

I'm drowning in you Land you're a gong in my skull now and maybe Later in the harbours A whelk-shell: May and beetle Darkling shining Earth.

From Tancredo Infrasonic (1952) Translated by Tanis Guest. Anton van Wilderode (1918-1998) September

I'm home again. Summer's enjoyed and done and all returns now to its ancient way. The apples fall, the grass has turned to hay. On the planking walnuts clatter one by one.

The water lies transparent in the ditches, gone is the ferment of the weeds and algae, the gudgeon now approach perceptibly more closely, dart away with rapid twitches.

One yellow rose has opened late and sweet, drawing the butterflies that circle there. The spiders weave their webs of gossamer that quivers gently under tiny feet.

The distances are sealed and barred to sight by banners of ground mist that drift and hover,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 the firebreaks in the pinewoods have grown over, the last migrating birds have taken flight.

I'm home again. Reflective and withdrawn. A time for reading in the evening light, drinking the rich milk of a poem that under my gaze ripens to whey and cream.

From The Oldest Happiness (Het oudste geluk, 1995) Translated by Tanis Guest.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 39

Peter Ghyssaert (1966-) Oaks

Oaks are the trees of the dies irae; when the ground shatters they, spread through the land, will watch with old, wooden faces that remain unmoved: too many gales have been frozen in their tough branching crowns; they are no longer disturbed by growth, that age-old turmoil, and their stillness shows not a glimmer of contempt, of compassion for the old land, only patience.

And when the souls of the saved then fly like glittering noble gases to their maker; and the damned, afire with diarrhoea, plunge down past cold, iron-hard roots deeper into the earth: they have seen it before, they have heard it before, they don't get involved.

From Cameo (1993) Translated by Tanis Guest. Ad Zuiderent (1944-) Winter Landscape

In vain I raise eyes that are closed to see; I find the landscape now enclosing me that before the dawn loomed cold in my mind's eye: a man's last bike-ride into fenland snow in search of silence like an embryo, breath-clouds condensed around his mouth as he went by.

Winter, resembling Dutch School scenery. Where were the people, though? At home, maybe, by the stove, or else in the background, mist-diffused.

This winter vision that I saw moved me just like before the war, as if, now fogs were closing in, I'd got the time confused.

Why did I need people? Thoughts from aloft fell like a shapeless pack into soft snow - a blank patch meant a cyclist getting off.

In vain I raise eyes that are closed to see; the man's enclosed within my memory till that has vanished in fine snow. Landscape's left, enough.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 From Memory for Landscape (Geheugen voor landschap, 1979) Translated by Paul Vincent.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 40

Rutger Kopland (1934-) The Surveyor

It isn't mere indifference, in a certain sense it is perhaps even love that drives him on, there's no paradise without its steward.

He is happy with his landscape, but happy too with searching, co-ordinates point him to his invisible spot, the map, not the world, is his Utopia.

He wants to know where he is, but it's his consolation to know that the spot where he is standing exists only as his private formula, he is a hole in the shape of

a man in the landscape. With the boundaries that he draws, sharper, more distinct, the grass and the trees grow vaguer and everything that lives, declines and dies.

The world around him is perfectly clear, everything has been observed.

From This View of Things (Dit uitzicht, 1982) Translated by James Brockway (in ‘A World beyond Myself’, London, 1991).

Nescio (1882-1961) Along the River Vecht

Friday. Caught the ten-to-ten train from Muiderpoort station to Abcoude. Took bike. Wonderful deep-blue sky, cloudless. Still quite cool in the morning, later really summery. Went to ‘De Vink’ café. Coffee in the deserted garden. Through the pollard willows on the far bank with their candelabra branches, looked out over the endless, golden meadows dotted with bright, beautiful cows and the high sky, so blue. Through the tollgate. Wonderful avenue of willows. View of Abcoude! The rivulet by the fort deep blue. Everything far and deep, the avenue tall, a distant barrier. Et tout d'un coup, d'un fol éclat, s'en va mon coeur. Sun on the Vecht. Along the winding path to Vreeland. Sparkling light everywhere, on the leaves, in the ditches, on the Vecht, and breadth of space, followed by enclosure. Slowly absorbed each stretch of the way, as far as the next bend. Dismounted frequently. The eternal river, so silent and soft, almost habitable. Nymphs everywhere. No people. Those tall, almost bare poplars on the far bank, so tall and slender and spare, not much foliage left except on top, a curtain of magical Egyptian trees, Pharaoh stepped through them. A nymph rose from the water, arms raised. Past the second windmill, far across the blue river. Nederhorst den Berg, castle, two towers, good enough to eat. Row of poplars on the grass still fresh and in full leaf, looked eternal. At the orchard of the Hesperides sat on the grass by the side of the road with my back against a willow and smoked a pipe or two and looked out be-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 41 neath the trees. Here and there a few apples left on the branches. Midges danced, a late brimstone butterfly flew about. Further on: that little lake on the Vecht, impossibly blue. Tea in Vreeland outside ‘De Nederlanden’, a swindle. Day got very hot. Kept to the same bank, in Loenen went down that street. Two-twenty-nine train back to Muiderpoort. The landscape was outside all place and time.

13 October 1950 (Nature Diary) From Collected Works (Verzameld werk deel 2, Natuurdagboek, ed. L. Frerichs. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar / G.A. Van Oorschot, 1996) Translated by Paul Vincent. Martin Reints (1950-) Under a Famous Overcast Sky

Along the dike beside the restless river someone lumbers along for the sake of his health in a well-known brand of running shoes

someone else on a bicycle is on the way to a village (to a self-service shop?) (to the sub-post-office there?)

the two persons having met and stopped each other (one asking the other the way) (and after that the time) peer together into the distance

the gestures they make do not exactly adhere to any fixed pattern but nor are they totally lacking in orderliness

in this their gestures accord with the leaves and the branches and twigs and everything that is part of the botanical potpourri in the water-meadows and with the course of the old river. In another room someone sits at the window writing

he ponders the words he has drawn from his pen and strikes them out and then carries on thinking

shall I hang the view of the river here on the wall, with the overcast to end all overcasts and those two contemporaries on the dike in the distance having reached the point of an exchange of thoughts?

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 shall I get the bowl of battered apples and insects out of the kitchen and put it on the table?

and who or what is it makes me ask myself these things?

a newspaper slides through the letter-box and lands on the mat by the door

then the man writes: we are bargemen sailing on sluggish rivers whose boats are like very old toys.

From Body and Soul (Lichaam en ziel, 1992) Translated by Tanis Guest.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 42

Giving the Land Back to Nature Nature Development in the Netherlands

Nature development has been going on in the Netherlands for several decades now. It has become the second track of the country's environmental policy, running alongside the so-called ‘classical’ conservation of nature (see Anonymous, 1990). Classical conservation involves the protection and management of certain areas judged to possess great natural value in the form of particular wild plant and animal varieties, in a way that assures their survival. In almost every case, these plant and animal varieties are found in man-made landscapes, so maintaining man-made landscapes has become the goal of classical conservation. Nature development, on the other hand, is aimed at creating the kind of basic conditions that enable the attainment of as natural a situation as possible. Measures and preconditions are based on natural situations and processes. Since virtually the entire country consists of man-made lands, that is, of exploited nature, nature development is aimed at bringing about changes in the existing situation. Both the basic conditions to be created and the processes to be developed are derived from what is known as the ecological reference, which is the ecosystem that now exists under prevailing climatological conditions - or would exist if human beings had not interfered by imposing their culture on nature.

The object of nature development

The object of nature development is to preserve the diversity of wild plant and animal species that occur in nature. In this respect, nature development does not differ from the classical conservation of nature. The difference lies in the context in which that preservation takes place. In nature development, the focus is more on natural processes, while classical conservation is based on patterns partly shaped by human beings. As has already been mentioned, the roots of classical conservation lie in the protection of plant and animal varieties that exist on man-made lands; that is, within a context that humans have created for the benefit of cultivated plants and domestic animals. Thus classical conservation derives its strategy from mowing, cutting peat and grazing domesticated agricultural animals such as sheep and cows; large

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 43 herbivores such as cattle are regarded as instruments of management. Nature development is based on natural context. It attempts to adhere as closely as possible to the natural course of events. If some kind of intervention becomes or continues to be necessary - because an area is too small for the full functioning of a natural ecosystem, for example - then management interventions are carried out that are analogous with natural processes. Ideally, after a basic situation is created, no further human intervention should be necessary. Under natural conditions, for instance, large herbivores are free to graze at will. The cattle that feature in nature development are free grazing cattle and not domesticated cows, such as we find in man-made landscapes. Wild cattle are seen as an integral part of the ecosystem because the wild variety of cattle is indigenous to the country. Free-roaming cattle are as integral to the plan as the other varieties of wild plants and animals. In nature development, cattle live in a way analogous to the original wild cattle of Europe, the aurochs - that is, they live as wild animals. They stay outside 365 days a year and graze in nature the whole year through. In principle they are not given any supplemental feed, which means that a wildlife area must serve as the biotope for wild cattle. The result of the grazing will be a park-like landscape. Because wild cattle became extinct during the seventeenth century, nature development makes use of an ecological substitute: the so-called primitive breeds of cattle that do well in the wild. One of the most important aspects of nature development is the construction (or reconstruction) of the ecological reference (see Baerselman and Vera, 1989). This takes place on the basis of data derived from archaeology, palaeoecology, plant ecology, forestry, vegetation science and historical ecology, together with research in areas with comparable conditions, the so-called reference areas. Constructing the ecological reference is like assembling a puzzle, with historical ecology playing an important supporting role. It involves tracking down the extent and effect of relationships between human activity and nature, in the sense of the changes that human intervention

In nature development cattle and horses live wild in nature reserves, where they take the place of their extinct wild ancestors the aurochs (bos primigenius, †1627 AD) and the tarpan (equus przewalski gmelini, †1887 AD).

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 44 has brought about over the centuries, especially in those activities that have consumed the greatest land area: agriculture and forestry. By reversing the order of events, a picture can be obtained of how nature would have looked if such intervention had never taken place. The hypothesis behind nature development asserts that man-made lands can be restored to their natural state. The wild plant and animal varieties that now occur in the context of man-made lands will re-settle in the new natural context. A more natural context would have a greater abundance of varieties and would be more reliable in terms of assuring the survival of those varieties. The reasoning behind all this is that the species that inhabit man-made landscapes existed long before the discovery of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago. As far as Europe was the biotope for grasses, trees, shrubs and large herbivores, the natural vegetation was that of a park-like landscape with an enormous variety of biotopes. The fact that they made the transition from natural to man-made land is regarded as proof that in principle they could make the same transition back to fully-developed nature. And indeed, it was in the natural context that they underwent the longest period of their existence.

Red deer (cervus elaphus) have been introduced into the Oostvaardersplassen; together with wild horses, cattle and roe deer, they feed on grasses, plants, bushes and trees and so allow the development of a varied plant cover, making possible the continued existence of the diversity of plant and animal species indigenous to such areas.

Why nature development?

Nature development appeared as a reaction to the deterioration of natural values on man-made lands, that is the disappearance of wild plant and animal varieties. By man-made lands is meant all areas where human beings made changes in the original existing natural ecosystem with a view to producing cultivated plants and domesticated animals. Man-made lands include fields and pastures as well as cultivated forests such as coppices, coppice-with-standards systems and productive seedling woodlands. The disappearance of wild varieties of plants and animals was at first the result of selections made by human beings when they invented agriculture. Thus of the 50,000 varieties of birds and mammals to be found in nature world-wide, approximately 40 (0.08%) were transformed into agricultural animals. Of the approximately 50,000 varieties of edible plants, only 15 varieties (0.03%), including rice, wheat and maize, were transformed into cultivated plants. Agriculture involves selecting varieties. It also involves making a selection from the vast natural diversity of biotopes, and

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 choosing only those in which the selected varieties, the cultivated plants and domesticated animals, can thrive. In addition to selection, another factor adding to the deterioration in natural value is developments in the production methods introduced for the benefit of the few varieties that pass the agricultural selection process, such as the increased use of fertiliser, the draining of land, the raising of cattle density and selective breeding for particular characteristics. The latter triggered another enormous reduction in the diversity of breeds and varieties of cultivated plants and domesticated animals. Classical conservation has tried to combat the decrease in plant and animal varieties by opposing such agricultural developments and introducing more nature-friendly forms of agriculture. It aims for what is called the interweaving of agriculture and nature. Nevertheless, these attempts have done nothing to halt the deterioration, let alone bring about any improvement. And even when the focus shifts to in-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 45

One example of nature development: the Oostvaardersplassen in South Flevoland in the central Netherlands. Some 6,000 hectares in extent, the reserve consists of a marshy area of about 3,600 ha (shown here) and a dry area of about 2,400 ha. The marshy section is a breeding ground for rare birds such as the great white egret (egretta alba), Eurasian spoonbill (platalea leucoridia) and bearded tit (panurus biarmicus). In summer the marshland is grazed by up to 60,000 moulting greylag geese (anser anser), and this prevents it becoming choked by plant growth. troducing wild plants and animals, it still takes place within the framework of agriculture (and forestry) and still involves a selection from the totality of varieties that exist in nature.

The Oostvaardersplassen

Then the Oostvaardersplassen (Oostvaarder Lakes) came into existence in 1967 in the South Flevoland polder. This area of some 6,000 ha consists of a marshy part (about 3,600 ha) and a dry part (about 2,400 ha). The developments that took place in this wildlife area shaped the basic notions of what we now understand by nature development. Paradoxically enough, the area had its origins in an act of human intervention: the reclamation during that year of part of the IJsselmeer. The lowest-lying section of this new polder, which had been earmarked for industry, remained partially under water, the result of the inflow of rainwater from the rest of the polder. At that point industry decided it had no need of the area. The development of the polder began in the highest, driest part, far from the Oostvaardersplassen. That section of it that is now the Oostvaardersplassen was left to nature. As the polder dried out, the soil began to settle. In order to keep the area wet, an embankment was built around some 3,600 hectares of it. Then a spontaneous development took place: the area became home to a whole range of plant and animal varieties, many of them on the endangered species list. Among the endangered plant varieties was the marsh fleawort, and among the birds were the bearded reedling, the bluethroat, the bittern and the spoonbill. Then, in a most surprising development, the Oostvaardersplassen became a breeding ground for such varieties as the greylag goose and the great white egret, species that had disappeared from the Netherlands (see Vera, 1988).

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Even more surprising was that during the months of May and June grey-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 46 lag geese from all over Western and Central Europe came to the Oostvaardersplassen to moult, a period when they are extremely vulnerable. The birds lose all their flight feathers at once, rendering them unable to fly for four to six weeks, so they retreat to inaccessible areas such as the swamp in the Oostvaardersplassen. In the course of a few years, the number of moulting greylag geese grew to about 60,000 in 1992 (see Van Eerden, 1997). This huge number of birds consumed massive amounts of swamp vegetation, causing large areas of reedbeds to change into open water as the years passed (see Vera, 1988). The discovery made in the Oostvaardersplassen was that large herbivores such as the greylag goose kept the swamp from closing up, making it possible for all sorts of birds to remain that would have disappeared if the greylag geese had never appeared in the first place. Rather than leading to competition with other varieties of birds, as was expected, the arrival of this new, large variety resulted in the development of new habitats for a wide range of plants and animals. The greylag goose had become their trailblazer. In the field of ecology this process is called facilitation. The grazing of the moulting greylag geese resulted in a situation that could only have been accomplished by a management programme involving cutting the reeds and carrying them away (the generally accepted assumption up until then). With the greylag geese, the swamp became a more self-regulating wildlife area as far as the survival of a wide variety of swamp plants and animals is concerned. No need for human managers.

Grazing by large hoofed animals living wild, such as horses, is essential to the establishment of many species of wild plants and animals. Along the great rivers these ungulates are helping to develop an infrastructure for flora and fauna extending from Switzerland and Northern France to the North Sea.

The role of large hoofed animals

The experience with the greylag goose of the Oostvaardersplassen led to the emergence of new ideas about nature in the Netherlands and new ways to putting them into practice. The activity of these birds served to focus the spotlight on the role in the ecosystem played by large herbivores: the greylag goose in the swamp, and on land the large hoofed animals such as the horse, the red deer, the wild boar, the bison and the elk (see Vera, 1986; 1997). These animals develop and maintain park-like landscapes (see Vera 1997). Among these landscapes are the grassy areas

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 on which the greylag geese in turn are dependent for their food. Greylag geese gather on the grasslands near the swamp before retreating there to moult, and they return to the grasslands after the moulting season is over. So the grasslands near the swamp are an integral part of the ecosystem. Without those grasslands, the greylag geese would not withdraw to the swamp and the whole system would collapse like a house of cards. As a result, a great many varieties of plants and animals now thriving there would disappear. Up until then, it had been generally assumed that only agricultural animals such as cows could maintain grasslands for geese. In the realm of nature development, the reasoning was that if the domesticated descendants of a wild species can do it, then the wild species itself - that is, wild-living cattle - should be able to do it, too. In addition, there are many more varieties of wild herbivores than of domesticated animals. Since all those different varieties of wild herbivores eat different varieties of plants, and different parts of the same plants, their food preferences lead to a greater variety in

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 47 the structure and composition of the overgrowth than would be the case if domesticated animals alone grazed there. So the large wild herbivores provided for a greater variety of biotopes, and hence a higher diversity of plant and animal species. The problem with the large wild hoofed animals is that they have disappeared from large areas of Europe and are not able to change habitats spontaneously, so they have to be introduced. A further complicating factor in the case of the horse and the cattle is that the wild forms of both varieties have died out, the horse - the tarpan - in 1887 and the wild cattle - the aurochs - in 1627. A handful of varieties that continued to be bred for agricultural purposes, the so-called primitive breeds, can be used as their ecological substitutes. In the Oostvaardersplassen such cattle and horses, as well as red deer, were introduced by way of experiment so they could play their role in the full development of the natural ecology. Together with roe deer, which settled the area spontaneously, they are now developing a landscape that has an increasing diversity of wild plant and animal varieties. Among the varieties of birds are some that were always assumed to be part of the man-made landscape, whose survival, it was thought, depended on agriculture-based environments and special management strategies. These include not only the goose but also the whinchat, the stonechat, the skylark, the quail and the corncrake (see Bijlsma, 1997). In fact this demonstrates that bird varieties can easily make the transition from man-made lands to a fully developed natural ecology. The lesson taught by the Oostvaardersplassen was that nature possesses enormous elasticity, and wildlife areas can be fully developed with a greater diversity of wild plant and animal varieties than comparable agricultural areas. The natural processes responsible for this development can be reinitiated. The result is a wildlife area in which wild flora and fauna can flourish with little or no human management. Actually, the fact that so many wild plant and animal varieties - long disappeared or only to be found in man-made lands - were able to make the change to fully developed natural habitats is not so very astonishing. Up to a certain point these European varieties are accustomed to disasters. Only thanks to their resilience could they have survived such disasters as the Ice Ages. Indeed, every 100,000 years or so all the varieties of plants and animals dependent on the now-prevalent moderate climatic conditions are swept away by intervening ice ages. After such an age comes to an end, they return from their refuges in southern Europe. So the recolonisation of areas under more natural conditions ought not to lead to insurmountable problems. The only impediments might be that a variety is not able to reach these new wildlife areas because of barriers thrown up by human beings, such as roads and man-made lands that are unsuitable for them, or because certain varieties have died out over the years, as happened with the horse and the steer.

The Stork Plan

The next important phase in nature development was the so-called ‘Stork Plan’ (see de Bruin et al., 1986). This was a project for the Betuwe region of the central Netherlands, including the country's three major rivers, the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 48

The Stork Plan is a project which allows the Netherlands' great rivers - such as the Rhine, Waal, Maas and IJssel - to spill over into their flood plains when they are running high. It is intended that such floods and related phenomena such as erosion and sedimentation will recreate habitat for the flood plains' naturally occurring flora and fauna.

Maas, the Rhine and the Waal. The project was presented as a contest whose only requirements were that each entry be workable and that each entry aim at restoring the original historical character of the river region. According to the initiator of the contest, the Eo Wijers Foundation, the area's distinctiveness is fading more and more, that is, the river area is increasingly becoming no different from the rest of the Netherlands. Not only did the Stork Plan win the first prize but, since it was launched, dozens of projects along the same lines have been started and carried out. Moreover, the plan's basic principles have been imitated in other projects outside the river area. The basic premise of the Stork Plan is that the character of the river area derives primarily from the great rivers themselves. By referring to other rivers that have been subject to little human influence, or less influence than in the Netherlands, such as the Loire, the Danube and the upper Rhine, a picture of the Netherlands river area was constructed showing how it would have looked without any human influence at all. In this way the processes involved in forming the landscape were identified. These processes were then used to design the plan. It was decided that the most significant processes were the annual floods and the grazing of the large hoofed animals that naturally inhabit the area such as cattle, horse, red deer, wild boar, elk, roe deer and aurochs. The beaver was among the more important smaller animals. Next, the series of changes brought about by human beings was reconstructed. The main changes here were the containment of the river by dikes and the disappearance of groves and small hardwood and softwood forests. Over the centuries two kinds of dikes have been built. First the main dikes. These are the high-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 49 est. They protect numerous cities and villages as well as large areas of man-made land. These dikes have robbed the rivers of dozens of kilometres of flood plain. Over the course of the last century, lower dikes known as summer dikes were built between the main dikes in the remaining flood plains, the washes. Their job was to contain high water in the summer. In winter high water would flood over these dikes. The principal agents in changing the character of the rivers were navigation and agriculture. Navigation involved the deepening, regulating and normalising of the river's low water bed; agriculture concerned the transformation of a park-like landscape into one consisting almost entirely of grassland, with only one type of hoofed animal: the cow. The disappearance of the black stork is seen as a metaphor for all these changes. As the centuries passed, this type of bird disappeared from the Netherlands, as did other species that needed nature on a large scale for their habitat such as the white-tailed eagle, the crane, the wolf and the lynx. It was predicted that if the rivers were able to fully utilise the remaining flood plain, that is, the area between the main dikes - if when running high they could overrun their banks even in summer - then many varieties of plants and animals, including the black stork, would be able to return. The Plan involves a development of the river area on the principle of dividing the functions of agriculture and nature. Agriculture behind the main dikes will be optimally developed. Between the main dikes, nature will be allowed to develop as fully as possible in combination with navigation, the free extraction of water, ice, sediment and the products of erosion such as clay and sand. Extraction of clay for brick making will provide for small-scale shallow open water in the washes, and sand reclamation for large-scale deeper water. In the river itself, as a result of navigational activity, these biotopes no longer provide habitat or spawning grounds for birds and fish. To achieve the desired result, the lower summer dikes will have to be pierced. Then horses and cattle will be introduced as free (wild) living animals, to be followed by other hoofed animals such as the red deer, the wild boar and the elk. Agriculture will have to disappear from the washes. Ultimately, this process will result in a park-like landscape in what is now the flood plain, with groves of softwoods (willows and black poplar) and hardwoods (oak, lime, elm, ash and hornbeam) (see De Bruin et al. 1986). At numerous spots along the great rivers, experiments are being conducted on areas varying from a few dozen to a few hundred hectares (see Anonymous, 1996; 1998; Helmer et al., 1993). Slowly but surely, these plots will grow and merge to form long ribbons along the great rivers, an ecological infrastructure. More and more varieties of plants and animals which have disappeared will return (see Anonymous, 1998). The resulting ecological infrastructure will run parallel to the shipping traffic, connecting Central and Western Europe (see Anonymous, 1996). These plans for the great rivers have recently been given a new impetus in the wake of the extremely high water levels reached in the great rivers. A debate has raged on the way human beings have dealt with nature in recent centuries. More and more we have forced nature into increasingly narrow limits (dikes), limits that she seems about to tear down. This situation has led to the notion that instead of opposing nature, we should agree to join forces (see Anonymous, 1994; Anonymous, 1996; Helmer et al., 1993). As

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 50

A park-like landscape created and maintained by the grazing of large hoofed animals such as horses, cattle, red deer and wild boar (sus scrofa). This type of landscape occurs naturally in large parts of lowland Europe where the soil, water management and climate allow trees to grow. The processes responsible for this landscape provide the frame of reference for nature development. far as the great rivers are concerned, and in the interests of safety, water management should be aiming towards giving the river more room. Besides breaking through the summer dikes, which is what is happening in the Stork Plan, this also means that dammed and silted subsidiary channels should be reopened, thus increasing the river's capacity (see Helmer et al., 1993). It is not inconceivable that the main dikes will be moved back in order to broaden the flood plain. In the event of very high water levels, certain areas behind these dikes can also be made to accommodate flooding (within dikes) for a few dozen kilometres, thereby creating a subsidiary stream to relieve the main stream. In this way, the area will regain something of the role of flood plain that it had before the dikes were built. Because of the extra space, the height reached by the water will be reduced. A similar situation can be found in Croatia along the River Sava. Behind the dikes lining this river are the former flood plains which are now being allowed to flood for dozens of kilometres when the river is high. Downstream, the water is led back into the Sava by means of dikes. The result is that the surge of high water is greatly lessened. In fact this is an overflow system, an older method that was always used to let the river ‘breathe’. Cooperating with the force of the water has also been applied in coastal defences (see Anonymous, 1994; Helmer and Vellinga, 1996). In the coastal town of Bergen in North Holland, where the dunes are several kilometres deep, a breach has been made in the first row of dunes at a point where parts of the dune were constantly being washed away by the sea. Now the sea is being allowed in during storms, depriving the water of its power. After several such encroachments a tideway has formed, as was intended. This cooperation principle is known as ‘nature at work’.

Criticism of the concept

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Criticism has been levelled at the concept of nature development from several quarters. First, it is claimed that nature development is based on a paradox. According to the concept, nature is that which has not been changed by human interference. Since nature development involves focused human activity, it would seem to be contradicting itself. The philosophy behind nature development is that if human beings are able to make nature disappear, they are just as able to create conditions that will allow nature to return. The intention of nature development is to let nature have its say to a greater extent by removing man-made obstacles. An exact copy of what existed before can never be created, but it will certainly be more natural than what we have now. As far as the ‘authenticity’ of this nature is concerned, I would like to quote the philosopher Heraclitus, who said that you cannot step twice into the same river - yet the river is there, all the same. Paradoxically enough, nature development does not mean the abrupt end of all human interference. What it does mean is a great deal of initial interference, in order to undo the consequences of earlier intrusions whose goal had been to constrain the processes of nature. Nature development is said to be blind to cultural history. Unquestionably nature development can mean the disappearance of existing cultural values. In and of itself this can be seen as the creation of new man-made lands. If

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 51 the old was created by the exploitation of nature, the new can be created by providing nature with elbowroom. Nevertheless we are faced with a dilemma, in that wherever the one is introduced the other can no longer exist. By way of nuance, we should point out that in a country such as the Netherlands most of the man-made land still exists, and there are plenty of ways to safeguard its cultural-historical values. In addition, those same values can be adapted and used in projects related to nature development. Finally, it is important to remember that without the wilderness our culture becomes incomprehensible. Our culture, after all, is rooted in the wilderness; that is its source (see Vera, 1997). The most important ecological criticism is that large herbivores will not be capable of preventing the ultimate development of closed, dense woodlands. This statement is based on the so-called ‘succession theory’, which maintains that wherever soil and climate are favourable for the growth of trees, woodlands will eventually arise. There is no space here to discuss the argument in detail. However, research has shown that the theory is not tenable. There is much information indicating that the past overgrowth was that of a park-like landscape, and that it is therefore possible for such a landscape to arise again (see Bruin, 1986; Vera, 1997). The first results produced by grazing with large wild herbivores support this theory. Then there is the criticism that nature development will lead to the loss of natural values now present in man-made lands. This is closely related to the criticism above, in that it assumes that varieties associated with open areas, such as grasslands and heath lands, will be lost in the transition from open areas to woodland. The reason for this, it is claimed, is that the original natural overgrowth is woodland. This criticism gets the same reply as the previous point. As was observed earlier, varieties whose survival had always been assumed to depend on man-made landscapes have been shown to settle in areas that develop by analogy with natural situations. The last point of criticism is that nature development is only possible on a large scale, making it impossible for the Netherlands. Nature development does demand a certain scale because the processes it is based on require it, such as grazing by large herbivores. For this reason, nature development does best in spacious areas (that is, a few thousand hectares or more). This does not alter the fact that good results can be obtained in smaller areas (from a few dozen to several hundred hectares). The many projects carried out in the Netherlands along the great rivers prove this. Nevertheless, areas can be so small that while there is little or no room for natural processes, there is room for land management based on agrarian practices, such as mowing. In that case such management is to be preferred. Up until now, experience with nature development has taught that for the continued survival of diversity among wild plant and animal varieties, it is extremely important to foster the growth of large nature reserves.

FRANS VERA Translated by Nancy Forest-Flier.

All photos courtesy Frans Vera.

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Bibliography

ANONYMOUS, Nature Policy Plan of the Netherlands (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries). The Hague, 1990. ANONYMOUS, Natuur aan het werk. Een verkenning van de mogelijkheden voor grootschalige natuurontwikkeling langs rijkswateren en rijkswegen (Study and background document. Ministry of Transport and Public Works; Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries). The Hague, 1994. ANONYMOUS, Groen voor Grind. Op weg naar een mooie ruil (Stuurgroep Gransmaas). Maastricht, 1996a. ANONYMOUS, Rhine-Econet. Ecological networks in river rehabilitation scenarios. A summary report (Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management and Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries. Riza Institute for Inland Water Management and Waste Water Treatment). Lelystad, 1996b. ANONYMOUS, De Maas... internationaal (Natuurhistorisch Maandblad. Natuurhistorisch Genootschap in Limburg, special issue with French summaries). Maastricht, 1998. BAERSELMAN, F. and F.W.M. VERA, Nature Development. An exploratory study for the construction of ecological networks (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries). The Hague, 1989. BRUIN, D. DE, D. HAMHUIS, L. VAN NIEUWENHUIJZE, W. OVERMARS, D. SIJMONS and F. VERA, Ooievaar. De toekomst van het rivierengebied (Gelderse Milieufederatie, Arnhem; in Dutch with English. French and German summaries, 1986). BIJLSMA, R.G., Broedvogels van de buitenkaadse Oostvaardersplassen. Een kartering in 1997 (Altenburg & Wymenga ecologisch onderzoek b.v., Staatsbosbeheer, Regio Flevoland / Overijssel, RIZA Rijkswaterstaat; with English summary). Lelystad, 1997. EERDEN, M.R. VAN, ‘Moulting Greylag Geese Anser anser defoliating a reed marsh Phragmitis australis: seasonal constraints versus long-term commensalism between plants and herbivores’. In: EERDEN, M.E. VAN, Patchwork. Patch Use, Habitat Exploitation and Carrying Capacity for Water Birds in Dutch Freshwater Wetlands (Dissertation, Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. Directorate-general for Public Works and Water Management. Direction Flevoland). Lelystad, 1997. HELMER, W. and P. VELLINGA (ed.), Meegroeien met de Zee. Visie op de Nederlandse kustzone (Stroming b.v. / IVM). Laag Keppel, 1996. HELMER, W., G. LITJENS, W. OVERMARS, H. BARNEVELD, A. KLINK, H. STERENBURG and B. JANZEN, Living Rivers (World Wildlife Fund). Zeist, 1993. MARCHAND, M. (ed.), Floodplain Rehabilitation Gemenc (Hungary). Main Report (Delft Hydraulics: RIZA (Institute for Inland Water Management and Waste Water Treatment), VITUKI (Water Research Centre)). Delft, 1993. VERA, F.W.M., De Oostvaardersplassen. Van spontane natuuruitbarsting tot gerichte natuurontwikkeling (IVN / Grasduinen-Oberon). Haarlem, 1988..

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 VERA, F.W.M., Metaforen voor de Wildernis. Eik, hazelaar, rund en paard (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries; in Dutch with English summary). The Hague, 1997. WINDEN, A. VAN, W. OVERMARS, G. LITJENS and W. HELMER, Nieuw Rotterdams Peil. Stad en natuur in de monding van Rijn en Maas (Bureau Stroming, commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund). Zeist, 1997.

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Lost Landscape?

There are two reasons why Europe is so familiar with the landscape of the Low Countries. Firstly, because of the way the people there succeeded in reclaiming land from the water and making it productive; nowhere else has man stamped his mark so indelibly on the landscape. And, secondly, because of the way that landscape has been depicted in art; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries first the Flemish and then the Dutch landscape became famous, so famous in fact that the Dutch word ‘lantschap’ entered the English language in the dual meaning the word still has in both languages today: a tract of land and its depiction in a painting. It was the political and cultural situation of the time that smoothed the way for this burgeoning awareness of the landscape of the Netherlands. The self-assured middle classes in a state that had only recently won independence had sufficient wealth and sufficient local authority to look upon and

Cartoon by Gal after Bruegel's The Harvesters.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 54 enjoy their surroundings as a landscape. That sort of climate creates not only the opportunity, but also a need within us to discover and capture our surroundings as a ‘landscape’. Art, and particularly painting, plays an important role in this. Our perception and experience of nature and the landscape are influenced by the way poets and painters have described them in words or depicted them on canvas. Imperceptibly, their work becomes a visual code for later generations. Landscape is a total phenomenon, it is the expression and crystallisation of what a society is concerned with and what controls it. In time, landscape and inhabitants become attuned. A kind of ‘national identity’ is expressed in the landscape and, at the same time, the landscape influences the character and mentality of its inhabitants. Just as there are individual differences in sensitivity to landscape, so every nation probably has its scenic preferences, its favourite views and most cherished spots. Whereas in Germany and Central Europe that tends to be woods and mountains, in the Low Countries it is mainly the sea and the rivers, the vast stretches of water and expanses of cloudy sky, as painted so magnificently by the great Masters of the Golden Age. As recently even as just before the Second World War, H. Marsman composed the opening lines of his poem ‘Thinking of Holland’ (‘Herinnering aan Holland’), which evoke that selfsame landscape:

Thinking of Holland I see broad rivers languidly winding through endless fen, lines of incredibly tenuous poplars like giant plumes on the polder's rim; and sunk in tremendous open expanses, the farmsteads scattered across the plain (...)

From Poetry (Poëzie, 1938) Translated by James Brockway.

Arcadian images

If the seventeenth century can be described as the first phase of awareness of the landscape of the Low Countries, then the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth can be described as the second phase. The Dutch landscape experienced its next, and to date also its last, artistic heyday on the canvasses of the painters of the Hague School. The industrial revolution had of course already taken place (though later here than in Great Britain), but references to its influence on the landscape were usually avoided. The paintings of the Hague School still exhaled the peace and tranquillity of the landscapes around the seat of government, the coast with its chain of dunes, the polders and dikes. Here - and for the last

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Paul Gabriel, Train in Landscape. 1887. Canvas. Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo.

Emile Claus, Girl near the River Leie. Canvas, 56 × 46 cm. Private collection. time - we can admire the classic Dutch landscape with its rivers and ditches, its pastures and cows, mills and churches, low horizons and high, overcast skies. The literature of the 1880s brought a fresh sense of nature and landscape. In their prose and poetry the writers of the Eighties Movement lovingly and sometimes passionately evoked images of the landscape of the Netherlands, as in the long poem ‘May’ (‘Mei’, 1889) by Herman Gorter in which the poet praises the beauty of the still rural landscape. Similarly, the period around the turn of the century was characterised by a great interest in living nature, quickly followed by a practical sort of concern for nature and landscape conservation. People like J.P. Thijsse, Eli Heimans and others taught

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 56 the Dutch people to go out into the countryside and to observe more consciously the beauty of nature and the landscape. The first nature reserves were established at a time when the consequences of population growth and industrial development were beginning to constitute a threat to nature. Between 1895 and 1920, the landscape played a major role in the work of the writers and above all painters living in and around Sint-Martens-Latem, not far from Ghent (East Flanders) on the banks of the River Leie. Marking as it does the transition from (post)-Impressionism to Symbolism and Expressionism, the oeuvre of these Latem painters presents sometimes realistic, sometimes almost mystical or religious images of the Flemish landscape. The work both of the Hague School and of the Latem artists provides us with an image of the landscapes of the Northern and Southern Netherlands, shortly before the twentieth century radically changed the face of the world.

In the name of progress

In this century, and especially in the second half of it, the consequences of this modern age have left their mark all over the landscape. The towns have spread, the villages have grown and become urbanised, vast new housing developments have sprung up on all sides. Trading estates have been built, motorways have cut through the countryside, other roads have been asphalted and widened, scenic areas have been opened up, camp-sites and recreational parks have mushroomed. The Low Countries have become affluent, highly industrialised and densely populated. The modernisation of agriculture and particularly of cattle breeding (intensification, rationalisation and mechanisation) have transformed the landscape. No other landscape has been so systematically shaped, divided, designated and controlled by planners, developers and landscape architects, but also by ecologists and nature conservationists. With the exception of a few nature reserves, there is barely a square metre of soil in the Netherlands that has not been studied, ear-marked, worked and reworked. In Belgium the land has been modernised in a rather more ‘random’ fashion, so that old and new, beautiful and ugly are sometimes juxtaposed in the most surprising manner. All in all, the countryside has probably changed even more than the towns. Not only has the countryside been urbanised, forming a sort of urban-rural continuum, but it is precisely in the countryside that the motorways have been built, that airports have been constructed, that refuse dumps, quarries and gravel-pits have appeared. Moreover, an ever-expanding tourist and leisure industry has left its mark on the rural areas, with the result that the historic centres of some towns have remained more intact than the country round about. By the year 1970 a visitor to the Low Countries who had only seen the paintings of the Hague and Latem artists would scarcely have recognised the country. Their canvasses depict a world we seem to have lost for good.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 57

Landscape without memories

A still relatively carefree belief in progress prevailed until around 1970, but that changed rather abruptly as a result of a growing awareness of countless environmental problems. It appeared that water, earth and air were polluted, that many species of plants and animals had disappeared or were disappearing, that the beauty of many landscapes had been marred or was threatened, that noise nuisance had reached new and intolerable levels. In short, what we were experiencing was the downside of our affluent society. Shocked by the decline of their area, residents in many municipalities formed local pressure groups and took steps to stem further impairment. There was also a new and more widespread awareness of the need to impose limits on (economic)

Meindert Hobbema, The Avenue at Middelharnis. Late 17th century. Canvas, 103.5 × 141 cm. National Gallery, London.

Motorway in Ulvenhout, The Netherlands. Photo by Stephan Vanfleteren.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 58 growth and prosperity and to protect nature and the landscape. It seemed that the speed and scale of the changes were out of all proportion. In politics, concern about nature and the protection of nature and the environment became a fixed item on the agenda and some ‘green’ political parties even made it their raison d'être (Agalev in Flanders; GroenLinks and de Groenen in the Netherlands). Thus we had entered the third phase in our regard for the landscape, triggered mainly by a new awareness of the problematic consequences of our technologically advanced and affluent post-war society. The landscape of the Low Countries is threatened in an ecological and also in a cultural and historical sense. For landscape is not just a piece of the universe and of the earth's surface, but also a product of the way people treat the environment: it is nature and culture interwoven in a - hopefully - harmonious manner. The rapid and large-scale changes have caused not only an ecological but also a historical and cultural deterioration and levelling. Modern technology and capitalism have blurred local and regional variations as well as variations in the landscape. As a result many landmarks, which served a purpose in the collective memory, have vanished or been forgotten. After all, our historical awareness also has its roots in the landscape; the landscape has a great historic dimension, the result of long intercourse between people and their surroundings. It is this cultural landscape that has suffered most as a result of the changes of this century, which have brought about a ‘de-historicism’ and with it an erosion of sense of place and of the bond which people had with their native soil. The pregnant meaning places can have in the personal and collective memory is diminished or displaced by the ubiquitous advance of ‘non-places’ or ‘technotopes’, i.e. uniform, neutral and meaningless places with which people retain no real bond. In a technical and highly mobile society people become less and less attached to their town, village or region. But is there not a danger that a landscape without memories will produce a society with little historical depth? There are, of course, museums where the past is preserved and reserves where nature and landscape are protected, but they are far removed from normal life and we visit them as spectators and tourists, as outsiders. So can it be that as a result of the cultural rift caused by the process of modernisation in this century, an end has come to the harmony between man and environment with which the Low Countries lived for so long and which we so admire in old Masters?

Divided landscape

But maybe we should turn our backs on those images of the landscape in days gone by and try to live in and with a technical society whose relationship with the land and surroundings is totally different. Will perhaps a new correlation form between man and landscape, and should we not be receptive to a very different relationship with nature and culture and learn to appreciate the beauty of the new, perhaps postmodern, landscapes which are now evolving, just as we grew accustomed to the landscapes of the olden days? After all, the landscapes we loved were in fact largely the work of man and certainly not virgin nature. They were, as they are today, the result of

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Industry and housing in Flanders. Photo by Stephan Vanfleteren. human interaction with the environment, and in the Low Countries that interaction had long been very intensive. Not so very long ago the Netherlands added a chapter to her history of combat with the water with the reclamation of the Zuiderzee and the Delta works. Even in the last few years we find instances of ‘new nature’ being created; for example, nature has deliberately been allowed to run wild on former agricultural land. This ‘nature development’ is really just an extension of the Dutch tradition of land reclamation and development, except that now land which was greatly influenced and managed by man has been returned to nature. Yet if I confess to not really feeling at home in many modern landscapes, I do not put it down to the fact that they are almost entirely the work of man, but purely to the speed and extent to which our living space has changed, especially in the second half of this century. The rift which has formed in that time and which is visible in the landscape has perhaps breached the continuity of our living space by affecting our memory of the landscape. Does it perhaps have to do with our national character which, as we know, has a relatively limited historical consciousness, that the modernisation and ‘de-historicism’ of the landscape could take place so quickly and without much resistance? I have the impression that in Great Britain, for example, there was a greater awareness of the significance of the countryside than in the Low Countries and a greater sense of the historical dimension of the landscape. Every nation gets the landscape it deserves. The Low Countries, affluent and very densely populated, have increasingly to contend with the tension and perhaps discrepancy between prosperity and well-being, between working and living, between economy and ecology and between comfort and beauty, dichotomies which are expressed in the landscape. With the result that a landscape begins to emerge that (reflecting our own lack of unity) is split into large parts which have been abandoned to the dynamism and obsession with building of the techno-economic establishment, and others which are nurtured and protected like oases. In the latter our senses, still unaccustomed to life in a technotope, can occasionally delight in the colours, smells and the peace and tranquillity which are lacking in the former. Finally, we might ask ourselves if the landscape of the Low Countries could be an inspiring example for other countries in the twenty-first century as it was in the Golden Age, or if it will be a warning of what it should not be like?

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 TON LEMAIRE Translated by Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim.

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Stills of Landscape

Brussels.

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Boerengat, The Netherlands.

Gooik, Flanders.

Flevoland, The Netherlands (on the sign: ‘The Lord Jesus sayeth: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden’ Matthew 11:28).

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Varsenare, Flanders.

Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

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Durgerdam, The Netherlands.

Veurne, Flanders.

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Kluisbergen, Flanders

Zevenbergen, The Netherlands.

All photos by Stephan Vanfleteren.

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Turning Tides in Belgium An Account of a Ten-Year Political Quest

Ever since Belgium came into existence its end has regularly been predicted, mostly by foreign observers. Usually they had in mind a divorce between Flanders and Wallonia, North and South. However, there are more and subtler blueprints for assessing relations between and within the country's regions. It is not only the Belgian state that has changed; so, at least as much, has Belgian society. It is more accurate to speak of the multiplex end of ‘one’ Belgium. Of a Belgium, for instance, in which, sociologically and ideologically, the broad spectrum of the population translated fairly directly and exclusively into the relative size of the three classic political groupings: Christian Democrats, Socialists and Liberals. In the parliamentary elections of 24 November 1991, deeper-seated changes in Belgian society manifested themselves for the first time at the polls. The results of those elections showed more than the usual shifts in voting patterns. Voting is compulsory in Belgium and, massively and unhesitatingly, voters spoilt their ballot papers, left them blank or voted for small protest parties or for the far right. While the decades of the sixties, seventies and eighties had certainly not been devoid of political incidents or major social changes, the foundations of Belgian society remained relatively stable. A trip to the polling station might indeed shift the balance of power, but those who sought power knew who supported them and why (or why not). During the nineties that certainty disappeared. In 1996 a major social tragedy, the horrifying murder of four children (the Dutroux affair), led to a huge political reaction by the population. Following the 1991 election, this was the second massive expression of a changing Belgium. Three hundred thousand citizens took to the streets in the White March, not with slogans but with white balloons. All over the country people came forward, sometimes as members of so-called ‘white committees’, and in the most diverse ways engaged in a public debate on the workings of justice and politics. Demands for a more effective, more ‘humane’ justice system were coupled with calls for a ‘more democratic’ democracy, a political system which would be closer to the people. Like the 1991 elections with their vague picture of a fragmented electorate, the protest of 1996 provided a blurred snapshot with no clear point of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 66 reference. Over the course of the nineties it became clear that the relative predictability of the views and concerns of the Belgian people could no longer be guaranteed. Even in 1991 people were talking of ‘the gulf between the government and the people’. Exactly what that meant could be seen and felt more clearly with every passing year. Following the Dutroux affair, efforts to understand and assimilate the social changes proceeded at a heightened tempo. Political parties, and also trade unions and other social organisations, intensified the self-examination they had initiated after the 1991 election. They reinvented themselves, redefined their basic principles. They talked to their members and went in pursuit of ‘the unserved audience’, new target groups - a process of trial and error. This reform was not just a matter of structural necessity; there were also fundamental policy reasons. In recent years new social issues had been clamouring ever more loudly, ever more often, for the politicians' attention: the environment, mobility, security, public health. The Dutroux affair was more than just a ‘scandal’, as the foreign media invariably described it. The tragedy was allowed to happen by a structural failure of the police and justice system in Belgium, by sheer bad management (muddled and outdated police and judicial methods, poor communication between the police and the judiciary, competition between three different police forces). Certain political circles had reached this conclusion much earlier. And in the course of the nineties other ‘new’ social issues too were subjected to hard study by parliamentary commissions and think-tanks. But their analyses, and the results these should have brought in terms of reforms, did not find their way onto government political agendas quickly enough. Even under the two governments of Jean-Luc Dehaene (1992-1995, 1995-1999) most energy was devoted to ‘classic’ socio-economic and institutional matters. From necessity, in this case, rather than from reluctance to tackle new issues. Already in the late eighties it was agreed that the transition from a unitary to a federal state should be accelerated. This led to the constitutional reform of 1993. And in the socio-economic field, changes both in Belgium and in Europe forced the government to adopt an intensive policy of social security reforms and reorganisation of government debt. A legislative programme of this kind is complicated, and it is not popular. This, coupled with the less obvious social changes (individualisation, the breaking down of traditional religious and socio-political divides), made the outcome of the elections of 13 June 1999 very hard to predict. On top of this, every shock in any non-traditional political area provoked additional popular outcry. It had happened with the Dutroux affair. A second shock came with the death of a Nigerian woman who had been refused political asylum. Ten days before the 1999 elections there was a third shock, this time concerning the environment and public health. Traces of dioxin were discovered in the food chain (in chickens and eggs). Here too preventive measures had failed because of structural disfunction: fragmented inspection services, lack of communication between civil service and government and between the ministers concerned and the prime minister. These three shocks led to the dismissal of five ministers in three years. Not for nothing was 13 June 1999 called ‘the mother of all elections’. Because of its scale: on that one day people had to vote for the federal parliament, the regional parliaments and the European Parliament. But also be-

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Emile Claus, Cockfighting in Flanders. 1882. Canvas, 275 × 200 cm. Private collection. cause of the stakes: when a country knows it has reached a turning-point, anything can happen. Probably the evolution of the constitution is the easiest part of the quest to understand; it is at any rate the simplest to explain and to predict.

Scraping Belgium's bones

When the first constitutional reform was introduced in 1970 Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens spoke of the end of unitary Belgium. But not until the nineties did his words really get through to the people. The (to date) last constitutional reform, the Sint-Michiel Accord, was also Jean-Luc Dehaene's first great achievement as prime minister. In 1993 Flanders and Wallonia were given still greater autonomy within Belgium, but above all they acquired their own fully fledged, directly elected parliaments. In the years that followed Belgian politicians and people had to learn to live with the tangible effects of this structural partition. Separate institutions led to separate worlds. The structural basis for contacts between Flemish and French-speaking politicians was reduced. Not infrequently, that led to linguistic confusion. With more of their own structures and institutions, the different regions were able to pursue separate policies. And that in turn sharpened differences, already latent, in views on the economy and every other possible area (the justice system, for instance). Paradoxically, greater powers for the regions rather quickly induced a greater hunger for yet more powers - at least in Flanders. In general terms, the Sint-Michiel Accord gave the regions greater control of the content of their socio-economic policy, but the financing of it (and therefore taxation) remained largely in federal hands. As early as 1996 the Flemish Parliament, together with the Flemish government, began work on a new constitutional reform which was to lead to more fiscal autonomy and the partial regionalisation of social security. These preparations were of necessity unilateral, for constitutional change requires an exceptional majority in the federal bodies. The Flemish Parliament's initiative stirred up bad blood among the French-speakers, who then had several years to organise their resistance to further constitutional reform. As a result, on the eve of 13 June 1999 positions were more irreconcilable than they had ever been.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Partly due to the structural separation, since 1995 attitudes to federalism itself have been forced further and further apart. In addition, any reform of the constitution becomes more difficult as there is less and less of Belgium: any further constitutional reform will be scraping Belgium's bones. What makes things particularly difficult is the position of the capital. Brussels is officially bilingual, but in practice predominantly French-speaking. Over the years Belgian legislators have built up a complex institutional model which takes account of the balance between the language communities. It is a delicate, brittle system, the most sensitive nerve in all the Belgian structures. The exercise of certain powers requires a double majority in both language groups. This works just so long as there is a determination and an entente between the Flemish and French-speaking parties to make their shared system work. But anyone who wants to block it, and so strike at the heart of Belgium, needs very little to do so. For years it has been feared that

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 68 the far-right Vlaams Blok party might take advantage of that weak spot. On 13 June 1999 they failed in that aim. Although the Vlaams Blok became the largest Flemish party in Brussels, the other Flemish democratic parties who support the Brussels model together form a majority. Nevertheless, the puzzle has become even more intractable. The Vlaams Blok's success has manoeuvred the democratic Flemish parties into an impasse. They do not want to cooperate with the Vlaams Blok, not just because of that party's extreme right-wing views but because none of them supports separatism. But on the other hand they have to contend with the French-speaking cartel of the liberal PRL party and the FDF, the rabidly francophone Brussels party, which since 1995 have formed the largest political bloc in the capital. The Vlaams Blok does not want constitutional reform because it would rather see the break-up of Belgium. The PRL-FDF do not want it either, but precisely because they fear that it would lead to... the end of Belgium. In the Flemish satellites around Brussels, too, tension has been growing over recent years. For thirty years the French-speaking inhabitants of these municipalities have enjoyed ‘facilities’. These include, among other things, the right to receive administrative forms in their own language. Until recently these facilities were provided automatically. Then the Flemish government decreed that henceforth residents of these towns must specify their choice of language every time they have any contact with government bodies. The French-speakers see this as limiting their facilities, the Flemish government as a stricter application of them. Either way, it has further diminished the French-speakers' already minimal willingness to discuss any further constitutional reform. Most of French-speaking Belgium harbours a strong suspicion that Flanders is pursuing a secret nationalist agenda. Ironically enough, the one Flemish party that does have a ‘purely’ nationalist programme, the Vlaams Blok, derives its electoral strength not from constitutional reform but from quite different developments in Belgian society.

The new citizen

Belgium does not exist in isolation; it is part of Europe. Reform of the state accords with a European federal logic. Since the opening of Europe's internal borders the Belgians have had to digest many other changes, changes which the fall of the Berlin Wall has also accelerated elsewhere in Europe. These, even more than the evolution of Belgian federalism, have contributed to a sense of uncertainty. It is not just a question of the globalisation of the economy; that is only one factor in a changing citizenry. During the nineties, most Western European countries found they could no longer take for granted the way in which states or politicians bound the people to them in a mutual contract of rights and obligations. But when that bond began to erode, the results made themselves felt at the polls. In Belgium it led to the phenomenon of the ‘floating voter’ and the ‘protest vote’. Voters jumped from one party to another, turned in blank or spoiled ballot papers, or gave their votes to splinter parties, political adventurers or the far right. Views on

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 this behaviour and the developments that led to it vary with the observer. One speaks of emancipation, another of egocen-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 69 trism. One talks about critical awareness, another about anti-politics or even anti-democracy. Undoubtedly there is something to be said for each of these descriptions. Again, the reasons for this development are a cocktail of intangible social changes, some rapid, some more gradual: more and broader education for some, less education for others, more opportunity for individualism, broader horizons, greater unpredictability in one's working life because of changes in the economy (partly due to globalisation), more contact with people of differing views and with foreigners through the blurring of actual and figurative borders, more opportunities for the individual but at the same time more threats, more tangible impact on daily life from developments in new social fields (the environment, security, public health etc.). Belgian society became an eclectic body with simultaneous positive and negative movements, chronically mixed feelings, hope and despair. People sense the impotence of the traditional political structures to react adequately to these changes. They turn away from the parties or subject them to a highly critical scrutiny. They did it when they voted in 1991, and again in 1999; but they also did it in 1996 in the White March. This spurred all the traditional parties to undertake an existential quest. These reforms sprang as much from a substantial imperative (‘adapt or perish’) as from pragmatic necessity (electoral losses). The Socialists evolved in a social-democratic and ecological direction, the Christian Democrats moved further towards secularisation, the Liberals introduced the notion of ‘people's democracy’. The compelling reason behind these changes was the acute threat to democracy posed by the success of the far right. In times of change, playing on feelings of uncertainty and despair can reap a golden harvest. And the Vlaams Blok did just that. In the early years of its success the party appealed mainly to that section of the population that was less able to take advantage of the positive aspects of change (hope). In Belgium, as elsewhere in Europe, the far right's 1991 electoral breakthrough can therefore be ascribed largely to the votes of disillusioned, often older voters, alienated former supporters of the traditional people's parties (the Christian Democrats, but mainly the Socialists). A number of political scandals also came to light in the nineties; the most notorious, the Agusta-Dassault affair, involved the socialist parties who in the late eighties had accepted backhanders from the armaments industry. These scandals were themselves the evil results of practices which had been possible precisely because the traditional Establishment had for so long thought its position natural and unassailable. Critical scrutiny of the political system in the nineties, and the resultant crisis in the institutions, brought a raising of the ethical standard. Less savoury political practices (collectively known in Belgium as ‘gesjoemel’, hanky-panky), which nobody had bothered about in the eighties, after 1991 often provoked devastating public reactions. Political appointments in the justice system and other semi-governmental organisations also came under fire. At first the events of 1996 acted as a positive catalyst. Far more than the elections of 1991, and despite the fury and grief, they exemplified the hope of change instead of despair, constructive examination of the country's institutions rather than destructive anti-politics, a critical rather than a defeatist-nihilist citizenry. In parliament this led to a (with hindsight) very

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 70 temporary consensus among politicians of all shades and creeds. In the parliamentary commission of enquiry set up to investigate police and judicial failures in the Dutroux case, traditional party-political differences were at first briefly set aside. After 1996 the politicians continued their quest, focusing now more on revising and ‘refining’ the rules of the democratic game. Efforts were made to encourage greater popular involvement by, for example, expanding the responsibilities of ombudsmen and experimenting with referenda and public consultation. The almost ten years of political quest for an appropriate response to the changes in society and their effect on the population were as chaotic as those same changes and their effects had been. The politicians themselves have mixed feelings about ‘the new citizen’. Often they honour and vilify him in the same breath. They acknowledge faults in their own procedures, and in those of other institutions such as the civil service, police and justiciary. They appreciate the need to make their own structures more accessible, to make the civil service and the police less bureaucratic and more efficient. But at the same time many of them are wondering where the citizen's legitimate criticism ends and where it becomes, in the words of the sociologist Mark Elchardus, ‘a society of complainers and accusers’. As well as more generalised dissatisfaction with the way the institutions function, the change in economic structures has also produced a concrete anxiety. In the past few years Belgium has been faced with the closure of many outdated large industries and the consequent job losses. Less obvious - less visible to the media, at any rate, and so to public opinion - is the new dynamism in the small and medium-sized business sector, much of it specialising in more modern, high-technology products and services. This has brought new job opportunities and different, more varied forms of employment. It is of no immediate comfort, however, to those who are unemployed or no longer secure in their jobs. The unemployed voter, the frightened or angry voter, the critical voter who thinks that the ruling political class offers no adequate answers to new social problems: they all turned out to vote on 13 June. A heterogeneous group of individuals, and one which has grown steadily since 1991.

The elections of 13 June 1999 provided the first major test of ten years of change and reform. The ruling parties, the Socialists and Christian Democrats, took a beating. It meant the end for Prime Minister Dehaene and the coalition which had held power for a decade. But their losses did not mean proportionate gains for the third traditional party, the Liberals. While the Liberal group did become the largest in the country - itself a historic event - the gains of the far right and the Green parties were proportionally greater. The far right made gains only in Flanders, the Greens in both parts of the country but particularly in Wallonia. The outcome was also mildly favourable for the democratic Flemish Nationalist Volksunie party, who teamed up with the recent innovatory ID21 movement (‘Integral Democracy for the Twenty-First Century’). Belgium no longer has three large traditional parties and a number of smaller ‘protest’ parties; after 13 June the gap between the diminished ‘large’ parties and the enlarged ‘small’ parties is relatively narrow.

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The unusual result was initially attributed to the dioxin crisis which broke ten days before the elections. Certainly this was responsible for the Greens' larger-than-expected gains. But this analysis ignores the link between the outcome of the election and the underlying continual social changes I have sought to describe. In other words, there is method in the apparent ‘madness’ of these election results. The new eclecticism of society is reflected in the fragmentation of the vote. The Belgian voter cast his vote for political change with all its positive and negative aspects, with mingled hope and despair I have described. He clearly turned away from the traditional parties, except for the Liberal party which - in Flanders at least - not coincidentally had already been reformed in 1993 under the leadership of Guy Verhofstadt. He voted for the change promised by the far right, but which is in fact at odds with the positive change embodied by the Greens for whom other voters opted. The Socialists and Christian Democrats had also made positive efforts in recent years to update their parties' policies and organisation, for example to address new social issues; but on 13 June this made no impression on the voter. Not yet, maybe, because those changes were entered upon too late (only since 1996; they include the reform of the police and the justice system which led to the so-called Octopus Agreement); moreover, they were frustrated by the government's socio-economic priorities. Just as 13 June cannot be attributed solely to a rational rejection of Dehaene's actual policies or an impulsive reaction to the dioxin crisis, in the same way the significance of this election is greater than the question of what new government team will lead Belgium into the next century. In the longer term these elections are significant above all for the further evolution of Belgian society and politics, and so also for the pursuit of what is already a ten-year-long quest. On 13 June 1999, with the fragmentation of the political landscape and the continuing success of the far right, democracy reached a point of no return. The growing differences between the political landscapes in Flanders and Wallonia also contribute to the fact that since 13 June Belgium has once more become harder to govern; though the election results have temporarily pushed the debate on constitutional reform into the background. But at the same time the elections of 1999 opened up positive opportunities for the future. The 1991 election result was merely the first manifestation of social processes in ferment; their interpretation had yet to begin. By 13 June there was already greater understanding of those processes. And so the election result, despite the chaotic picture, has provided clearer directions for the future. In a sense, only now can the quest truly begin. It will be possible to control hope and despair better as the political world, with this greater understanding, is better able to tackle the manifold social changes. In the nineties Belgium became a totally different country. The prologue (1991-1999) has only just finished.

FILIP ROGIERS 1 July 1999 Translated by Tanis Guest.

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Three Faces of Dutch Animation

Gerrit van Dijk, I Move So I Am. Photo courtesy Cilia van Dijk.

An animator plies his craft in his studio, not on a film set; he applies himself to the creation of a world entirely of his own construction, not to documenting reality as it is or in a fictitious form. Image by image, the animator builds up scenes which are then shown on film at a speed of 24 frames per second. It's a dauntingly labour-intensive technique, but the only one that lets the animator control every last detail and ignore the ordinary rules of what is real and not. An animator, in other words, is an individualist. Dutch animation has a particular reputation for individualism. Over the last twenty years, Dutch animators, working in a spectrum of personal styles and techniques a million miles removed from Disney bluebirds and the mass children's market, have been producing arthouse shorts which are among the very best being produced anywhere, and which are shown and acclaimed the world over. Prominent among these artists are Gerrit van Dijk, Paul Driessen and Ties Poeth.

Gerrit van Dijk, A Good Turn Daily. Photo courtesy Cilia van Dijk.

Gerrit van Dijk: I Move So I Am

Gerrit van Dijk has been making animated shorts since the seventies, since when he has built up a considerable body of highly respected work. Anything but a ‘classical’ animator, he uses image-by-image techniques, as well as live action (filmed images shot at normal speed) and graphically enhanced live action images; his latest film, I Move So I Am, took him more than ten years to complete. Taking its inspiration from

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 R. Escher's famous etching of two hands sketching one another, the film shows Van Dijk drawing his own hands: a continuum of reciprocal erasure and starting all over again. In the background, meanwhile, we see a constantly shifting, moving galaxy of images from Van Dijk's earlier films and celebrated artworks by Michelangelo, Rodin, Mondrian, Matisse, and other great masters of the past. For I Move So I Am Van Dijk was awarded the 1998 Holland Film Award of the Netherlands Film Festival. This annual prize goes to the Dutch film which has achieved the highest number of foreign film festival screenings. I Move So I Am was featured at twenty-seven festivals and collected

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 73 a bevy of prizes and awards, among them the Golden Bear of Berlin. I Move So I Am is, of course, not intended as a straightforward self-portrait of Gerrit van Dijk wrestling with his art, but a personification of the artist caught up in the generic struggle of creating and recreating himself, time and again. The very choice of title - a play, needless to say, on Descartes' celebrated dictum ‘cogito, ergo sum’ - is an assertion of Van Dijk's conception that the essence of art lies not so much in the static art object itself as in the process of its creation: the artist's search for exactly the right expressive form in his perpetual endeavour to redefine both the self and reality. Reviewing Van Dijk's earlier films, we see that identifying himself in terms of the world around him has been an on-going preoccupation. What has changed is that his focus has shifted from the politicised perspective of the seventies to the personal, private sphere. A constant in Van Dijk's films is the absence of the traditional narrator's voice, apart from one or two rare exceptions. He works almost entirely through image, setting up his films like paintings. Here is no fantastical world of tricksy camera angles and positions, but transformations in which images turn into other images, but without ever completely losing sight of the original image. CubeMenCube, for instance, shows two cubes projected against a changing background; Sportflesh depicts a little boy who gradually metamorphoses into an increasingly repulsive muscle freak. Seeing these films one is not so much conscious of watching snatches of a larger whole, or idea, as of the composition as an autonomous entity within the confines of its framework, an impression which is reinforced by the films always remaining on the same plane throughout. Besides a unity of image, another Van Dijk hallmark is his use of visual quotations; almost all his films contain references to historical visual material and stereotypes. In A Good Turn Daily and Pas A Deux, for instance, he ranges through the gamut of collective western memory with flashes of Vietnam, the Beatles, Neil Armstrong on the moon, and a cast of movie stars, pop stars, cartoon characters, politicians, and religious leaders from Brigitte Bardot to Pope John Paul II. The effect of the added animations and the transitions from one image to the next is to create extraordinary relationships which reveal new contexts and new meanings. A Good Turn Daily marked the point in Van Dijk's artistic career when, as mentioned earlier, his themes switched from social and political topics to the more private sphere. In A Good Turn Daily, we observe a boy scout wandering through a world in which he encounters catastrophe upon catastrophe. Wherever he goes, he tries to hold out a helping hand, but before he manages to achieve anything he is off to the next calamity. In the course of this he undergoes a series of transformations into a variety of social workers' types, and into John Wayne, Mussolini, Nixon, the pope, and finally Jesus Christ. The association between this disparate assembly of heroes and villains cannot help but lead to the depressing conclusion that he who would save the world is bound, however good his intentions, to create only more havoc. Clearly, in making A Good Turn Daily Van Dijk was bidding adieu to his rebel, idealistic self. The later films bespeak a more introspective, restrained man. For Janneke (Voor Janneke), for instance, is a visual ode to a new life's beginning, shown in a set of close-ups recording a child's development from con-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 74 ception to parturition. With I Move So I Am, his most successful film so far, Van Dijk once again leaves the world and its troubles to its own devices to deliver a deeply personal statement.

Paul Driessen: condemned to destiny

Completely different in character is the work of Paul Driessen; Van Dijk and he may be contemporaries, but there anything in common between the two more or less ends. Unlike Van Dijk, Driessen has never been politically or socially driven, but has always drawn his inspiration from biblical stories, fairy tales, and his own imagination. Driessen's films are characterised by an apparently childlike but very sophisticated style of drawing. His extremely original animation and absurdistic, dark humour have gained him many dozens of international film awards, and have been an inspiration to countless young animators. On the face of it Driessen's visual vocabulary would seem limited in scope. Nonetheless, every Driessen film is unique, and inhabits a universe of its own. In On Land, at Sea and in the Air (Te land, ter zee en in de lucht), he splits the image in three with two vertical lines, and then proceeds to take the laws of cause and effect on a rollercoaster ride with odd and surprising relationships between the three screens. This idea of different worlds interacting recurs in several of Driessen's films. In Sunny Side Up (Spiegel-eiland) the screen is split horizontally: in the top half dwells an island and in the bottom half its recalcitrant mirror image. In The Writer (De schrijver en de dood) we see a writer losing control over the characters he creates, who begin to live separate, simultaneous existences in the different dimensions demarcated by the split screen. Paul Driessen's films may seem light-hearted, but they are not. His figures are often divorced from one another, but at one and the same time condemned to co-existence. They march on, resolutely, towards their inexorable destinies, but with surprising twists and turns en route. The film Elbowing, made in Canada, can be seen as the key to Driessen's work as a whole. The film shows a row of identically uniformed men. Each gives the next one in line a little nudge of the elbow; when the nudge reaches the end, the last man topples into an immense abyss, uttering a bloodcurdling howl as he goes. The entire row now takes a step sideways, after which the process is repeated. One figure stands out among this dismal throng: a joking, cavorting, colourful clown, who is not inclined to submit passively to the foreordained pit. Thus, when his turn comes, he salutes his companions graciously and begins to make his way down by an invisible ladder. This unexpected development sets off a reverse nudge in the row, causing the first man to tumble next, and so on. You don't have to look far to identify the clown as Driessen himself: Paul Driessen, animator extraordinary, who knows how to surprise and delight his audience with the unexpected, who shakes up our stultified ideas about what should be and gives as all a break from everyday insanity, if only for a moment. Three Misses is the title of Driessen's latest film, which had its premiere at the 1998 Holland Animation Film Festival in Utrecht. The film is a sort of remake of an earlier short, Oh What a Knight (1982), about a doughty

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Paul Driessen, On Land, at Sea and in the Air (Te land, ter zee en in de lucht). Photo courtesy Stichting Holland Animation, The Hague.

Paul Driessen, The Writer (De schrijver en de dood). Photo courtesy Stichting Holland Animation, The Hague. knight-errant who rescues a princess from the arms of her evil captor. Three Misses is a subtle elaboration of this archetypal male hero versus helpless female victim theme. In three individual, interwoven tales Driessen creates a universe with a logic of its own in which events of few seconds' duration may stretch into an eternity, and a motley crowd of fairy tale characters, biblical figures, and Wild West types roam on predestined collision courses. Common to the male protagonists is their inherent self-concern; their efforts on behalf of the imperilled maidens are in reality not motivated by feelings of compassion or justice, but driven by a purely instinctual compulsion for violent action.

Paul Driessen, Three Misses. Photo courtesy Ciné Té filmproduktie b.v., Amsterdam.

A strong feature of all Paul Driessen's films is that everything has an organic, biological identity, objects no less than people. A door in a Driessen film, for example, is no slab of hard, massive wood, but a floppy, sloppy, near-visceral thing. This

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 particular characteristic is accentuated in all his films not only by the style of animation itself, but also by use of hundreds of sound effects. In fact, Driessen's sound tracks are as much part of his signature as are his unmistakable animations.

Ties Poeth: no clichés, please

A film maker who is less easy to typify is Ties Poeth. Like van Dijk, he works in a variety of animation styles and techniques. He does not, however, call himself an animator, feeling that this would pigeon-hole or stereotype him, something which he does not want on any account. In keeping with this, he avoids all trace of cliché, trends, or the stereotypical in his films, which are orientated towards the new and experimental and are difficult to generalise about because of their stylistic and technical diversity. Nonetheless, when you see them one after another, they all bear the unmistakable imprint of Poeth: a searcher always in quest of new means to express

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Ties Poeth, Mission Ville. Photo courtesy Ties Poeth. his perceptions. Audiences out for a good story line should keep well away from Poeth; what he offers the viewer is the experience of being carried along, and away, by a stream of visual associations in which he plays out the conceptual fields of tension between depiction and representation and the figurative versus the abstract. In Mission Ville, Poeth shows the Dutch landscape viewed from a hot air balloon; as the balloon glides along, the fields and crops below become abstractions of form, colour and motion - an effect he achieved by directly drawing on and scratching into the film without camera intervention. As is the case with much of Poeth's earlier work, Mission Ville is a film without content, at least, not content of a kind that lends itself to explication or interpretation. The Carnival Shout (Joelfeest) seems to have introduced a change of approach, however, to the extent that although this film does not tell an actual story, meaning and symbolism play a far greater role than in any previous Poeth film. The Carnival Shout has as its theme the origins and development of the carnival parade over the centuries. The link is a cavalcade of painted, ceramic horsemen passing through a constantly changing setting. Alternating with this are sequences of real people (shot in stop-frame motion) in carnival processions - such as two men cavorting inside a donkey suit; a nun wearing an ass' head - and many kinds of other images which in one way or another relate to the carnivalesque. These include Scandinavian prehistoric cave paintings, works of art, including Bruegel's The Battle between Pancake Day and Lent, different versions of the medieval Ship of Fools, grotesques, and so forth. So much imagery and symbolism are packed in that the viewer cannot really take it all in. That, precisely, was Poeth's intention. He is not out to explain or analyse the idiom of carnival past and present, but to put the viewer directly in touch with a particular experience and atmosphere. In seeing carnival through his observant eye, we are at one and the same time alienated from and absorbed by the festive hubbub. In 1998 Music for an Owl (Klein Concert voor een Uil), the most recent

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Ties Poeth, Music for an Owl (Klein Concert voor een Uil). Photo courtesy Ties Poeth.

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Ties Poeth film, was premièred at the Holland Animation Festival. This film is set in the Church of Our Lady in Breda and tells the story of how the once splendid Gothic edifice fell into dereliction and was renovated in the space of a year. The film is in four phases, according to the seasons. Scene 1 shows the woodworm burrowing into a joist. Autumn storms do the rest. With the advent of winter, the devastation looks as it is about to be completed as beams disintegrate and masonry collapses into the nave. Come spring, however, and in flies an owl to claim the place for her own and bring in new life. While the owl broods in her nest, up goes the scaffolding and down go the piles to restore the church. Summer: newly-hatched owlets squawk in the nest, and the crowd cheers as balloons flurry up the spire of the newly-restored church at the festive, ceremonious opening. The set of Music for an Owl was based on photographs from the beginning of the century which were then photocopied in high-contrast black and white to give the film a strongly graphic, sometimes even abstract character. Very important for the mood of the film is the music by Erik Visser, who also worked with Poeth on The Carnival Shout. The Owl music can roughly be described as an orchestral fanfare without brass. The overall sound is harmonious, though with plentiful use of dissonance and assonance, and was conceived to convey the majesty of the Church as the outward manifestation of the Catholic faith. Poeth's own roots are in Catholicism, and this is in keeping with his vision of the church both as a significant monument and as a place of anchorage for the spirit. The film is a testimony to the church as symbolic of everything in life that should be cherished, nurtured, and protected against the elements: a plea for constancy, in short. In spite of the many differences between them, the films of Gerrit van Dijk, Paul Driessen, and Ties Poeth do share a core element: each is the product of an idiosyncratic approach to the medium, and its creator's will to bend its possibilities to his own vision. They also demonstrate that animation need not be restricted to variations on the classical cartoon, but has all the potential to occupy a place of its own at the interface of film and the visual arts.

TON GLOUDEMANS Translated by Sonja Prescod.

Further information

The Netherlands Institute for Animated Film Willemstraat 47 / P.O. Box 9358 / 5000 HJ Tilburg / The Netherlands, tel. +31 13 535 45 55 / fax +31 13 580 00 57 / e-mail: [email protected]

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A Fascinating Malaise The Paintings of Luc Tuymans

Among collectors, it is the Americans and Germans especially who show a keen interest in paintings by Luc Tuymans (1958-), an artist from Antwerp who, as Adrian Searle once wrote, ‘examines the malaise of European culture’. The Americans are probably taken with what they see as a typically ‘doomed’ European atmosphere, whilst for the Germans the paintings express a contemporary variant of the ‘Götterdammerung’. Searle, who in the spring of 1994 invited Tuymans to take part in his Unbound exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, saw the value of some of Tuymans' work, describing it as ‘focusing on small, even insignificant details, as well as on the traumas of illness, alienation and the past horrors of Western civilisation. Tuymans presents the world as fractured and sick at heart. Even the paintings themselves, with their sickly, jaundiced surfaces and colour, and the almost reluctant application of paint, are suffused with a certain mordancy. The implacable and anguished paintings hover over the details of an empty room, a glimpse of the human face, bloodstains, and the torso of a child's discarded doll’. Searle's description applies to all Tuymans' work, with the exception of that produced during the last two years or so. They are on the whole small-scale paintings which are about pain, powerlessness, violence and sickness. Most of the images refer to the artist's own personal experience. The memories are sometimes stored up for a long period of time, but, possibly triggered by certain events, they surface at a specific moment, and are then given the form of sketches, water-colours or paintings on canvas. However, there is more to the painting than just the so-called ‘image’ itself. To Luc Tuymans the narrative aspect is less important than the essential process which takes place during the actual painting: the image takes on a life of its own so that the memory contained in the painting is completely different to that in the artist's head. Tuymans once described this discrepancy as a memory-free zone: ‘A rhetoric develops for the image as well as for what follows. The images can be interpreted in a certain way, also by the viewer. I want to reach a point where any diversion is minimalised. Anything that distracts is cut away, banned, in order to achieve absolute clarity. The result is a so-called naive image, sometimes referred to as narrative. But it contains a vast number of hidden meanings.’

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Luc Tuymans, Portrait. 1994. Canvas, 58 × 44 cm. Photo Zeno x Gallery, Antwerp.

A key concept in Tuymans' work is that of ‘movement’: ‘One of the things that has always interested me most is the fact that a static image, such as a painting by Caspar David Friedrich or by El Greco, has always given me the impression that its size or format is of no importance. And yet within this limitation of size or format (and this is something I have also experienced with Mondrian), one can discern movement within the static image. The fact that there is movement in something which is fixed, has always fascinated me.’

The calm before the storm

In recent years Tuymans' work has become more distant. Searle's description of the paintings depicting the malaise of the age no longer really applies. One could regard some of his more recent works as a reaction to the electronic images of our time. In quite a few of his paintings we are increasingly aware of an element of electronic light, as opposed to natural daylight. More metallic, cool in feeling, and more distant.

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Luc Tuymans, The Fence. 1998. Canvas, 219 × 129 cm. Photo Zeno x Gallery, Antwerp.

The concept of ‘distance’ has been present in his work for some time, as is evident in his diagnostic view of a society that is sick or tormented. And yet his work is not always entirely without emotion, even though it is an emotion which is simplified and controlled, as revealed in a series of works dealing with the sexual abuse of power. This brings us to another important idea in his work: that of illegitimacy. Luc Tuymans never paints the predictable image, the answer to the long predicted end of art. His work exudes a controlled despair, producing an image that is at once atmospheric and uneasy, and a mood which sticks in your mind. Someone once described his work as terrible ‘because it is all about violence without itself being violent’. And indeed there is never any violence as such depicted in his work, but rather the situation before or after the deed. There is a stillness about the work which some critics have described as the calm before the storm. There are times when the charm of a figurative representation is highly appealing, and yet behind the charm there lurks something that is perverse. This is also an indication of Tuymans' artistic interpretation of the world: just as there are no certainties anymore, so there is no longer any such thing as a complete image. What we are shown are excerpts, inserts and details of a larger whole which is difficult to capture. In this sense his work is closely linked to the medium of film: it is the illusion of manipulated units of time that gives life to film. By omitting units in the appropriate way, the impression

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 81 of a coherent movement is created. At the same time, however, Tuymans puts the medium into its proper perspective: ‘Film is a fetish for the masses, whilst paintings are still purely individual and tactile. And yet, like film, painting is a long process involving a great deal of thought and work; it is as it were premeditated. Both its creation and its observation require an enormous effort of concentration. For years now I have been painting things out just to be able to maintain that level of concentration.’ Tuymans himself used to film sometimes: ‘When you work with moving images, you find that the exact opposite occurs to when you are painting: you automatically look for an image that is static. People remember a film through its static images.’ His recent exhibition of stills revealed both the painter and the film-maker, touching on the whole issue of looking, of images formed by the memory, of isolated fragments and moments which, although losing their clarity, nevertheless remain fixed in the mind's eye. Tuymans' use of colour and application of paint are entirely suited to this sphere of alienation: his canvasses often appear to be drab and sombre, but at the same time he lends a certain brilliance to many of his colours by mixing them with a lot of white.

A yearning for that one image

Although Luc Tuymans has a deep mistrust of man, he is at the same time aware of the fact that man is not the final reality, merely a part of it. The horror and violence of the Second World War are also important elements in trying to develop a real understanding of his work. One of Tuymans' best known works is Our New Quarters from 1986, which is based on the memory of a postcard from Theresienstadt which he saw in a book. Theresien-

Luc Tuymans, Our New Quarters. 1986. Canvas, 80 × 120 cm. Photo Zeno x Gallery, Antwerp.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 82 stadt was not a proper concentration camp, but was used by the Nazis as a diversionary tactic to mislead organisations like the Red Cross. Prisoners were allowed to send cards to their families who had been left behind. On the card the prisoner describes his ‘new quarters’ (cynically, or desperately naive? We shall never know). Although Tuymans produced only six of these paintings dealing directly with the war, they are of great importance. It is not the anecdotes of war that matter, but rather the whole atmosphere, the feelings of guilt and the collective memory of the cruelty, all of which are to be found in most of his other works as well. Luc Tuymans has this to say about it: ‘This irrational war was not only the illustration of an extreme and violent young man's dream, it also had unimaginable repercussions on a cultural level. After the war publicity and the media became extremely important, for the world had learned an important lesson from the whole propaganda concept of the Nazis. When did people respond to the war in ex-Yugoslavia? Only after they had been shown pictures which reminded them of the Nazi concentration camps. At moments like these, it is as if something inside me simply explodes; we seem to need these images as a point of reference, as a warning signal. We are fascinated by them.’ In his work Tuymans expresses the power of memories like these. Images of controlled despair which in one way or another seem intent on self-destruction. We continue to yearn for that one image, for the confrontation with our own memory, for an expression of that which smoulders deep within ourselves and which can be recognised in Tuymans' paintings. But each time the memory is thrown back in our faces like a wet rag: with the artist himself offering us no salvation or release in the form of a moral point of view to soothe our troubled spirits. Rather the reverse, for as far as Tuymans is concerned, artists are in fact no more than ‘retarded children’. The image they create only has meaning when it is decelerated, which has the effect of adding to the discomfort of the viewer, whilst at the same time increasing his fascination.

MARC RUYTERS Translated by Gregory Ball.

Luc Tuymans, G.I. Joe. 1996. Canvas, 68.5 × 62 cm. Photo Zeno x Gallery, Antwerp.

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‘I turn violence into art’ The Work of Armando

Armando, Tête Noire I. 1956. Oil on board, 105 × 87 cm. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

An artist, a writer, is confronted with the duality of imagination and reality. During the period that the Dutchman Armando (1929-) made his debut, fantasy-rich imagination was setting the tone in the visual arts. 1948 had seen the setting up of the CoBrA group (a group of artists from the three cities Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam); the artists in this group rejected realism, taking their inspiration instead from the spontaneous fantasy of a child's drawing. But as early as 1950 some of them had turned away from this approach and were giving expression to the horrors of reality in the recently ended Second World War. Armando studied history of art after the War. His first drawings, which appeared shortly after 1950, were inspired by the visual freedom of individual expressionism. During the same period he began writing poetry.

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Right from the beginning, however, Armando's work was no imaginary depiction of an internalised experience. It presented reality in the raw, without comment or interpretation, mercilessly. Armando did not allow himself to be tempted by the imagination. He faced reality four-square. In his early period as a visual artist Armando, who had not had any formal training, abandoned the familiar paths as far as possible. He drew with his left hand, with closed eyes, in the dark and using a blunt stub of carpenter's pencil. These drawings were abstract, chaotic and ‘materialistic’: fragile and thick lines, strokes and dashes which sometimes almost went right through the paper. They were violent and aggressive; he himself called them criminal. He drew, so he later said, in the same way that people were killed in the War: out of anger and hate. He could not indicate precisely where that anger sprang from, except to say that it came from his memories of reality. He felt powerless to discover the motives for the destruction and continued to search for them. The Latin word ‘Armando’ means ‘while I arm myself’. The bearer of this name is obsessed with evil. His art springs forth from his fascination with violence and war. In order to temper his memory of that cruelty, he must record its unbridled and merciless character. ‘Not moralising or interpreting (“artifying”) reality, but intensifying it. Working method: isolation, annexation. Result: authenticity. Not on the part of the maker but of the information. The artist who is no longer an artist; a cool, realistic eye.’ Armando wrote these words in 1981 in his Notes on the Enemy (Aantekeningen over de vijand). ‘Art’, he said, ‘is something we need like toothache.’ To the extent that his work is focused on beauty, it is the beauty of evil. ‘How much beauty can we bear?’, said Armando in a text from 1985. The reality which Armando cannot escape is that of the thirteen / fourteen-year-old boy which he himself was during the Second World War. He was aware of the way in which concentration camp prisoners in Amersfoort were tortured and murdered. That is his obsessive theme. His drawings, the poems with which he made his debut in 1954, his later paintings and works of prose are his powerless attempts to fathom these horrors. His weapon is identification. Sentiment and interpretation serve only to flatten the perception of reality. He became a boxer and in 1962 published his boxer's poems: isolated and thus intensified fragments of reality. In 1967, together with the author Hans Sleutelaar, he published a documentary work about Dutch SS war volunteers. Armando's emphatic identifications, exercises in registration without any moral aspect, met with a great deal of resistance. His fascination with evil was too easily taken for admiration and veneration. His work was described as dangerous, as ‘corrupt art’. But Armando was not looking for sympathy. The world is hard, and so is he. As an artist he takes up the struggle against degeneration, a fighter against time. The coherence of his art, his lifestyle and his statements brought him increasing recognition after 1965, despite the initial criticism. Appreciation of Armando was initially also hampered by his fragmentary and multifaceted character. As well as being a drawer, painter and poet, he worked at various times as a journalist, as a co-actor in his tragi-comedy Herenleed, written together with Cherry Duyns, and (from 1971) as a violinist in a gypsy orchestra. As a result he himself was often as hard to grasp

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 85 as the reality in which he was unable to detect any coherence, and which he merely recorded. This lack of coherence was precisely what made reality so bewildering for him, and he sought to express it by producing works in series. His drawings and monochrome paintings from after 1954 had a greater focus on landscape than his earlier works. He declared the landscape, close by the scene of the crime, to be guilty. ‘Whatever happens, it just keeps growing. And that is precisely what I find so unforgivable about landscape.’ The contrast between nature in all its beauty and the culture of wartime madness was fundamental for Armando. Unable to come to terms with this contrast, he filled his drawn or painted landscapes with the traces of human cruelty and the urge to destroy. Besides black, red was almost the only colour which Armando allowed into his work. He often mixed the thick paint with sand and plaster in order to fight against creating a mainstream ‘composition’ as far as possible whilst painting. He created an ‘espace criminel’. In the late fifties and early sixties Armando's art continued to focus on recording, seeking a reconciliation with reality, or on emotional overwhelming. Just as he isolated reality in his poems and short prose texts, so he began in the period 1958-60 to incorporate nails, bolts and lengths of

Armando, Feindbeobachtung. 1980. Canvas, 250 × 175 cm. Amrobank Collection, Amsterdam.

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Armando, Gefechtsfeld 27-7-1986. Canvas, 165 × 225 cm. Nederlandse Bank Collection, Amsterdam. barbed wire into his visual art. The inhuman and human are mingled together; victim and executioner become interchangeable. His work was already showing greater control in this period. Hate and anger were replaced by the ‘enemy’. Armando continued to search for his identity; in 1979 this search took him to Berlin. In the years before this, from 1967 onwards, he integrated photographs in his drawings, giving them a more dualistic and ‘sacral’ character, for example in On The Way to the Place and The Unknown Soldier. In his Diary of a Perpetrator (Dagboek van een dader), published in 1973, there is also a process under way between man, at one moment perpetrator and at the next prey, and imperturbable, morally uninvolved nature. The same situation in various guises also lies at the basis of the television play Herenleed, which began its ambiguous dialogue in 1971 with fragments of conversation between a gentleman and a servant, which in fact amount to a failed communication and thus take on more the form of statements or even of a confrontation. ‘Heer’ is the Dutch word for ‘gentleman’, and the related word ‘heir’ is an old word for ‘army’, while ‘leed’ means ‘suffering’ or ‘harm’. The theatre series was followed in 1978 by a frank television film, The History of a Place (De geschiedenis van een plek), about events in Amersfoort before, during and after the War. In 1979, helped by a German grant, Armando shifted his battleground to Berlin: ‘the lion's den’. Here he created the series Feindbeobachtung: larger canvasses, some of them monumental works in the form of diptychs and triptychs. In these works white takes on the battle against black. Around the edges, in particular, the paint engages in a true ‘battle of substance’. These works are less concerned with the duality of perpetrator and victim, and more with the boundary and intermediate areas: human passiveness which has tolerated these awful events, just as nature acts as if it knows nothing and is not concerned about anything. 1988 saw the publication of Armando's magnum opus, the novel The

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Street and the Shrubbery (De straat en het struikgewas), which is set in the boundary region between the town and the forest and which deals with what happens when the enemy is given a chance to carry out his destructive and humiliating work. The same words recur regularly in cohesive fragments throughout this work, terms with a wartime ring to them such as ‘bold’, ‘courageous’, ‘alert’, ‘guilty’, ‘lurking’ and ‘prowling’. Many sentences are questions which are presented as facts: ‘Hey, how did he end up dead.’ Armando works according to impulses, and this is also how he writes his poems. He also works from sketches for his paintings. He writes and paints only what forces itself upon him: ‘There are some days when everything hurts.’ In Berlin Armando's art took on a more explicitly romantic character, a tendency already hinted at in the title of a poetry collection in 1971: Heaven and Earth (Hemel en aarde). The Germanic pathos, the urge for the infinite, which Armando recognised in Nietzsche, were expressed in the series of paintings entitled Gefechtsfelder. The lonely tree, the isolated forest, evoke the art of the romantic landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich, whose Chasseur im Walde from 1814 adorned the cover of the cycle Diary of a Perpetrator. But in Armando's work there is no question of inner spiritualism. His Fahnen are black heroic flags, often simultaneously representing merciless axes. Armando seeks to master time, and believes that art is a way of gaining a hold over reality. That is its consolation. The Körperlich series from 1982, and the more recent series Köpfe (1988) offer an impression of a last remnant of matter which has been sustained through time. There is a striking similarity to mummies, and more particularly to the scanner images which are able to show the cause of death of

Armando, Fahne. 1980-1981. Canvas, 240 × 175 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 88 these people who died very long ago. They are the most far-reaching challenge to time, which lays bare suffering and erases all trace of life. More than ever, they challenge beauty. Armando has confessed that, unlike the French painter Bonnard, he is unable to paint flowers while the world is drawing up its battle lines. He would like to be able to do so, but the fact is that he has pledged his heart to a beauty which is terrible. This obsession is now expressed in symbols: ladders, a reference to the Jacob's ladder, which stands for the unattainable, that which supersedes humanity. The wheel, as a symbol of cyclical time, the constant turning which none of us can escape. The greater simplicity of figurative forms, a ladder or a wheel, have enabled Armando to discover a new field in addition to his paintings. He now designs large bronze sculptures: monuments against time. He also devises oversized goblets, which lie open to history like sacrificial bowls. Armando's work is always focused, and with ever greater stubbornness, on keeping alive the image of the enemy, as is also the case in his latest volume of poetry, The Name in a Room (De naam in een kamer, 1999). His battle is the battle against time, against the irrevocability of death. As a poet and

Armando, Körperlich. 1982. Canvas, 225 × 155 cm. Museum Van Bommel Van Dam, Venlo.

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Armando, Kopf. 1989. Watercolour, 73 × 102 cm. Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen. writer, actor, drawer and painter, and now also as a sculptor, he thus lines up with a major artistic tradition. This makes him one of the more important artists of our time, and one with an international reputation.

ERIK SLAGTER Translated by Julian Ross.

Further reading

Armando, the Berlin Years. The Hague, 1989.

Translations

From Berlin (Tr. Susan Massotty). London, 1996.

In December 1998, the Armando Museum opened its doors to the public.

Address

Armando Museum Langegracht 36 / 3811 BW Amersfoort / The Netherlands tel. +31 33 4614088

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Extract from The Street and the Shrubbery by Armando

Art

We have art to save us from being destroyed by truth. Friedrich Nietzsche

He could scarcely read when he began cutting out and collecting reproductions of paintings. Who had taught him? No one. By the time he was twelve he had a thick folder full of pictures of familiar and unfamiliar paintings that he had cut out. He looked at them once more and threw them away. He had better things to do. He needed to wave his arms about for a while and look around him. Later it returned, that business with the pictures, with those reproductions.

He asks why you like paintings so much. Yes, I love paintings. But why? He asks why. I don't know, I just know I like paintings, and that's all.

Art, art. The refined aspects of art had passed me by, I scarcely made their acquaintance in those days. Because art was freedom, and surely that had nothing to do with refinement, surely art was the raw, hoarse underside of freedom. Probably I had some inkling of that more refined side, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I had once seen a young man singing songs with hands folded and eyes turned upwards, it frightened the life out of me, it gave me the creeps.

Once he grew up he would encounter them, the artists who were forever complaining, who, so they claimed, had suffered unspeakable hardship, who in particular had had too little tenderness or love from their parents. There were all kinds of deprivation. Weakness and self-pity all round. In the beginning he didn't understand what these artists were talking about. Was parental love really so important then, did it really make a difference? To be honest he thought they were a bunch of whingers with their aggrieved posturings, but because there were nice people among them, he thought: I guess that's how it's supposed to be. It surprised him and probably still surprises him, at least if he's still capable of feelings, which I doubt. I expect he's a good deal older. Can you hear me?

How lonely the artist is, how great his loneliness must be for him repeatedly to be able and to dare to take the boldest decisions, how sad the artist's loneliness is, but also how fruitful, and hence how little deserving of pity the artist's lot.

Suddenly something is art. Suddenly the audacious thoughts and deeds of a disconsolate human being have found their way into the domain of art. That, I know from experience, is an austere and harsh domain, with its own laws and conflicts. You had better not wind up there, because eventually you want to get out and you do not always succeed. I have never succeeded.

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Such disparaging things are often said about people who sold out to the enemy. Fine, but what is your opinion of the firs and spruces that subjected themselves totally and continue to do so to any enemy that comes along. Look at the illustrations of the enemy in action: there they are, the trees, standing laughing in the background. And not only the firs and spruces, but the other trees too. Shouldn't something be said about that? I believe it should, for sometimes they still stand there, the trees, the fringe of the forest and the timber, in the self-same spot where they stood at the time, you musn't think they have gone elsewhere, they stand there still as indifferent witnesses. I study them, look at them, and something sickening happens: they are beautiful, I find them beautiful.

I'll give you an example. I have in mind a particular spot, where several roads meet. It's never busy during the week. There is undergrowth beneath the trees. It is fragrant and buzzing. The surface of the road looks dreamy. An unattainable country house. A man on horseback. Someone on a bicycle with a bunch of heather stuck on the back. Truly, an idyll. Meanwhile, however, the place takes on another form. The same undergrowth, the same trees. It's still quiet, but there is something wrong, a military action was fought here, an action. The chill. The barrenness. The victim. The dreary roads strewn with refuse. The residue of power. This was the very same place, but in one's memory the scene of brute force is almost more beautiful than when it was an idyll. It takes you to the verge of bewilderment.

The beauty of the places where the enemy was, where the enemy was located, where the enemy was housed and ran riot, where the enemy exercised his reign of terror, where the traces of the enemy's reign of terror are to be found. Precisely there. Beauty should be ashamed. And not forgetting the beauty of the places where the enemy was defeated. Beauty is at a loss what to do. Beauty is perplexed.

I have said it so often, but I cannot repeat it often enough: beauty is suspect, beauty isn't worth a row of beans, beauty couldn't care less.

There really is something odd going on with beauty, there's no denying it. It must be obvious that beauty is no good. But guess what: it's this very beauty I've devoted my life to. It has me in its power. I am in its service. Leave me be! What else can I do?

Where can one find consolation? No longer with one's fellow man, you seem to have messed that up yourself. Where then? If not with one's fellow man, then with what he has produced: art. Sometimes one can seek consolation in nature. Nature appears peaceful, but isn't. That's why nature is very beautiful. But does one really need consolation? Can't we do without?

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 From The Street and the Shrubbery (De straat en het struikgewas. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1988, pp. 243-247). Translated by Paul Vincent.

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From Writer at his Own Expense to Public Phenomenon On the Work of J.J. Voskuil

It was front-page news on 26 May 1998. ‘J.J. Voskuil wins Libris Prize’ read the headline in the NRC Handelsblad, a much respected Dutch newspaper. The writer J.J. Voskuil had been named as winner of an important literary prize sponsored by a Dutch bookstore chain. A photo shows the author, accompanied by his wife, being congratulated. This is a remarkable event. Not because the award had gone to Voskuil's Plankton (1997), the third part of his 5,500-page cycle The Bureau (Het bureau) (its seventh and final part is to be published in 2000). The first two parts, Mr Beerta (Meneer Beerta) and Dirty Hands (Vuile handen), published within six months of each other in 1996, and part 4, The A.P. Beerta Institute (Het A.P. Beerta Instituut, 1998) had all been praised by the critics and even shortlisted for literary prizes. And part 5 (And Melancholy Too - En ook weemoedigheid), published in January 1999, was also well received. But because much public furore is difficult to reconcile with the nature of J.J. Voskuil's writing, which is so inseparably bound up with his personality. For a long time Johannes Jacobus Voskuil, born in The Hague in 1926, was known as the writer of a single book, and one that had attracted only a small circle of readers: the highly autobiographical novel On Closer Examination (Bij nader inzien, 1963). Its 1,200 pages relate the story of a group of students of Dutch language and literature at the University of Amsterdam. From September 1946 till May 1953, we follow them in their attempts to take a stance against a society that fills them with disgust and anxiety. The highest ideal they hold is to keep society at a distance and never pursue a career. One after another, however, they are ensnared by marriage or their profession. At the end of the novel Maarten Koning (Voskuil's alter ego) is the only one left.

An attempt at self-explanation

The decline of this group of friends culminates in a break between Paul Dehoes and Maarten Koning. The former professes his non-conformism through a deluge of words and in so doing bases himself on the principles set out in the literary magazine Forum (1931-1935), which through its edi-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 93 tors Menno ter Braak and E. du Perron propagated a form of uncompromising honesty and was highly sceptical of all forms of collectivism. Paul only borrows Forum's jargon, however, as his actions increasingly entangle him in society. He is seen slipping towards a cosy middle-class lifestyle, encouraged by his girlfriend, who later becomes his fiancée and then his wife and who is expecting a child by the end of the novel. As his family name suggests (‘hoes’ = ‘cover’), Paul uses words to cover up what he is really like. We discover in retrospect that the real king (‘koning’ = ‘king’) of non-conformism is Maarten. On Closer Examination develops in strict chronological order and seems to be told from a purely objective standpoint: all characters are described from a distance in the third person. Their unspoken thoughts are not related. The friends are often shown in the middle of a discussion or at a party in some student's flat. Sometimes Voskuil shows a character preoccupied by ordinary everyday life in these passages. The reader sees that character's personality with such clarity that he or she feels almost like a voyeur. The loneliness of the alienated Henriette, for example, is nowhere more excruciatingly

J.J. Voskuil (1926-). Photo by Bert Nienhuis. depicted than in his bald description of her trip to the country on 30 December 1948: ‘You could barely make out the path. There were reeds growing in the water on one side. The wind was blowing through the willows on the other. It took a long time for her eyes to get so accustomed to the dark that she could see where the meadows began. She stumbled along the uneven path, stepping in the puddles. The wind was cold. She was shivering. Her coat flapped and slapped against her legs. She continued on mechanically. It started to rain again. She slipped in the mud and slid down off the path. A dog began to bark in a farmyard further up the lane.’ On Closer Examination's behaviourist narrative style is only seemingly neutral. From the very beginning, Maarten's protagonist, Paul, is presented to the reader as a poseur. He brags to his friends about his erotic adventures, but the reader knows better. He is so afraid of failing that he swallows two raw eggs in preparation before going to bed with a woman for the very first time. In 1963 On Closer Examination was well received by the Dutch critics, but it also came in for criticism. People objected to the false sense of objectivity Voskuil had instilled in the novel; nor were his detailed descriptions in keeping with popular taste.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The author himself refused to comment. He gave no interview, nor did he release any new work for publication. It was later discovered that he had written a sequel to On Closer Examination, titled Under the Skin (Binnen de huid), but hadn't dared publish it. As a result of this, and also because of the book's size and its relatively high price, Voskuil's first attempt was a financial disaster. The book had to be sold off at less than cost price. Nevertheless, On Closer Examination remained popular among a small circle of readers, this popularity growing along with increased popular interest in the years immediately following the Second World War. It was reprinted in 1985 - this time accompanied by interviews with the author in which he explains the essence of his novel. He characterised On Closer Examination as ‘an attempt at self-explanation’ which he had undertaken at a time when the illusions of his student days had become untenable. According to him the book expresses the idea that friendship is of no consequence. He wished to express this to his friends in a sort of parting letter.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 94

The reprint sold better than the first edition, partly because of the 6-part TV series based on the novel by the director Frans Weisz which was shown in 1990.

Threatened

If On Closer Examination deals with Maarten Koning's life between 1946 and 1953, The Bureau deals with the period 1957 to 1987, when he is working at the scholarly institute mentioned in the title, which conducts research on dialectology, folklore and onomastics. In order to secure a livelihood, Maarten only aims for a low ranking position but soon finds himself appointed the busy head of the Folklore Department. The institute grows at an enormous rate, as a result of which Maarten finds himself in charge of staff and has to make public appearances, delivering lectures and writing papers on such diverse items of Dutch folk culture as the flail and the wedding ring. He does not manage too badly, his self confidence strengthened by repeated approval, but it demands so much of his energy that it gives him headaches and stomach pains. He is lacking in the social graces and consequently finds it hard to combat the somewhat blunt manner of the Bureau's director, Balk. Maarten feels ‘threatened’ by the slightest thing; this word appears with striking regularity in the cycle of novels. In the books that have appeared till now, we find him having to make more and more concessions regarding the principles he had set himself as a student. This leads to violent confrontations with his wife Nicolien, who serves as his angry conscience. In The Bureau, Voskuil gives an account of his thirty years at the P.J. Meertens Institute (the real name of the Bureau) in Amsterdam. Again, what drives him to write is the loss of illusions, in this case the illusion that he had been part of a department that held solidarity in high esteem. After his retirement he was forced to re-examine this view - the result being his gigantic manuscript: The Bureau. After some hesitation, the publisher decided to include it among his titles, a decision he can look back on with pleasure since the volumes published so far have already sold tens of thousands of copies. The issues in The Bureau are again of a moral order, as immediately becomes apparent from the beginning in Part 1, Mr Beerta. According to Maarten Koning, an individual should lead an authentic life with a minimum amount of pretence, a life where there is only room for a few trustworthy people. He measures people according to these standards, as he does with Mr Beerta, his boss during the first few years of his job. Initially, Maarten has a good opinion of Mr Beerta. He considers him as someone who, like himself, believes in nothing. But he soon loses credit. Beerta turns out to be dishonest and cowardly; he abuses his position and finally, following a visit to the DDR, reveals himself to be a political nincompoop. Like Paul Dehoes in On Closer Examination, Beerta becomes a caricature with whom Maarten contrasts favourably, partly because of the slanted narrative in The Bureau. For we really only get to follow Maarten's comings and goings, and now we are also treated to an insight into his thoughts and feelings. The result is that it is he who engages the reader's sympathies, even when he does not respect his own principles and behaves badly. The reader can only judge Mr Beerta and the other

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 characters and their often unpleasant deeds through Maarten's eyes, their inner lives remaining hidden at all times.

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And Maarten continues to add more water to his wine as far as his principles are concerned. To his wife, Nicolien, who accepts no responsibility whatsoever and continually confronts him with his principles, he replies: ‘The only thing that remains of your principles is that you do the things but with aversion’. This quote is from Part 2, which bears the highly significant title of Dirty Hands. These are the words of someone who has given up. And yet, Maarten Koning is not a weak character. He commands the respect of his colleagues and does not allow himself to be pushed around, as is shown by the detailed description in Plankton of the problems involved in the periodical Ons Tijdschrift. This periodical for folk culture is a Flemish-Dutch initiative, but the influential professor Pieters, municipal secretary of the city of Antwerp, considers it as his own personal property, and often breaks agreements made with the Dutch members of the editorial board. This leads to a split, as actually happened in real life. The conflict derives in part from differences between Flanders and the Netherlands. There are disagreements as to which direction the magazine should take. Pieters wishes to reach as broad a readership as possible with a regionalist publication that has links with various folkways museums and associations. The Dutch members of the editorial board, led by Maarten Koning, strive to maintain a high level of academic precision and reject all forms of regionalism. This difference in policy is probably closely related to differences between Flanders and the Netherlands. Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, has been oppressed for centuries. This being so, it is understandable that they see the need to spread their own culture rather than provide the critical analysis of it that Maarten argues for; it is no coincidence that he represents a region that has been independent for centuries. Voskuil makes no attempt to deny the autobiographical background of his novel. On the contrary, in his interviews he shows how little esteem he has for fiction - an attitude he reinforces by changing with ease to the first person singular when referring to Maarten Koning. Critics have also pointed to and clarified the reality behind The Bureau. Some articles go into great detail, revealing which people served as models for Voskuil's characters. These people were then interviewed about their views on his account of things.

Fiction Beats Reality

The success of The Bureau has been strengthened by a cultural climate in which there is a great interest in biographical writing. Over the last ten years a number of biographies of prominent Dutch people have appeared, in a country that has had no real tradition in this field. The attention paid in the mass media to literature is also strongly biographical in tone. Like a soap opera, The Bureau offers its readers the opportunity to follow the lives of its characters over a number of years and has the extra attraction of being true to life. This notion of true-to-lifeness is strengthened by Voskuil's style. With almost obsessive precision, he gives us detailed descriptions of the comings and goings of his characters and in so doing never shies away from repetition. We are therefore

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 given repeated descriptions of how Maarten Koning begins his working day: ‘He went back to close the door, he opened the win-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 96 dow, hung up his coat and put the plastic bag in the bookcase... He removed the cover from the machine, moved his chair sideways, took the top letter from the pile that had to be answered and placed it beside him.’ The syntax is regular and the words sober: his use of adjectives is strictly functional and metaphors - absent in the above quotation - are few and far between. Voskuil excels in rendering dialogue, such as Maarten's tedious discussions with his colleagues or the arguments with his wife. This interest in reality found in The Bureau has led to some remarkable scenes. When the P.J. Meertens Institute planned to leave its beautiful premises beside a canal in Amsterdam, people were offered the opportunity to visit the place where The Bureau had happened. Crowds stormed the building. And scenes from The Bureau were played in the original setting in order to make this autobiographical fiction even more true to life. And that was not all. In the summer of 1997, news reached the papers of a conflict at the P.J. Meertens Institute, the problem being one of reorganisation. That reality and fiction had become further intertwined was proven by the fact that one of the parties to the dispute had borrowed his arguments from Voskuil's novel. Nor did the writer himself remain aloof. During the same period Dutch farmers were suffering losses due to swine fever, which provoked a public debate on agribusiness in which Voskuil became heavily involved. Totally in keeping with Maarten Koning, who has always been concerned about the welfare of animals, he used his fame to launch a campaign designed to improve the living conditions of pigs which he called Pigs in Danger (Varkens in nood). During the celebration at which the Libris Prize is presented, he took the opportunity to address a politician present on the needs of Dutch pigs. He donated a part of the prize money to his campaign. So J.J. Voskuil, a writer at his own expense with a small circle of readers, has grown to become a writer read by tens of thousands and even a public phenomenon. Perhaps he has found the social acceptance for which Maarten Koning has searched in vain.

G.F.H. RAAT Translated by Peter Flynn.

Extracts from The Office by J.J. Voskuil

‘I've been invited to a conference,’ he told her after they'd sat down to eat. ‘Again?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean - again?’ Her reaction irritated him. ‘I hardly ever get invited to conferences.’ ‘But you've just been to one!’ She sounded indignant. ‘All you ever do these days is go to conferences! You're just like Beerta.’ He forced himself to stay calm. ‘That was three years ago.’ ‘Two years!’

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 ‘Three years!’ ‘Two years!’ ‘Anyway that has nothing to do with it. This is a completely different sort of conference.’

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‘What sort of conference is it then?’ ‘This is a celebratory conference.’ ‘A celebratory conference?’ Her voice was shrill with indignation. ‘But surely you don't have to go? What is it anyway, a celebratory conference?’ ‘The Belgian Commission is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary.’ ‘And you have to go to that? Surely that's got nothing to do with you? Don't tell me you take such nonsense seriously! When your office celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary you didn't give a celebratory conference, did you?’ ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Well then! Why on earth should you go to theirs now? Let someone else go! Some idiot who actually enjoys such nonsense.’ ‘I'll think about it.’ ‘You'll think about it?’ She had stopped eating and was now looking at him furiously. ‘Why do you have to think about it, for God's sake?’ He lowered his eyes to avoid her furious gaze and painstakingly tried to cut a bite of meat. ‘In the first place because Beerta thinks I should go, and in the second place because I can't think of any reason not to.’ ‘No reason?’ She clenched her fist next to her plate and leaned forwards as though she was going to fly at him. ‘If I don't go, I'll never know whether it's because I think it's nonsense or because I'm afraid,’ he said, doing his utmost to control himself. ‘So you have to give it a try first? You have to go to it before you can decide whether or not it's nonsense? It's not enough if I tell you it is?’ ‘If I refuse to go I want to know why,’ he said, sitting up straight and looking at her angrily. ‘If I refuse to go because I'm scared, then I'll just get more and more scared! If I refuse because it's nonsense, then it's nonsense!’ She was shocked into silence for a second but recovered at once. ‘And if I tell you that it's nonsense?’ ‘That's not enough.’ ‘Not enough?’ Her voice rose again in anger. ‘No, that's not enough,’ he repeated, infuriated. ‘And I'm the one who decides whether or not it's enough! It's my job, not yours!’ She was silent for a moment. ‘When is this conference?’ she asked. ‘At the beginning of September,’ he said diffidently. ‘Then you can't go. That's when we're going on holiday.’ ‘We can go on holiday afterwards.’ ‘You don't mean you're going to put off your holiday for a lousy conference?’ He didn't answer, turning his attention instead to his food. ‘Answer me,’ she said threateningly. ‘You're not going to put off your holiday for a lousy conference, are you?’ ‘I won't have to put it off,’ he said, controlling his temper. ‘The conference finishes on the fourteenth, so we can leave on the fourteenth!’ ‘Leave on the fourteenth? How can you possibly leave on the fourteenth if the conference doesn't finish till the fourteenth?’ ‘Because the conference is in Brussels.’

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 ‘And what about me? You expect me to bring our rucksacks to Brussels by myself? I wouldn't dream of it! How could you think such a thing?’ He stared tensely at the plate in front of him. ‘I was going to suggest that you come along to the conference.’

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‘Me?’ she said indignantly. ‘You think I should go to that conference? I wouldn't dream of it. Imagine me taking part in such nonsense!’ ‘You're invited too.’ ‘Me, invited?’ She laughed. ‘Well, then they don't know me yet, do they? Just imagine! Tagging along as the wife of that scholar chap, I suppose? And having to talk to all those jerks! You didn't really think I'd go, did you? You didn't really think I'd do it? You know me by now, don't you?’ ‘Yes, I know you,’ he said with forced restraint. ‘Well!’ she said angrily. ‘Don't say such idiotic things then!’

From Mr Beerta (Meneer Beerta. Het Bureau I. Amsterdam: Van Oorschot, 1996, pp. 478-480)

‘You weren't here yesterday afternoon,’ said Balk, coming into the room. ‘No, I was at the library,’ said Maarten by way of apology. He was immediately annoyed with himself for having said it, but it had slipped out before he could think. ‘One of the applicants was a man you'd really get along with,’ he continued, paying no attention to what Maarten had said, ‘a good bloke. I wanted to send him along to you. I told him to come back tomorrow. Will you be here tomorrow?’ ‘Yes, but I don't have an opening for him.’ ‘That doesn't matter. If you can use him, then there's an opening for him! You're the only one here who doesn't have a documentalist, and this chap is exactly what you need. Wait a minute, I'll get you his letter.’ He walked resolutely out of the room. Maarten looked out at the garden, but without seeing anything. He felt threatened by Balk's proposal, which had caught him off guard, especially because he couldn't think of any reason to argue. He thought it unlikely that Balk would be able to choose someone he could get along with, but he saw that he wouldn't be able to convince Balk of this without starting an argument, and he was afraid of arguments. This insight made him instantly unhappy. Again the door opened. Balk marched in and put the letter down in front of him with a forceful gesture. ‘Here you are. Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. The man lives in Rozenburg, but he says that's not a problem. After you've seen him, bring him to me and we can discuss the practical details.’ He turned around and was out of the room before Maarten could answer. Maarten read the letter with reluctance. The man's name was Jan Boerakker, twenty-nine years old, living in Rozenburg and doing administrative work at a Shell laboratory. He possessed a Librarianship Diploma C, a wife, and two children, and wanted to apply for the job of librarian. The letter was written in a child-like, spidery scrawl which Maarten found off-putting. Depressed, he got up, took the letter, and walked through the second office to the back room. His entire staff was there: Heidi Bruul, whose name was now Heidi Muller, the Misses Schot-van Heusden and Boomsma-Varkevisser, who had taken the places of Kees Stoutjesdijk and Ad Muller as his student-assistants, and Bart. He greeted Heidi and Bart by their Christian names and the other two by their surnames and sat down across from Bart on the other side of his desk. ‘An applicant's coming round tomorrow,’ he pushed the letter over the desk towards Bart. Bart read the letter, his eyebrows raised in surprise, with the paper close to

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 99 his glasses, because even with glasses he had difficulty reading. ‘Surely this to replace De Gruiter?’ he said, looking up. ‘No, he's coming to us. It's Balk's idea.’ ‘I should like to have been told about this beforehand.’ ‘Me too, but Balk made the decision, he thinks this man would suit us.’ ‘But we don't have an opening, do we?’ ‘He's made one for us.’ ‘That's very nice of Mr Balk, but I really don't think I would have accepted it.’ ‘I can't think of any reason not to. Shall we see him together?’ ‘I'll have to think about it first,’ said Bart, put out. An hour later he came to say that he didn't want to be present at the interview because he didn't want to share the responsibility for a decision he hadn't been told about first.

From Dirty Hands (Vuile Handen. Het Bureau II. Amsterdam: Van Oorschot, 1996, pp. 17-19)

It was quiet by the canal. A Sunday morning, early. They walked slowly under the trees in the direction of Brouwersgracht. The wind rustled for a moment in the leaves above their heads and then died down again. Their feet ambled over the cobblestones. Grass was growing here and there between the stones at the edge of the water. Where cars had been parked there were dark oily spots. He looked up at the white cornices gleaming in the sunshine. A couple of doves were sitting up there on one of the ledges. They rounded the corner and walked down Brouwersgracht. A man with a little dog was walking towards them. He waited by a tree while his dog lifted its leg. The dog kicked up the earth with its hind paws, then, when the man started walking again, quickly ran after him. On the bridge over Prinsengracht they lingered for a while, looking at the houseboats, which were reflected in the placid water, so motionless that there was almost no difference between the boat above and the boat below. They descended from the bridge to the North Church and sat down on one of the benches. He took the newspaper he'd been carrying and opened it halfway, gave the supplement to Nicolien, and put his half of the paper on his lap, though he didn't read it. He stared drowsily ahead, his eyes half closed against the sunlight. A couple of churchgoers walked past. He followed them with his eyes while they crossed the square and disappeared around the corner. Coming from the other direction was a man with a beard, a child, a dog, and a pregnant wife. They sat down on another bench. The man got up again, took the child over to the slide, lifted him up and let him slide down. After repeating this a couple of times, he brought the child back, took a plastic bag, and went over to the sandbox. While he collected all the rubbish from the sandbox, putting it in the plastic bag, his dog jumped in and began digging a hole enthusiastically. The child was put in the hole and the man and woman watched from the bench as he swung a little shovel around. In the church the organ had started to play. The muted sounds filtered through to the square and evaporated in the silence. The congregation started to sing: Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide; When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me. He listened, moved. When the hymn was over he needed a minute to get his emotions under control.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 ‘Shall we move on then?’ he asked, sounding a bit choked up.

From The A.P. Beerta Institute (Het A.P. Beerta Instituut. Het Bureau IV. Amsterdam: Van Oorschot, 1998, pp. 161-162)

All extracts translated by Diane L. Webb.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 100

Guido Gezelle, a Limpid Singer

Guido Gezelle (1830-1899).

The Flemish poet Guido Gezelle was born in Bruges on 1 May 1830 and died there on 27 November 1899. His mother was a pious, melancholy woman, his father a silver-tongued and cheerful gardener; and it is evident from his poetry that both parents had a powerful influence on his character. In 1854, having completed his studies for the priesthood, Gezelle was appointed to the seminary at Roeselare, where he showed himself an inspiring teacher who greatly influenced a number of his students. Religion, nature and love for his native tongue and people became the principal themes of his poetry. In 1860 he returned to Bruges, the city of his birth, first as a lecturer at the English seminary1. and later as a curate. In 1872 he became a curate in Kortrijk (Courtrai), a post he held until 1889 when he was appointed director of a community of nuns in the same city. From 1893 he lived there in retirement, at liberty to devote himself to his own work. Soon after returning to Bruges in 1899 he died. As well as writing poetry Gezelle was also very active as a philologist and folklorist, a journalist, an editor of periodicals and as a translator, of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha among other things. He was a child of his strict Catholic environment and of the traditional Flanders of the time. As a priest he had a strong missionary bent, being very much concerned with the spiritual welfare of his fellow-men. Through his work and his conduct he played an inspirational role in the romantic awakening of linguistic and cultural consciousness in Flanders. Although Gezelle's poetry is predominantly religious in inspiration, in his best poems he never preaches. Here he is always the brilliant word-artist, whose poetry has lost nothing of its originality even after more than a century. No other poet has made the Dutch language to sing in so unparallelled a way.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 What is marvellous about the poet Gezelle is his gift of wonder. Childlike and naïf, he lives surrounded by nature. He has no explanation for all the wonders that strike his eye and ear; but throughout his life they spur him to praise of the Creator. Gezelle's delight is always unbridled and extravagant. And even when he is overcome by loneliness and sadness his language re-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 101 mains just as musical. His poetry is inspired by a romantic feeling for life, but clarity and simplicity are its most essential hallmarks. As a poet, Gezelle is as much a seeker as a finder. Whatever he touches with his words rediscovers the purity of the first day. This makes him unique. It also explains why those who sought to imitate him always fell short of him. In his poetry Gezelle created a language all his own. And that is a gift only great artists have.

JOZEF DELEU Translated by Tanis Guest.

Translations

The Evening and the Rose. 30 Poems translated from the Flemish by Paul Claes and Christine D'haen. Antwerp, 1989. A new volume with translations, compiled by Paul Vincent, is in preparation.

Nine Poems by Guido Gezelle

The Evening and the Rose

I've many many an hour with you been sharing and enjoying, and never has an hour with you one moment been annoying. I've many many a flower for you been picking out and plucking, and, like a bee, with you, with you the honey from it sucking; but never an hour so dear with you, so short enduring ever, but never an hour so sad with you, when you and I must sever, as the hour when so near to you, that evening, with you seated, I heard you speak and spoke to you what our souls repeated. Nor was a flower so sweet by you discovered, culled, elected, as which that evening shone on you, and to me was affected! Although, for me as well as you, - who will this harm be curing? - an hour with me, an hour with you may not be long enduring; although for me, although for you, however bright and blowing, that rose, be it a rose from you, not long its prime was showing;

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 still long will guard, I vow to you, unless it all forgoes, my heart three dearest pledges: YOU, THE EVENING - and - THE ROSE!

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 102

O Rustling of the Slender Reed

Παρ ροδανν δονακα Hom. II. XVIII, 576

O! rustling of the slender reed! o if I knew your song of need! whenever wind along you walks and brushing them bows down your stalks, you bow all meekly dipping, then stand up and meekly bow again, and bowing sing the song of need beloved by me, o slender reed!

O! rustling of the slender reed! how oft how oft did I recede here by the quiet waterside, alone and by no man espied, and watched the rippling water flow, and saw your limber stemlets go, and listened to the song so sweet you sang to me, o rustling reed!

O! rustling of the slender reed! how many people past you speed and hear the music of your song but listen not and go along! along to where the heart will haste, along where tinkling gold betrays; but of your sound they take no heed, o my beloved rustling reed!

And yet, o rustling slender reed, your voice is not so poor indeed! God made the stream, God made your stem, God ordered: ‘Blow...’ and breeze began to blow, a breeze that wafted round your stem, which struggled up and down! God listened... and your song of need delighted God, o rustling reed!

O no, my slender rustling reed, my soul will not your talk impede; my soul of God himself received affections such as He conceived, affections which your rustling know whenever up and down you go: o no, o no, my slender reed, my soul will not your talk impede!

O! rustling of the slender reed, resounding in my song of need, may it complain before Thy foot, Thou in whom both our lives take root! o Thou, who even this poor talk dost love of but a reedy stalk,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 do not, I beg, my plaint impede: me! feeble, pining, plaintive reed! Mother

I am of thee belowward, be it pencilled or depainted, not, mother dear, with likeness recalling thee acquainted.

No portraiture, no photoprint, no statuary in stone, unless it be that likeness left by thee, in me alone.

o Might I, thee unworthy, ne'er that likeness be belying, but honoured be it living in me, honoured in me dying.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 103

There Fell a Leaflet (In Recollection of Beethoven's Septet)

There fell a leaflet once upon the water There lay a leaflet once upon the water And flow upon the leaflet did that water And flow the leaflet did upon the water And welter-wallow-welter in the water Because the leaflet had become like water As flexile and as fluid as the water As pliant and as pleasant as the water As quick it was and speedy as the water As rumpling and as rippling as the water Thus lay the fallen leaflet on the water And one might say the leaflet and the water Were not a leaflet one and to- ther water But water was leaflet and leaflet water And once a leaflet fell upon the water As water ran the leaflet ran, as water Stood still the leaflet stood there on the water When water rose the leaflet rose and water Did not descend 'less leaflet did and water Did nothing 'less the leaflet did in water. Thus fell a leaflet once upon the water And blue it was in heaven and in water And blue and bright and green would blink the water And leaflet laughed and laughing was that water But leaflet was no leaflet no and water Was no more than the leaflet then no water

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 My soul was but that leaflet: and that water The sounding of two harps appeared that water And blinking in the blue and in that water Thus lay I in the Heaven of that water The blue and blissful Heaven of that water And once a leaflet fell upon the water And once a leaflet lay upon the water

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 104

I Hear You not yet

I hear you not yet, o nightingale, and the easter-sun is at dawn; where stay you so long, or have you perhaps your solace from us withdrawn?

No summering, true, no sprouting, and from the hedges no leaflet is growing; there is ice in the wind, there is snow in the sky, there is storming around and blowing.

Yet loud all about it finches and sprews; the blackbird too laughs and tattles; it swifts and it tits, it cuckoos in woods, it sparrows and flaps and prattles.

Where stays he so long, the nightingale, with his solace from us withdrawn? No summering yet, but summer it will: the Easter-sun is at dawn. The Evening Comes so Still, so Still

The evening comes so still, so still, so tardily treads near, that no one knows just when the day nor where it went from here. 'T is evening, still... surrounding me is something, one, invisibly, that touches me with whispering, light: 'T is evening and to rest is right.'

The trees bear up the whole wide sky with undefiled green; I can, so thick their foliage stands, scarce through the gardens see; and none I hear, all roundabout, of the sweet-throated feathered crowd, but, in the leaves below and dim,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 the nightingale's nocturnal hymn.

He sings! Ah, if he knew his song, how beautiful! He does not note that singing he enthrals my ears and chains me to his throat. Ah, if he knew what I know well: that thankfully I know and tell who gave his voice to him, and me its pleasure and felicity!

What lovely lay! What do I hear asudden, yonder gabble? What withering and thithering of gibberish and babble? Oh, frog-folk in the waterweed, be still! Give to the silence heed: may I that luscious warble hear... and you, tormentors, forth from here!

Take that!... A splash about the stone, and, with a stretchèd shin, the frog-folk deeply dip the froth, the stagnant froth within!... Alas, now night and shadiness my lovely singer will possess: no nightingale, no row nor sough, is to be heard... 't is over now!

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 105 o Splendour Wild and Undefiled

Of all creatures cause and primalty Ruysbroeck, Marriage o Splendour wild and undefiled of flowers by the waterside!

How glad I see you, well-arrayed in water stand, as God you made!

Born harmless, guileless up you rose, there on the spot that God once chose, there standing, in the sunshine: see all that you do is flower be!

'T is being that my eyes beheld, 't is truth, and never double dealt; and who through you delights my soul, alike to you, is one and whole!

How silent is it! There's no herb astirring that could us disturb; no wrinkle on the lovely face of water, full of flowery grace; no wind, no word: around outspread, all shadowy, all silencèd!

There, deep, deep in the water bent blues the green-dappled firmament; and, piercing here and there is spun a long-drawn filament of sun.

What honour, frailty, chastity may in one single flower be, which, suddenly, and free of doubts from its Creator's finger sprouts!

By Him, and by no human deed, was planted here the humble seed; through Him alone, and instantly, it opened and rejoicèd me, by teaching prayers unto me, and being such as I should be: beholding and believing in all ultimate the origin,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 the ground of all; still more I see and yet not all: God's primalty!

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Where Sits that Limpid Singer

Where sits that limpid singer I can hear but seldom may descry, in leaves forlorn, on this blithe Mayday-morn?

He hushes dumb the fowls around, by wondrous wealth of vocal sound, his jug-jug lashes the forests and the hedges.

Where sits he? I do not perceive but hear him, hear him, hear him weave his gay refrains: they are chattering in the lanes.

Thus sit and sing the worker may, before the loom, at peep of day, from woof to shape longlasting linen drape.

The weaver sings, his tissue tunes; the batten clatters, the frame booms; and swiftly tread the spools along the thread.

Thus sits there, in mild summer air, one warping on the weaver's chair of green, and sheds his thousand-coloured threads.

What is he: human, beast or what? All sweetness, 't is a censer that by Seraph hands its frankincense expands.

What is he? 'T is a carillon-trill, with teeth so sharp, with strings so shrill, with mouths so bold, all made of speaking gold.

He is... where I may never come, a spark of fire, a gospel from a higher home than where we humans roam.

Hark! Slow with loud and lovely voice, how deep he delves for life and joy, as from the ground of ample organ sound!

Now pipes he fine, now calls he shrill; and sap of song seeps from his bill, like water-bubbles that from the rooftiles tumble.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Now, counted, his tales tap and thrill, as were it on a marble sill, where pearls in strings, dropped from their garlands, spring.

No birds but know their melody, their compass and delivery in perfect way to paint through vocal play.

It grieves me not, though old in days, he bears the prize of song away, and, bird of glory, bereaves me of my laurel!

For man has never known you well, nor rightly spoken out your spell, o wondrous tale of sovereign Nightingale!

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Ego Flos... Cant. 2:1

I am a flower and bloom before your eyes, prodigious light of sun, which, ever unimpaired, me, puny creature, will here daily vitalise and me, beyond this life, life everlasting spared.

I am a flower, at dawn I will disclose at dusk reclose my leaf, and alternating, then, as you, o sun-fire, may new-risen, me dispose, I wake or will entrust my head to sleep again.

My life is but your light: my task, my trying, my hope, my happiness, my only and my all; what am I without you but ever, ever dying; what have I without you that will my love enthral?

I am far from you, although you, precious spring of all that living is or ever life conveys, are nearest me of all and, o dear sun, will sting into my deepest depth with all-pervading blaze.

Lift up, let down!... untie my earthly bounds; uproot me and undig me...! Loose me... let me go where summer ever is and light of sun abounds, where you, eternal, sole and perfect flower blow. Let all things be behind, performed, fordone that distance between us and deepest scissures spanned; let dawn and dusk, and all that must depart, be gone, and show your endless light me in my Father's land!

All poems translated by Paul Claes and Christine D'haen.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The translators wish to thank Tanis Guest for valuable advice.

Eindnoten:

1. See The Low Countries 1993-94: pp. 137-143

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Saintly and Generous Saint Nicholas and the Low Countries

‘It was the fifth of December and from early in the morning there was an air of secret bustle, of smiling whispers, of anxious stashing-away from sudden irruptions, at the home of the Van Erlevoorts.’ Thus begins a chapter in Louis Couperus' well-known novel Eline Vere, written in 1888, more than 100 years ago. There's no doubt about it: these are preparations for a Saint Nicholas party; this is a time for hasty handiwork. Each and every family member has ensconced himself in his own room, only to make his appearance later on in the day bearing a surprise package.

Saint Nicholas and his Servant (Illustration from Jan Schenkman's book with the same title, c. 1860).

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The party began early in the evening with all the traditional customs. First was the arrival of the saintly gentleman himself, properly attired as a Catholic bishop and accompanied by his black servant. A variety of tasty sweets and titbits were then scattered about. His departure was followed by several rings of the bell, at which mysterious parcels were brought forth and ‘the deluge of gifts and surprise packages began’, as Couperus describes it. The torrent continued until the drawing room was a scene of unremitting chaos, full of ‘paper, straw, bits of bran and potato peelings’. In the midst of it all sat the children - and the adults - beside their small tables laden with gifts. The feast of Saint Nicholas (more popularly known as ‘Sinterklaas’) was originally a feast for children. That's how it began during the Middle Ages, and that's how it is still regarded in Flanders. In the Netherlands, however, the adults have joined the party; and that wasn't always easy. Giving someone a good dressing-down is a far simpler matter than having the same thing done to you. This sentiment was nicely expressed by P.A. de Genestet in his long poem ‘The Eve of Saint Nicholas’ (‘De Sint-Nicolaasavond’, 1849): ‘the fatherly brow was darkened by cloud, at being treated just like the younger crowd; he thought it was all quite horrid and childish...’

The personal touch

From scraps of wrapping paper, wads of newspaper, bits of string, and adhesive tape sticking to everything, to crumbs of trampled gingerbread and abandoned glasses and cups - what's left after the ‘delightful evening’ is chaos. The feast of Saint Nicholas is a feast of gifts, to be sure, but the main focus is really elsewhere. Saint Nicholas is all about the act of giving itself, trying to surprise people, personal innuendoes, the extra joke, the accompanying poem. It's true that it all ends with the gift, but that's just a bonus. It's not even unusual for limits to be set beforehand on the amount that can be spent - a peculiar notion that many a foreign visitor has learned about the hard way. Invitations to join these typical Saint Nicholas evenings always come with instructions. It is explained to him that an ordinary giftwrapped present simply won't do. The point is to bring a so-called ‘surprise’. The jeweller's ribbon or the shiny paper from the perfumery, he is warned, is a testimonium paupertatis. To show up with such an item would immediately render him an outcast. But no matter how hard he tries, the newcomer will gradually learn to his bewilderment that there's something not quite right with his contribution: too small, too little packing material, too little fuss and bother on the outside. And indeed it is difficult to understand why a ball of string with a little trinket inside can make a splendid Saint Nicholas gift. Anyone who hasn't grown up with the tradition, who as a child hasn't messed about with glue, slogged away with the most unlikely packing material, who has never tried to coerce a cardboard box to take the shape of a mitre or, even worse, made nasty poultices of plaster or syrup: for as long as he lives he will have a rough time with what is known as ‘gift night’. It's highly doubtful if his gift will ever amount to a surprise.

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Gerard David, The Legend of the Three Poor Girls. Early 16th century. Panel, 55.9 × 33.7 cm. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children

During the Middle Ages, saints were indispensable helpers in daily life. Diseases were conquered through the intercession of the saints; harvests succeeded, ships were guarded from shipwreck and lost articles were recovered through their mediation. School children too were given their own patron: Saint Nicholas. Countless legends have been told over the centuries concerning blessed Nicholas, the third-century bishop of Myra in faraway Asia Minor. Many of these legends have to do with his actions on behalf of children. One of the best known is the medieval story of the three boys in the barrel of brine. On the way home from school the boys had sought shelter in an inn. The innkeeper, however, proved far from trustworthy. During the night he and his wife cut the poor boys up in pieces and pickled them in a barrel, with the intention of presenting his next guests with a superb meal. The first new visitor, of course, was none other than Saint Nicholas, who quickly realised that everything was not quite as it should be. He brought the young fellows back to life and, not least important, set the innkeeper and his wife back on the straight and narrow. An even better story perhaps is the legend of the three poor girls. In the village of Patara, near Myra, there lived an impoverished nobleman with three daughters. They were his only possession, and he had no money to offer for their dowries. No dowry, of course, meant no suitors, but the poor man didn't even have the money to support the daughters themselves. It was a bleak situation that appeared to have but one way out: prostitution. Nicholas, then a young priest, heard of their wretched plight and decided to help them. He waited until dark and by the light of the moon threw some money through their window. A few nights later, when everyone was asleep, Nicholas repeated his secret action. When the third night came the father quickly arrived on the scene. He managed to grab the generous giver by the collar, wanting to thank him. Keep it secret, Nicholas implored; no one has to know. It must remain a surprise.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 A careful reading of this story easily reveals a number of elements from the Nicholas celebration: the secret approach in the dead of night, giving by stealth, the scattering of gifts. Since the girls were asleep, it's reasonable to assume that the money landed right in their shoes, neatly lined up beside their beds. And the gingerbread men, the spicy suitors, that are gobbled down in such great quantities around December 5, are direct offshoots of this ancient story.

A saint of the Reformation

During the seventeenth century in the northern Netherlands, gingerbread men functioned as heralds of real suitors. Any girl who found a gingerbread man at her door on December 5 would know that somewhere out there a living heart was beating just for her. Because the tradition required (and still requires) that Saint Nicholas surprises be signed by no one but Saint Nicholas himself, it often took some doing to discover the secret admirer's identity.

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Gingerbread men, Saint Nicholas songs, poems, special markets, fathers risking their necks by climbing onto snow-covered roofs with a horseshoe in hand to make mock imprints of the Saint's horse: the seventeenth century teemed with references to the Saint Nicholas celebration. The paintings of Jan Steen bear witness to extravagant domestic pleasure. But it's really nothing short of miraculous that the feast was celebrated in the northern Netherlands at all. The Reformation had imposed severe restraints on the veneration of the saints. The Protestants, with government support, tried with all their might to eliminate the popish Nicholas feast from the calendar. Fines were imposed for the setting of shoes or for appearing in public with Saint Nicholas gifts. Bakers were strictly forbidden from producing Saint Nicholas figures. But the intended effect failed to materialise. On the contrary, the feast not only managed to survive (albeit with the suppression of activities on the public roads), but it developed in the Protestant Netherlands to enormous proportions. And herein may lie the seed of difference from the way the feast is celebrated in the still-Catholic south: the conscious choice on the part of adults to carry on with the feast naturally led to an increase in their own personal involvement.

Jan Steen, The Feast of Saint Nicholas. c. 1665-1668. Canvas, 82 × 70.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 112

Versified didactics

Saint Nicholas poems are a good example of that adult participation. The exact source of the custom is not known, but the fact is that it exists, and in a Saint Nicholas poem people are allowed to confront each other with the truth. Since a good Saint Nicholas poem has no regard for the number of playful digs it contains, Saint Nicholas provides the Dutchman with a happy outlet for his deep-seated moralism. And the poem's guaranteed anonymity makes it that much easier. That's just how it was in the seventeenth century. The poet Mattheus Tengnagel eagerly stepped into the shoes of the saintly gentleman to take a few swipes at his fellow townsmen. From his post atop the chimney, he wrote in 1640, he could carefully observe the functioning (and nonfunctioning) of Amsterdam's bigwigs: ‘So now, good friends, / Be on your best behaviour, / And take these admonitions to heart...’ This is Saint Nicholas at his best. The didactic principle can be traced to the monastery schools where the feast had its origins. Those who do their best will be rewarded - a tenet that still applies. At the very least there should be promises of improvement, which isn't a matter for children alone by any means.

Invented traditions

Good traditions are living traditions, and they're constantly giving rise to new features. In the mid-nineteenth century a little Saint Nicholas book appeared that hit the market like a bombshell. The book was full of new details, and it seemed to be just what everyone was waiting for. In the wink of an eye, the familiar arsenal of rituals underwent a massive expansion. Saint Nicholas continued with his clandestine filling of shoes during the night, but now he spent the day making calls in full regalia at homes and schools. His mode of transportation became a boat. He had an exotic black servant at his disposal who dealt with miscreants by stuffing them into a sack. There it was in black and white in Saint Nicholas and his Servant (Sint Nicolaas en zijn knecht), so it had to be true.1 The book's opening poem, ‘There Comes the Steamboat’ (‘Zie ginds komt de stoomboot’), was an immediate smash hit. From now on it was an unquestionable fact that Saint Nicholas came from Spain - ‘There comes the steamboat from Spain once again’ - although there was no such indication in his biography. The historical details concerning the good Saint are few and far between, but one thing is certain: Bishop Nicholas lived and died in Asia Minor. These developments were eagerly welcomed in both Flanders and the Netherlands. They gave an air of refinement to the feast, and the rituals thereby settled into a concrete pattern. But all in all, the feast as it is celebrated in Flanders is still strictly for children. Surprises and poems are less in evidence. Actually, in the southern Low Countries the Saint is not the only generous holy man.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 113

The same but different: another saint in Flanders

Martin, a fourth-century officer in the Roman legions, ended up as bishop of the French city of Tours. But it was at the city gate of Amiens that the incident occurred that would assure his fame and his sanctity: he cut his cloak in two and gave half to a shivering beggar. The saint, who is celebrated on the day of his death, November 11, lent his name to many churches and schools in the Low Countries. The weather vane on Utrecht's cathedral spire, for instance, isn't a cock; it's Saint Martin astride his horse. And the church is named after him as well. His feast is still celebrated in certain Low Countries enclaves (such as Dutch Limburg, the region around Aalst in East Flanders and Ypres in West Flanders). Understandably, the celebration has always been connected with the cycle of the seasons. The agricultural work was finished, the harvest was in, the pigs were slaughtered. The poor got whatever fell from the table. During the evening a great fire was built, the Saint Martin Fire. This still takes place in the Limburg countryside, where the people gather outside the villages and make a communal bonfire of their garden refuse. The generosity of Saint Martin, which granted warmth and light to people in need, is linked here with a ritual exorcism of winter's approaching darkness and cold. By coming together in solidarity, the people help each other get through the winter. In the villages of Dutch Limburg, children go from house to house with lanterns or hollowed-out beets with candles burning inside. They ring doorbells and sing songs in order to get sweets or fruit.

Saint Martin, as depicted in the Book of Hours of Albert of Brandenburg (Bruges, c. 1522).

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 114

Gradually the Saint's generosity became limited to children, and the feast was contaminated by the celebration of Sinterklaas on December 6 according to the ‘if you can't beat 'em, join 'em’ principle. In a few places, Saint Martin became the Sinterklaas whose day is celebrated on November 11 instead of December 6. Children are told that he's Sinterklaas' brother, and indeed the one saint has become the spitting image of the other. As a fellow bishop, Saint Martin appears on horseback bearing a crosier and wearing a mitre and mantle (whole and untorn for the occasion). In Dutch Limburg you sometimes see him without the long white beard, but in Flanders the syncretism is fairly complete. So the ingredients for both Saints are the same: Black Pete, whom parents can use to threaten their offspring and keep them in line, the fear of the Saint's big book which ‘will be brought forth and in which is contained everything that is’ (the Liber scriptus proferetur in quo totum continetur from the Dies Irae), the letter in which one humbly petitions the Saint for pardon and gifts and which is solemnly deposited in a post-box set up on the marketplace especially for this purpose before the evening rituals begin - setting out one's shoes and placing in them a carrot and a turnip (for the horse), and perhaps a bottle of beer for the hard-working servant, Pete. And then early to bed, because the miracle can only happen if you're asleep. The Saint rides over the snow-covered roof and instructs his Pete to dump all the sweets and toys down the chimney.

The Saint versus Santa

In 1992 and 1993, the Flemish public broadcasting company produced Hello, Saint Nicholas (Dag Sinterklaas), a complete serial about Sinterklaas whose ten episodes have been re-broadcast every year since. The aim of scenarist Hugo Matthysen was to present a Sinterklaas people could really believe in. The show featured just the right mix of humour and respect, with an exemplary Saint Nicholas played in all solemnity, wisdom and austerity by actor Jan Decleir, and with a non-politically-correct but likeable Black Pete as the mischievous sidekick. In short, it managed to convey the magic of an old Catholic-pagan mythology that's quite indestructible, at least if people are willing to play along for a little while and return to childhood once again - even if central heating has replaced the chimney, if the saints have been done away with, and if our black neighbours no longer inspire xenophobia. Each episode goes about answering a different question: does the Saint have to buy all the presents himself? How do you write him a letter? Is Black Pete naturally black, or is it for some other reason? Does the Saint ever fall in love? Whether the answers are true or not is anybody's guess; the most important thing is that they are convincing. Because, it has to be admitted, sometimes television really can bring back the magic. It was in the Middle Ages that Saint Nicholas filled the first little shoes, and for centuries since children have been singing their songs in expectation of his nocturnal visit. But whether they'll continue singing with just as much enthusiasm is a very big question. Saint Nicholas has acquired a competitor who is also dressed in red,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 who also makes his entrance in December, but who doesn't make nearly as many demands: ‘de kerstman’ (the ‘Christmas Man’).

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Scene from the Flemish TV series Hello, Saint Nicholas (Dag Sinterklaas, 1992-1993). Photo VRT.

For lovers of the Sinterklaas tradition he comes as a thorn in the flesh. They see him as a good-for-nothing who's using his idiotic joviality to take over the role of gift-giver. The fact that the kerstman is clearly nothing but a product of commercialism doesn't make it any easier. That his roots are in America is undoubtedly another strike against him. There he's known as Santa Claus, and under that name he's actually quite familiar in the Low Countries. His name contains a clue to his background. During the nineteenth century, in certain New York circles, awareness of the ethnic past of the country's various population groups began to grow. An attempt was made to breathe new life into the faded memory of Saint Nicholas, who had made the crossing to America along with the early colonists. Many authentic details had been forgotten, and the influence of the English Father Christmas had already had its impact. The result was a mishmash in which the name, at any rate, remained recognisable. But when he finally returned to the Old Country he was wearing boots and sitting in a horse-drawn sleigh. The pedagogical principle had been thoroughly done away with. The kerstman is just plain fun - fun and laziness.

Cartoon by Emiel de Bolle.

Are we supposed to take this lying down? Shouldn't we protest the arrival of this kerstman? Or is his appearance just another chapter in the development of a thoroughly interesting tradition? For children the choice isn't all that difficult. The more presents the better, and as far as the strange transformation is concerned they couldn't care less. For the adults the matter is somewhat more complicated. They're the ones mainly responsible for organising the festivities. Life is much easier when all you have to do is buy a fancy gift-wrapped present. No more bother about coming up with a surprise, no more last-minute composing of poems while everyone sits and waits around the basket of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 gifts. And yet, whether this can be called a gain in the long run is by no means obvious.

EUGENIE BOER Translated by Nancy Forest-Flier.

Eindnoten:

1 This book became known by the name of its author Jan Schenkman, a retired Amsterdam teacher. But it is uncertain whether he was responsible for the first edition.

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The Painter of Silence Dirk Bouts Revisited

Art-lovers who visit Flanders now have a new five-star attraction: the gothic Church of St Peter in Leuven, where The Last Supper painted by Dirk Bouts hangs. Both church and painting have been completely restored and, after a long and problem-filled period, are once again a delight to the eye. The completion of the restoration in 1998 coincided with the 550th anniversary of another gothic structure, Leuven town hall, and was celebrated with a major exhibition and a series of publications on Bouts and life in Brabant in the late Middle Ages. An old master who because of the serenity and piety of his work is sometimes referred to as ‘the painter of silence’, Dirk Bouts was once again placed in the glare of the spotlights, drawing a veritable flood of visitors.

‘Master Dierick’

The exhibition and monograph on Bouts were prepared by the late Professor Maurits Smeyers from the Catholic University of Leuven, who together with his team compiled a synthesis of the present-day knowledge of ‘Master Dierick’. As with most painters from the late Middle Ages, important information about the life and work of the artist is missing. But thanks to the references to his name in old documents, and his contacts with scholars at the University of Leuven, who advised him in his work, we do have an exceptionally good impression of Bouts' development and his importance in his own day. Several compositions from Bouts' hand were so successful that they were taken over by other artists and produced in series. He was imitated even as far away as Portugal. Where and when Dirk Bouts was born is not known with any certainty. The only thing which is certain is that his name appears in the Leuven archives for the first time on 28 September 1457, where he is mentioned as the owner of a vineyard. From a document dated 12 July 1476 detailing a property transaction, we also know that Bouts was born ‘extra patriam’ (i.e. outside Brabant). According to sixteenth-century authors he came from the Dutch town of Haarlem, and it is fairly generally accepted that Bouts first saw the

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Dirk Bouts, The Last Supper (central panel), c. 1464. Panel, 183 × 152.7 cm. Church of St Peter, Leuven. light of day in this town in North Holland somewhere around 1410, and that he was also educated there. Fifteenth-century Leuven was an attractive place for artists and craftsmen. Although the residence of the Dukes of Brabant had moved to Brussels, a university had been founded in Leuven in 1425 - the first university in the Low Countries, and one which gained even more importance in 1432 with the addition of a faculty of theology. The building of the Church of St Peter and the town hall transformed the centre of the town into a bustling construction site and offered exceptional opportunities to the artists of the day. The economy of the whole of the Southern Netherlands was flourishing under the reign of Philip the Good, making this, together with Northern Italy, one of the wealthiest and most densely populated regions in the whole of Europe. Bouts therefore had good reason to seek his

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Dirk Bouts, Portrait of a Man. 1462. Panel, 31.6 × 20.5 cm. National Gallery, London. fortune in Leuven. This Brabant town was more important than centres in the Northern Netherlands such as Haarlem, Leiden and Amsterdam. Whilst in Leuven Dirk Bouts married a wealthy woman, Katharina van der Brugghen, who went through life bearing the promising nickname ‘metten gelde’ (‘with money’). They had four children including the sons Dirk and Albrecht, who like their father went on to become painters and continued the work of his studio after his death. In 1474 he was married for a second time, to Elisabeth van Vossen, a wealthy widow. Bouts died in 1475. From his contacts with professors at the university, his work for the well-to-do citizenry and for members of the Burgundian court, but above all from the major commissions he received from both the city administrators and the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament, we can deduce that Bouts' talent was recognised by his contemporaries. He must have become a prosperous and esteemed citizen of Leuven, a supposition supported by the fact that when he died he left behind several houses, investments, large plots of land and two vineyards.

Devotion

Like all artists in the late Middle Ages Dirk Bouts painted mainly religious subjects, both smaller-scale devotional pieces for private clients - including a number of extremely fine Madonnas - and more ambitious triptychs for use in churches. He also has a small number of portraits to his name. These

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 119 paintings became widely dispersed over time, and today they are among the most valuable possessions of renowned museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid, London's National Gallery and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Visitors to the Capella Real in Granada, where the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella lie buried, will also find a triptych by Dirk Bouts. But his masterpiece, The Last Supper, has fortunately been preserved in the Church of St Peter in Leuven, for which the painting was commissioned in 1464.

The Holy Sacrament

Bouts' triptych is not so grand and visionary as Jan van Eyck's The Adoration of the Lamb in St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, nor as striking and full of heavy emotion as the Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden in the Prado. But it is the purest in terms of content, a painting which suggests an intense inner experience, and which is generally reckoned to be among the finest creations of the Flemish Primitives. A visitor travelling to Ghent to view Van Eyck's The Adoration of the Lamb, or to Bruges to see the John the Baptist altarpiece by Memling, should certainly not fail to visit Leuven to see Bouts' masterpiece.

Dirk Bouts, The Virgin and Child. c. 1465. Panel, 37.1 × 27.6 cm. National Gallery, London.

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Dirk Bouts, The Last Supper (left-side panels): ‘Abraham and Melchisedech’ & ‘Feast of the Passover’. Panel, 88 × 71 cm (x2). Church of St Peter, Leuven.

The painting was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in Leuven. The purpose of these brotherhoods, which became increasingly successful as the fifteenth century progressed, was to promote the celebration of the Eucharist. This celebration goes back to the Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles in Jerusalem when Christ, in the knowledge that he was soon to undergo death by crucifixion, transformed bread and wine into his body and his blood. Christians commemorate this event every time they take Communion, just as Christ asked. The Last Supper has been portrayed by artists in a variety of ways. Most paintings evoke the dramatic moment when the betrayal by Judas - the apostle who delivered Christ into the hands of his enemies - is revealed. But Bouts took a different approach, choosing instead to portray the moment when Christ initiates the Eucharist by blessing

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 the bread. The blessing hand of Christ is placed precisely in the centre of the middle panel, and the whole tableau is designed to fill viewers of the painting with reverence in the face of the miracle of Christ's sacrifice, and to lead them to meditate and experience their faith in a direct and immediate way. For many people today, this religious context has lost its meaning. And yet the timeless harmony of the tableau, the intense expression of the figures and the splendour of Bouts' palette still have the power to speak to us after more than five centuries. His painting is not only a testimony to late-medieval piety, it is also a unique artistic interpretation of it. From the contract drawn up for the commissioning of The Last Supper we know very precisely what Bouts was paid for his work: two hundred Rhine guilders - a considerable sum for the time. The painter agreed not to accept any other commissions whilst he was working on the triptych. And he had to take advice on the content of the picture from two theologians from the University of Leuven, Jan Varenacker - who had several terms of office as Rector of the University - and Egidius Bauwel. It was not uncommon for

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Dirk Bouts, The Last Supper (right-side panels): ‘Gathering of the Manna’ & ‘Elijah in the Desert’.

Panel. 88 × 71 cm (x2). Church of St Peter, Leuven.

Dirk Bouts, The Last Supper (right-side panels): ‘Gathering of the Manna’ & ‘Elijah in the Desert’.

Panel. 88 × 71 cm (x2). Church of St Peter, Leuven. artists to follow the religious advice of clerics, but the contractually stipulated collaboration between a genius such as Bouts and theologians who had the last word is an unusual example of this practice. It illustrates that those commissioning paintings kept a very close eye on the artists to ensure the correct interpretation of the religious message. Control of the media, we would call it today. Bouts evidently not only received theological instruction from the Leuven professors; his understanding of optical effects also points to a university environment. The Last Supper is one of the earliest examples in the art of the Low Countries of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 the use of central perspective. The impression of supernatural harmony which The Last Supper conveys to the viewer from the first glance is very largely due to the clever interplay of lines and proportions which fill the canvas. It is a highly constructed painting, built up in a strictly symmetrical manner, with Christ on the central axis. The central portrayal of the Last Supper is flanked on the side panels by four scenes from the Old Testament, all foreshadowing the institution of the Eucharist: ‘Abraham and Melchisedech’, the ‘Feast of the Passover’, the ‘Gathering of Manna’ and ‘Elijah in the Desert’. Also striking is the fact that Bouts wanted to involve the viewer in the painting directly. He situates the supernatural events in a recognisable late-medieval interior with tiled floor, open fire and twinkling chandelier. Through the window we catch a glimpse of Leuven town hall. And in this way the masterpiece unites a deep spiritual significance with a razor-sharp portrayal of tangible reality, a combination which is typical of the Flemish Primitives. The viewer is unsure what to admire first: the serenity of the figures portrayed or the wealth of their costumes, the gleam of the cutlery, the crispy crust on the bread rolls on the table.

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Saved and protected

The Last Supper has had a turbulent history. In the nineteenth century the centre panel was transferred from the wooden support to canvas, and this had irretrievable consequences for the structure of the work. The side panels were sold to a German dealer and only returned to Belgium after the First World War, by way of reparation. During the Second World War the side panels, like Van Eyck's The Adoration of the Lamb, were confiscated by the German occupying forces and were retrieved by the Allies in 1945 from the salt mines of Alt-Aussee. And within the Church of St Peter itself, the position of the painting has been changed more than once. Today it has been restored to its original location in the chapel of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in the choir. Before its restoration, The Last Supper had lost some of its splendour. Successive layers of varnish combined with retouching, which had become dirty with the passage of time, had dimmed the play of light, weakened the contrasts and eroded the original range of colours. During the restoration the layers of varnish and the poorly aged retouchings were removed - though the restorers retained a thin layer of varnish in order to keep intact the original palette. Cleaning and retouching were kept to a minimum, and every change made is reversible. Special attention was devoted to protecting the work: the painting in the Church of St Peter is now protected by a triple screen of bullet-proof, colourless, non-reflective glass, which is also impervious to ultra-violet light (which causes discoloration). The temperature and humidity behind the glass panels are monitored continuously. The non-reflective glass means art-lovers can enjoy the triptych unhindered; a touch which will be appreciated by anyone who has ever fought to avoid their own reflection when viewing paintings in a gallery. The choir of the Church of St Peter - which among other things contains a second painting by Bouts, as well as gothic statues, intricate work in precious metals, the tombstone of John I, Duke of Brabant, and the Tabernacle - is a glittering treasure-house which cannot be bettered by any museum.

JAN VAN HOVE Translated by Julian Ross.

Further reading

A detailed monograph, with contributions in English, French and Dutch, has been published under the title Dirk Bouts: A Flemish Primitive in Leuven (Leuven, 1998). It was edited by Maurits Smeyers. An accessible introduction in Dutch, focusing on The Last Supper, is Dirk Bouts: Het Laatste Avondmaal (Tielt, 1998). Both works are copiously illustrated.

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Rembrandt's Practical Approach to Italian Art Three Variations

An international outlook is a constant component in the ongoing definition of Dutch identity and character.1. Rembrandt's interest in visual culture beyond the Netherlands is one measure of his own Dutchness, and his practice of assimilating and transcending a variety of sources, indigenous and foreign, is well known. In many instances, Rembrandt (1606-1669) borrowed from or made outright copies of works by Persian, Flemish and German artists, and he especially often appropriated concepts and motifs from Italian art. The preponderance of Italian sources is all the more remarkable since Rembrandt, unlike many other North European artists, did not take the customary Italian journey to complete his training. Yet Rembrandt had a worthy precedent as a stay-at-home in Lucas van Leyden, who studied Italian prints and adopted their motifs and formal language in his late engravings. Without venturing beyond the geographical limits of the Netherlands, Rembrandt became an artist who made effective use of Italian art, which he knew in prints, paintings and drawings.2. Through his training Rembrandt came into contact with Italy at second-hand, for both his teachers had spent time there. Rembrandt learned the process and technique of painting from Jacob van Swanenburgh, and he learned the method of composing narratives to convey dramatic intensity from Pieter Lastman. From both Rembrandt gained familiarity with the principles of ancient sculpture and figural proportion, calculation of light and dark to enhance spatial illusion, and an approach to invention that sanctioned borrowings from other artists. And through the Amsterdam art market and his own extensive collection of prints, drawings and paintings, Rembrandt came into contact with Italian art first-hand. For many of Rembrandt's specific uses of Italian art there is an inclination already present in Low Countries art, and that is the case with the three pictures discussed here.3. In these examples, Rembrandt is not merely attracted to an exotic element; rather, he seems attracted to a motif because it provided a solution to a problem at hand, a solution not too far from those already indicated by other artists from the Low Countries. His dual dependence upon Italian and Low Countries sources is evident even in his early paintings.

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Rembrandt H. van Rijn, Nicolaes Ruts. 1631, Panel, 116.8 × 87.3 cm. Frick Collection, New York.

Rembrandt's earliest known commissioned portrait, Nicolaes Ruts of 1631, demonstrates this dependence upon both traditions. Ruts' posture, standing nearly frontally, resting one hand upon a chair and with the other holding a letter, is nearly identical to that of a man painted in the same year by Thomas de Keyser, then Amsterdam's most fashionable and successful portraitist. So Rembrandt's point of departure was nearby, for in 1631 the young artist had just moved to Amsterdam for good. But another portrait pushed Rembrandt to a more dynamic solution for Ruts. The portrait of a bearded man, signed and dated 1561 by the North Italian portraitist, Giovanni Battista Moroni, bridges the gap in expressive power and forceful design between the De Keyser antecedent and Rembrandt's portrait of Ruts. Moroni's stolid hirsute figure presents a close source in pose for Ruts: the bearded man casually rests one hand on a truncated column, and holds the other forward, offering a letter. Moroni's portraits are occasionally confused with those of Titian. Quite possibly, his pictures travelled to Amsterdam,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 125 and may even have been known under that more famed name. Even Antony van Dyck, who had travelled extensively through Italy, made a copy of a signed Moroni portrait (the so-called Schoolmaster in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and ascribed it to Titian. By adopting the shifts in posture and the more intense contrasts between light and dark as found in Moroni's picture, Rembrandt achieved a greater interaction between the portrayed and the viewer, and achieved a more convincing, illusionistically solid figure. Dutch portrait models offered Rembrandt guides for typical poses, carefully observed individual features, and attributes such as letters for communicating with the viewer; but Italian art provided a formula that enhanced the outward focus of the gaze, the extending gesture, and the contrasting illumination. And in Rembrandt's impasto layers of pigment, the very physicality of the painted image is strengthened; the figure is itself modelled in the pasty texture of the oils, which, unblended, add to the illusion of the figure's presence. Scratches in the pigment reveal the panel's reddish priming, and delineate the moustache hairs around the mouth. Guided by the theory that the painted portrait should convey most fully the outward appearance and inward character of the sitter, Rembrandt found an Italian model most convenient to further his goal of a heightened verisimilitude and dynamism. A similar pattern may be charted in other works. The Bathsheba of 1643 is a small, preciously crafted panel. Painted with a smaller brush and somewhat more tentative paint handling than is usual for Rembrandt, the panel certainly was made in his atelier and under his direction if not entirely by his hand. It has long been recognised that its main design derives from two paintings by Lastman, a Susanna and the Elders (Berlin) and a Bathsheba

Thomas de Keyser, Portrait of a Gentleman. 1631. Panel, 122 × 90 cm. Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Giovanni Batista Moroni, Portrait of a Bearded Man. 1561. Canvas, 98 × 74 cm. Private collection.

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Rembrandt H. van Rijn (?), Bathsheba. 1643. Panel, 57.2 × 76.2 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

(The Hermitage, St Petersburg). Both pictures are sheltered, lush garden scenes, with pools of water and buildings in the distance. The bench in Lastman's Susanna, with its fountain of a human head, has become, in Rembrandt's painting, a wide bench whose animal head fountain was painted out; this peculiar long-necked creature now shows through as a ghostly pentimento. From Lastman's Susanna Rembrandt adapted two attendants, one old and one youthful, who tend to Bathsheba's hair and feet. Lastman's nudes, doll-like and awkwardly posed, provided a starting point for Rembrandt's Bathsheba. But for a pose that conveyed delicate proportion and grace, Rembrandt turned to Raphael. In Raphael's Alexander and Roxane Rembrandt found a young nude framed by two cupids, one crowning her with a wreath, the other taking off her sandal. Keeping attendants at head and foot, just as Lastman had done in his Bathsheba of 1619, Rembrandt changed the one at the head into a young African woman, and the one at the feet into an old maid; in this way, the servants contrast with Bathsheba's features, even as the servants in Lastman's picture contrasted in posture and age. Raphael's nude, modestly inclining her head and tenderly covering one breast, provided an ideal of femininity. Rembrandt switched the gestures of the arms and raised her head, but kept the contours of her legs. Rembrandt enlivened the smoothly firm Roxane with the creased and textured fleshiness of a nude studied from life. He also endowed Bathsheba with a knowing smile as she seductively eyes the viewer. Raphael's invention, published presumably under his direction in an en-

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Pieter Lastman, Susanna and the Elders. 1614. Panel, 43 × 59 cm. Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Gemäldegalerie), Berlin.

Pieter Lastman, Bathsheba. Early 17th century. Panel. The Hermitage, St Petersburg.

After Raphael, Alexander and Roxane. Engraving after a 16th-century painting. graving, soon became an admired and imitated model of feminine beauty. Rembrandt was hardly the first to make use of her: other artists, including Carracci and Rubens, had already adapted Roxane to suit their needs for an ideal woman. For Rembrandt, Raphael's ideal beauty needed only to be animated with vivacious gaze and palpable flesh. Another case where Rembrandt lifted a female protagonist from another's composition may be found in the 1644 Adulteress. One typical and well-known version of the episode is Bruegel's, which shows Christ responding to the accusers by writing upon the pavement, ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone’; at this, the accusers begin to depart. Rembrandt chose to depict a moment earlier in the episode: the accusers have just finished speaking, Christ, listening, has not yet begun to respond, and the woman,

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Rembrandt H. van Rijn, Adulteress. 1644. National Gallery, London. still under attack, has not yet received absolution. This earlier moment is one of heightened tension and unresolved action. Bruegel's composition became a general model for subsequent representations of the episode; most often, artists followed Bruegel in showing a kneeling and writing Christ, a standing woman, and departing accusers. But Rembrandt, in representing the earlier, unresolved moment of the story, emphasised Christ's latent expression of justice and wisdom, and the humility of the accused woman. He also reversed the poses of confrontation between Christ and the Adulteress, for it is Christ who stands and the woman who kneels. Bruegel's protagonist appropriately displays remorse and shame. Her frivolous dress and bowed head might encourage the viewer to think her guilty. Yet this dress is closer to Italian Renaissance than Low Countries models - there was, in the Netherlands, an inclination to show the accused woman as somewhat foreign, even vaguely Italian. Rembrandt found a suitable model in the kneeling, weeping Magdalene at the foot of the cross in Tintoretto's Crucifixion, published in an engraving. Sincerely reformed and

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Pieter Perret (after Pieter Bruegel), Christ and the Adulteress. 1579. Engraving. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout, Adulteress. 1664. 64 × 81 cm. Photo RKD.

Johann Jenet (after Tintoretto), Crucifixion. 1623. Engraving. Photo Fonds Albertina. repentant, the Magdalene offered a parallel character to Rembrandt's accused Adulteress, not yet pardoned but neither proven guilty. Adjusting his model to fit the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 stairs of the cavernous temple, Rembrandt clothed her in a chaste, white gown with blue sash. We might never take her for a descendent of Tintoretto's Magdalene were it not for her appearance in a painting of the Christ and the Adulteress by Rembrandt's pupil Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout. There she appears, in reverse, with the contours of Tintoretto's figure; instead of the simple robe of the Magdalene, she wears a flowing gown and head covering typical of theatrical Rembrandtesque clothing. Van den Eeckhout likely became aware of the Venetian Magdalene as an appropriate model for the adulteress through Rembrandt, either by the example of his own painting of the adulteress, or as informal advisor to his former pupil. Politically and economically the prosperity of the Dutch Republic depended upon international relations and trade, and its culture followed that orientation with strong interests in the literature, art, and fashion of other regions. Rembrandt was a practical artist. Perhaps more than his contempo-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 130 raries, he exploited the styles and inventions of non-Dutch artists because he recognised their usefulness. In the practice of art and literature, appropriation of others' motifs was not regarded as plagiarism, but as praiseworthy and acceptable, both rhetorically and aesthetically, as long as it resulted in a successful product. Adapted from rhetorical principles codified by Quintilian, imitatio and aemulatio permitted artists, and even encouraged them, to look to others' works for formal models, stylistic guidance, or expressive standards. As a didactic tool, borrowing from others' inventions showed how an artist followed good examples. Lifting an invention from a predecessor demonstrated respect for a model, as well as mastery of it; and improving upon the model demonstrated one's own superiority. Imitatio denoted a copy transformed, so that the result did not betray its source. Aemulatio, however, involved a more complex rivalry, and demonstrated that an artist could take on the challenge of a predecessor in order to outdo his invention or style. In a successful borrowing of another's invention, the source should be disguised. But if the borrowing were detected, then an artist laid himself open to ridicule and harsh criticism. Vasari, in his life of Michelangelo (1568), related one anecdote that demonstrates the shame due to the perpetrator of an unsuccessful, all-too-obvious variation.4. Michelangelo condescendingly said to a young painter who had gracelessly lifted from the work of others: ‘If all these (painted) figures returned their limbs to the works whence they came, there would be nothing left.’ This was understood as sound advice to artists: they should rely upon their own invention, or else disguise thoroughly their reliance upon others. Michelangelo's judgment on detected borrowings entered Dutch art literature with Karel van Mander's Het Schilder-boeck of 1604.5. In his life of Michelangelo, which is almost wholly based upon Vasari, Van Mander concluded that each artist should rely upon his own invention. Philips Angel repeated the story in his 1642 discourse on art, and cautioned his audience to use good judgment to avoid such errors.6. Another justification for borrowing gracefully and without detection also came from Van Mander. In the Grondt, the didactic preface to Het Schilder-boeck, he proclaimed that well-cooked turnips make good soup.7. His recipe meant that a good soup is made up of many ingredients, stewed for a long time so that not a single one betrays its raw flavor. Rembrandt's turnips were indeed well-cooked, and it is due to his greatness that their sources are so difficult to trace. Adapting others' inventions is standard art practice, and Rembrandt did so consistently. He embellished his sources with elaborate costume, adjustments in pose, and life study. His painterly style, whose goal was to achieve verisimilitude and vividness, depended upon varied paint textures, rich colour and tones, and emphatic chiaroscuro; it helped to disguise his figural borrowings. In his practice of imitatio and aemulatio, Rembrandt selected fine models, improved upon them, and surpassed his predecessors in both invention and paint handling. Rembrandt was familiar with rhetorical rules from his Latin school days, and he was aware of art theoretical precepts and practices. He may well have considered the theoretical background to his borrowings, but they generally served as pictorial solutions. The three examples discussed here present a variety in kind of compositional situations:

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Ruts is a male portrait, Bathsheba is a composite of three sources, and the Adulteress is a single figure borrowed for expression and posture. Rembrandt's originality is not compromised by recognising his sources, but enhanced by acknowledging how well he concealed them. And finally, it is due to Rembrandt's genius that he could seize from others' inventions those figures that impart a psychological depth, a communication of words or sentiment, or a moment of conflict to be resolved.

AMY GOLAHNY

Eindnoten:

1. See, for example, Karel Porteman, ‘“The Idea of Being a Dutchman”: Normative Self-Reflection in Early 17th-century Amsterdam’. In: W.Z. Shetter and I. Van der Cruysse (eds.), Contemporary Explorations in the Culture of the Low Countries. Lanham / London, 1996, pp. 231-247 2. An overview of this phenomenon is given by B.W. Meijer in the exhibition catalogue Rondom Rembrandt en Titiaan: Artistieke relaties tussen Amsterdam en Venetië in prent en tekening. The Hague, 1991. 3. See further A. Golahny, ‘The “Adulteress” by Rembrandt and by Van den Eeckhout: Variations on an Italian Magdalene’. In: W.H. Fletcher (ed.), Papers from the Second Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies. Washington, 1986, pp. 115-23; eadem, ‘Rembrandt's Early Bathsheba: The Raphael Connection’, Art Bulletin, LXV, 1983, pp. 671-75; eadem, ‘Rembrandt's “Ruts” and Moroni's “Bearded Man”’, Source, X, 1990, pp. 22-25. 4. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite (ed. G. Milanesi). Florence, 1906, VII, p. 281. 5. Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck. Haarlem, 1604, p. 172v. For Van Mander, see The Low Countries 1995-96: pp. 305-306. Van Mander's work has also been translated into English (Doornspijk: Davaco Publishers). 6. Philips Angel, Lof der Schilder-Konst. Leiden, 1642, p. 36. 7. Van Mander, ‘Den Grondt’. In: Het Schilder-boeck, 5r. For an amplification of these observations on plagiarism and originality, see B. Broos, Rembrandt en zijn voorbeelden / Rembrandt and his Sources. Amsterdam, 1985.

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The Struggle between Pallas and Mercury 400 Years of Relations between Japan and the Netherlands

At the turn of the millennium it will be four hundred years since the first direct contact between Holland and Japan was established, for it was in 1600 that the ship Liefde, formerly called Erasmus, reached the southern coast of Kyushu. This event will be commemorated with a wide range of economic, cultural and scientific activities in both countries under the slogan ‘four hundred years of history with a future’. The underlying motivation for these celebrations seems, however, to be economic rather than cultural.1. This motivation is nothing new. The first Dutchmen who came to Japan were primarily merchants interested in making a profit and neither willing nor able to study Japanese culture, like the employees of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) who worked in Japan during the so-called Sakoku period (1641-1854) when Japan, fearing the influence of Christianity, had closed itself off from the rest of the world, only allowing Dutch and Chinese traders to reside in Nagasaki. The Dutch had given ample proof that they were not interested in spreading the Christian faith and claimed to be able to import the same amount of foreign commodities as the Portuguese, who had come to Japan more than half a century earlier in the company of missionaries. From 1641 the Dutch were confined to the small island of Deshima, connected to Nagasaki by a small bridge. Contact with ordinary Japanese was restricted as much as possible, except for interpreters and specially-designated female companions. Their main pastimes seem to have been social visits and indulging in tobacco and alcohol which was imported from Holland. The only Dutchmen to see more of Japan were the head of the trading post (the ‘opperhoofd’), the doctor and one or two other employees, who went each year to pay their respects to the shogun in Edo (present-day Tokyo). All in all a three-months' journey. In consequence the only important accounts of Japan to reach the general European public were written by a few opperhoofden such as Caron or Titsingh, or the doctors Kaempfer, Thunberg and Von Siebold. These, of course, were men of better than average education.2. As part of his duty the opperhoofd had to write reports on a daily basis, but these accounts of trading matters, the ‘dagregisters’, were read by just a few Company administrators.3.

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In general, 250 years of exclusive Dutch presence in Japan generated embarrassingly little scholarly activity to arouse interest in Europe. Well-to-do westerners could marvel at exquisite lacquerware, porcelain or silks from Japan, but they did not distinguish between Indian, Chinese or Japanese origin. A real craze for Japan could only develop after Japan had opened its doors in 1854, attracting other foreigners who wrote travel stories and brought back all kinds of objects. It is noteworthy that this Japonism started not in the Netherlands but in France, where Impressionist artists found new inspiration in Japanese woodblock prints. The Japanese urge to know about other countries has always been stronger than the other way round, and has affected political, social and cultural developments. Upon their arrival in Japan the Dutch were obliged to give a detailed report on affairs in the outside world, the so-called ‘fusetsugaki’, but they complied only ‘as far as was deemed not to be harmful to the Company’. In the late eighteenth century the Dutch presence triggered the emergence of a new scientific school, the Rangaku, standing for research into Dutch-related subjects. This is even said to have laid the foundation for Japan's modernisation in the nineteenth century. Through this contact with Holland many Japanese came to realise that there was another world out there. This led to a clearer definition of their own world, just like in the image of the woman looking through a foreign magnifying-glass belonging to the eye-doctor and presenting her with an unusual view. Dutch-Japanese relations can be divided into four periods: the first 250 years of exclusive contact, for the most part during the Sakoku period; the Bakumatsu period (1854-1867), Japan's transition towards modernisation, when the Netherlands still held a major position among the other western countries; the Meiji and Taisho period (1868-1924), when Japan was catching up with the West, employing foreign advisers and technicians, but relatively few of them Dutch, and the rest of the twentieth century when the Netherlands was just one of Japan's many trade partners. During the Second

A pseudo-eye doctor inspecting a woman's eyes with a magnifying-glass, by Utagawa Hirokage, 1859. This is a mocking adaptation of an image in the Hokusai Manga.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 A pseudo-eye doctor inspecting a woman's eyes with a magnifying-glass, by Utagawa Hirokage, 1859. This is a mocking adaptation of an image in the Hokusai Manga.

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World War, Japan occupied the then Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). The painful legacy of this conflict has, from time to time, cast a shadow over relations between the two countries.

The VOC and Japan: ‘Copper is the bride for whom we dance’

The year 1609 saw the beginning of official trade relations between Holland and Japan with the ex-Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu issuing a trade licence to the Dutch, who set up a trading post in Hirado. Initially they made more profit out of privateering, preying on Portuguese ships, but from 1632 onwards commerce picked up. The VOC exchanged Japanese silver for Chinese silk and made high profits with its inter-Asian trade, which linked almost every country in East Asia with Batavia as the centre of this trading network. Things started to change when Japan prohibited the export of silver in 1668. This was done to cope with increasing urbanisation and commercialisation, as well as with large government deficits. Various restrictions on the consumption of luxury goods were imposed. Only the warrior class, the samurai, were allowed to wear imported silk. These measures also supported a developing Japanese silk industry. As a result the VOC switched to buying gold and copper, but Japanese limitations on total imports, and around 1700 a reduction in the number of ships allowed, did not improve matters for the Dutch. Debasements of the coinage and reforms by successive shoguns, especially those advocating frugality, further added to the agony of the Company. In the eighteenth century copper had become ‘the bride for whom we dance’, as one of the governor-generals of the VOC put it, but finding suitable imports to pay for this commodity became difficult. Sugar and all kinds of knick-knacks could partly make up for this. In this atmosphere private trade thrived, despite the Japanese authorities being on the alert for contraband. Thunberg recounts that everyone setting foot in Japan had to undergo a rigorous body search. All luggage was meticulously examined. Containers of butter and preserves were stirred with little iron sticks; cheese for private use was pierced from all sides, and even eggs were broken to check the contents. Although the VOC was disbanded in 1799, trade with Japan continued until the opening up of the country, but under different administrators.

The Japanese viewpoint: ‘Everything rare would be called Oranda-something’

Contact with the Dutch has influenced the lives of a variety of Japanese. As we shall see later, some even paid for this contact with their lives. A large group of interpreters attended to the needs of a relatively small number of Dutchmen, and acted as intermediaries with the Japanese authorities. Their knowledge of Dutch was often passed on from father to son, or picked up from simple

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 text-books. As a result, there were many complaints about their incompetence. In a letter to Titsingh, the opperhoofd Van Reede tot de Parkeler gives the example of a senior interpreter ‘who is totally un-

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The Dutch at Deshima. Detail of scroll with the Deshima factory, attributed to Shuseki Watanabe (1639-1707). Kobe City Museum. fit, only able now and then to curse the coolies with a Jesus Christus, Donder Blixem’.4. According to Van Reede, the son of this very interpreter had been poisoned by his colleagues because he had become too close to the Dutch and had leaked secret information, thus breaking his professional oath.5. In other cases the contact was more fruitful: through their association with Dutch doctors, the interpreters served as transmitters of western knowledge. From all over the country Japanese doctors came to Nagasaki to study western-style medicine, or visited the Dutch physician during his annual stay at Edo. These ‘students’ were often sent by their lords, and their knowledge was kept a family secret. Some of them became personal physicians to the shogun. During the rule of Shogun Yoshimune (reigning 1716-1745), the study of western science was undertaken more effectively, but under strict official supervision. He used western science and technology, including astronomy and calendars, to aid the development of industry and agriculture. Scholars were sent to the Dutch to learn the language and all kinds of useful facts. The Dutch grumbled about the ‘bothersome visits of these shogunal students with their silly questions’, but western science became more widely studied. The shogun also ordered almanacs and horses, hunting-dogs and plant-seeds to breed with domestic varieties. Sadly, these reforms failed due to natural disasters, and one of the succeeding shoguns tried a policy of promoting trade and export. In this so-called Tanuma-period (1769-1786), named after the advisor of the then incumbent shogun, wealth had passed into the hands of the urban merchant class. This period was the heyday of Dutch influence, seeing the birth of a relatively independent school of Dutch Studies and a popular craze for all things Dutch, not for scientific ends but for the mere fun of it. In 1771 a group of Dutch-style doctors embarked on the translation of an originally German anatomical treatise after they had attended the dissection of a human body and discovered that the drawings were more precise than those in Chinese-style medical books. They published this Kaitaishinsho with official support in 1774, thus legitimising Dutch science. From then on

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A karamonoya-shop, specialising in import wares. From the Settsu meishozue (Famous places in Settsu), vol. 4, Osaka, (1798-1800), by Rito Akisato. Kobe City Museum.

Dutch scholars emerged all over the country, sometimes attending special Dutch academies. Translations in specialised fields such as Dutch grammar, medicine, botany, chemistry, mineralogy, astronomy, natural history and painting and printing techniques were undertaken, and Dutch-Japanese dictionaries compiled. Serious scholars took a rather condescending view of the ‘Hollandophiles’, who collected Dutch things just for pleasure, but it was partly thanks to these people that the scholars could lay their hands on real Dutch books, pictures and other items. Less well-to-do citizens could not afford these things, but they could go window-shopping at the shops that sold ‘foreign’ goods, where glassware, fabrics, deer- and rayskins, gilt leather, precision instruments and mechanical devices were on display. Fairs showed novelties ‘from wonderful Holland’, including camels, elephants and tropical birds. Japanese imitations and articles decorated with Dutchmen holding long clay pipes, foreign ships, exotic animals or Roman letters could also be had. The craze reached such a pitch that ‘everything rare would be called Oranda-something’.6. In the 1780s crop failures and a growing uneasiness about Russian probings in the north of Japan put the clock back again. A revival of Confucian values and censorship were the result. For Dutch Studies, which was seen as threatening to the official policy of isolation, this had grave consequences. The Shogunate still wanted useful information on the outside world, ‘as long as this information did not fall into the wrong hands’.7. So Dutch Studies continued under an official aegis. In 1811 a new Translation Office was established within the shogunal Bureau of Astronomy, translating mainly geographical and military works. For some translators this meant of-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 137 ficial recognition, but others felt silenced. One of these was Sugita Seikei, grandson of one of the translators of the Kaitaishinsho. Dutch books had acquainted him with ideas of freedom, and he got so frustrated at not being able to speak out that he took to drinking. When drunk, he could not keep himself from shouting the Dutch word for ‘freedom’: ‘vrijheid, vrijheid’.8. Others who did speak out paid with their lives. Among them was the head of the Translation Office, Takahashi Kageyasu, who had supplied Doctor Von Siebold with forbidden maps of Japan in exchange for information. These maps were used for his standard work on Japan, Nippon. ‘Real freedom’ had to wait until 1853, when an American fleet under the command of Commodore Perry forced Japan to open up. Only then did the Japanese discover that their knowledge of Dutch was useless for communicating with other foreigners.

Blue and white Arita bowl with Dutchman and elephant. Early 19th century. Kobe City Museum.

Japan's modernisation: ‘Western civilisation and enlightenment’9.

After Perry had left, the Netherlands was asked to provide Japan with ships, and to assist in the building of a fleet. In 1854 the steamer Soembing was sent to Japan and its officers provided naval instruction; many of their students would later become prominent in the Japanese navy. This ship was presented to Japan the next year and renamed Kankomaru. In 1857 a second detachment arrived together with the first ship to be ordered, the Kanrinmaru, including Doctor Pompe van Meerdervoort who was to establish the first western-style hospital (which eventually became the medical faculty of Nagasaki University) and Engineer Hardes who built a foundry near Nagasaki, the basis for the present Mitsubishi shipping wharf. The Shogunate sent missions to the US (initially on the Kanrinmaru with a Japanese crew) and to Europe. Among the envoys sent to the Netherlands in 1862 was Fukuzawa Yukichi, a leading proponent of the West, whose thinking had great influence well into the Meiji period. Another mission was despatched in 1863 to supervise the building of a second steamship, the Kaiyomaru. Some members of this mission spent three years in Leiden studying Law; they would lay the basis for the Japanese Constitution. By 1858 diplomatic and trade relations between the Netherlands and Japan were regulated, putting the Netherlands on a par with the other nations that had concluded treaties with Japan. However, few of the foreigners employed in the Meiji period

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 were Dutchmen; but those few, working in the fields of civil engineering and medicine, made a distinct mark on Japan's modernisation.10.

Japan's image abroad: ‘A people not supposed to build factories’

While Japan was busy with its occidental-style modernisation it was flooded with foreign diplomats, businessmen, artists and tourists, who nearly all had unrealistic expectations. Their picture of Japan was based mainly on artefacts: a pastoral, picturesque and artistic country. Later accounts and

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Yokohama print with Yokohama station and Japan's first train, 1872, by Hiroshige Utagawa (the third). Kobe City Museum, S. Kamikawa collection. souvenirs, including photographs, confirmed this image because the visitors only saw what they wanted to see. There are very few souvenir pictures of western technology in Japan, while there are more than three hundred Japanese prints depicting its first railway. More honest travellers were disappointed because they did not find what they had come for. Of this last group, the Dutch writer Louis Couperus is a good, albeit late example. He visited Japan in 1922 on a tour of Asia which he covered in letters to the weekly de Haagse Post. He started with high hopes, but soon asked himself if it was all worth the trouble and expense when he discovered that the Japanese landscape was just as he knew it from lacquerware, porcelain and paintings: ‘Japan is no mystery anymore.’ He wanted more grandeur, such as he had found in the scenery of his beloved Indonesia. Kyoto briefly lifted his spirits; but even there, the viewing of the cherry blossom which he had so looked forward to, did not meet his expectations: ‘It is nice, but how could such artistic people put such awful red blankets under the cherry blossoms, clashing in colour, and how could they be so careless with their litter? Why can they not drink their sake from blue and white porcelain flasks? Because the western stopper is so practical, as is the Jaeger underwear which is warm but peeps out from under the kimono.’11. Later he laments that ‘Oriental refinement has been replaced by western aspirations. They should have been true to their nature and polished their own handicrafts instead of building factories’. Unlike many Impressionist artists, he could not appreciate the prints of Utamaro: ‘always the same superficial, expressionless faces, always the same long stature, although there is no Japanese woman of such type’. In France these prints created quite a craze for all things Japanese, but in the Netherlands the general reaction was more subdued. One reason is that in the Netherlands Japanese objects were relatively well known to the public, for instance from displays at the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities in The

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Hague. When it was dismantled in 1883, these objects were combined with the huge collection of Von Siebold, which had been on view from around 1833, and transferred to the National Museum for Ethnography in Leiden. Von Siebold also played a decisive role in the appointment of the first professor of Chinese and Japanese at Leiden University in 1855. All these images did not prepare the West for the shock it was to receive at the emergence of a strong, militaristic Japan.

Japan in the twentieth century: ‘Asia for the Asians’

One aspect of the westernisation of Japan was the development of a modern army and a colonial imperium to supply Japan with raw materials for its expanding industry. Even Couperus recorded in his letters the pride the Japanese took in their victories over China and Russia in 1895 and 1905. These victories resulted in the annexation of Taiwan and Korea and increased Japanese dominance in Manchuria.

Souvenir photograph of Japanese lady in a rickshaw. Late 19th century. Private collection.

During the First World War Japan encroached further into the Pacific, coming alarmingly close to the Dutch Indies. After the global economic crisis in 1929 many western countries erected protective barriers against Japanese imports, forcing Japan to focus on East Asia (from 1940 on under the slogan of a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’). In 1932 it established a vassal state in Manchuria and started another war with China in 1937, causing friction with the US and Britain, which eventually led to the Japanese entry into the Second World War on the German and Italian side. In the Dutch Indies, rich in raw materials such as oil, this Japanese expansion had been observed with suspicion from quite an early date and anxiety about Japanese economic influence resulted in protective measures. When the Netherlands sided with the Allied forces it was just a matter of time before Japan attacked. The Japanese occupation lasted only three and a half years, until 29 September 1945, but it has determined Dutch attitudes towards Japan until the present day. Politically, Dutch-Japanese relations were restored in 1952 with the ratification of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which also provided for war indemnities to Dutch military internees in the camps in the occupied Indies, but civilian detainees had to wait until 1956 to receive compensation. The small amounts they received and their cold

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 treatment back in the Netherlands by a government whose focus was on economic revival after the war, has caused much ill will. When Emperor Hirohito visited Holland in 1971 he was met with demonstrations, as was Prime Minister Kaifu in 1991. In that same year Queen Beatrix devoted a major part of her address at the State banquet in Japan to this past, also noting that ‘sincere realisation of the ordeals may help us overcome feelings of resentment and bitterness’. From the Japanese side there have been several official expressions of regret and in 1997 the Japanese government placed a fund at the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation for the translation of diaries by Dutch internees. From 1998, Dutch ‘comfort women’, who were forced into prostitution under the Japanese occupation, can apply for subsidies from a Japanese fund, formed by private donations. Although there are political forces in Japan which oppose the ‘slavish’ expressions of Japan's war guilt,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 140 there are signs that the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989 has paved the way for a more objective study of Japan's war past. Since then, several personal accounts by internees have been published in Japan, as well as parts of Rudy Kousbroek's The East Indies Camp Syndrome (Het Oost-Indisch kampsyndroom, 1992; also publ. in Japanese). This Dutch writer, born in the East Indies and himself interned in a Japanese camp, gave in his book a rather more objective picture of the Japanese occupation than one is used to. For a more balanced attitude to present-day Japan, the Netherlands should not focus exclusively on this dark, though recent past, but should also take into account the Dutch-Japanese relations of the centuries before.

The Netherlands in Japan: ‘Holland is my kind of country’12.

It is this specific common past which makes the Netherlands stand out amongst the other countries with which Japan has trade relations today. Compared with many other countries, the Netherlands' share in Japanese trade (mainly in agricultural, dairy, meat, marine, confectionery and high technology products) is relatively small, but it is better known than one would expect. For the rest, in Japan as everywhere else, the Netherlands' image is based on windmills, tulips, Rembrandt and Van Gogh, or the government policy towards drugs, euthanasia and homosexual marriage. Recently, in view of the economical recession in Japan, the so-called ‘poldermodel’, known as the ‘Dutch model’, attracted much attention, as did the results of the Dutch skating and soccer team, but the most famous Dutchman is still judoka Anton Geesink. Dick Bruna with his books about a little rabbit, miffy (‘nijntje’ in Dutch) or ‘miffi-chan’ in Japanese, would be number one, if only people realised he is Dutch.

View of Huis ten Bosch near Nagasaki. ©Huis ten Bosch / B-1746.

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All these images are skilfully combined in the ‘seventeenth-century-Dutch’ theme park Holland Village (1983) and the fictional Dutch town Huis ten Bosch (1992) near Nagasaki. Here one can see reconstructions of existing buildings from all over Holland. They house museums, hotels, pubs, restaurants, shops, theatres, a branch of Leiden University and private homes, along with seventeenth- and nineteenth-century ships, canals, windmills, a marine port, tulip-beds and an independent system for recycling and waste disposal, summarised as ‘a coexistence of ecology and economy’. Less visible manifestations of the Dutch presence in Japan are Dutch loan words, transmitted in the Sakoku period, and the existence of the Japan-Netherlands Institute (1975) in Tokyo, which is one of the few places (except for the Indonesian department of the University for Foreign Languages in Tokyo, and the Belgian-Flanders Exchange Centre in Osaka), where the Dutch language is taught. With help of this Institute and the financial support of the Canon Foundation, a modern Dutch-Japanese dictionary was published in 1994. The birth of a Japanese-Dutch dictionary has to wait until a Dutch company is willing to finance such a project. The Institute also coordinates research into historical relations and carries out academic exchange and research programmes. Furthermore, it promotes cultural activities, in cooperation with the Dutch Embassy and the Consulate in Osaka.

Back to the first Dutch ship to reach Japan. Its figurehead, a statue of Erasmus, was worshipped for centuries in a small village north of Tokyo as Kateki-sama, the legendary Chinese ship inventor. At night he would roam the village as a bad spirit, with bulletholes in his back (screwholes by which it had been fixed to the ship). This was until someone thought he was a missionary and a photograph was exhibited in Rome at a Christian exhibition in 1926. When he was finally identified as one of the few surviving fragments of the Liefde, the statue was designated ‘National Treasure’ and transferred to the National Museum in Tokyo. With that, ‘Dutch hopes of restoring it as Dutch cultural property faded away’.13. Four times has it travelled back to its hometown Rotterdam, in honour of the real Erasmus or for the promotion of Dutch-Japanese relations. If only it could speak, it might make us put a little more philosophy, and fewer pecuniary motives, into our dealings with Japan.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Wooden figure of Erasmus; the figurehead of the ship Liefde, before 1598. Ryukoin-temple, Sano city, Tochigi prefecture.

ISABEL TANAKA-VAN DAALEN

Eindnoten:

1. Both in Japan and in the Netherlands exhibitions will be held which cover the various aspects of this 400-year relationship (for more information: Foundation 400 years The Netherlands-Japan, fax +31 71 516 64 09). Apart from the catalogues for these exhibitions, please refer to the forthcoming commemorative volume, edited by L. Blussé and W.G.J. Remmelink. The English and Dutch version will be published by Teleac, and is expected to appear around April 2000. There will also be a separate Japanese edition. In addition to these exhibitions the Netherlands will also be ‘special guest’ at the Tokyo International Book Fair in April 2000 (for more information: Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, fax +31 20 620 71 79). 2. F. Caron, A True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam. London, 1663; I. Titsingh, Illustrations of Japan. London, 1822; E. Kaempfer, The History of Japan... London, 1727; C. Thunberg, Thunberg's Travels. London, 1795 and Ph.F. von Siebold, Nippon... Leiden, 1832-1858. 3. These diaries and other correspondence between the opperhoofd and his superiors at the Asian headquarters in Batavia are preserved at the National Archives in the Hague. Parts of the diaries

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 have been translated into Japanese by N. Murakami (1641-1654), Y. Nagazumi (1627-1641), the Historiographical Institute of Tokyo University (1633-1644) and the Society for the Historical Study of Japanese-Dutch relations (1800-1822). Of other parts the tables of contents (in English) are published in: The Deshima Dagregisters; their original tables of contents, vol. I-X, 1680-1800. Leiden Centre for the History of European Expansion (ed.), 1986-1997 and the revision, The Deshima Diaries; Marginalia 1700-1740. The Japan-Netherlands Institute (ed)., Tokyo, 1992. 4. Letter 41 (30-11-1787) by J.F. van Rheede tot de Parkeler. In: F. Lequin (ed.), The Private Correspondence of Isaac Titsingh, 1785-1811, vol. 1. Amsterdam, 1990. 5. I. van Daalen-Tanaka, ‘Titsingu no fukushin no keiko tsuji no nazo’ (‘The mystery of Titsingh's trusted apprentice-interpreter’), in the Tsushin (newsletter) of the Japan-Netherlands Institute, no 2 (82), July 1998. 6. G. Otsuki, introductory notes to his Rangaku Kaitei (Ladder to the Dutch Studies), 1788. (In Yogaku vol. 1, in the series Nihon shiso taikei no. 64, Tokyo 1976, p. 334.) 7. S. Matsudaira's (1758-1829) autobiography, Uge no hitogoto. (In Uge no hitogotol..., Tokyo, 1942, p. 177.) 8. S. Sato, Yogakushi no kenkyu (The study of the history of Western Studies), 1980, p. 200. 9. This is a literal translation of the Meiji slogan ‘Bunmei kaika’. 10. See the forthcoming book (working title: Dutch Civil Engineers in the Meiji Era) on these civil engineers, by the Foundation 400 years Netherlands-Japan, Zutphen: Walburg Press, 1999, and the accompanying film in 2000. 11. Louis Couperus, Nippon. The Hague, (1923), p. 45 et al. (in the 1971 edition). 12. This quote is part of a text on cups and stationary by Sanrio (1984-1987), in the ‘little pig’- series. The text continues with: ‘Always on the level. Set me free by the Zuiderzee and let me roam in my clogs through the polders’. 13. J.W. van Nouhuijs, ‘Zeekaarten van het schip de Liefde ex-Erasmus uit Ao 1598’, in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, 2e serie deel XLVIII, 1931, p. 843.

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‘Japonaiserie forever’ Vincent van Gogh and Japan

There are few artists in whose life and work Japonism played such an important role as in that of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). In the latter half of the nineteenth century Japonism was what we would nowadays call a ‘hype’, a craze that left its mark on the fine arts and applied arts alike. Few artists, however, were so taken by it that it not only altered their work but also their whole vision of life. ‘All my work is more or less based on Japanese art’, Van Gogh wrote to his younger brother Theo in 1888. Both of them were enchanted by the Japanese woodcuts that were going for a song at the time. This interest in exotic art work did not come out of the blue. The then recent phenomenon of international exhibitions being regularly organised in a number of European capitals stimulated an interest in objects from other cultures. The flood of Japanese prints on the European market made them relatively cheap, which was a godsend for impecunious painters like Vincent van Gogh and the young Claude Monet, who soon began to build up a collection of Japanese prints. They are said to have arrived in Europe as wrapping for porcelain and other goods and thus been discovered by collectors. During his stay in Zaandam in 1871 Monet is said to have discovered a pile of Japanese prints being used as wrapping paper by the local grocer and to have rushed home delighted with his find. Van Gogh was probably already aware of Japanese art before he decided to become an artist himself. Within a short distance of each other, in Leiden and The Hague, there were three collections of Japanese art that were open to the public. One of these, property of the Rijks Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden in The Hague, was situated close to the art dealer's shop where Van Gogh worked as an assistant in 1869. The Netherlands' very long-standing trade relations with Japan gave it a head-start over the rest of Europe. This not only benefitted the economy, it was also a source of interesting material from another cultural tradition. Nevertheless, it was not Dutch but French artists who were the first to be influenced by Japanese features in their own stylistic artistic development. Poets and other writers were also inspired by Japanese culture. From Paris Japonism spread rapidly over the rest of the world.

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Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

But to return to Van Gogh and the start of his career. Having largely taught himself to draw and paint, he had had little contact with colleagues, and living in a remote village in Brabant did not improve his prospects of interesting encounters either. Thus Vincent's life was a fairly isolated one. It was a stroke of luck that he was familiar with the latest developments in Paris. Theo van Gogh was working there as an art dealer and sent magazines and the latest books, such as those of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, to Brabant. These two brothers, whose reputation rests especially on their diaries, considered themselves the discoverers of the Japanese art of printmaking. The visit they made in 1861 to the Von Siebold collection in the Rijks Japansch Museum in Leiden is proof of their serious interest. In their novels Japanese art is often mentioned and Van Gogh, who was an avid reader, often referred to these authors whom he admired. The Goncourts' enthusiasm for Japanese prints undoubtedly aroused his interest. The first mention of Japanese art in his letters was in November 1885, when Vincent, writing from Antwerp where he had just arrived, told Theo that he felt at home in his small room because he had hung some Japanese prints there: ‘You know those little women's figures in gardens, or on the beach, horsemen, flowers, knotty thorn branches’. In the same letter Vincent quotes a well-known motto of the Goncourt brothers: ‘Japonaiserie forever’. Little did he then know how much those words would apply to himself. The three months that Van Gogh spent in Antwerp served as a bridge between the Brabant countryside and Paris. In the Netherlands his subject matter had been scenes from the hard lives of peasants and weavers. When he arrived in the French capital in February 1886, he was immediately confronted by the innovative ideas of the avant-garde. Theo, of course, was a familiar figure in the art world and Vincent soon came to know a number of the youngest group of Impressionists. They were experimenting with new techniques like pointillism. Anyone who calls The Potato Eaters to mind, painted as Van Gogh himself declared in the tones of a ‘dirty potato’, can imagine how challenging he must have found the colourful canvasses of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley. But the painter of drab peasant life was to make the colourful technique of the Impressionists his own in an astonishingly short time. With the enthusiasm so characteristic of him Vincent studied the stylistic innovations of the Japanese printmakers. Together with Theo he accumulated a large collection of Japanese prints and even organised an exhibition of them in the café Du Tambourin, a Montmartre venue for artists that was popular with the younger generation. In 1885 the discerning critic Théodore Duret wrote: ‘Prior to the discovery of the Japanese albums no one had had the nerve to go and sit on the riverbank and allow a bright red roof, a white wall, a green poplar, a yellow road and blue water to contrast with each other on a canvas.’ Duret was especially delighted by the daring way in which nature was represented in Japanese art. For the Impressionists, who were out to rejuvenate the art of landscape painting, the Japanese print was an inspiring example. Their revolutionary work was characterised not only by a striking use of colour but also by other non-European features such as figures abruptly cut

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 off by the margin or an emphatic contrast between what was in the foreground and the background.

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Vincent van Gogh (after Kesai Eisen), Japonaiserie: Oiran. 1887. 105 × 61 cm. Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Van Gogh familiarised himself with this idiom in his own way. In the winter of 1887 he produced three ‘Japonaiseries’: copies in oil of Japanese prints. The most ambitious of the three was based on a reproduction on a cover of the magazine Paris Illustré. The issue was devoted to Japan and the print depicting an ‘oiran’ (a Japanese courtesan) has been identified as by Kesai Eisen. Van Gogh carefully traced the figure on tracing paper, enlarged it and placed it in an idyllic water landscape with bamboo and water lilies. He derived the two frogs and cranes from two other Japanese prints. It is no accident that the cranes are there. Vincent was indulging in some visual word play: ‘grue’, the French word for ‘crane’, also means ‘tart’, thus alluding to the courtisane. Another painting dating from the same period is the striking Portrait of Père Tanguy. This dealer in artist's materials and art sympathised with the Impressionists, who found it hard to exhibit their work. Père Tanguy allowed them the use of his shop window and was also generous about offering artists credit. Van Gogh was very fond of this Socialist Utopian, and Tanguy's kind-heartedness shines through in the painting. As was frequently the case, Van Gogh made several versions of this portrait; the Musée Rodin version shown here is the most elaborate. Its relevance to this article is further enhanced by the presence in the lower right comer of Van Gogh's own ‘Japonaiserie’ of the oiran.

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Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Père Tanguy. 1887-1888. Canvas, 92 × 75 cm. Musée Rodin, Paris.

By now ‘Japonism’ had come to mean more to Van Gogh than the obvious stylistic influences in his own work. His image of Japan, and especially of the way in which he believed that Japanese artists behaved towards each other, had assumed the form of a Utopia. The disappointingly competitive climate of the Parisian art world was no doubt also a factor. Van Gogh imagined that instead of vying with each other Japanese artists worked together fraternally. Someone like Père Tanguy, who was modest and strove for a better society, fitted into that picture. This was a valid reason for placing him against a background of Japanese prints. Worn out and unwell after two taxing years in Paris, Van Gogh left for Arles in the Spring of 1888. It was a wise decision, as the enthusiastic letters he wrote after his arrival in the South of France show. To his colleague Emile Bernard he wrote: ‘Having promised to write to you I want to begin by telling you that this countryside seems to me as beautiful as Japan for clarity of atmosphere and gay colour effect.’ He also wrote to Theo and his sister Wil that he felt as if he were in Japan.

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A bonze in Arles

Among the first subjects Vincent took up in the Midi were the orchards in bloom. He set up his easel and paint box in the midst of the fruit trees in order to capture the atmosphere as directly as possible on the canvas. Working outdoors was not without discomfort. In a number of letters he complains of the cold and of being bothered by the wind. But his zest for work was unflagging; a total of fourteen paintings of orchards in bloom are on record. Of particular interest is Pear Tree in Blossom. The high viewpoint and the prominence of the little dwarf tree in the foreground give this small painting a decidedly Japanese quality. The yellow butterfly that can be discerned among the flowers accentuates the Japanese character of this subtle painting. Van Gogh undoubtedly had Hiroshige Utagawa's woodcut of a plum tree in flower in mind when he painted this picture. In Paris he had made a careful copy in oil of this print, which he had in his own collection. Vincent had an ambitious plan with ‘the orchards in flower’. He wanted the motif of the trees in bloom to form a decorative unity in a series of three related paintings. The vertical canvas of the Pear Tree in Blossom was to be the central panel, flanked by two horizontal panels. He explained what he had in mind in a letter to Theo and illustrated his intentions with a sketch of the Pear Tree in Blossom.

Vincent van Gogh, Pear Tree in Blossom. 1888. Canvas, 73 × 46 cm.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

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Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait as a Bonze. 1888. Canvas, 62 × 52 cm. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (MA).

In the summer of 1888, when the orchards had finished flowering, Van Gogh began to paint landscapes and views of the countryside around Arles. The brilliant light in the South of France overwhelmed him and brought home to him the great contrast with his native land where ‘the colours of the prism are veiled in the mist of the North’ as he put it so vividly in one of his letters. A fascinating self-portrait dates from September of the same year. It is obvious from the stylisation of his features that Van Gogh wished to give it a special significance. The painting bears the title Self-Portrait as a Bonze. Van Gogh probably derived the idea from a novel by Pierre Loti, a writer he much admired. Bonzes or Japanese priests occur in Loti's Madame Chrysanthème (1885), a novel set in Japan. Van Gogh owned an edition with a number of illustrations of these Japanese priests with their shaved heads. What motivated Van Gogh to assume such a pose? As so often his letters provide a clue to its genesis. He intended to give the portrait to Paul Gauguin, with whom he had become friendly in Paris. ‘I have a portrait of myself, all ash-coloured. The ashen-gray colour is the result of mixing malachite green with an orange hue, on pale malachite ground, all in harmony with the reddish-brown clothes. But as I also exaggerate my personality, I have in the first place aimed at the character of a simple bonze worshipping the Eternal Buddha’, he wrote to Gauguin. His sister Wil received a briefer description, he simply told her that he had depicted himself as a Japanese.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The Self-Portrait as a Bonze may be considered as a reaction on canvas to a self-portrait that he had recently received from Gauguin. Emile Bernard also took part in this exchange of self-portraits and likewise sent one to Arles.

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From a letter to Bernard we come to learn more about Van Gogh's sentiments during this period: ‘I have long been impressed by the way the Japanese artists have often exchanged work with each other. It shows that they admired each other and supported each other and that there was a certain harmony among them, that it was natural for them to lead a brotherly life, and not a life full of intrigues. The more we resemble them in this respect, the better we shall fare.’ This passage is especially revealing of what Van Gogh missed in Arles: collaboration with other artists, friendship and harmony. The Self-Portrait as a Bonze is the embodiment of Van Gogh's Japanese dream and shows him at the height of his powers. In the Yellow House where he had now found a home for himself, Van Gogh hoped to set up an artists' colony akin to a Japanese monastery. Both Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard were urged to come to Arles. Failing his friends' physical presence, the self-portraits were a tangible substitute. Van Gogh harboured the notion that they would work together in unison, while Theo would act as their dealer. Things were to turn out differently, even though they looked hopeful at first. When Gauguin finally arrived in Arles he was impressed by Vincent's work, admiring especially the sunflower still-lifes. Van Gogh had gone to the trouble of hanging two versions in his guest's room.

Sunflowers

The tragic outcome to Paul Gauguin's stay in Arles is a familiar story; after only two months, tension between the two artists ran so high that Gauguin left without warning for Paris and Vincent van Gogh had to be admitted to a mental hospital at Saint-Rémy. It is noteworthy that after these dramatic events Van Gogh scarcely ever referred again to Japan in his letters. The ideal of an artistic community along Japanese lines had proved to be an illusion and was no doubt too painful to be dwelt on. Japonistic motives did not, however, disappear from his work. Quite the contrary, they even proved to be a godsend when his enforced isolation obliged Van Gogh to look for subject matter close at hand. A good example is the drawing of beautifully observed crickets.

Vincent van Gogh, Three Crickets. 1889. Ink drawing, 20.5 × 18 cm. Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Nature was still a source of inspiration, but the blind alley of life in the mental hospital was a torment, and moreover Van Gogh was homesick for the North. Despite the fact that he spent a large part of the day indoors and was sporadically laid low by epileptic fits, magnificent still-lifes of flowers were produced in this period, among them the celebrated Irises. The painting Branches with Almond Blossom which he made on the occasion of the birth of his nephew, Vincent Willem, is evidence of what he was capable of despite his unhappy situation. He sent the canvas to Paris and the proud parents hung this delightful scene in their bedroom. The motif of the branches of almond blossom should have been the beginning of a new series, but once again Van Gogh fell victim to his disease and by the time he had recovered spring was over. In May 1890 Vincent left Saint-Rémy. After a brief stop in Paris to admire his little nephew, he continued on to nearby Auvers-sur-Oise. There he worked intensively for over two months on views of the village and the surroundings of Auvers. His depressed state of mind finally became so serious that he saw no other way out

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Vincent van Gogh, Branches with Almond Blossom. 1890. Canvas, 73 × 92 cm. Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. and on 29 July Vincent van Gogh died from the effects of the pistol shot with which he had wounded himself two days before. Van Gogh's death was not the end of his relationship with Japan. To begin with, the Japanese public was fascinated by his tragic life. From 1910 on various publications about his life and reproductions of his work increased his fame in that country. Numerous travelling exhibitions followed and finally Van Gogh became one of the most revered Western artists. It is common knowledge that in the last decades Japanese collectors have paid fortunes for the few paintings that have appeared at auctions. The fact that the pavilion built to enlarge the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has been designed by a Japanese architect, Kisho Kurokawa, underlines the special relation between Van Gogh and Japan yet again. The pavilion is ellipse-shaped and bounded by an asymmetric Japanese water garden. This new wing, which was opened to the public in July 1999, embodies a symbiosis between European and Japanese cultures. The financing of the project was in the hands of a big Japanese insurance company. Since 1987 this firm has owned a version of the Sunflowers, the authenticity of which has become the subject of some controversy. The composition of this still-life of fourteen sunflowers is similar to that of the Sunflowers in the National Gallery in London. The Van Gogh Museum plans to carry out a close examination of the painting in the coming years; the result of its inquiry is expected in 2001. The relationship between Van Gogh and Japan remains surprising and intriguing.

MARIJKE DE GROOT Translated by Elizabeth Mollison.

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Further reading

KODERA, TSUKASA, Vincent van Gogh, Christianity versus Nature. Amsterdam / Philadelphia, 1990. ORTON, FRED, ‘Vincent van Gogh and Japanese Prints’. In: Japanese Prints Collected by Vincent van Gogh (exh. cat.). Amsterdam, 1978, pp. 14-23. RAPPARD-BOON, CHARLOTTE VAN, et al, Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museum Collection of Japanese Prints. Amsterdam, 1991. UITERT, EVERT VAN, et al, Vincent van Gogh, schilderijen (exh. cat.). Amsterdam, 1990.

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers. 1888. Canvas, 93 × 73 cm. National Gallery, London.

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Brittle Wares Interaction between Oriental Porcelain and Delft Faience

The first sizeable consignment of Chinese porcelain to come onto the market in the Netherlands was part of a cargo seized from a Portuguese ship; it was auctioned in Middelburg in 1602. A similar auction took place in Amsterdam in 1604 and this one was an international event. The large profits being made from this porcelain prompted the young Dutch East India Company or VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, incorporated in 1602) to include it among the items it purchased in Asia. The porcelain trade was soon well under way, with tens of thousands of pieces shipped to the Netherlands every year. The imports consisted largely of ‘kraak porcelain’, a type characterised by the cobalt blue Chinese designs under the glaze and a border divided into wide and narrow sections. Plates, dishes and bowls in various standard sizes were shipped in large numbers, along with bottles, wine-kettles and vases. There was great interest in this porcelain in the

Wine-kettle with overhead handle, China, kraak porcelain, early 17th century, height 20 cm. The decoration in underglaze blue shows auspicious symbols and flowering plants in six panels. Groninger Museum, Groningen; photo by John Stoel.

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Netherlands. The moneyed bourgeoisie which emerged at the beginning of the seventeenth century was keen to confirm its status with a luxuriously furnished interior and it was prepared to pay a good price for this exotic porcelain. In practical terms, porcelain was superior to all the other kinds of ceramic known at that time; it was strong, smooth, non-porous, easy to clean and able to resist hot foods, and even large dishes were comparatively light and thin. The contrast of a blue decoration on a white ground was an additional attraction. Porcelain competed successfully with majolica, a collective name for a type of earthenware first produced for local use in many Dutch cities at the end of the sixteenth century. Dishes and plates in majolica were covered on the back with a transparent lead glaze to make them watertight. The front was given an opaque tin glaze which turned white in the kiln; coloured decorations were then applied onto the glaze with metal oxides. The arrival of Chinese porcelain caused a sharp decline in the demand for the refined, luxury types of majolica and the manufacturers were forced to concentrate on the cheaper versions or on the production of wall tiles for houses, a logical choice given the great urban expansion taking place at the time.

Beaker vase, China, transitional porcelain, 1635-1645, height 37 cm. Decorated in underglaze blue with a Kylin (an auspicious mythological animal) in a landscape. Groninger Museum, Groningen; photo by John Stoel.

Transitional porcelain

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The range of Chinese porcelain products was limited, however, and after a while this proved something of a problem. Once the Dutch market was awash with plates, dishes and bowls, there was a demand for other porcelain items such as beer tankards, salt-cellars, candlesticks and mustard-pots; in other words, Western designs which were not of course part of the standard Chinese export range. Initially the demand could not be satisfied because the VOC was not allowed to buy in China itself and was dependent on supplies available in the South-East Asian markets. However, the establishment of a trading-post on Formosa (present-day Taiwan) in 1624 made it possible to trade on the Chinese south coast on a regular basis, using Chinese middlemen. At that time the Company could more or less rely on porcelain orders being dispatched correctly and on time. Besides the traditional kraak porcelain, new types could now be ordered, though they did have to be specially made in the Chinese porcelain kilns in inland Jingdezhen, in the Province of Jiangxi. These orders were accompanied by patterns, in the form of European ceramic, glass or metal objects. Sometimes, too, wooden moulds were made in the Netherlands or Batavia (present-day Jakarta) to ensure that the Chinese potter produced the exact form required. Interestingly, all these new objects based on Western models were decorated with Chinese designs. This was, of course, just what the purchasing public wanted; after all, it should be quite clear that this was exotic Chinese porcelain and not ordinary European ware. This type of porcelain, made between approximately 1635 and 1650, is called ‘transitional porcelain’ and it is far superior in quality to kraak porcelain. Though polychrome enamelled pieces are sometimes found, most are decorated in underglaze cobalt blue. Kraak porcelain plates, dishes and bowls were still produced alongside this transitional porcelain.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 154

Shortage and replacement markets: Japan and Delft

The middle of the seventeenth century brought a dramatic change in the market situation. The civil wars in China between the supporters of the old Ming dynasty and the new Qing rulers resulted in a shortfall in supplies of Chinese porcelain on Formosa after 1645. The VOC therefore needed an alternative source, which it found in Japan where porcelain was produced on a small scale in kilns near Arita in Kyushu. However, they were not equipped to cope with the large VOC orders, and though a number of kilns quickly reorganised and specialised in export porcelain for the VOC there were constant problems. In the eyes of the Dutch traders, the quantities supplied were often too small, the cost price too high and the quality not on a par with Chinese porcelain. The Japanese potters complained about the speed with which they had to supply the articles and about the constant whittling down of the sometimes pre-agreed price. Most of the pieces made in Arita at that time copy the decorations of Chinese kraak and transition porcelain in underglaze blue in order to have easy access to the Dutch market. However, it proved impossible to satisfy the Dutch demand for oriental porcelain completely. Potters in Delft spotted the gap in the market and made the most of it. Before long they had switched most of their production from majolica and tiles to a new type of ceramic, known as faience. The term is used to refer to earthenware which is covered on the back and front with a white tin glaze in imitation of Chinese porcelain. The blue decoration was also copied, while a lighter and thinner body was obtained by using different firing techniques. In other words, they endeavoured to copy every aspect of Chinese porcelain right down to the last detail. And their efforts paid off, firstly because of the continued shortage of Oriental porcelain and, secondly, because the end-product was attractive, of high quality and cheaper and so, all in all, an excellent alternative. The number of faience factories in Delft soon multiplied from a mere handful to about thirty in 1670 and that was the origin of the now world-famous ‘Delft blue’. As one might expect, at first most Delft faience was painted with Chinese-

Dish, Japanese porcelain, 1660-1670, diameter 35.5 cm. Decorated in underglaze blue. The panelled border and the design of birds in a river landscape imitate Chinese kraak porcelain. Groninger Museum, Groningen; photo by John Stoel.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Dish, Delft faience, marked De Dissel factory, c. 1670, diameter 22.5 cm. The decoration in blue of an insect on a rock and large flowers exactly copies the Chinese kraak porcelain model. Groninger Museum, Groningen; photo by John Stoel.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 155 style decoration. Every effort was made to produce exact copies of kraak and transitional porcelain and from a distance it is often almost impossible to spot the difference between a Delft dish and a Chinese one. Gradually, however, the Delft producers began to move away from the Asian model. By combining all kinds of Chinese motifs and interpreting them in their own way, they arrived at a new style known as Chinoiserie.

Polychrome Delftware

An important innovation emerged at the end of the seventeenth century, namely the use of enamel colours in the decoration. Technically this did not pose a problem. They were applied to the tin glaze and fired at a temperature of between 900 and 1000° C in the so-called ‘grand feu’ or ‘big fire’. These enamels turned green, brown, yellow or purple according to the metal oxides used. Red was more difficult and burnt easily. The potters were already familiar with this process from the majolica-making days and so we might well wonder why it was not applied to faience sooner. Again the answer lies in the Chinese model. Dutch customers were under the impression that porcelain always came with a blue decoration, which explains why the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Coffee urn, Japanese porcelain, c. 1700, height 37 cm. The exuberant shape follows an unknown metal (?) European model, the decoration in overglaze enamels of the Imari type shows cranes and a pine in low relief. The three legs are shaped as Japanese women. In the base a hole for a tap. Groninger Museum, Groningen: photo by John Stoel.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 156 faience imitations were only in blue. They learned better when new types of export porcelain began to arrive from Japan and later also from China. All kinds of variations on the Chinese blue and white models copied for the VOC began to appear in Japan around 1660. One example was decoration executed entirely or partially in enamel colours. New and highly-typical Japanese styles developed from these early enamels and at the end of the seventeenth century there were two dominant types of polychrome export porcelain: Kakiemon and Imari. The first is sparsely decorated in different enamel colours depicting a flowering twig, birds, a dragon or another mythical creature. The second type, conversely, is intricately decorated all over with flowers, birds, Japanese figures or fabulous creatures in underglaze blue, iron red and gold. As we have seen, polychrome porcelain was made in China for the Dutch market as early as the 1640s, but in too small quantities to become widely known. Only after 1683, when the civil war had been settled in favour of the Qing dynasty, the porcelain kilns were producing on a large scale again and exports had resumed, did coloured Chinese porcelain become an increasingly important part of the export range. Of the many new types of porcelain which then came onto the market, the so-called ‘famille

Jar, Delft faience, c. 1700, height 33.5 cm. Decorated in enamels imitating Japanese Imari. In the two large panels a chinoiserie design of birds and flowering plants. Groninger Museum, Groningen; photo by John Stoel.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 157 verte’ is the most important. It was decorated predominantly in green enamels with ‘Long Elizas’ in a garden landscape, flowering plants or figural representations derived from Chinese woodcuts. It was not long before both Japanese and Chinese coloured porcelain was in great demand in the Netherlands. The fact that it was scarce and expensive once more triggered a market for imitations. This meant that the Delft potters had to start learning new techniques again, given that the red and gold burnt at high temperature. So a process was developed for these enamels whereby they were fired for a second time at a lower temperature of around 600° C, in the so-called ‘muffle’-kiln. Other pastel-colour enamels which had to be applied in detail and in fine nuances were also fired in this ‘petit feu’ or ‘small fire’. As soon as China began exporting porcelain again, the VOC stopped purchasing Japanese porcelain and switched back to Chinese porcelain, which was now brought into Batavia in huge quantities in Chinese junks, making it unnecessary for the Company to buy it in China. Yet business did not live up to expectations, because private individuals also started buying up porcelain in Batavia and shipping it to the Netherlands, where an extremely varied, ever-changing range of high-quality porcelain was now available. Delft earthenware was also competitive because it offered a wide choice of designs. So in 1690 the VOC decided to cut its losses and left the porcelain trade entirely to private individuals. The Delft manufacturers took advantage of the situation and flourished, the coloured faience proving more than a match for the blue.

The porcelain trade in the eighteenth century

In 1729 the VOC, following the example of other European Companies, began trading direct with Canton, China's main export harbour (now Guangzhou). Porcelain was purchased in enormous quantities along with tea, silk and other items. In the space of just five years, from 1729 to 1735, the VOC handled almost 4.5 million pieces of porcelain, around a million more than in the whole of the seventeenth century. There was no longer any question of a shortage of porcelain in the Netherlands; indeed there was now such an abundance that it had lost its exclusivity. It became an everyday item, available at a reasonable price, intended for a mass market. Recent urban archaeological excavations have shown the extent to which porcelain penetrated all strata of Dutch society in the eighteenth century. It appears that even relatively poor households had a few Chinese teacups or plates. In addition to all the advantages inherent in porcelain as a material, changes in eating and drinking habits also account for its enduring success. By the end of the seventeenth century, tea, coffee and - to a lesser extent - chocolate had become popular beverages and their consumption required tea and coffee services of thin porcelain. For meals, there was a growing appreciation of matching dishes and plates, stimulating the creation of large table services of Chinese porcelain consisting of many pieces, all with the same decoration. Porcelain now had a new role to play in the interior as well. By around the year 1700, a profusion of porcelain was already to be seen on wainscoting, mantelpieces and in the porcelain cabinets, whereby the total-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 158 ity of forms and colours rather than the single item now helped create the desired effect, and this fashion was continued well into the eighteenth century. The VOC concentrated on buying those commodities which were assured of a good market year in and year out, and which provided profits of between eighty and a hundred percent. Bowls, plates, tea and coffee-ware, services, pairs of ornamental vases, spittoons, chamber-pots and individual teapots were part and parcel of the inbound cargo. A good example of a typical cargo of this type is the porcelain retrieved by divers from the wreckage of the Geldermalsen, a VOC ship which ran aground on its way from China to the Netherlands. The treasure was auctioned as the Nanking Cargo in 1986 and it provided the Groninger Museum with a complete overview of all types of porcelain from this VOC cargo. Naturally the VOC strove for a degree of variation when buying in China. It had to adapt annually to fashion and taste, if only to hold its own against the imports of competitors. So the VOC regularly sent sample items over to China to illustrate what it wanted to purchase or to have a copy made in porcelain. Sometimes these would be Chinese porcelain purchased by other Companies and popular in Europe, sometimes Delft earthenware such as the butter tubs with raised lips on either side dispatched to China in 1765, but usually they were in the form of drawings. Most of these drawings were of course lost in use, but one set of seven pages dating from 1758, containing twenty-three illustrations, has survived. It is apparent from the order lists which have been preserved that the Company was very exacting as regards the wide range and fashionable shape of the porcelain; interestingly, far less importance was attached to its decoration. Almost all the items purchased were painted in Chinese style in underglaze blue, in enamel colours or in an imitation of Japanese Imari. With one or two exceptions, the VOC did not order porcelain with European-style decoration because the cost price was high and the profit minimal. Such chine de commande, painted after the example of Western prints, was bought in Canton as a souvenir or gift by members of ships' crews, or it was specially ordered by individual traders for a specific customer.

Tea cup, Chinese porcelain, 1735-1740, diameter 8.5 cm. Decorated in overglaze enamels, showing Dutch merchants entering a porcelain shop in Canton. Museum Het Princessehof, Leeuwarden; photo by Johan van der Veer.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Saucer, Chinese porcelain, 1735-1740, diameter 12.3 cm. Chine de commande, decorated in overglaze enamels with a European couple after an as yet unidentified print. Groninger Museum, Groningen; photo by John Stoel.

The decline of Delftware

In the light of all this, it is understandable that after 1730 Delft faience with Oriental motifs quickly lost market share. The transition to complete services decorated with European motifs provided little consolation, because in that market segment producers now had to compete with European porcelain and earthenware. The heyday of Delftware was over, the quality deteriorated and in the course of the eighteenth century most of the factories closed. Of course, the Chinese porcelain trade was exposed to the same competition, particularly after the 1750s when the Dutch became rather bored with Chinese decoration and switched to the fashionable hard English earthenware, such as Wedgwood which sold well in a number of shops in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, Chinese porcelain managed to hold its own much better than Delftware and it remained an established part of the inbound cargoes from China right up until the end of the eighteenth century.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 159

Conclusion

So, as we have seen, the influence of Oriental porcelain on Delft faience was very considerable. The VOC had created a demand for porcelain, but a change of circumstances in China caused supplies to dry up. In order to take over that share of the market, porcelain had to be copied in high-quality earthenware and the Delft potters developed new techniques, forms and decorations. Delft faience flourished until Chinese porcelain again became available in sufficient quantity and variety. Meanwhile, the production of Oriental porcelain was strongly influenced by the requirements of the new Dutch market. The potters in China and Japan reacted efficiently to the demands of the Company and of Dutch individuals. They supplied a very wide range, partly of Western forms, at a low price and decorated as required in Chinese or European style. Even today, Oriental porcelain is still a distinctive part of Dutch culture and life. Decorative and utility pieces are found in many households - a marvellous example of the way the Dutch incorporate exotic elements into their daily lives.

CHRISTIAAN J.A. JÖRG Translated by Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim.

Further reading

HOWARD, D. and J. AYERS, China for the West, 2 vols. London / New York, 1978. HOWARD, D.S., The Choice of the Private Trader. London, 1994. JÖRG, C.J.A., Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade. The Hague, 1982. JÖRG, C.J.A., Interaction in Ceramics. Oriental Porcelain and Delftware (exh. cat.). Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1984. JÖRG, C.J.A., The Geldermalsen. History and Porcelain. Groningen, 1986. LUNSINGH SCHEURLEER, D.F., Chine de Commande. London, 1974. VOLKER, T., Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company. Leiden, 1954, 1971.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 160

The Jesuit Connection Relations between Flanders and China

One early player in the history of relations between China and Flanders was Willem van Rubroeck OFM, who hailed from the south-western corner of Flanders. Coming from one of the first generations of the Franciscan movement in Flanders, he is certainly among the foremost figures of the early Franciscan mission to the Far East. Although he never actually reached China, his most famous journey (1252-1255) took him to Karakorum in Mongolia, and he pointed the way for the later generations of friars who founded the Christian Church of Yuan China, leading among other things to the establishment of the dioceses of Peking (Beijing) and Fukien. After him we find no discernible traces of any relationship between Flanders and China until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Flemish interest in China resumed within the framework of the Jesuit Mission in China, itself a spin-off of the great age of the Descobrimentos, the Portuguese discoveries in the Far East. It is significant that in a letter of 1552 the founder of the China Mission, Francis Xavier, already specifically asked for ‘Flemish and German’ fathers to be sent there. It is not entirely clear just what lay behind this preference; he may have been thinking of the physical strength of the North European fathers, necessary in the harsh conditions of that mission; maybe, also, the exemplary role of Father Gaspar Barzaeus (or Berse), a native of Goes in Zealand Flanders, inspired his choice. In any event, from the beginning Flemish fathers were part of that small pioneering band, along with representatives of other nationalities, among them the real stars of the mission, the Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri, Alessandro Valignano and Matteo Ricci. At this time, the presence of Portuguese groups in Bruges and Antwerp meant that these cities had long been receiving Chinese products such as Wan li porcelain and medicinal plants - including ginseng root, the description of which by Andreas Vesalius (Basel, 1546) introduced it to the rest of Europe. In the first decade of the seventeenth century a native of Douai, Nicolas Trigault, played an important role in this mission: by his journey through Europe (1611) in search of money, books, etc, which attracted the attention of European princes, intellectuals and painters (Rubens!); by sending a series of European books on science and other subjects to Peking, which

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 161 formed the basis of the famous Jesuit library and the ‘scientific’ work of the Jesuits there; by his Latin translation of Matteo Ricci's account of the China Mission, which made it widely accessible and popular in Europe; by his part in developing an adequate Western transcription system for Chinese. Sadly, no detailed research on his work and reception has yet been carried out. In the first half of the seventeenth century Flanders was represented on the Chinese scene almost exclusively by the products of its printing houses, with a splendid copy of the Biblia Polyglotta (ceremoniously received in Peking in 1604), and Hieronymus Nadal's Evangelicae Historiae Imagines (Antwerp, 1594). Both of these were produced by the famous Antwerp publishing house of Plantin, and the latter achieved widespread use in the instruction of converts. Conversely, the ‘image of China’ was received in Flanders, and disseminated inter alia in cartographic form (the China maps of Abraham Ortelius), in several (translations and) publications of Jesuit Year Letters (‘Litterae Annuae’), and in Jesuit theatre. Some collections of Chinese curiosities also came into being (for instance, the Jacob Edelheer collection in Antwerp); it is likely that they contained the same kind of items as the collections in Holland - porcelain, fans, lacquer ware, plant specimens etc. - but on a more modest scale than in the Northern Netherlands.

‘China Jesuit’, as portrayed by P.P. Rubens on the occasion of the former's stay in Antwerp in 1611. Photo courtesy Prof. dr. H. Vlieghe; cf. ID, Corpus Rubenianum, Part XIX Portraits, II Antwerp Identified Sitters, no. 154c.

An ‘engineer’ Jesuit

A decisive event for the Flemish presence in China was the arrival from that country of the Italian Jesuit missionary Martino Martini, who passed through Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven in the first half of 1654. His visit spurred a new generation of young Jesuits to head for China, attracted partly by Martini's stimulating personality and reports and partly by their strong desire for heroism and martyrdom. A real torrent of demands for postings to China came from the Flemish colleges, and a glance through them tells us a good deal about the applicants' motives. It was in 1655 that Albert Dorville, Philippe Couplet, Ferdinand Verbiest and Franciscus de Rougemont left Flanders, reaching China in 1659 after many vicissitudes. Together

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 with Petrus van Hamme they became central figures of the Flemish presence in China, albeit for different reasons. Dorville's most conspicuous achievement was undoubtedly his participation, with Johann Grüber, in the first (recorded) journey by Europeans through Tibet and the Himalayas, where they were the first to describe a number of places, including the Potala in Lhasa. Far better known, though, is Ferdinand Verbiest, who was active in Peking between 1660 and 1688 as a missionary, scientist, engineer and diplomat. His activities are relatively well documented - though not yet fully studied - thanks to a tremendously rich bibliography in (mainly) Latin, Portuguese, Chinese and Manchu. Probably his most conspicuous role was as imperial astronomer and calendar maker; the prestige that went with this position afforded him excellent opportunities to protect and promote the Christian cause. It was in this capacity that he built, between 1669 and 1674, a set of six new astronomical instruments for the Imperial Observatory in Peking, of a Tychonic type, mainly to persuade Chinese specialists of the superiority of Western astronomy. This - still extant - set combines contem-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 162

F. Verbiest's new Peking Observatory (1669-1674), etched by Melchior Haffner after his own world-famous drawing (From F. Verbiest, Astronomia Europaea, Dilingae 1687).

Reconstruction of F. Verbiest's automotive vehicle, built in 1984. Photo courtesy Noël Golvers. porary European skill with Chinese artistic tradition, and is certainly a masterpiece in the history of instrument building; in addition, the ‘engineer’ explained the physical principles, the building process and the working of the instruments in both Chinese and Latin treatises, of which the former are also remarkable for the beauty of their design. They are now precious and eagerly-sought-after bibliographic rarities. One important question regarding Verbiest's instruments is just how far they were obsolete in Europe at the time they were introduced in China; however, the proven degree of ‘retardation’ can be explained as due to factors beyond their builder's control and was certainly not intentional. In any event, Verbiest also showed himself highly competent in several other mathematical disciplines, by making, adapting and even inventing machines in the fields of - among others - ballistics, canal digging, clock and dial making, by the construction of automata, etc. Probably the achievement of his which has attracted most comment was the casting of a series of some 300 military cannons, of increasing per-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 163 fection, and the most imaginative his development of a steam-driven automotive vehicle, later forgotten but now generally recognised as the precursor of the modern automobile! These in addition to many other more or less important achievements, for instance in the field of international diplomacy: he personally manipulated the tentative Chinese-Russian talks with a view to organising overland communications for the Jesuits between China and Europe via Siberia and Moscow. In this, too, he opened new horizons for the mission. With these manifold activities, Verbiest - whose Chinese name was ‘Nan Huai-jen’ - is still recognised in today's China as the most important figure in Sino-Flemish relations.

Bringing China to Europe

Meanwhile Verbiest's colleagues from the Leuven Jesuit college, Philippe Couplet and Franciscus de Rougemont, were working in South China, in Nanking (or Chiang-nan) Province; they, far more than Ferdinand Verbiest, represent the missionary pur sang. In the case of de Rougemont, this has recently been confirmed with the (re)discovery and study of his personal account book for 1674-1676. Couplet on the other hand left China for Europe in 1681, bringing with him a 400-volume library of Chinese Christian works, as well as (mainly Latin) manuscripts by Jesuit missionaries which also covered a broad spectrum of non-Christian Chinese culture, religion, philosophy and customs. Here he developed a new side to his career. During his ten-year stay in Europe (in Flanders, Italy, France, England, Spain and Portugal) from 1684 to 1694 he was busily engaged in the publication of these manuscripts, which earned him the honorary title - a little exaggerated, but basically accurate - of ‘the man who brought China to Europe’. These works did indeed represent (following on from Matteo Ricci, Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, Alvaro Semedo and Martino Martini) a new vein of fresh information on China, written by qualified eye-witnesses. There were, to name only a few, Ferdinand Verbiest's Astronomia Europaea (Dillingen, 1687) and his Elementa Linguae Tartaricae (Paris, 16811, 16942); the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus by Prospero Intorcetto, Philippe Couplet, Franciscus de Rougemont and Christian Herdtrich (Paris, 1687), which included a Synopsis of Chinese history, a Tabula Chronologica Monarchiae Sinicae, a Tabula Genealogica 3 Familiarum Imperialium (...) and Annales Sinici; the Nouvelle Relation de la Chine by Gabriel de Magalhaes (Paris, 1688); the revision of a basic Chinese grammar; and many others. During his stay in Europe, moreover, Couplet was in contact, directly and / or through correspondence, with several scholars who were trying to acquire a knowledge of the Chinese language: Christian Menzel in Berlin, Thomas Hyde in Oxford, Melchisedech Thévenot and Louis Picques in Paris, who represent the first generation of European sinologists. In fact Couplet's prime objective was always to promote and defend the interests of the Chinese Mission in Rome and in Europe; but his intellectual contribution is none the less important for that. Couplet's death on his return to China in 1694 meant the end of a period (1654-1694) which had started with Martini's arrival in Antwerp. The presence of Flemish Jesuits in China and the apparently uninterrupted (though

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 164

Flemish engraving (Antwerp), accompanying the dissertation of Th. d'Immerselle at the Jesuits' mathematical school in Leuven in 1652. Imitated afterwards in China. (Noël Golvers, T'oung Pao, LXXXI, 1995, 303-314).

Allegory of the Muses of European Science, a Chinese imitation of the engraving in d'Immerselle's dissertation (From B. Laufer, 1911). indirect) contacts, centring especially around Balthasar II and Balthasar III Moretus and the Antwerp Jesuit house, had given Flanders a great opportunity to play an important role in the ‘intellectual’ approach of Europe to China. But nothing came of it, because of a lack of interest. Even the China-topic in Flemish Jesuit theatre was restricted to stereotypes. In Antwerp, the Bollandist Father Daniel Papebrochius was an active supporter of the China mission; but we find no sign of any broader interest. Apart from Martini's De Bello Tartarico (Antwerp, 1654) no major books on China appeared in the Southern Netherlands, and even such an epoch-making work as the Novus Atlas Sinensis (Amsterdam, 1654) - originally offered for publication to the Antwerp printers - was rejected by the local printers. A lack of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 linguistic interest - compared to neighbouring countries - also indicates a very limited interest in this part of the expanding world. Meanwhile, ‘Flemish’

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 165 books and prints (engravings, emblems) did occasionally get as far as China, and Couplet and de Rougemont played a substantial part in the production of the first Latin translation of (three of) the four Chinese Classics, published in Paris in 1687 as Confucius Sinarum Philosophus. The situation did not change with the arrival in China in 1689 of Petrus van Hamme. Much of his correspondence has been preserved, but still awaits proper collection and study. In this eighteenth-century phase, one new element is certainly an increased interest in commercial relations with China (most notably the tea trade), culminating in the rise and eventual suppression of the Ostend Company (1722-1774). This organisation, together with other enterprises in decades that followed, brought a vast array of Chinese objets d'art to the Southern Netherlands and also contributed to the assimilation of ‘Chinese’ customs such as tea drinking and other chinoiseries in urban centres there.

The Scheut mission

The last phase of Flemish-Chinese relations begins in the nineteenth century, when the creation of the Belgian Kingdom gave a new context - and to some extent a new élan - to Flemish interest in China. Apart from the contributions of individuals such as Paul Splingaerd, in the fields of diplomatic and economic relations among others, it is again the missionary enterprise, and some of its spin-offs, which is most conspicuous. Here we think in the first place of the contribution of the missionary congregation of Scheut

Father Antoon Mostaert CICM (1881-1971), one of the world's foremost Mongolists. Photo courtesy F. Verbiest Foundation.

(CICM) in China and Inner Mongolia, memorable both for the heroism of the venture and for its participation in the scientific exploration of those areas. Especially deserving of mention here are Antoon Mostaert CICM and Jos Mullie CICM. The former still ranks among the foremost mongolists, and his works, including Dictionnaire Ordos (Vol. I, 1941; II, 1942; III, 1944), Le dialecte Monguor (Vol. I, 1931; II, 1945) and Le dialecte des Mongols Urdus (1926-1930) remain landmarks in the field. Jos Mullie is mainly known for his studies on Chinese; his Chinese Idiom (Het Chineese taaleigen, 1930-1931) and Principles of Chinese Literary Language

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 (De grondbeginselen van de Chinese letterkundige taal), among others, are still important works. He and his fellow fathers also considerably advanced the study of archeology, folklore and even paleontology, individually or in collaboration with leading specialists such as Teilhard de Chardin SJ. The CICM enterprise had to abandon its activities in the field in 1949; but its work in the domain of humanitarian aid projects and historical research continues in the Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation (Catholic University of Leuven). In recent decades, too, economic collaboration (such as joint-ventures) opened up new horizons. This brief survey shows how for more than 700 years Flemish people, most of them missionaries, have contributed within the context of their own ‘mission’ to a better understanding of Chinese people, and how substantial their contribution often was.

NOËL GOLVERS

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 166

‘Only in my poems can I dwell’ The Work of J. Slauerhoff

The poet and prose writer J. Slauerhoff (1898-1936) is one of the most important authors in Dutch literature. His books have been translated into French, German, Italian and Portuguese, among others, but - strangely - not yet into English. In the Netherlands, his poems, novels and stories are available in collected editions which are regularly reprinted - something which none of his fellow writers of the thirties has achieved. This is the more remarkable because critical views on Slauerhoff's work have always been mixed. Being the subject of a pitched battle among the critics in the early 1930s did his reputation no harm. Later critics pointed out irregularities in his metre. A professor and author of a poetry textbook published in 1993 referred to his ‘metrical faults’ and ‘technical defects’. Slauerhoff's poetry has also been criticised for being histrionic and rhetorical. His stories contain improbabilities and impossibilities; chronology and historical facts are inaccurate. As a writer-craftsman he also failed because he couldn't stop tinkering with things: his manuscripts and typescripts were illegible and difficult to work with. But Slauerhoff's readers have remained loyal. They are moved by the imaginative variations on his theme: a romantic disillusionment with life (‘I didn't think life would be like this’; ‘Life has become burdensome to me’). Reality falls far short of the ideal, ‘the Absolute’, which he pursued throughout his life and could never attain. His work is partly a fevered pursuit of that ideal, an emphasising of its unattainability, and above all a protest against the insincerity and indolence with which people in general avoid this conflict. Slauerhoff's readers are also moved by his self-idealisation. He portrays himself as a strong, lonely figure who roams forests, steppes and other in-hospitable surroundings: a wanderer in China; a seaman - preferably an explorer - a castaway, or even a ruthless pirate with no sense of ethics. One of his best-known poems, ‘In Memoriam Myself’ (‘In memoriam mijzelf’) is a good example of such a ‘self-portrait’. In other ‘portraits’, Slauerhoff identifies with renowned predecessors, whom he also depicts as ‘doomed’. The most important of these are the Chinese Po Tsju I and the Portuguese Camoens.

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Slauerhoff's life story has also acquired legendary elements. The first biography appeared only four years after his death, despite the fact that biography was not a favoured literary genre in the Netherlands. Two more biographies followed, as well as a 400-page French work devoted to the man and his oeuvre. In the Netherlands, every pupil studying literature at school has heard of Slauerhoff, the seafaring poet. They know him as the romantic who was unlucky in love and who, in spite of his beautiful love poems, was desperately searching for a woman to share his life. They know him as the opium addict who liked to tease respectable citizens and behaved so badly towards some of his friends that they refused to have anything more to do with him. His life contained more than enough anecdotes to liven up literature classes.

A Frisian Rimbaud?

Slauerhoff grew up in a middle-class environment. His father, a painter and decorator in Leeuwarden, raised his hat to anyone he met in the street who might be a potential customer. Slauerhoff thus became acutely aware of class distinctions. His health was poor and he was sent to stay with relations on the lovely Wadden island of Vlieland, which always remained special to him. He returned to the island regularly and for a long time considered settling there. Leeuwarden is the capital of the Dutch province of Friesland, a bilingual province where Dutch and Frisian are spoken. As legend has it, Slauerhoff would ask a girlfriend for a kiss in Frisian, but as a writer he used the Dutch language. He admitted that Friesland remained very special to him even though his poetry tells us that he could not live in the Netherlands, where the water in the canals flows too slowly: ‘as slowly as Dutch blood in the arteries’. He had a predilection for French and was familiar with the works of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Tristan Corbière. He also wrote poetry in French, some of which he collected as Fleurs de marécage. His well-known renderings of Chinese poetry were based on translations (especially those of Arthur Waley) because he could not read Chinese. However, he was able to read German, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and he adapted and translated works in those languages into Dutch. Slauerhoff's poor health did not affect his education. He also completed his degree in medicine relatively quickly, despite conflicts with professors who commented on his defiantly dirty nails. At the same time he lambasted the committee members of his student society in satirical poems published in student journals. But he wrote serious poetry too and, with the help of a student of Dutch (to whom he was engaged for a couple of years), became familiar with classical Greek and Latin literature. Slauerhoff was not a bookish type, but he was certainly well-read. In 1923 his first collection of poems, Archipelago (Archipel), was published. The first poem in the collection is ‘The Figurehead, the Soul’ (‘Het boegbeeld, de ziel’). The figurehead is feminine, but this does not detract from the suggestion in the title, i.e. that the poem is a self-portrait - the first of many. The poem contains the nautical images which feature in all his works. Slauerhoff loved the sea, and made a number of long sea voyages

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 168 when he was a student. For him, the sea is an unspoiled territory where he can escape from human civilisation, which he generally despises. He also writes about the ocean depths which he associates with purity - another important motif - a region unchanged since the Creation. But, with panoramas of shipwrecks and long-drowned bodies, Slauerhoff also depicts the deep as a kingdom of death. He felt more at home at sea than on land, and enjoyed the sound of the water gurgling along the ship's side. He also loved ships - so much that he could not watch the original film about the Titanic to the end, and left the cinema. After qualifying as a doctor, Slauerhoff's life assumed a more regular pattern. He wanted to travel to far-off countries, partly to collect material for his writing. Ship's doctor was an obvious career choice for one who was neither rich, nor possessed a strong constitution. He signed up and remained a ship's doctor, albeit with interruptions which were the result of his own doubts about the future, as well as the fact that his health deteriorated and forced him into periods of convalescence. He suffered from various afflictions, including tuberculosis - something he could not disclose if he wanted to continue working as a ship's doctor. Surprisingly enough, he passed the medical examinations; but the medical care he received under these circumstances (for the most part he doctored himself) was inadequate. Slauerhoff sailed to the Dutch Indies, and travelled between Java and Japan on ‘coolie-ships’ transporting labourers. Later, he worked aboard more luxurious cruise ships taking Europeans to South America, and he also travelled to East Africa. As a doctor he was more popular with the crew than the passengers, and admitted to feeling more at home on the coolie-ships than on the cruise liners. He visited many countries, but outside Europe he rarely went farther than the ports and coastal areas. He never roamed the forests or the steppes; nor was he ever a pirate. Yet his descriptions of, for example, Mexico and China are remarkable; Slauerhoff could capture the atmosphere of a country, and supplemented his own observations from his reading.

‘Just float as free and gracefully’

Although he loved the sea, he could not break away from the basic tenet of all Romantics: happiness is always somewhere else. During his travels, he was forever reviling the seafaring life and making plans to settle on dry land, where he would marry a good wife and lead a bourgeois existence. He would also have the chance to recover his health - something which was becoming increasingly necessary. Between voyages, Slauerhoff attempted to realise his plans, but sooner or later something always went wrong, and he returned to sea. He worked as a locum in Dutch villages, and had other jobs in medicine for short periods. A more important step towards a conventional lifestyle was his marriage in 1930 to the dancer Darja Collin, who inspired him to write a well-known poem about dance and poetry: ‘If I could somehow express your dance / in a poem free of words. / Just float as free and gracefully / as you in the air and in the light.’ But in that same year he returned to sea. Travels through Portugal and Spain also took him to Morocco. Here he made a new, paradoxical attempt

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 169 to lead a more regular life: in 1934 he opened a doctor's surgery in the most unhealthy part of Tangiers. There was much work to do there, he claimed, yet he continued to neglect his own health. His wife could not follow him to Tangiers, and the couple were divorced in 1935. Slauerhoff had meanwhile moved to Paris, but shortly afterwards he went back to sea. In the meantime his health had deteriorated to such an extent that he could not carry on. In the year of his divorce, 1935, Slauerhoff was forced to let his ship leave Genoa without him. After a succession of nursing homes, he entered a convalescent home in Hilversum, where he died in the autumn of 1936.

The flying Dutchman

Slauerhoff is known first and foremost as a poet. To a certain extent, his Collected Poems (Verzamelde gedichten) can be seen as his most successful book. His individual volumes do not reveal a great deal of development in his style. Not just because he really only had one theme, but because for each collection he selected poems with a particular motif; each volume thus contained both new and old work. His anthologies include East Asia (Oost

J. Slauerhoff (seated) and other crew members aboard their ship in Shanghai on 18 January 1926. Photo Letterkundig Museum, The Hague.

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Azië) from 1928, and Yoeng poe tsjoeng from 1930. East Asia contains Slauerhoff's poetic impressions of his travels there. Yoeng poe tsjoeng (literally: ‘of no use’) contains mainly his interpretations of Chinese poetry, which are so radical that the result is 100% Slauerhoff. Another thematic collection was to be published in 1936, the year of his death: sea poems under the title Salt Water (Zout water) - alluding to the sea and to tears. At the last moment, however, Slauerhoff choose the poignant title An Honest Seaman's Grave (Een eerlijk zeemansgraf). Some of his best-known poems evidently could not be placed in his collections, and were posthumously published in his collected works. Slauerhoff's best-known novel is The Forbidden Empire (Het Verboden Rijk, 1931). Together with its sequel, Life on Earth (Het Leven op Aarde, 1934) it recounts the wanderings of a radio operator - a new autobiographical character. In The Forbidden Empire, the radio operator first tries to find happiness in complete isolation. He wants to become ‘empty’, but recoils from this when he starts to feel threatened by ‘demons’. The novel deals with the idea of reincarnation: the demon turns out to be the sixteenth-century poet Camoens, who wants to take possession of the radio operator's soul. In one section of the book, radio operator and poet come together in a strange sort of mixed personality. The second book, Life on Earth, is more realistic. The radio operator submerges himself in the vast Chinese empire and in the epilogue he decides, having considered the opportunities open to him, to continue his wanderings for ever. In the novel The Guadalajara Uprising (De opstand van Guadalajara), published posthumously, and recently published in Germany under the justifiable title Christus in Guadalajara, Slauerhoff sets his usual theme in a completely different environment: among the Mexican Indians. The novel is more lucid, but also more cynical. This time the familiar wanderer, as always in search of a more endurable lifestyle, is the victim of a number of megalomaniac characters, the worst of whom is a priest. They manipulate him into the role of a saviour in order to gain the support of the Indians. Slauerhoff's most penetrating prose, however, is to be found in his short stories, for example in the collections Spring Island (Het Lente-eiland) and Foam and Ash (Schuim en As), both published in 1930. Spring Island contains the China stories and this small collection, considered as an entity, represents Slauerhoff at his best. The quality of writing in Foam and Ash, however, is generally held to be less consistent. Many readers claim that the best stories from Foam and Ash are superior to those in Spring Island, although opinions differ as to which stories are actually the best.

A calamitous truth

A pirate does not write melodious, virtuoso poetry or perfectly composed novels. Slauerhoff is not a poet of the ‘well-made poem’, but we can feel the sense of metre and rhythm in his verse. His style is very recognisable, partly because he is not afraid of dissonance. In terms of the personal nuances in Slauerhoff's poetry, Baudelaire - who was not afraid to bend poetic conventions to his own uses - was a far better ‘master’ for Slauerhoff than the Dutch faultfinders.

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Slauerhoff seems to have brooded on his poetic ‘incompleteness’ throughout his life. In the story ‘The Erased Handwriting’ (‘Het uitgewiste handschrift’, in Spring Island), for example, the poet Po Tsju I is portrayed as an outcast who lives only for his poetry, but is not successful. One evening a poem appears on his paper as if written by an invisible hand. The new poem is far better than his previous work. Next morning, however, the paper is blank - the poem has been mysteriously erased. Po eventually turns respectable and begins to climb the social ladder. He becomes a well-to-do official, and his new poetry is highly acclaimed. Yet he cannot forget the erased poem: was that one verse not far better than anything else he had written since? And was this poetry not worth far more than his career? His friend Yuan Sjen then gives him back the ‘erased’ poem; Yuan says it is ‘good’ but not remarkable. Slauerhoff gives Po Tsju's reaction: ‘Then he carefully read his own poem as if it were that of a stranger. Yes - a stranger's. Yuan Sjen was right, it was weak and faltering. Yet it had something which was missing in his later work. What could he call it? The accent of calamitous truth. (...) there was something which none of his later work could achieve. There were lines which simmered with exposed emotion; it was a miracle that they remained on the paper. They could easily have slid off it like dew from a blossoming branch.’ This ‘accent of calamitous truth’ is what Slauerhoff wants to achieve in his fitful work. The ‘exposed emotion’ alludes to the romantic ideal of direct expression of the emotions. Slauerhoff's work is often interpreted in this way, and sometimes even as directly autobiographical. The deliberate creation of something which is imperfect and not ‘polished’ (such as the mess on his manuscripts) reflects his ambiguous relationship to his writing. He cannot live without it: ‘Only in my poems can I dwell’ is one of his most-quoted lines. Yet he likes to emphasise that his writing is a curse and a burden - thoughts which he also attributes to his predecessors Po and Camoens. There are many romantic writers. They all express dissatisfaction with life and in their work they try to communicate their constant struggle to liberate themselves from the source of their dissatisfaction. Slauerhoff is a late romantic, and also one of the great romantics. His best work is a convincing portrayal of the oppressive paradoxes which determine his character.

EEP FRANCKEN Translated by Yvette Mead.

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Two Poems and a Story by J. Slauerhoff

In Memoriam Myself

By enemies hemmed in, With ‘friends in need’ who've fled Rank meat that stinks like sin, I laugh, toss back my head, Though torn to shreds within, My body all but dead.

Each day my life was crossed By new adversity. Good reaped iniquity; I paid a heavy cost, But now the battle's lost I fight on doggedly.

Snow, ice envelop me, The bodies are piled high Of those who crazily Pursued my inner ‘I’, Once bright as ‘gay Paree’, Now polar, frozen, dry.

I leave no last bequest, Smash life's work at a stroke; No mercy I request, Curse past and future folk; Stand tall where they now rest, And treat death as a joke.

I look fate in the eye, Have said not one goodbye, But want men when I die To say just this of me: ‘He did good very ill, Served bad with honest will, Succumbed while battling still, Undaunted, lived his fill, Intolerant and free.’

From Collected Poems (Verzamelde gedichten, 1999) Translated by Paul Vincent. In Holland...

Holland's no place for me to live, Raw passion there they can't forgive. Whatever would the neighbours think Who peer and pant through every chink? Give me the steppes, the open skies, Where fellow-men don't spoil one's day: No heron will flee my lusty cries,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 No vixen start and scoot away.

Holland's no place for me to die, Rotting in soggy ground to lie Where one has never really lived. Rather roam, longing, low and high, The company of nomads keep. ‘He's failed,’ my smug compatriots sneer. It's true, I wish I'd cut more deep; That's cost this free man very dear.

Holland's no place for me to live, Your life to chasing goals you give, Thinking of others constantly. I must hurt only furtively, Never thump someone's ugly face When I can't stand their damned grimace. Attacking people without cause Shows disrespect for moral laws.

In poky houses I'll not live Which Ugliness spawned on this shore In towns and villages galore. All walk stiff-collared, in black droves - Not stylishly, but just to give The feeling they know what behoves. Each citizen the other greets, Parading through the Sunday streets.

Holland's no place for me to bide, I'd ossify, seize up inside. There life's too stolid, too sedate, Men weigh their words, dispassionate. They'd never stick their own necks out, The helpless, though, they single out. No shrunken yokel's head's found this far north, No glorious crime of passion ever blazes forth.

From Collected Poems (Verzamelde gedichten, 1999) Translated by Paul Vincent.

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The Death Struggle of the Foolish Old Man in Love with Writing

Lou Tun, famous for his history of the third dynasty, also wrote many poems and a love story. The poems were all lost in the great book-burning which took place at the bidding of Emperor Yuan, the last of the Liangs. There is a manuscript of the love story in the great monastery library of Kalgan. But it is illegible, the pages are curled and scorched at the edges, and the ink has run; the script is obliterated, as though the manuscript has been burnt and has lain in water. It has also been half torn in two. Lou Tun always worked late at night; during the day, to provide for his needs, he was a money-changer. In the evenings he washed his hands, soiled by the copper coins, and began to write. When after fifteen years he had completed his history and had received some taels, he believed he would greatly enjoy his evening and night-time rest; he had grown old and weary and thought he had enough money to be able to drink two cups of wine every evening before going to bed. But he slept badly, and in the morning he was much more exhausted than in the past when he had devoted half the night to his work. So one evening he sat down once more at his table by the window, dipped his brush in the ink and began to write. Spontaneously he began to describe the fortunes of a pair of lovers on the far side of the great river. At first all was light and joy, he was able to experience how they walked together upon soft and dark forest paths, picked flowers at the blossom festival, lit fireworks at new year, how also they met each other in secret at night. This was how he wanted to spend what remained of the evening of his life, enjoying the pleasures which he himself had been denied. But without him wanting it, his story became sad now and then; in the wine of their joy was mingled the gall of pain and disappointment, in the purity of their love the treachery of family ties. Lou Tun endeavoured to guide it all back on to the path of true joy. He drank no more wine, and bought the finest ink and the best paper. But nothing helped. Then he drank more wine and a few times he fell asleep rejoicing in the belief that he had given a favourable turn to their fortunes. But when the next evening he read over what had been written, he saw that through an apparently joyful event, the seeds had been sown of yet more fateful developments in the plot. At such a moment he could not imagine that he had written it himself, so good were his intentions towards the young couple. Could it not be that someone stole the manuscript during the night and altered the text a little, while he slept? He grew sombre again, placed the manuscript under his pillow, made a copy which he hid behind the double bamboo wall and in the morning compared the two: no, there was not a jot of difference, and still the story became ever sadder, so that the lovers had begun to think of suicide. He warned them in well-chosen parables, but the longing for the release of death grew stronger. He portrayed for them the terror of the existence of the shades of those who shorten their lives wilfully; more and more their thoughts lingered

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 174 on death, they spoke of the different means: gold leaf, poison, silken cord. The girl especially, who was tormented by her mother and brothers, continually thought of it; once she bought a silken cord, but in his last line, written with trembling hand, Lou Tun, whose head was already inclining towards his pillow, had the cord stolen before nightfall by a servant who also needed it. Then he could go no further, the last wellspring of joy had run dry. Lou Tun had them both fall into a deep slumber caused by a sudden illness, and roamed around at night, fearful that he might otherwise arise in his sleep and bring about their suicide. One evening he could not go out; his right leg had been hurting him for some time, he was suffering from a sudden feebleness, an affliction of old age. The weather was dismal, the wind raged, the rain fell, the river raced on and great waves surged. The house, which stood on the bank, shook. Lou Tun walked round inside his enclosed room, stopping repeatedly by the writing table next to the window. Suddenly he sat down, resolved to have the couple flee to the land behind the western mountains and make them begin a new life. But he wrote: ‘...in the stormy night, they were driven from their homes and met on the bank of the unruly river. The wind blew away their kisses; the thundering water drowned out their voices. The current washed away the sandy bank; without them moving from where they stood, the swirling water came closer and closer...’ A fierce gust of wind tore open the window and he saw them standing on the other bank, beyond the river; streaks of lightning flashed to and fro between them and him. And still his hand moved. He tried to stand up, to call to them, but his hand was forced on to the paper. He grasped the manuscript and tried to throw it into the blazing fire. The fire went out as if he had poured buckets of water over it, and the manuscript was back in the same place on the table. And now he felt it: a twelve-armed demon had him by the neck, forced his limbs to sit and his right hand to write. The other arms were wrapped round his waist and his head to squeeze out that one sentence: ‘and then they drowned!’ But his left hand was still free, and did he not still have all his teeth, even though he was eighty years old? He grasped the manuscript in the hand that was not writing, clamped the edge between his teeth and pulled... The wave which was threatening the desperate couple on the far bank swept across to this side, invaded Lou Tun's small house and filled the room, foaming and tumbling. When it retreated, the old man lay dead under his table and the manuscript lay washed up in a corner... The lovers on the other side gave up their wrongful intent at the last moment; on the edge of the madness of self-destruction the woman felt that she was carrying a child, the young man that a noble spirit would give his life for their salvation. They left for the land beyond the western hills; the young man later held high office; they were happy in their descendants.

From Spring Island (Het lente-eiland, 1930) Translated by Jane Fenoulhet.

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‘A short name on a small stone’ The Poetry of Christine D'haen

The Flemish writer Louis-Paul Boon was a very important novelist, but you could hardly call him a shrewd judge of poetry. In one of his rare reviews of poetry he gave the following definition of modern poetry: modern poetry is poetry which knows that while you are reading it others are misusing the same time to revel in the evil in the world. In this particular review, of 1951, Boon was reacting to the - in his view exaggerated - praise heaped on the poet Christine D'haen (1923-) by some critics. His judgement was wrong. D'haen has proved to be one of the greatest poets to emerge since the Second World War. In fifty years of poethood a great many of her poems have become classics of Dutch-language poetry, including ‘The mole’ (‘De mol’), ‘Horologio meo’, ‘Domus’ and ‘Sea-interlude’ (‘Zee-interludium’). Of her early poem ‘Daimoon megas’ one critic swore that had he been born a Turk he would have learned Dutch to be able to read it. D'haen introduced new themes into Dutch literature: that of house and garden, children's games and games of love; and she did it from a feminine perspective. D'haen has not confined herself to writing Dutch poetry. With her translations of Guido Gezelle and Jan Hendrik Leopold she has also contributed to poetry in English. Conversely, she translated one of Milton's poems into Dutch and declared herself an admirer of Edmund Spenser, Robert Browning and Edna St. Vincent Millay. But in view of the experimental manner in which she handles the traditional verse, among English poets she can perhaps best be compared to Gerard Manley Hopkins. Since she received, in 1992, the greatest literary prize the Dutch language area can bestow1 she has continued her poetic career tirelessly with stunning new volumes. At the age of seventy-five, with the double volume Dantis meditatio / Dodecahedron (Dantis meditatio / Dodecaëder) she confirms a mastery more and more reminiscent of Mallarmé.

Perfect speech

Not only was Boon wrong about the quality of D'haen's poetry, his definition of poetry also needs some amendment. Modern poetry - which begins with Homer - is poetry which knows that time is short and makes the max-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 176 imum use of that time, either to record the suffering of the world or to create in words a monument of delight as an antidote to personal or general sadness. The latter is what Christine D'haen does. For her, poetry is ‘the perfect speech of the world, the voice of humankind, which does not understand why they, the weak, are slaughtered’. She wrote this in one of her five (to date) published autobiographical books in prose, A Thousand and Three (Duizend-en-drie, 1992). Given a poet who does not understand why death wreaks such havoc, it is no surprise that her work contains a notable number of elegies. D'haen worked for years on the monumental series ‘Twelve Elegies for Kira van Kasteel’ (‘Twaalf grafgedichten voor Kira van Kasteel’), a celebration of her landlady from her student days (1947-1949) in Amsterdam, who died young. This was followed by an ‘Epitaph for Jan Grooten’ (‘Grafschrift voor Jan Grooten’), an ‘Elegy for Bérénice’ (‘Grafgedicht voor Bérénice’), a ‘Tomb for Charlotte Köhler’ (‘Tombeau voor Charlotte Köhler’), all in Onyx, an ‘Epitaphium Marijn de Jong’ (in Mirages), and various other elegies. ‘Every elegy is a sort of eternalisation,’ the writer once said in an interview. It replaces and perpetuates the individual of flesh and blood. In her poems D'haen refers several times to the recumbent stone effigies of the dead placed on tombs in Renaissance times. For instance, in the eighth ‘Elegy for Kira van Kasteel’ she refers to the tomb of Ilaria del Caretto in Lucca, in Morgane to Michaelangelo's figures on the tombs of Dukes Guiliano and Lorenzo in Florence and in Dodecahedron to the figure of a reading boy on the tomb of Martin Vazquez de Arce in Sigüenza (‘El Doncel de Sigüenza’). D'haen elevates those commemorated in her elegies to ‘a spiritual marble flesh, which no longer suffers’ (Morgane). If there is one poet of whom all these elegies remind us it must be Mallarmé, with his famous ‘tombs’ for Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire and Verlaine. In his ‘Tombeau’ (for Verlaine) Mallarmé speaks of a ‘deuil immatériel’, an intangible mourning.

Sustained notes

It is not by chance that every one of D'haen's volumes ends with a poem like a sustained note, a last look back at all that has gone before. Typical of this reviewing of things gone by is the final poem in her collection Onyx (1983). For Onyx D'haen selected poems from three previous volumes, supplementing them with a number of new ones. The poem ‘Theatre, Couch’ (‘Theater, ledikant’) shows the culmination of the erotic element that had been present in D'haen's poetry ever since her debut in 1958 with Poems 1946-1958 (Gedichten 1946-1958). But even in this passionate poem death has a prominent place: the stage or bed resembles a table-tomb, on which man and woman couple like effigies: ‘Birth-scream and death-cry is torn / together from the double nude.’ The original deficiency has to be overcome in ecstasy. After the act of love, sleep - one of the commonest motifs in D'haen's early poetry - plunges the lovers into the depths of unconsciousness. ‘The poem is a dream’, the poet has said more than once in interviews. It is a state of entrancement. ‘Theatre, Couch’ marked the completion of the first major stylistic evolution in D'haen's work: from traditional to free verse. The boldness with which she abandoned

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 strict classical forms to experiment with daring enjambements, assonances, contrasting motifs, jerky rhythms, semantic ambi-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 177 guities etc., finds its finest expression in a volume published a good five years after Onyx. Mirages (1989) marked the high point of her dissonant use of language, her personal themes (the never-fulfilled rapture of love and the insatiable search for knowledge of the universe) and syncretic symbolism (drawn from history, mythology, science and the plastic arts). The final poem in the collection, ‘Yom Echad’, resembles a film run backwards and summarising the course of life on earth. Yom Echad means in Hebrew: ‘The evening and the morning, one single day’. The whole volume intensifies the tendency, apparent in her earlier work, to intertwine mythology and everyday things in a piling-up of images. In ‘Yom Echad’ that striving reaches new heights: a use of religious metaphor elevates such banalities as playing chess, drinking tea and talking about stamps to a cosmic level. The equally impressive poem ‘The Dead’ formed an exception in her 1992 volume Merencolie (the Old French word for melancholy). The long lines in free verse are out of line with the fourteen sonnets that precede the poem, all of which reflect in a hermetic way on Cosmos, Eros and Logos. In ‘The Dead’ D'haen adds Thanatos to the list. The title is a reference to James Joyce's story from Dubliners and to John Huston's film version of it. Specifically, the poem commemorates various dead people, some of whom had been given a tomb in earlier volumes, and a number of deceased authors who had been her friends. In the four brief stanzas at the end of the poem she plays with the personal pronouns ‘gij, hij, zij, mij, ik, jij’ (‘thou, he, she, me, I, you’). From the perspective of death life ends with the dissolution of identities. Only ‘an inner insight’ remains.

A la façon de Pound

Since Melancholy D'haen's poetry has moved to ever greater internalisation and meditative deliberation, with the poem more and more reflecting upon itself, and an increasing synthesis of abstract philosophy and plastic art. The visual arts had come to the fore for the first time in Mirages, in four poems describing paintings by old masters. D'haen has said that she would have liked to be a painter or sculptor. Again and again in the later volumes Morgane (1995) and Dodecahedron (1998) we come upon cycles which take as their starting point paintings or sculptures. These works have to be regarded as in some sense part of the poem, as in Renaissance and Baroque times poems formed part of emblematic depictions. Following the example of the ‘dizains’ of the sixteenth-century French renaissance poet Maurice Scève, D'haen used the very tightly structured form of dizains, neuvains and douzains. These consist of ten, nine and twelve lines respectively, of ten, nine or twelve syllables. The critics have even more trouble with these hermetic poems than with earlier ones. The numerous intertextual references, in particular, remain a thorn in their flesh. A splendid example of the intertextuality of D'haen's poetry is the ‘Nocturne’ which closes Morgane. Following Pound's example, the poem is constructed entirely out of quotations. D'haen recycles fragments from the elegies of the Roman poet Propertius (c. 47-c. 15 BC) to create a new poem. In it the speaker asks his girl-friend to hurry up with love, for he can already feel the lethal poison working. What remains is ‘a short name on a small stone’.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The cycle which precedes ‘Nocturne’ in Morgane is called ‘Psychomachia’, after the long Platonic-Christian allegorical poem by Prudentius

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 178

(c. 400 AD). But the battle waged in D'haen's poems is not between good and evil, it is a battle against time. Her lyric of the intellect contends more and more openly with the theme of Time, a theme which has in fact determined her work from the beginning. D'haen has always been painfully aware of the limited space of time allotted to life. With each volume she has sought to create the definitive work, the summit of her skill and knowledge. But nearly every one of her poems is a failure in her eyes, because it is not perfect and so can be eroded by time.

Knowledge of the origin

In Dodecahedron D'haen speaks like a passionate mystic of our own day of the divine wisdom, the knowledge of the origin, which she lacks. She realises only too well that all activity such as seeking for knowledge and communication is doomed to failure. In this volume she attempts to distance herself from the world by comprehending that same world. The last poem in Dodecahedron tells of the creation to which one ultimately has to bid farewell. According to D'haen, in the Divine Comedy Dante too was trying to purge himself of ‘doing’. Her reflection on his magnum opus, Dantis meditatio, is an attempt to empty herself of life and be absorbed into a universal knowledge. Ultimately the poet achieves the insight ‘that for us, foolish beings, snuffs out the sun’. If even our planetary system is not eternal, how should anything made by man endure? And so the last poem of Dantis meditatio ends with ‘your Glory becomes Nothing, past, unless’. Even Dante's Divine Comedy is not proof against time, unless everything is eternal, or - which is probably not the poet's meaning here - unless a new epic is created on the rubble of the old. D'haen's magisterial work too will pass, unless it is done again.

HANS VANDEVOORDE Translated by Tanis Guest.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Christine D'haen (1923-). Photo courtesy Lannoo Publishers.

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Six Poems by Christine D'haen

Yom Ehad

And the evening and the morning were the first day (Gen. 1:5)

Yet coiledroundabout Night with elastic galactic body

The dark duration Now evening spreads; light still falls full on the Thousand Things - a seraph soars with faun and mandrake - here light thrones on ore, porphyry, basalt. There stood brocade, solid gold, with a few trinkets. O how much sand for uncial and lens, passion, metaphysics with peace of wrinkles, when drop by drop blood spills down from chalice of flesh. Violins, horns, that is his fruit, Noon, a sacrament with stiff ceremonial. They bake loam for stone for the oven for the pot for the corn for the loaf for the child, Karpov & Kasparov sit, hear the trumpet for tournament and flea circus, while people are talking of stamps and drink tea. It sparkles from airship and snow, veils in fans of water Worm, ant, rat, ferret, badger, lynx, mink. On each leaf sinks the dew of Con- stable. All birds of the earth rush upwards together toward the light of Turner and the Sun.

From Mirages (1989). Translated by Christine D'haen.

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A Nocturne

(Sextus Propertius)

I have neither topaz nor emerald for your finger the sting of my poems only

That you share my small bed is dearest to me that you be mine, without any convenience

The wreaths around the brim of the goblets grow pale the dripping petals are floating on our wine

You read your poems, your thighs around mine, the verse flows, as if smoothed with light pumice

As long as the lamp burns, we are talking softly, once the lamp is quenched, the struggle begins

while the moon glides along the panes on both sides, the coaxing moon with her lingering

You hand me hard balls to cool off my palms, you loosen my ribbons, you smell me

Lie down among the cows, adore the goddess, let us be poor, among donkeys

In love I want to complain and hear complaining when the sun has covered his steeds with black

Let lust inspire you shameful words, that they may hear our cries on the road

I am dressing you in gauze, you are a girl now like the hair of corn you swell with milk

But hurry: I feel I drank wine pale with poison my lips are ashen with the waters of Lethe the thumbs of my thin hands are cracking

A short name on a small stone. But balsam of tears on our love hereafter.

From Morgane (1995) Translated by Christine D'haen.

Note

The poem consists of quotations from the poems of the Roman poet Sextus Propertius (c.47 - c. 15 BC). I was thinking of Ezra Pound, Homage to Sextus Propertius (1917).

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The Dead

Rasstrelyan Ogloblin Pron They shot Ogloblin Pron (S. Yesenin, Anna Snégina)

Foaming green foliage, brown earth, mountains, water, the sky grey or blue and multicoloured clouds: such is the world; there man acts. The sun shines, the wind blows, it's thundering, it rains and snows. You are here no longer.

Have I heard of your death yet? Sometimes, with a shock, comes knowledge, come dreams. Unaddressable are the dead.

Kira did start it; then Wietse, who told me. Paul Hendrickx, Trees Claeys, Julia Borragán, Monsieur Cambier et Madame, their grandson. Hoebanx: Mr and Mrs, José Hoebanx and Nulf with Dunya his wife, and his son, and little Frank Hoebanx, Fritz Derwael and Jettie and their little son; the Beelaerts; Marijn, Albert. Brulez, Gijsen, Snoek, Kemp, and Westerlinck, and now Walschap - All Souls' Day takes more - Berthe Veranneman de Watervliet-Joos de ter Beerst, almost a hundred. Quit killing!

Not yet: father and mother (nor we: father and mother), and you: stairs, a car, flames, water, cancer, the heart, the killer.

Of All will lack, all-embracing, the hoard. Then being-me, then being-you through me.

Each came here and saw this: life, an inward insight.

From Melancholy (Merencolie, 1992) Translated by Christine D'haen.

Note

15: Those people were authors.

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Theatre, Couch

Theatre, couch heaped high and overpiled death-white on bedboards pillows and cloths stage-sets, platform for the great proto-performance where two naked players masked, encased in the tight armour of taut desire, lying stretched face down, face up, dance out each other's sacrifice and eucharist ecstasies of the flesh made god:

Blind primordial serpent swallowed up by subterranean glowing caves slips between gemstones, twists round ores veined through with metal clasps, sucked down almost into the muddy moistness fumbling is found marble sediment, coal-seam and diamond. Then, furious arrow and erect, with fearful leaps the virgin game eludes him, till by the water trembling, yielding, overborne, the prey spills from soft belly entrails still aquiver. But warm dark earthy depths ripped open, excavated in fleshy bed receive in secrecy a swollen grain implanted, held in the coil of the beloved serpent. Baskets for the rituals of the corn are woven the shuttle slams clear through the straight warp of the body textile sublime where ascend descend sun, stars and moon in the skin's dusky glistening. There tortured and compelled their spark ignites, bursts forth, is caught and held in earthen pots and from the hearth the good heat radiates the readied game they both do eat each other's food are they, fermented drink. In the furnace heat he forges his blade invades oneiric land sets princely pleasure palaces ablaze. Lips sealed panting in violent arousal enmeshed, oppressed, till sudden excess explodes from gaping throat. Birth-scream and death-cry is torn together from the double nude soaring dizzyingly upward ah, oh, the sound of opening, vowels which press on consonants,

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 a liberal white flood poured out swamps the initial lack once more fills golden grails with death and resurrection, want appeased. Theatre, couch, sleep's voluptuous plumage buries those heroes heavily and under it conjoined they process the soft pulp slurp the agave pulque. Revealed, mysterious, their state perfected stands on your iconostasis.

From Onyx (1983) Translated by Tanis Guest.

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Dodecahedron XII

He gave the heavens and the earth. At first the light, and then gave night its name and shaped the difference. The heavens' canopy, water and earth will he create for me, all things that move and stay. He made the Zodiac, measure for this world's Time, the green growth, fish and birds, and every beast. For Adam in Eden made Eve's countenance, gave David's royal crown, Bathsheba and Abishag, the One Star to the Child that lay upon the world, and beside each his Angel who'll kiss away his tears, imagined horoscopes, cruel Scorpio. Ego sum pauper, nihil habeo.

Van Gogh's Chair London

From Dodecahedron (Dodecaëder, 1998) Translated by Tanis Guest. Dantis meditatio. Paradise 33 ...Che quasi tutta cessa mia visione

Your hundred cantos when the world shall die by earthquake, deluge and by fire-filled air flawless, admired, well-crafted, sinewy, unique construct of words, impermanent shatter, their stones sundered each from other, all those who read them dead and gone, and those who died have long ago forgot your wonder, your Glory becomes Nothing, past, unless

From Dantis meditatio (1998) Translated by Tanis Guest.

Eindnoten:

1 Yom ehad: (Hebrew) day one (i.e. one day) 14: As my purpose was to choose short words for an impression of speed, some English names of animals differ from the animals mentioned in Dutch. 15: When Chantrey, the sculptor, was changing Constable's painting Hadleigh Castle (1829), Constable said: ‘There goes all my dew’. Constable and Turner were, in a way, rivals. I reconcile them here.

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The Invisible Made Visible Godfried Vervisch and his Anti-Classical Self-Portraits

Godfried Vervisch (1930-) has been painting almost nothing other but human figures for at least thirty years. In these pictures one can often recognise features of the painter. They also frequently depict women offering themselves in full-frontal nakedness to the spectator. Only in a few scenes are two or more people (the latter is very exceptional) doing ‘something’ together. They may lie stretched out alongside each other, as in the rather forced embrace of Sunday Afternoon (1998). Or a woman presents herself, again rather awkwardly, to the gaze of a man of whom we see only the profile of his head and a lower leg floating in space. This painting, The Seductress (1997), seems to be more likely an image in a man's mind than a woman really showing her body to a man of flesh and blood whom she

Godfried Vervisch, Sunday Afternoon. 1998. Canvas, 150 × 120 cm.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 185 wants to seduce. In With a Woman on the Mind (1998), a woman in the foetal position is lying curled up between the eye and the ear of the roughly painted profile of a man's head sunk in thought. A head like this looms up again in Endangered City (1998). But here the mouth, held hideously open, exposes a row of teeth, and under the flattened forehead the eye stares frightfully straight ahead. A floating hand grasps a knife. The table below contains human and animal outlines, a naked figure stretched out and a monstrous head, this time seen frontally. Nowhere does the enigma of the human face, reduced to a few essential features, call up such troublesome but unavoidable questions as in Vervisch's self-portraits. In his Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, written at least a century before the breakthrough of Modernism, Hegel had already opposed over-realistic portraits. He demanded that the portrait painter should leave out all detail in order to capture the essence of his sitter's character. Caspar David Friedrich created one of these ‘Hegelian’ portraits in his renowned self-portrait (1810) in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinet (Staatliche Museen), with its sombre depth and tormented earnestness. Vincent van Gogh's September 1889 self-portrait became even more celebrated, and, like Vervisch's numerous self-portraits, complied fully with Hegel's demand for restraint and psychological authenticity. The modern self-portrait, which had already made its appearance in the nineteenth century, broke away from the conventions that had dominated portraits and self-portraits until then. The portrait, intended to represent human dignity and nobility of soul, suggested identification with mythological, classical or religious themes. The interior where the sitter appeared provided symbolic indications of their values and endeavours. The face, a bearer of feelings, can be read as a landscape with a hill (the nose), roads and paths (folds and wrinkles), light (the eyes), a wood (the hair), caves (the

Godfried Vervisch, The Seductress. 1997. Canvas, 150 × 120 cm.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Godfried Vervisch, Endangered City. 1998. Canvas, 100 × 80 cm.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 186 ears), valleys (the forehead and cheeks) and rivers (the lips and mouth). Portraits were pictorial constructions conceived in a temporary conspiracy between the painter and his model. Size, colour, pose, and choice and treatment of the background: it was all the result of an agreement, successful or otherwise. Certain rules were not to be ignored. For instance, the portrait typically remained the preserve of monarchs and nobles. The portrait de profil, originating in classical times, enhanced the majesty and hieratic character of the subject. By contrast, the portrait de face appealed directly to the spectator. This was much more about a frontal encounter between two personalities. The outcome of any such pictorial and psychological struggle was uncertain. Who conquered whom? What was the subject, in agreement with the painter, deceiving the spectator into believing?

Waiting for execution

Using modern means, Godfried Vervisch continues the centuries-old struggle between the painter, the portrait and the spectator. He distils this struggle down to its essence (and leaves out every other aspect of the portrait). In his work there is no balancing of the subject's social position and individual inner motivations. All symbols of class and power, of intellectual and moral virtues are banished. Vervisch's self-portraits do not illustrate anything, nor do they aspire to any great degree of reality. In Vervisch's paintings, and es-

Godfried Vervisch. Self-Portrait. 1998. Canvas, 100 × 80 cm.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Godfried Vervisch, Girl with Cat. 1959. Canvas, 130 × 100 cm.

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Godfried Vervisch, Self-Portrait with Dog. 1966. Canvas, 180 × 120 cm. pecially in his self-portraits, human dignity comes to the fore, wounded and aggrieved. In his most recent self-portraits, he visualises himself less than ever as one of the imagines maiorum (busts of the ancestors in Roman households). On the contrary, he waits like one condemned (by whom? by what?) to execution. In these paintings one experiences a stifling world reminiscent of that of Kafka. Pathos is no longer subject to the reins of reason. Level-headedness, wisdom, strength and energy have all vanished. All detail and the whole facial landscape have gone along with the virtues. All one can think of is eruption, fragmentation and icy taciturnity. It is not so much that Vervisch shows the spectator his world, but that the spectator's own world is opened up to him. And yet the artist does not hold up a mirror of social criticism to his spectators. His painting does not in the least make ethical statements about the world, nor does it concern itself with formal, purely painterly questions such as style, materials or composition. Vervisch considers these issues not so much as unimportant, rather as pre-determined. He sees problems of form

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 188 as pseudo-problems: they solve themselves. It is the painter's will and the intensity of his attention that creates the forms specific to him, and his style. Vervisch, whom many see as a forerunner of the so-called Neue Wilden, chooses and adopts from the field of techniques and materials what he sees as useful and uses it, on paper or canvas, in paint or in plaster, to bring into being the invisible mental image (With a Woman on the Mind). In Vervisch's work, painting is a mental matter. It is also a question of drastic curtailment, concentration and simplification - in one word: attention.

Exercises in revelation

Thanks to this concentration, Vervisch is able to focus rigorously on the inner life. His painting is an unremitting daily exercise in making the invisible inner life visible. This invisibility made visible, neither spectacular nor varied, is almost as monotonous as Giorgio Morandi's bottles. And what's more, the representation of invisibility on canvas or paper is a hellish task.

Godfried Vervisch, Sitting Nude. 1985. Canvas, 180 × 130 cm.

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Godfried Vervisch, Self-Portrait in Armchair (detail). 1985. Canvas, 180 × 150 cm.

This is because the inner life is not only invisible but is also an impure life. Which is why not one of Vervisch's paintings aims for pure beauty or perfection. It all comes down to keeping the attention in a state of tension so as to penetrate anew into the authenticity of each experience. It is only by devoting almost painful attention to it that the spectator too is able to trace this inner life. In the pose of the character painted, for example, or in the intense vacancy of his gaze, in the darkness behind the white marks of the face, in that one source of light behind the gaze. It is the gaze itself that lights up in the darkness. The gaze of the painter who is depicting himself often angles for another gaze - angles, but seems not to find it. This is why it remains vacant, waiting. Sometimes the vacant gaze of the artist painting himself has freed itself from the bodily movement and the figure below it. It then floats away from the canvas like a will-o'-the-wisp and demands the spectator's attention. In pre-modern portraits and self-portraits, when the subject did not look at the spectator it was seen as a sign of pride or shame; women painted looking into their spectators' eyes were considered dangerous seductresses. The

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 190 painted Vervisch is beyond danger, pride and shame. Those who had themselves painted in front of a cloth or a curtain thereby presented themselves as an event or a revelation: the veil, once removed, unveiled the sitter as if by a revelation. By contrast, Vervisch leans forward from an invisible chair as if he wants to leave the canvas. Or else he stands upright like Atlas, towering over his house, bearing the nocturnal heavenly vault with his head in the stars. In both cases Vervisch lets himself get out, to the outside. He is then outside himself; no longer an ensemble of individual characteristics, but dissolving or merging into the inner life: as inward as the unknown spectator in front of him and as the cosmos in which he stands. In pre-modern portraits a hand supporting the head indicates melancholy, the disposition specific to humanists and artists. And the serious face the painter turns to the spectator - as in Nicolas Poussin's self-portrait (1650) - acts as a memento mori for the spectator. But Vervisch's self-portraits do not refer to anything and are symbolic of nothing: from within the bounds of a painter's canvas, they reach out for the soul.

Godfried Vervisch, Self-Portrait - Standing. 1998. Canvas, 150 × 120 cm.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 191

Godfried Vervisch, Dove of Peace. 1998. Canvas, 24 × 30 cm. Private collection B.D.

Filling the void with imagination

For centuries the portrait has set a fixed image against a moving, unstable image. The entire history of Western portraiture maintains that the frozen beauty of the fixed image is able to contain the essential dynamics of movement. This is the last thing that Godfried Vervisch's anti-classical self-portraits would claim. Each one of them steps outside itself. Their painted gaze seeks out the spectator's gaze hic et nunc, but at the same time realises that it is not genuinely present. Even the most penetrating, furthest projecting and compelling gaze in his paintings is directed at a void, which is certainly a void to the spectator, since he never gets to see the spot on which the painted gaze rests. In Godfried Vervisch's work there is little of what but a lot of how to be seen. The attention a Vervisch portrait demands from the spectator stems from nothingness. It is precisely this invisible element that makes these portraits so fascinating. Is Vervisch looking into his own eyes or is he imagining the gaze of his future spectators? What defines the difference between the two? Doesn't the spectator also imagine the gaze the painter had in the past while portraying himself? Vervisch's portraits de face put up a fight whose outcome remains uncertain. One thing is for sure: the painter and spectator, the one who portrays himself and the portrait-viewer focusing on that depicted ‘self’, both fill in the void with their imagination. An absorbent nothingness fills to become a world to which both, by their attentiveness, are party. A world of inwardness and reflectivity.

FRANS BOENDERS Translated by Gregory Ball

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 192

Robert Zandvliet's Vision

Surfing on the Internet, you can end up in the archive of the Vleeshal, an exhibition area for modern art in the Dutch town of Middelburg, in Zeeland. If you call up the data on the exhibition which Robert Zandvliet (1970-), the Dutch artist who currently attracts considerable interest, held there in 1997, you get a short text and a few photographs to testify to the exhibition.1. Before this page is downloaded, the user is confronted with a white screen, on which a text appears, sentence by sentence, in close succession, in black, followed by a white screen. It is almost impossible to imagine a simpler de-

Paintings by Robert Zandvliet at The White Canvas, the special exhibition held at the Vleeshal in Middelburg in 1997. Courtesy Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam - Photo by T. & R. Henderson.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 193 sign for a page, and that is precisely why it is so significant. Quite deliberately, no use is made of the enormous range of pictorial opportunities offered by the Internet; instead attention is focused on the white and the text. The page forms a moment of reflection amid the bombardment of visual and textual information on the Internet. It denotes what is by far the most appropriate form of information transfer, namely letters on paper. Yet the page is no adaptation of an old form to a new medium. On the contrary, the sentences do not appear in a single block of text, but one after another, which means you have to read them at a set pace. Further associations can be made. The progression of the sentences makes you think of the lists of credits at the end of a film, where all those involved are named, one by one. The title of the site is The White Canvas, which strengthens the association with films, but which also forges a relationship with the art of painting. Every painting begins as a white canvas. Whether he is dealing with a film screen or a painter's canvas Robert Zandvliet declines to specify. The whole text reads:

Robert Zandvliet The white canvas The white canvas stands for the place where all images come from how we look how we perceive things perception is plumbing the depths of the image all the images we know are burned into this screen this is actually the ultimate image

For many creative artists, such as painters and film-makers, the white canvas must be a torment. It screams to be filled, and it is up to them, time and time again, to come up with something to fill it: something more original, more significant, more powerful than the millions of images which have been produced down the centuries, and in any case different from them. A virtually impossible task, and so it is not surprising that the art of painting has been declared dead several times already this century. And yet, time after time it has had new life breathed into it by young artists. The clear, powerful paintings of Robert Zandvliet demonstrate the zest for life of the art of painting. He shows that the white canvas still holds a promise and hides a world of boundless possibilities. Just as good chess players seem to be ready, with each fresh set of just sixteen pieces, to conjure new and interesting positions on to the board, with the age-old materials of paint and canvas Zandvliet creates new, convincing images. Zandvliet is not encumbered by the ballast of the art of painting as handed down through the centuries, but has concentrated from the beginning on what for him is the essential question: what is perception? His concept of perception is not simply observing something, but actually plumbing the depths of the image. And that is what he has always tried to do.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 194

Searching for the archetype

According to Zandvliet, he learnt how to look at things at the art school in Kampen. There for the first time he became acquainted with art, museums, theatre, and recorded everything, without prejudice, in his mind. After art school in Kampen, he went to the Ateliers, an important independent art institute in Amsterdam, where talented young artists can work independently under the critical supervision of leading artists and critics. Straight after his time at the Ateliers, Zandvliet exhibited in leading Dutch institutes, such as the Witte de With in Rotterdam, followed by exhibitions at, among others, the Museum in Dordrecht and De Pont in Tilburg. His work has been purchased by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Boijmans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, and other major Dutch museums. The work with which he established his name has up to now been typical of Zandvliet. It is persuasive and extremely self-evident, as if it had existed before and only now is showing itself. The canvases depict very simple, every-day motifs, such as a bus-shelter, an egg-box, a reading lamp, or confectionery. They are not only simple points of departure, they are also innocent. They have little significance in their own right, and do not carry with them a whole world of connotations. The subjects are painted in such a way that they are readily recognisable, but at the same time abstract forms. No details are reproduced, there is no context, the space is undetermined and indeterminable, and the relationships are unclear. Sometimes Zandvliet zooms in on the subjects, approaches them from an unusual perspective or blows them up to enormous sizes, causing the subjects to become detached from their actual starting-point. In this way a 1994 painting, now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, depicts a block of chocolate in skewed perspective, but also a pattern of squares encircled by a soft green colour. Similarly a painting from 1997 shows a pat-

Robert Zandvliet, Untitled. 1997. Distemper on canvas, 136 × 376 cm. KPN collection, The Hague. Courtesy Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam - Photo by Olaf Bergmann.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 195

Robert Zandvliet, Untitled. 1996. Distemper and oil on canvas, 167 × 250 cm. ABN AMRO collection, Amsterdam. Courtesy Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam - Photo by Olaf Bergmann. tern of coloured planes and stripes, and can also be read as the side of a caravan. The stripes become frames of the contour, the windows, or the bands on the caravan. It is clearly not Robert Zandvliet's way to deal with the chance properties of that single starting-point, rather he tries to see the general characteristics and to plumb the depths. He is searching for the archetype.

The eye of the beholder

In the somewhat later work, Zandvliet concerns himself more directly with looking and seeing. He paints a series of views. No longer an object in a space, but the space itself, seen through a telescope, the window of an aeroplane, a car mirror. Just as earlier the objects were not clearly delineated, so now the space is only sketchily defined: the glimpse through the telescope shows a green foreground with white above, the glimpse through the aeroplane window a white foreground with blue above. For the White Canvas exhibition in Middelburg Robert Zandvliet constructed a white box in the architecturally dominant space of the Vleeshal. Opposite each other in this box he hung two enormous paintings of a cinema screen. On the wall between them was hung a canvas of cinema seats. Just as in his earlier work the points of departure are recognisable, but also abstract in a certain sense, and you look at colour planes, lines and paint layer. On the outside of the box, on the short side, hung a painting of a television set, and on the other side a ‘portrait’ of a camera, to complete the image. This work is disconcerting. We are used to looking through a camera lens ourselves; we know how to look at photographs; we can recognise when photographic achievements are used in painting. We are also used to playing a role for the camera ourselves, but then we know the world behind it. Not so now, the only thing we see is an enormous eye. Is it watching us? The reflection gives nothing away. Throughout the whole exhibition, the concept of looking is questioned in a confrontational manner. The artist has painted shimmering white canvass-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 196

Paintings by Robert Zandvliet at The White Canvas, the special exhibition held at the Vleeshal in Middelburg in 1997. Courtesy Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam - Photo by T. & R. Henderson.

Robert Zandvliet, Untitled. 1997. Distemper on canvas, 241 × 376 cm. Stichting De Pont, Tilburg. Courtesy Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam - Photo by Henk Geraedts.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 197

Robert Zandvliet, Untitled. 1996. Distemper and oil on canvas, 226 × 401 cm. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Courtesy Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam - Photo by Olaf Bergmann. es and a dead cathode-ray tube. Normally it is up to him to give the white canvas an image, but this is his image. Now it is up to the onlooker.

The joy of painting

More recently, Zandvliet has begun to paint motorway junctions and landscapes. Anyone unfamiliar with the principle of motorway junctions with roundabouts and fly-overs, will probably not recognise them for what they are. The works are abstract patterns of transparent lines, planes and strips of colour painted over a vague background. The landscapes are more readily recognisable, not as a specific type of landscape or as a particular place, but certainly as a landscape, as an archetype. The landscapes have a more open quality than the motorways. There are no longer any objects in the space, but the space itself is depicted. It is quite probably in these works that Robert Zandvliet's formidable manner of painting finds its most powerful expression. Zandvliet often paints in egg-tempera, that he makes himself, sometimes combined with oil paint, which gives a deeper colour. He constructs his paintings in thin layers. The layer of paint is often transparent, sometimes almost lucid and fragile, and is in itself a pleasure to look at. The broad brush-strokes of the landscapes in which colours and layers shine through, and the thin white layers of the cinema screens are vibrant with the joy of painting.

SASKIA BAK Translated by Sheila M. Dale.

Eindnoten:

1. http://www.zeelandnet.nl/vleeshal

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 198

Dick Bruna, the Friendliest Maker of Picture Books in the Netherlands

No one in the Low Countries can claim never to have seen any of Dick

Dick Bruna (1927-). Photo by Sjaak Ramakers.

Bruna's pictures. Child or grownup, everyone in the Netherlands and Flanders is acquainted with his work. Despite the fact that for some reason or other his cartoon characters miffy, snuffy, boris & barbara and poppy pig aren't part of common literary parlance, every single person in the Low Countries has, consciously or unconsciously, made eye contact in some way, at some time or other, with one of his pictures on stamps, posters or paperback book covers. His children's book characters have gone out into the world - the whole wide world - although of course primarily, for two generations already, into the world of the very young. From Amsterdam to Tokyo they grace baby cream jars, bibs, tote bags, sweaters, cereal bowls, puzzles, boots, rain ponchos, coloured pencils, kids' games, towels and lots of other things for children. Their subtle design lends an extra aesthetic dimension to all these products. They offer children in particular a sense of recognition, of familiarity, because of course what kids see first on these products are their own trusty book characters.

Books for little hands

Now, who is this internationally successful maker of picture books, this loveable author and illustrator of some ninety little books for the very young (printed in enormous quantities in thirty-three languages)? Dick Bruna (1927-) was born in Utrecht, the city where he still lives and every morning still bicycles to his studio downtown to work. As a young man he had no desire at all to pursue a career as the fourth generation in the well-known family publishing business A.W. Bruna & Son. Instead, he became a graphic designer, without any real academic training, and so is a self-taught artist. Since 1947 he has designed some two thousand book covers (for the Zwarte Beertjes series) and lots

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 of posters, for which, as an outstanding designer, he has also received a number of awards. In 1953 Bruna produced his first children's book, the apple (de appel),

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 199

1,250 copies of which were published by the family firm. However, the book was not a success. Only 554 copies had been sold by mid-1955. Evidently at that time the Netherlands wasn't yet ready for a children's book with such a ‘modern’ design. But the essence of his later work can already be seen in it. The text is rhymed and the story, about an apple that really wants to have arms and legs in order to see the world, is friendly and simple. The illustrations share the same simplicity that his posters and book covers already had at that time. Only the technique differs slightly from the later books. The early children's book illustrations are still cut-outs rounded off by black brushwork. Besides this completely new formal language for children's books, with its flat composition, absence of perspective and daring use of colour - green and blue side by side! - the format was larger and longer than the currently popular Bruna books, which is probably also one of the reasons why his first children's book did not immediately strike a chord with the public. Only after Bruna had seen small children handling their books did he realise that his books should have different dimensions, the better to be held by little hands. Since that time he has produced 6 × 6-inch books, typically with twelve illustrations on the right-hand pages. The product, sometimes hardback, is always durable (washable!) and will survive a great deal of family life.

From miffy is crying (nijntje huilt, 1991). © Mercis b.v.

From poppy pig goes on holiday (betje big gaat met vakantie, 1998). © Mercis b.v.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Primary colours and clever simplification

Right from the start, Bruna's illustrations show an extraordinary feature: a surprising and idiosyncratic simplicity of form that he consistently uses. Striking, also, are his black brushed contour lines, the absence of perspective, again, and his use of predominantly primary colours: red, black, blue, yellow, white, green; along with brown, never purple and rarely orange. In this, Bruna remains in a certain sense an adherent of De Stijl painters and a great admirer of Mondrian, among others. He says about his own use of colour: ‘Blue is a colour that recedes. It is a cool colour and a colour that moves away from you. Red and green come toward you. They are warm colours because they contain yellow. Blue I use when I want it to be cold. But when I draw children in a house I give them a red or yellow background because I want them to be warm in there. I have really always tried to limit myself to those primary colours, De Stijl colours.’ Bruna's highly personal use of colours has remained practically unchanged over the years, but their application has become subtler and bolder. In addition, in many of his books he also makes the best possible use of white, employing it as an exciting ‘colour element’. As a self-taught illustrator, he should perhaps be seen as a gifted designer rather than as a virtuoso draughtsman. The influence of non-representational painting on his work is in fact unmistakable. In his illustrations we can recognise elements characteristic of painters such as Braque and Miró, and particularly the late Matisse; influences he freely acknowledges in interviews. The design of his characters is always the result of a well thought-out process of simplification. Starting off in pencil, he draws much more natu-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 200 ralistically and uses greater detail, searching from there for what is essential in the form. Leaving out more and more detail does not, however, diminish the recognition factor. In their deceptive simplicity, his drawings give the impression of having come into being effortlessly, as if, for instance, the contours were ‘merely’ accented with felt-tip. Nothing is farther from the truth. He cuts, pastes and experiments, with poster paint and brush, initially producing at least a hundred preparatory versions for a book of twelve pictures, and finally arriving at a number of definitive pictures, each of a unique economy. His stories always have a positive focus and intent. His human characters - as well as his anthropomorphised animal characters - have big heads with little hair set on fat little bodies with short arms and legs, attributes they clearly share with human and animal babies. These attributes are also why, according to psychologists like Lorenz, they appeal to our feelings of tenderness and our nurturing instinct, as well as possibly inducing a sense of recognition in very young children. Bruna's characters also always look straight at the reader with their friendly, oval, black eyes. According to developmental psychologist Dolf Kohnstamm, the result of this eye contact is that it holds the reader-viewer's attention. Through minimal changes to mouth and eyes, Bruna successfully adds expression to the faces, sometimes having a tear hang dramatically under an eye to suggest great sadness. He suggests movement or action in his relatively stylised stills through the use of horizontal ‘velocity lines,’ a trick also often employed by comic strip and animation artists, and therefore easy for children to interpret as such.

From do you know why I'm crying? (weet jij waarom ik huil?, 1997). © Mercis b.v.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 From boris on the mountain (boris op de berg, 1989). © Mercis b.v.

Safety and security

Typical of the design of Bruna's books is the fact that the text is always printed on the left-hand page in a simple sans-serif bold typeface - without capitals - in little quatrains whose second and fourth lines rhyme. From as early as the mid-sixties on, not only has the graphic structure of his illustrations become tighter and subtler, but the textual side of his books has grown as well. Consequently the total harmony between picture and text becomes an obvious given in his books. The regular rhythm in his little poems makes for a pleasant cadence when reading aloud, and it invites young children to fill in the last word themselves. In his language use, Bruna remains close to the children for whom he is writing, aged roughly between two and five. Research in creches and play-schools shows that this author-illustrator's vocabulary is instinctively well-attuned to that of his young audience. Undoubtedly this is also one of the reasons for his enormous popularity among pre-school children. Bruna's subjects are usually simple. Most of his books are about small events, like a trip to the zoo, a bicycle ride or a birthday party. There are also wish-fulfilling fantasy stories, with adventures that are warm, stay close to home and have satisfying endings. Safety and security are always a part of the basic ingredients of his work. Only one small socially critical sound is to be heard in the king (de koning, 1962), based on the romance between

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Edward VIII of England and the American Mrs Simpson which led to his abdication. The little king in Bruna's book also takes off his crown so he can marry the girl, rosemary. As an author, Bruna is at his most daring when he deals with the tough facts of life in dear grandma bunny (lieve oma pluis), a little book about the death of miffy's grandma. It is totally different in tone from all his other books. In this one, published in 1996, Bruna describes very clearly and with distinct emotion the difficult process of saying goodbye to a beloved family member, and from miffy's point of view, as she tells what happened when grandma bunny died:

grandma was just lying in bed really but it was the last time she would it was like she was lying there sleeping but she just wasn't breathing like she should

Everyone is sad. Even grandpa bunny cries (‘miffy had never seen him cry / grandpa had never done that before’). Grandma's coffin arrives (‘in which grandma lay all comfy / it looked very pretty inside / and seemed really soft too’). Everyone cries saying goodbye to her, and then a lid is placed on the coffin (‘now nobody could bother her any more / now grandma could rest quietly’). This emotional book could encourage a child to ask more questions about the topic of death. A child might also find comfort in it if death has entered his or her life. The adult reading aloud also often experiences this publication as a ‘book of comfort’, as the fan mail Bruna received in response to the book testifies. It was especially for the text of this book that Bruna, the artist, was awarded the Zilveren Griffel (Silver Pencil) during the 1997 Children's Book Week.

From miffy in the tent (nijntje in de tent, 1995). © Mercis b.v.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 From miffy at the gallery (nijntje in het museum, 1997). © Mercis b.v.

Pictograms and international success

When we look at the output of all these years, we are struck by the fact that the artist not only often uses the same characters, but also the exact same pictures for different books. When snuffy has become the basic form for ‘dog,’ the same rendition can be used for dog in another book as well. However, colour variation still causes the existing contour to undergo certain changes. When Dick Bruna has drawn something, has distilled it in his absolutely personal way from the reality around us, this depiction of a subject or character gains a kind of generic value that can't be improved on any more. It becomes a pictogram, as it were, from a universal ‘imagistic world language.’ His images are immediately interpreted correctly in a variety of countries, despite all the differences in culture. It is likely that this is why his pictograms have been used on the giant signposts for young beachcombers along the North Sea. Children everywhere laugh at the same jokes in his books. His ‘Bruna House,’ for instance, is also immediately recognised by Japanese children as the concept of ‘house’ even though they aren't familiar with houses like this.

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Bruna is, by the way, incredibly popular in Japan. The enormous success of his pictures there has to do no doubt with a certain congruence between his imagistic language and artistic tradition in Japan. After all, Japanese prints historically also display strong contour and the subtle effect of a sober and well thought-out composition. Dick Bruna not only creates tasteful work, but also shows good taste in selecting the assignments he accepts. His work is never linked to questionable products or dubious, purely commercial projects. In so doing, he has, for instance, designed pictures and posters for a number of idealistic enterprises such as Safe Traffic in the Netherlands, The Red Cross, the Dutch Dairy Board, Unicef, Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes, SOS-Children's Villages, the Humane Society and the Ronald McDonald Children's Fund. A list that also speaks for his friendly and positive attitude toward the world. Surprisingly (and with considerable success) Bruna approaches adult viewers likewise in his painted poster and logo messages using exactly the same simple formal language.

Official recognition

At the end of the 1960s critical notes could frequently be heard from the ranks of educators and librarians in connection with Bruna's little books. His work was considered a bit too flat, too cool and lacking somewhat in emotion, and its content was a little on the saccharine side. Therefore it was only very late in his career as a maker of children's books that Dick Bruna received official recognition in the Netherlands. In 1990 he was finally awarded the highly coveted Gouden Penseel (Golden Brush) for the illustrations in his book boris bear (boris beer). He had already received the royal distinction of knighthood in the Order of Orange Nassau in 1983. In 1987 Bruna, whose pictures have brightened many events in his community, was awarded the medal of the city of Utrecht because he had ‘brought the city to a higher level through the illustrious power of his imagination’. The Soroptimists' Club of Utrecht also had a bronze statue erected (made by his son, the sculptor Marc Bruna) to honour his picture book character miffy. However, the long delay on the part of adult juries in awarding the Gouden Penseel never mattered much to him. After all, two generations of fans all over the world, children and grown-ups, don't worry about prizes. They prefer to enjoy his unique and friendly little picture books!

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 From boris and barbara (boris en barbara, 1989). © Mercis b.v.

TRUUSJE VROOLAND-LÖB Translated by Wanda Boeke.

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Recycling Shakespeare in the Low Countries

‘For each man kills the thing he loves, By all let this he heard, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a word.’ (after Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol)

A familiar picture: the portrait of Mr William Shakespeare on the frontispiece of the First Folio (London, 1623) was made by Martin Droeshout, an engraver of Dutch descent.

In recent years, theatre audiences in the Low Countries have been treated to a series of remarkable Shakespeare productions. These include Toneelgroep Amsterdam's Richard III with Pierre Bokma as the seductive gangster-king, Johan Doesburg's Troilus and Cressida and Titus Andronicus for Het Nationale Toneel, Franz Marijnen's rendering of The Tempest at the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, Romeo and Juliet at the Zuidelijk Toneel, and De Trust's Friedrichswald (As You Like It) as well as its awardwinning Hamlet of 1997-1998, with Jacob Derwig in the lead. The 1990s have yielded an opulent dramatic harvest indeed, but few will wish to challenge the claim that the chief event in the recent theatre history of the Low Countries has been the production of Tom Lanoye and Luk Perceval's To War (Ten oorlog).1. To War is a startling production of Shakespeare's eight major history plays, conveniently rewritten for the purpose and rolled into a three-part cycle about the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III. This epoch-making project, realised by Blauwe Maandag Compagnie in collaboration with theatres in Ghent, Antwerp and Rotterdam, has created a stir for a number of reasons. These include its vast scope and the sheer physical demands that the production makes on actors and audiences alike, but also its manifest irreverence vis-à-vis the venerable Mr William Shakespeare. The new text is approximately half the length of the assembled Shakespeare plays. Furthermore, the plays have been substantially rewritten, with new material added, not only in Dutch

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 and ‘Flemish’ colloquial language, but also in French, Italian, British English, and American English. It would be an understatement to say that this 1990s rendering of Shakespeare's Elizabethan original fails to conform to any traditional trans-

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Ariane van Vliet in To War (Ten oorlog). Photo by Corneel Maria Ryckeboer. lation standards. Even as an adaptation the result must be labelled extravagant. All this suggests that the main reasons for the project's popularity must be sought elsewhere. A closer look at some of the salient strategies adopted by Lanoye and Perceval suggests that the production appeals to a series of interrelated concerns that range from the political rule and misrule of the Belgian nation to the contemporary plight of the literary artist vis-à-vis his cultural heritage and the condition of his principal medium, language. However unique To War's interaction with the current politico-social climate in the Low Countries may be, the question remains if such Shakespeare practice itself, too, is unprecedented.

‘Ma chère enfant’

To War departs from the original Shakespeare material in a number of important ways. If we start at the beginning, one of the more notable changes is the representation of Richard the Second's queen in the early scenes of the first part of the trilogy, entitled In the Name of the Father and the Son. Unlike Shakespeare, who first presents the queen in the famous garden scene where she expresses her apprehensions about the fate of her husband (2.2), Lanoye and Perceval introduce her as ‘La Reine’ in the very opening scene of the play. The Flemish adapters foreground her even further by turning Shakespeare's young but mature wife to the homosexually inclined Richard into an infant bride. Lanoye and Perceval rewrite Shakespeare where, for practical reasons, Shakespeare departed from his historical source material to profit from an additional, mature female speaker in the play. The Flemish reason for subverting Shakespeare's presentation of history here from the outset is not rooted in any desire for historical accuracy;

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 205 on occasion, their own departure from Shakespeare's history is even more drastic. There is little doubt that this manipulation of the queen in the text of Richard II serves to align the play more accurately with the disturbing Belgian present, following the traumatic discovery of a number of cases of child abuse (among which the so-called ‘Dutroux case’), and increasing certainty about the corruption of state justice. Such a reading of the editorial intervention is inevitable, given the first exchange of words between Richard and his child-queen, shortly before the king corrupts the judicial system for his convenience by hindering divine justice at Coventry. The dialogue rehearses childlike innocence, affection, physicality, and age difference, but also a mode of senior male domination symbolised in the forms of address, and supported by the combination of the queen's use of the interrogative and the monarch's of the imperative manner:

La Reine: (whispering affectionately in Richard's ear) Richaar Je vous en prie, laissez-moi faire pipi.

Richaar: (whispers back) Ma chère enfant, N'attends que pour un tout petit instant. (kisses her forehead).

Matters are equally unambiguous in the second act where we find the French queen playing with a doll, as Richard, surrounded with his flatterers, is treated to poetry with allusions of an increasingly eschatological nature. Here, on the eve of his departure for Ireland, Richard is also eager to sleep with his child-queen, and the proper stress on the French word ‘reine’ in this multilingual translation-cum-adaptation poignantly activates the Dutch meaning of ‘reine’ as ‘pure’ (1:37). All this does not prepare one for the shock when in the next scene the sexually initiated queen has her first period, while still childlike humming a French nursery rhyme (2.3), before speaking her version of Shakespeare's lines about ‘Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb’ (2.2.10), expressing her premonition of Richard's fall and the onset of civil war and national chaos. The allusions to child abuse in the first part of the trilogy are also easily reactivated during the famous sequence of the princes' murder in the Tower in the third part, And Deliver Us from Evil. However, one cannot accuse Lanoye and Perceval of glibly cashing in on a facile analogy. In fact, they make sure to invest the sequence with more than just an expedient expression of disapproval. On the one hand, they introduce a note of wry humour, for example when Richard III tempts the two youngsters to take up residence in the dreaded Tower. As he puts it in that curious amalgamation of Dutch and English so typical of the third part of To War: ‘Toe (=Come) little Richard, / Won't you go to the Toren (=Tower), too?’ (3:83). On the other hand, the adapters heighten the sense of horror when they have Richard devour the princes' corpses on stage. To Richard, as Lanoye sees it, the two nephews are his greatest source of humiliation, the most painful reminder of his wickedness, of his hideous exterior, of his unloved state, and hence they are also the true agents of his disintegration, a process whose lowest point is reached when Richard eats them in full view of the audience, in an image worthy of Francis Bacon.

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Killing the thing one loves

Another telling change effected by Lanoye and Perceval occurs at the end of the Henry IV sequence, where Prince Hal kills his father, Henry the Fourth. In Shakespeare's Henry IV, the eponymous king fears that his prodigal son will steal the crown by his deathbed. The king proves to be mistaken, however, and a degree of understanding and reconciliation is reached between him and his son in the end. In Lanoye and Perceval, Bolingbroke and Hal meet not at the former's deathbed, but on the battlefield where Hal, in an apparently gratuitous display of violence, chokes the already dying king. Initially, this departure from Holinshed and Shakespeare raises only questions, until this gesture proves to correspond rather accurately with Lanoye and Perceval's view of Bolingbroke and (ultimately also) his son, as dictatorial politicians, as right-wing Flemish nationalists, two leaders with Realpolitik as their ideal, men with ideas about human evolution, society, gender, and leadership that echo some of the more disturbing elements in current Belgian, or rather Flemish, politics. Under the circumstances, the one-time prodigal son's assassination of his frail and ailing progenitor is the best fate that the latter could meet with; the son ratifies his father's policies precisely by negating him at this stage. This is the politics of In the Name of the Father and the Son, but also of the later plays. If in Shakespeare, Henry the Fourth gives his son the memorable advice to distract rebellious native nobles by waging war abroad against a single enemy that demands a unified stance - ‘be it thy charge to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels’ - Lanoye and Perceval's monarchs eliminate the needy, the weak, or those who are sexually ambiguous like the gender-riddled Falstaff in the play. In The Fortunes of Falstaff (1943), John Dover Wilson gave a famous account of Falstaff as the surrogate father to Hal, but since the publication of Valerie Traub's magnificent Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespeare (1992), Falstaff is also the surrogate mother to the prince, which explains how, on the one hand, as a transvestite, he/she breastfeeds Hal in the new Flemish adaptation, and, on the other, has no place in the kingdom which the prince comes to rule, a kingdom founded on extreme notions of purity and male fantasies realised by designating as effeminate and precarious everything that might threaten to undermine the hegemony. In the role that Falstaff plays as the begetter of wit with his feminine ‘belly full of tongues’, he has more in common with the prostitutes whom he frequents than with the anxieties of such meritocratic males as Prince Hal. It is heavily symbolic therefore that in Lanoye and Perceval, an upstaged Falstaff dies as Henry and Katherine are engaged in an act of banal copulation. Given the overall nature of the To War adaptation, however, it seems less important to note the adapters' drive for a degree of consistency in their adaptation, than to recognise in Prince Hal's unanticipated instance of patricide the clearest sign of Lanoye and Perceval's oedipal affiliation with Shakespeare, a means of mastering their so-called anxiety of influence. It is an avowed love-hate relationship, brought into focus by the quotations which adorn the various parts of To War. There are passages from Goethe arguing that Shakespeare presents a serious threat to budding talent, since he invites imitation and keeps the young poet from fashioning himself; and from Camilla Paglia preaching an iconoclastic approach to the classics, as a

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 means of redeeming them. Just as Prince Hal symbolically blocks his father's mouth in an attempt to kill the old man and to perpetuate the fami-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 207 ly's rule over England, so Lanoye and Perceval, in a contemporary history play of their own making, drown out Shakespeare's voice with the aim briefly to rule in the cherished realm of literature. Prince Hal's annihilation of his father is an obvious analogy to Lanoye and Perceval's undertaking. Just as in this scene Prince Hal achieves the crown of England by means of a combined act of patricide and regicide, so Lanoye and Perceval attain their own crown of laurels by iconoclastically leaving the sacrosanct Shakespeare text behind, and rewriting history as well as Shakespeare in their own image. Returning to the trilogy, one notes that this love-hate relationship, with killing as an expression of love, pervades the Flemish version of the Shakespeare plays from beginning to end, both on the level of history, and on the level of literature. There is a straight line from Hal's killing of Henry IV in the first part of the trilogy, to the dying complaint of the hunchbacked Richard III to his mother: ‘The cowardice of your love let me live, / Where true love would have strangled me’ (3: 112). The philosophy of history unmistakably intersects with the literary aesthetics of Lanoye and Perceval when Richard the Third, after killing his brother George of Clarence earlier in the play, is made to address the audience with the words: ‘One thing I'll teach the world, willens nillens; / There is tremendous poetry in killings’ (3: 74). The original idea for To War was developed during work on Richard III, and it seems likely that these lines capture the original fascination with Shakespeare's history and Shakespeare's language that paradoxically also justifies fully the passionate act of demolition that is entitled To War.

No admiration, but emulation

The immense press coverage and the wide popular acclaim that To War has enjoyed, might suggest that we are witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon. This is not altogether true. The project is unique in a number of ways, not least because of the various ways in which, by appropriating the two Shakespeare tetralogies, Lanoye and Perceval manage to write the contemporary history of Belgium. It is stunning to witness the ease with which

Jan Decleir and Els Dottermans in To War (Ten oorlog). Photo by Corneel Maria Ryckeboer.

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Shakespeare's plays may be read as pre-texts for this contemporary history. Shakespeare's John of Gaunt comes home in the Lanoye and Perceval reworking, as he is made to speak the language of the Flemish he used to represent as the son of Edward III (who married into the Hainault line). The rift in Richard II between those respecting the native tongue or French, easily translates into the contemporary Belgian situation, not just with the tug of languages between the Flemish and the Walloons, but also with the francophone bourgeoisie of Flanders occupying the dubious middle region. Henry VI's famous military victory over the French becomes with surprising ease the battle of the Golden Spurs, fought at Courtrai in 1302, and the Flemish equivalent to the battle of Agincourt as a historical and literary prop for a sense of national superiority. Of course, in the final analysis Shakespeare's troubled sequence of English kings also rehearses the Belgian apprehension over their monarchy on the sudden death of the childless King Baudouin in 1993. In more specific terms, Lanoye makes no secret of the analogies he himself perceives between the late Belgian monarch, and Shakespeare's pious dreamer king, Henry VI. To War, in spite of its truly staggering inventiveness, only seems to mark a uniquely new stage in our practice and appreciation of Shakespeare in the Low Countries. The climate for its success has been prepared for decades. When To War is described by present-day critics as the result of processing Shakespeare in the food blender, one recalls the reviews of Jan Decorte's Brussels Cymbeline of 1981, upbraided for being no more than a hodgepodge, a rubbish dump with odds and ends of Shakespeare. Or one recollects the deep despair of Hans Croiset in that same year over Gerrit Komrij's raucous rendering in Dutch of Troilus and Cressida. If academics and theatre scholars now analyse To War with enthusiasm, this favourable appreciation is due in part also to these brave, earlier efforts which increasingly challenged the canonical rank of Shakespeare in the field of dramatic literature, as well as contesting the sacrosanct status of the text which, as we now know, Shakespeare himself revised to suit the political or theatrical conditions of his time. Still, even when we consider To War in its immediate, late-twentieth-century contexts, and define this theatrical venture as the epitome of postmodern Shakespeare, we are in danger of overlooking the fact that the practice of appropriation and rewriting which we rightly admire in the current enterprise of Lanoye and Perceval was also typical of the seventeenth-century reception of Shakespeare in the Low Countries, subsumed, at the time, in the process of translation, imitation, and emulation. Such practice in the seventeenth century was by no means limited to any of the traditional Shakespeare genres. We find it in the case of Jan Vos, whose immensely popular Aran en Titus of 1638 was, as Willy Braekman has demonstrated with great skill, fashioned out of a play on the subject of Titus (circulating in the northern European strolling player circuit), and Shakespeare's troublesome early tragedy, Titus Andronicus. In a similar way, the famous play-within-the-play from A Midsummer Night's Dream - featuring Pyramus and Thisbe as the star-crossed lovers - was gladly snapped up by M. Gramsbergen in 1650, and again by A. Leeuw in 1669. But Shakespeare's medieval history, too, was seized upon and made to serve Dutch ends. In 1651, Lambert van den Bosch collated a number of historical accounts of the final stages of the

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Jan Decleir and Lucas van den Eynde in To War (Ten oorlog). Photo by Corneel Maria Ryckeboer.

Wars of the Roses, including Holinshed's Chronicles, Sir Thomas More's pro-Tudor life of the last son of York, Thomas Legge's Latin Ricardus Tertius, as well as Shakespeare's Richard III. It was published as Roode en Witte Roos. Of Lankaster en Jork. Blyeindent trevrspel (1651), or, The Red and the White Rose. Or Lancaster and York. A Tragicomedy, to use O.J. Campbell's title for the play which he translated into English in 1919 to reveal its structural and verbal indebtedness to Shakespeare. It has long been recognised that the English history play, though dealing with the nation's past, often functioned as a mirror of contemporary politics. Lambert van den Bosch's The Red and the White Rose is no exception, although critics of the play, in a zealous attempt to establish the much-cherished genealogy with Shakespeare, have on the whole tended to ignore the Dutch play's contemporary politico-historical context. Closer analysis, however, reveals that Republican matters of some weight lurked behind the chronicled politics that Lambert van den Bosch translated and reworked into historical drama. Unlike Shakespeare, Lambert van den Bosch begins his play with the death of Edward IV and the succession of his young son as Edward V. The obvious question that arises is why this particular moment in the history of the Wars of the Roses should be granted such prominence. As it happens, the monarch's decease as well as the succession issue in the English history play had parallels in the rather grave situation in the Republic in 1651. This was a year after the untimely death, on 6 November 1650, of Stadholder William II, prince of Orange. William the Second's heir - the future William III of England - was still an infant, requiring a regent. This temporary and alternative form of leadership was a cause of considerable concern in the Low Countries, as it was in England after the death of Edward IV, when the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 future Richard III held the office. This anxiety in the Low Countries was certainly reasonable, given what has been identified as the persistent tug-of-war between the Amsterdam oligarchy and the house of Orange that also informs the power struggle in Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer of 1654. Political misgivings do not stop there in The Red and the White Rose. England, as it is presented in the Dutch play, is a source of embarrassment in people's eyes, even in the eyes of the English characters. As Lord Stanley puts it at the end of a sixty-line monologue trying to account for the chaos that wrecks the nation: ‘although the kingdom has found again its Lord in Edward, our heads are bowed under the burden of great sins. (...) we became guilty of a crime, one which forever will remain the shame and disgrace of our State, because King Richard, the lawful prince, was destroyed by the hand of a murderer - a crime which Pomfret must still lament - and such noble blood was spilled so wantonly. Everyone considers it a disgrace to England, that she so easily lays hands upon her legitimate Lord.’ (Campbell, 103-4; italics added) This speech, as translated by Campbell, expresses an obvious sense of national shame over the regicide committed by the English to have Henry IV succeed Richard II. A second look at the original Dutch version of 1651, however, shows us that the phrase ‘legitimate Lord’ should read ‘legitimate Lords’ (for ‘wettige Heeren’). In this way, the final sentence comes to read: ‘Everyone considers it a disgrace to England, that she so easily lays hands upon her legitimate lords.’ With a minor change from singular to plural, the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 210 situation in the play no longer refers to Richard II only; it also directly interrelates with the very recent Puritan regicide on Charles I in 1649, also commemorated in Vondel's Lucifer where it is feared that the Legions of Hell may be building a power base on English soil. Read in its immediate political and historical contexts, The Red and the White Rose, on the domestic level, brings into focus the young Republic's misgivings about the successor to the Stadholder, as well as the related anxiety over the threat posed by the anti-monarchic, Protestant faction in the cities. On the international level, the play expresses its misgivings about the Republic's English neighbours two years after the death of Charles I, two years also into the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell, which severely complicated the Republic's foreign diplomatic relations. As the plot of The Red and the White Rose suggests, with the coronation of Henry Richmond as Henry VII at the end of the play, Lambert van den Bosch would seem to support the monarchist idea, so that behind the united colours of the red and white roses, one may begin to discern the famous family colour of Orange. Just as Shakespeare set about cutting, pasting, and inventing medieval history with an eye to Tudor concerns, Lambert van den Bosch routinely recycled the English playwright's history including Richard III for The Red and the White Rose. Such practice, however, soon declined as, in the course of the eighteenth century, Shakespeare became canonised, streamlined, and fixed - with the first Dutch translations of Richard II and Henry IV dating from 1780, and with Henry V and Henry VI appearing in translation a hundred years later - to become one of the untouchable cultural icons of the civilised West. Against that background, we may recognise that To War does not really take up arms against Shakespeare. It really aims its fire at the

Ariane van Vliet, Jan Decleir, Peter Seynaeve, Els Dottermans en Vic de Wachter in To War (Ten oorlog). Photo by Corneel Maria Ryckeboer.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 211 civilising years that separate us from Shakespeare, thus helping to bring Shakespeare and his method back closer to home. Full houses in the theatre world are ever a reliable measure of a production's achievement. This also applies to To War. However, not only Flemish and Dutch audiences have recognised a familiar and telling tale in To War. In 1999, the Lanoye cycle of histories, especially translated into German for the purpose, was staged at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg as Endlich Krieg (or War at Last). Also, at the time of writing there seems an excellent chance that the German production will be transferred to the Salzburger Festspiele later in 1999. There can be no greater tribute to Tom Lanoye and Luk Perceval than the response from both domestic and foreign markets to their appropriation of early modern English culture.

TON HOENSELAARS

Further reading

BRAEKMAN, W., Shakespeare's ‘Titus Andronicus’: Its Relationship to the German Play of 1620 and to Jan Vos's ‘Aran en Titus’. Ghent, 1969. CAMPBELL, OSCAR JAMES, The Position of the ‘Roode en Witte Roos’ in the Saga of King Richard III. Madison, 1919. Rpt. New York, 1971. ERENSTEIN, R.L., et al., eds., Een theatergeschiedenis der Nederlanden: Tien eeuwen drama en theater in Nederland en Vlaanderen. Amsterdam, 1996. HOWARD, JEAN E., and PHYLLIS RACKIN, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories. London / New York, 1997. LANOYE, TOM, and LUK PERCEVAL, Ten Oorlog. 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1998. LEEK, ROBERT H., Shakespeare in Nederland: Kroniek van vier eeuwen Shakespeare in Nederlandse vertalingen en op het Nederlands toneel. Zutphen, 1988. NAAIJKENS, TOM, ‘Ten Oorlog met Tom Lanoye: Stof voor een eerste vertaalbeschrijving’, Folio (Shakespeare-Genootschap van Nederland en Vlaanderen) 5: 1 (1998): 17-39. TRAUB, VALERIE, Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespeare. London, 1992. VOS, JOZEF DE, ‘Ten Oorlog’ Doorgelicht. Special issue of Documenta: Tijdschrift voor theater (Ghent), 16: 2 (1998). VOS, JOZEF DE, ‘To War: The History Plays Recycled in The Low Countries’, Folio (Shakespeare-Genootschap van Nederland en Vlaanderen) 5: 1 (1998): 7-16.

Eindnoten:

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 1. See The Low Countries 1998-99: pp. 271-273

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 212

‘We've got to start loving this country more’ Frank Martinus Arion and Dutch-Caribbean Literature

Dutch is not only the language of two European nations on the North Sea; it is also the official language of Surinam, a former Dutch colony located on the northern edge of the South American continent which has been independent since 1975, as well as of the two Caribbean regions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands: the island group consisting of Curaçao, Bonaire, Sint-Maarten, Saba and Sint-Eustatius, which together form the Netherlands Antilles, and the island of Aruba which since 1986 has enjoyed separate status as an independent nation within that Kingdom. Altogether just under a million people in the Caribbean are able to speak Dutch and do so daily, despite the fact that it is often not their mother tongue. And Dutch not only has a practical function in each of these three countries; it has also generated a notable literature. For Surinam we can think of names such as Albert Helman, Hugo Pos, Leo Henri Ferrier, Bea Vianen, Edgar Cairo, Astrid Roemer, Ellen Ombre and many others; for the Antillean islands there are writers such as Cola Debrot, Boeli van Leeuwen, Tip Marugg, Frank Martinus Arion, Jules de Palm, Denis Henriquez and others. Frank Martinus Arion's first, and best-known, novel Double Play (Dubbelspel) appeared just over twenty years ago. At the end of 1998 it was published in English translation by Faber & Faber in London. Frank Martinus Arion (1936-) attended secondary school on the island of his birth, Curaçao, before studying Dutch in Leiden in the Netherlands. He then went on to work as a lecturer and linguist in Amsterdam, Paramaribo (Surinam) and Willemstad (Curaçao). As a literary author he publishes both in his mother tongue Papiamento and in Dutch. Anyone writing in Papiamento publishes for their own people. An author in the Caribbean region publishing in Dutch, however, is confronted with a twofold readership - the Dutch-speaking European reader for whom Dutch is the mother tongue but who finds the Caribbean culture described in this language alien to him; and the author's own Caribbean readership who read about their own cultural reality in the ‘foreign’ Dutch language. In addition to this linguistic difficulty, the Dutch-Caribbean author also faces the problem of a three-fold cultural heritage, the result of the area's colonial history, composed of indigenous Indian elements, the heritage of Africa and the heritage of Western Europe.

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This heterogeneous background has shaped the literary work of Frank Martinus Arion throughout his writing career. Following several essays in schoolboy-Dutch, journalistic pieces and isolated publications, he published the poetry collection Voices from Africa (Stemmen uit Afrika) in 1957 at the age of 21; in it he set out his position regarding that continent and the Old World. He followed this with a few poetry collections in Papiamento published on Curaçao, which contain a more personal definition of his position. This was followed by the publication through the Amsterdam publisher De Bezige Bij of his now well-known Dutch-language novels Double Play (1973), Departure of the Queen (Afscheid van de Koningin, 1975), Noble Savages (Nobele wilden, 1979) and The Final Freedom (De laatste vrijheid, 1995).

Love at stake

Like many authors, Frank Martinus Arion is remembered as the writer of what is deemed to be a brilliant book. His second novel was regarded by many Dutch critics as a failure, while his last two novels failed to make a lasting impact. But within the space of a quarter of a century Double Play - the first major Dutch-language novel by a black Antillean author - has become a classic both in the literature of the Netherlands and of his country of birth, the Netherlands Antilles, and in a wider context within Dutch-Caribbean literature. When at the conclusion of Frank Martinus Arion's fourth novel, The Final Freedom, the main character appeals in a television address to the people of the fictitious Caribbean island of Amber, which is threatened by a volcanic eruption, to remain rather than flee because the island represents the heart and soul of the Caribbean people, this at once reveals the main theme of the whole of Arion's work: defence of the love of that which is one's own - one's own island and culture, one's own responsibility towards that culture and, above all, one's own language. By choosing this as the main theme of his work, the author is adopting an explicit standpoint. The commitment

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Frank Martinus Arion (1936-).

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 214 to that which is one's own is accompanied by a resistance to that which is alien, even alien people, in this case Western people and their Western values. Arion's elaboration of this theme is marked by a process of literary creolisation: he adopts Western traditions and interprets them in his own way. Creolisation is always a mix of imitation and creation. The imitation lies primarily in the use of Western literary forms - though greatly adapted and transformed - while the creation lies in the individual content and themes. In Double Play the narrator confronts his readers first with the Caribbean variant of the game of dominoes, which is not a child's pastime but a game typically played by men for high stakes. The story has no fewer than six main characters: the four men who play dominoes every Sunday afternoon and two women - the wives of two of the players, who have a relationship with the two other players, one because of the economic necessity of earning a little extra money, the other to take revenge on her authoritarian husband. And so the game of dominoes also becomes a game involving human pawns. The game also provides the structure for the book, with the ‘foreplay’ between the early and late Sunday morning, the game itself which begins in the afternoon and lasts until dusk, and the ‘afterplay’ during the evening of the same day. The game takes place at the house of one of the players. And there we have the three classical European units of time, place and action. Using the description of the game, the story is carried to a climax as in a drama. But having six main characters enables the narrator to bring this drama to a positive conclusion - a very important thing for Frank Martinus Arion because he is seeking to prove that the Caribbean people have not embraced the European pessimistic view of the world. A second layer to the story is provided by a psychological portrait of the main characters, quite ordinary inhabitants of Curaçao, all of whom are black and come from the lower middle classes, and their world of ideas. Manchi Sanantonio and his wife Solema are the best-off economically with their jobs as bailiff and teacher, respectively; Bubu Fiel is a taxi-driver whose earnings are so irregular and who is parted from his money so easily that his wife Nora constantly has difficulty making ends meet; and Chamon Nicolas and Janchi Pau are ordinary workers at the oil refinery. These six characters are portrayed in a negative or positive light depending on their attitude towards the island. The losing domino players have no love for what is their own: the island and their wives. They therefore not only lose the game, but also their wives, their good name and honour, and ultimately their lives. The novel is dedicated ‘to women with courage’, and it is Solema who demonstrates this courage and together with Janchi Pau becomes the focus of the positive ending to the story. Love builds its own future: ‘So, because he loved her, did he suddenly care more about this country, did the course of events leave him less cold than before? Then the analysis he'd just given was wrong. Then, from a logical point of view, there was no other way of seeing it. It wasn't education that this country needed, but love! This feeling that he had. Because with this feeling you could do things. You could keep animals with it and you could make plants grow with it. You could finish a house with it (...). He formulated it slowly to himself: We need love. We've got to start loving this country more and our women too.’ Finally, the game of dominoes functions as a metaphor for the island and its politics in the protest against the power of foreigners and the plea for the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 215 country to have control over its own destiny and its own political responsibility. This makes Double Play very much a product of the late 1960s and early 70s, a product of what in recent decades has come to be known as the ‘30th of May movement’. During a major strike followed by widespread rioting - the revolt and fires of 30 May 1969 in which large sections of the capital went up in flames - the people of Curaçao demonstrated that they were no longer prepared to accept the dominance of foreigners and the power of their own elite. The arson and looting had to be brought under control by specially flown-in Dutch marines, and engendered the Dutch wish to effect speedy independence for the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom - a wish which incidentally was only acceded to by Surinam, on 20 November 1975. The Netherlands Antilles and Aruba opted - and continue to opt - for permanent ties within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The novel Double Play voices the socio-political commitment to greater responsibility for black people around 30 May 1969.

Building up

This brings us to the question of how relevant the book is, 25 years on. As early as the 1950s the physician / writer and later governor Cola Debrot was continually emphasising Antillean self-reliance versus Dutch cultural domination. His vision ultimately shaped much of the later thinking in the Netherlands Antilles, including that of Frank Martinus Arion. The positive side is shown on the Monument to Autonomy, which was erected to commemorate the domestic self-governing status acquired under the Statute of 1954, with the eloquent words of Queen Wilhelmina: ‘supported by our own strength but with the will to aid and assist each other’ - with the emphasis on the belief in their own strength. The negative aspect of this emphasis on that which is one's own is a tendency to isolate oneself. The creolisation supported by Frank Martinus Arion does indeed have a tendency to segregate itself from the outside world and bury itself in its own language, traditions, etc. The novel Double Play is set on the third Sunday in November somewhere in the early 1970s. The reaction to the riots of 30 May 1969 is a critical one. Since that day the island has become even sadder, because ultimately nothing has changed politically. The only value of the riots was that it showed the foreigners that the population was no longer prepared simply to accept everything. There is a general view that 30 May was nothing more than a wild evening of drinking and arson. This viewpoint is understandable, because Double Play aims to be constructive rather than demolish. One of the most important motifs in the novel is that of construction, symbolised in the houses of the four main characters. The negative side of the commitment to self-reliance is expressed in the rejection of the foreigners who wish to retain total power and who are consequently blamed for everything that goes wrong. The Dutch are described by Janchi, the main character who is given the positive leading role in the narrative, as ‘apes, barbarians, under-developed and uncivilised creatures’ - an idea Arion also voiced in his magazine Ruku (1969-1971). Nora has an aversion to the people of the Windward Islands and hates everything white

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 216 because she blames white people for all the misery affecting simple people such as her. On the other hand, the unproductive inhabitants of Curaçao also come under sharp fire. The criticism of Europe and Western culture is accompanied by a positive portrayal of Africa.

Yardstick of individuality

The fact that this theme - a critical plea for the retention of all that is ‘one's own’ - is a constant in all Frank Martinus Arion's work is easily demonstrated. In his second novel, Departure of the Queen, the Antillean main character defines his attitude to Africa and Europe and takes his leave not only of the Dutch Queen and the West, but also of the image he had of Africa: positive in his earlier work, it has now turned out to be a myth. Only those who exploit their own, admittedly limited, development opportunities make progress in Africa - not the elite who sell their souls to Western capitalism. The actual queen is therefore an ordinary Dutch woman who takes advantage of these development opportunities on behalf of the people. In his third novel, Noble Savages, the colonies in the Caribbean and the mother country France are opposed as centre and periphery, but it also becomes apparent that in France itself the miracle of Lourdes in Southern France and the appearance of Mary to the simple young girl Bernadette Soubirous run counter to the feelings of superiority prevailing in metropolitan Paris. In the middle of these oppositions the Antillean main character personifies the vitality of the Third World, the power of true imagination, as a necessary alternative to the old, tired West, which is doomed to decline. In The Final Freedom the author voices the ultimate wish for freedom to control one's own life. According to a foreign expert, a volcano on the fictitious island of Amber is about to erupt, but the Curaçao teacher Daryll Guenepou refuses to be evacuated and stays behind. This is largely due to the fact that on 1 September 1994 - twenty years after political independence - Creole is to be introduced as the language of education on the island, something which Daryll has been unable to achieve in his own country with his mother tongue Papiamento. Once again, therefore, the yardstick of individuality is used, the development from within of the country's own education system, with its own language of instruction. Right from Ivan Illich's motto at the front of the book, not a single good word is said about foreign experts - the main character forgets for the sake of convenience that he is one too - the pessimism of Europeans is emphasised and nothing positive is said about the Netherlands or Europe. It is actually Daryll's strength that he has never been to Europe. As a contrast, the great knowledge which Africa possessed long before European culture existed is emphasised in a positive way. Egyptian knowledge of astronomy was, it is claimed, stolen from Africa! In The Final Freedom Frank Martinus Arion also judges a number of his fellow authors according to whether or not they have undergone a process of creolisation. Of the Caribbean authors, Jan Carew, George Lamming and Derek Walcott are rated favourably; V.S. Naipaul gets a poor rating, because he ‘is one of the greatest imitators

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 of Europeans’. The story wipes the floor with pessimists such as Shakespeare, Goethe, E.M. Remarque and

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John le Carré on account of the pessimism of their heroes, all of whom are predestined to die. Judgements of this sort by the author may have had a function in the critical seventies and thereafter in certain circles; today, however, they appear dated. As a result, Frank Martinus Arion's later novels have never managed to make any lasting impact. This brings us back to the question of the continuing popularity of Double Play, since that contained the same thematic constant. Why is it only Double Play that has become a classic work which is still read with admiration, which is reprinted time after time and translated, in spite of its dated socio-economic and political framework? The answer has to be sought in the novel's composition and style. Double Play has a lightness of touch full of an ironic aloofness and ability to put things into perspective. With its technique of putting each of the six main characters in the spotlight in turn, combined with the tight ordering of time and space, the story has a splendid compositional rhythm in which the dominoes and the players are organically interwoven with a wide range of information about Curaçao society.

WIM RUTGERS Translated by Julian Ross.

Translations

Double Play (Tr. Paul Vincent). London, 1998.

Further reading

GLASER, MARLIES and MARION PAUSCH, Caribbean Writers: Between Orality & Writing, Amsterdam / Atlanta, 1994 (Matatu no. 12.). ROWELL, CHARLES (ed.): ‘Caribbean Literature from Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, and the Netherlands’. Callaloo. Vol. 21, no. 3, 1998.

From Double Play by Frank Martinus Arion

A cool breeze suddenly blew over the hills of Wakota and over the valley in which the men sat playing. It made Bubu Fiel even more dreamy, but it gave Janchi Pau a gratifying feeling of peace and clarity. For a moment he forgot Manchi, the conversation, and the whole domino table in fact, and thought just about himself and Solema. It was true. He'd changed, and she'd done it. There was something new in him. A desire for action, which he'd never had before. In the space of a few weeks he felt a different man. But had he changed? No. He was thirty-five and at that age

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 a man doesn't change any more, he felt. No, he was the same man he'd always been. But with something extra: Solema. So, because he loved her, did he suddenly care more about this country, did the course of events leave him less cold than before? Then the analysis he'd just given was wrong. Then, from a logical point of view, there was no other way of seeing it. It wasn't education that this coun-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 218 try needed, but love! This feeling that he had. Because with this feeling you could do things. You could keep animals with it and you could make plants grow with it. You could finish a house with it. Because you could do that, you could build several houses with it. Lots of wabi-wood tables. And then you should also be able to train teachers with it and heaven knows what else. He formulated it slowly to himself: We need love. We've got to start loving this country more and our women too. Yes, that last point was so sensible that he almost said it aloud. But he said nothing. A remark like that - that we had to love our women more - would just sound banal here. Hadn't he just denied that he was still a woman-chaser? What was the difference between being a woman-chaser and loving a woman, or even loving women? There was a difference, but he wouldn't be able to explain it to them. Because he felt unsure of himself in this area of love and tenderness, which was still so new to him, he quickly returned to an area that he could cope with better. ‘Just look at Cuba,’ he said in a somewhat calmer tone, ‘just look at Castro. There too they thought that the people would take it for ever, but you can't neglect and exploit people for ever and ever. Just look at the blacks in America. One day you'll get what's coming to you. All it needs is for one person to stand up...’ But he had the feeling that he couldn't formulate what he felt to be the truth. And consequently he was glad that Bubu Fiel interrupted him. The latter was still looking for the atmosphere of friendly jokes; the atmosphere of a good story; the atmosphere of small talk, of games which usually prevailed at their domino table, while they slammed down their pieces as hard as they could; the atmosphere which made a person realise that Sunday is such a wonderful, uncomplicated day, a day without the problems of the other six days. With the rum, cool and everything. Goddamn, he played this game for his pleasure. And so: the serious tone in which Janchi was talking about the revolution in Cuba and Castro, for heaven's sake! This wasn't the tone for a game of dominoes between friends, on the east side of your house on a Sunday afternoon - the only day which you really had off, which you took off (because you worked for yourself, after all). Perhaps this wasn't even a subject for Curaçao, where things always went according to a different pattern than elsewhere, more orderly than elsewhere, more disciplined and more decent, wasn't that so? None of that blood and violence, all those revolutions and such like... They might be normal in Cuba and other countries, but here... What's more, why should they bring up that word Communism on this afternoon of all afternoons? He couldn't have a capitalist mentality for the simple reason that he didn't know exactly what it meant, but he abhorred that word Communism because every association with it suggested there might be a regime in power which would forbid him to drive around this godless, arid island in his brand-new 200H, large and light blue, well polished and wide-winged, in the direction that he wanted, with an incalculable number of possibilities for the most varied, unexpected adventures. Like yesterday's! When he went to the camp over there and found that woman... What was her name again? Oh yes. Micha. So when he came across Micha who was having a birthday. Just like that. Can anyone under a Communist regime, or even a Socialist one, if there's any difference between the two, have such a stroke of luck? No, no! Impossible! In Cuba they'd even officially abolished prostitution. They made whores drive buses. Buses! Just

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 219 imagine: whores on great big tour coaches! For that reason, he said, ‘Communism will never come here. We Curaçaoans don't want that. We're individualists. We like doing as we please. Under Communism everyone has to do the same, no one has a life of his own any more.’ Sanantonio nodded at his partner in complete agreement. ‘That's not the point,’ said Janchi fiercely. ‘We simply don't want to see things. Because if we see things, then we have to fight them. And we don't want to do that. Not because we're afraid, but because fighting takes effort. We let them mess around with us because we like our pleasure too much. Not me,’ he corrected himself hastily. ‘We don't like our pleasure,’ said Bubu. ‘We don't like our pleasure.’ He repeated his sentence in order to suppress a feeling of shame about his venture in the camp which suddenly came over him. ‘We like our freedom,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Better one good day and one bad day. Better “entre medio” but in the meantime to be free to do what you like, than something like Communism. At least for me.’ Without saying anything, Janchi played the five-three. He decided it was better to devote his attention entirely to the game again, because he was getting angry, not so much at Bubu but at Manchi. But that was mainly of course because he had been angry with Manchi for a long time. Pleased that Janchi's move didn't prevent him from playing his double one, Bubu said, ‘But I agree with you, friend Janchi. I too have the feeling that a few things will have to change on this island. Life is getting too expensive like this. Perhaps a new party should be created, perhaps there should be two new parties, perhaps we should’ - and it was an odd, desperate position for a nationalist, or at least a member of the NVP like him to adopt - ‘become part of Venezuela or something. Venezuela, America, the Dominican Republic, for all I care? Perhaps these islands really are too small to do anything with.’ The thought gave him hope and he went on, ‘Yes, part of America. Like Puerto Rico. They themselves opt to stay part of America...’ But when this provoked not the reaction he expected, but an obviously sarcastic look from Janchi Pau, he suddenly said, ‘Or the young people must rebel! Better education or something.’ He paused. Casting an appraising eye at the veranda of Manchi's house, he said, ‘We lack the spirit of enterprise!’ He smiled at the others, but with a hint of ‘I'm a fine one to talk’ in his attitude. He knew at least that he lacked the spirit of enterprise, especially at this table this afternoon. ‘The spirit of enterprise,’ he repeated pensively. ‘We're dreamers,’ he added in a melancholy tone. ‘We enjoy life too much...’ He put out his left hand and gave Janchi Pau a friendly pat on the shoulder. ‘Perhaps too much. We like a good conversation, a drink, a woman. And the sun and the shade both tire us out.’ He thought for a moment. The sun robs us of the energy to do anything, and a wonderful wind and cool shade make us nod off to sleep. Ah, this is a beautiful damn island! Like a beautiful whore, who stops us keeping to our good intentions.’ He quickly took hold of himself so as not to show his listlessness and said, summing up, ‘We're dreamers, we're dreamers on this damn island!’

From Double Play (Tr. Paul Vincent). London: Faber and Faber, 1998; pp. 176-180.

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The Myth of Dutch Progressiveness The Netherlands as ‘Guide Land’

Several years ago, I gave a talk at a large American university, outlining how Dutch nationalism had waned since 1945, as the Dutch, for both practical and principled reasons, forsook ‘God, the Netherlands and Orange’ in favour of European and globalist commitments. Afterwards, a prominent Flemish historian told me, in a friendly but vigorous way, that I was absolutely wrong in this respect about his northern neighbours. ‘The Dutch are still exceedingly nationalistic,’ he insisted, ‘and they remain as convinced as ever that they are more right than anybody else.’ ‘Nationalism’ of course, is a tricky word, full of definitional pitfalls. But the adjacent Belgians are, perhaps, uniquely suited to see just how chauvinistic the Dutch can be concerning the superiority of their own country. Traditional Dutch condescension toward the Belgians, however, is only one form of this chauvinism, whether we choose to call it nationalism or not. As an American boy of tender years, I, too, was confronted with many sermons against the iniquities of my own country from Dutch friends and relatives. My mother was a Rotterdammer by birth. In 1960, at the tail end of the post-war immigration comet, she immigrated to the United States to marry my father, an American. I grew up in Iowa, not far from the South Dakota line. Apart from the Luxembourgers at its eastern edge, my county was settled largely by Dutch Calvinists, people whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had left the Netherlands for a better life on the Plains. It was in this milieu that I spent most of my life, a stability given variety by almost annual visits to the Netherlands during the summer months. Travelling to and from Iowa and Holland, I grew up living between two worlds which were rapidly growing apart, religiously, culturally, politically. The Netherlands in the year of my birth (1963) was a rather conservative place. But whereas the mental world of my Iowa community - and that of my own family - changed only slowly in the course of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, my Dutch relatives and friends rapidly developed views often in radical opposition to the certainties still firmly embraced back in Iowa. Members of my Dutch family liberalised their theology considerably or dropped out of the Dutch Reformed Church altogether, joined parties like the Political Radicals (PPR) or the Dutch Communists (CPN), and articulated

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 221 highly critical views of America and its backward policies, both in domestic and foreign affairs. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of them were quite active in the peace movement that chiefly aimed at preventing the stationing of cruise missiles in the Netherlands. This last political project occurred precisely at the time that the Reagan Revolution, and a new, more militant cultural conservatism was sweeping over the American heartland in general and over my small Iowa town in particular. By the standards of my hometown, my family was rabidly left-wing; by the standards of Dutch relatives, we had become hopelessly conservative. For this reason, I have always been particularly sensitive to the way many Dutch people spike their arguments with at least the insinuation that their own viewpoint is more ‘progressive’ and ‘enlightened’ than those with whom they disagree. This form of argumentation of course, is not restricted to post-sixties Holland; it is at least as old as the Enlightenment, and one could argue that its roots go even farther back. Still, the Dutch are masters of ‘we-are-more-progressive-than-you’ rhetoric because they are particularly unreflective in applying it. Other Europeans and Americans seem to value a field of tension between ‘tradition’ and ‘progress,’ in which the proper middle ground is the best choice for a given issue or problem. Not the contemporary Dutch, who play little (‘none’ would go too far) lip service to ‘tradition.’ It's not that the Netherlands is a traditionless place; one of the great realisations of my research years in Amsterdam during the early 1990s is how

Cartoon by Fritz Behrendt. The caption reads: ‘The changed image of the Netherlands is once a year...the old one again’ (Queen's Day 1995).

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 222 deeply attached the Dutch are to order, and to certain time-trusted conventions that maintain this order. I mean rather that the Dutch often avoid articulating sentimental or ideological attachment to ‘tradition.’ The Dutch public's relationship to the monarchy is instructive here. A great number of Queen Beatrix's subjects will insist that they have no particular fondness for the House of Orange, and that if it ceased to rule over the Netherlands after four centuries, they would not miss it. But, they hasten to add, Beatrix does a fine job as queen, and she deserves, by virtue of her personal merits alone, the respect of her subjects. It is a curious distinction, and it may be a disingenuous one. But it illustrates, among other things, the Dutch relationship with tradition: a principled hostility to it, to things that seem to belong to the past, all the while sneaking traditional attachments back in under some pragmatic guise. But this is not the same thing as saying that the Dutch really are just as tradition-bound as everyone else, only they won't admit it. The rejection of ‘tradition,’ and the unusually high attachment to being ‘progressive,’ does make a real difference in the substance and style of Dutch society. I think this culturally-embedded commitment to ‘progressiveness’ helps explain how the Netherlands changed quite quickly, even relatively painlessly, from a ‘conservative’ society in the 1950s to a society that by the 1970s was hailed - and condemned - as the ‘anything goes’ capital of the world. This shift during the 1960s was the subject of my book, Building New Babylon, which, thanks to my Dutch wife, appeared in Dutch several years ago. Initially, my project stemmed from my own personal yearnings to understand how, to put it baldly, Holland and Iowa had parted ways in the 1960s. But the book gradually turned into a cooler and more distanced work, accounting for why Dutch ‘elites’ made such easy concessions to religious, cultural and, to a lesser extent, political change. What I argued was that the Dutch leadership in various sectors of society, although castigated by ‘radicals’ who wanted to change society as quickly as possible, had themselves come to believe in the necessity of change - in the unavoidable demands of ‘progress.’ In a changing, dynamic world in which the Netherlands itself was being transformed, there seemed to be no choice, no fixed traditions and beliefs to which to cling. Thus the Dutch ‘cultural revolution’, such as it was, was actually facilitated by often cautious elites making concessions to, as they often put it, ‘the demands of the age’. The 1960s also unleashed a new, more militant form of Dutch moralism, which as a teenager I would encounter in subsequent years. Moralism had hardly been absent from Dutch society before the 1960s, but a new idealistic élan, sustained by the belief that the world could be transformed, helped sustain the idea that the Netherlands was somehow a ‘Gidsland’ (‘Guide Land’), a nation whose moral example could inspire other nations toward better behaviour. It is important to note that this ‘Guide Land’ ideal long predated the 1960s, and that it pertained almost exclusively to foreign policy. The Netherlands as the moral pathfinder for other nations stemmed from the ‘small is better’ thinking of the statesman J.R. Thorbecke in the 1830s, who sought a new, above-the-fray role for Dutch foreign policy after Belgian independence had stripped his country of big power pretensions. It was this ideal of a moral, principled neutrality which enjoyed its heyday in the first decades of this century until the German invasion of 1940 put an end to it.

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It was this ideal which resuscitated itself in the late 1960s, when many Dutch began to question the morality of a bipolar arms race and deep inequities in income across the globe. Perhaps the most tangible evidence of this ideal at work was in the large amounts of development aid given by the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s. But it was the peace movement, with its strong criticism of NATO defence policies, which received the most attention abroad. It certainly animated conversation at my family reunions. And by 1981, the Dutch seemed so in danger of reverting to their old neutralism that the American critic Walter Laqueur warned of the ‘Hollanditis’ that threatened to undo the Atlantic alliance. Those days, when the Dutch, including my relatives, had something prophetic to say about global affairs, are now largely a thing of the past. Now, with the end of the Cold War and deep doubts about the efficacy of foreign aid, the Dutch have largely abandoned their hortatory task of bringing other nations, and especially their chief allies the Americans, to their moral senses. In 1995, Foreign Minister Hans van Mierlo suggested an international peace-keeping force, just as the ‘Guide Land’ prophet Cornelis van Vollenhoven had done before him in 1913. But that same year was marked by the debacle of ‘Dutchbat’ forces in Srebrenica, who failed to protect thousands of Muslim men from mass execution. In many way, Srebrenica can be seen as the failure of the Dutch ‘Guide Land’ ideal with its sad but important lesson: it was superpower-sponsored force, rather than good offices of peace-loving nations, which brought an end to Serb aggression. But if Dutch foreign policy as a moral example to the world is all but moribund, it is clear that since the 1970s the Dutch have also touted their own domestic policies as progressive, humane and tolerant, worthy of emulation. Tolerance as (self-) image, of course, easily antedates the ‘Guide Land’ ideal - the Netherlands as a renowned bastion of tolerance is at least four centuries old. But in the last 25 years or so, many Dutch have argued that their own views on homosexuality, on soft drugs and euthanasia, to name just a few salient issues, are models that other nations should adopt. It is in these domestic issues that the ‘Guide Land’ ideal continues to thrive, even though Dutch drugs policy in particular has come under extremely heavy fire from the French, Americans and others in recent years. There is something in this Dutch posture that I find a bit annoying. The Dutch have a right, like any other nation, to determine their own domestic policy. I would furthermore assert that in the aforementioned issues and others they offer alternatives that other nations would do well to consider; I myself am personally charmed by some features of euthanasia, drug and homosexual policies in the Netherlands. But too often the assumed ‘progressiveness’ of these policies, whether implicitly or explicitly held, gets in the way of the Dutch evaluating their policies in the proper light. In the first place, it prevents the Dutch from seeing criticisms of their policies as anything but ignorant and reactionary - or at the very least, as a misunderstanding of their policies. The assumption seems to be on the part of many Dutch policy-makers that if once foreigners of an intelligent, humane, and progressive nature really understand what they are doing, they will be in full agreement. How could they not be? In this case, the myth of Dutch progressivism sometimes gets in the way of Dutch officialdom talking with their critics, either in or outside the Netherlands.

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There is an even more shadowy side to the myth of Dutch progressiveness. Most Dutch are not likely to consider their own showcase policies as retrograde. Part of the reason why in the late 1940s many Dutch opposed relinquishing Indonesia to Sukarno was their belief that the Indonesian people could not possibly be ungrateful for the progressive trusteeship - the word ‘colonial’ was often avoided - with which the Dutch had so beneficently provided them. The tendency is also apparent today. Forced euthanasia during the Nazi period has required the Germans to painfully consider the ethical ramifications of voluntary euthanasia. But surely, many Dutch seem to think, their own progressive and humane doctors and jurists have nothing to learn from Nazi Germany? Indeed, the analogy between them and German doctors of the 1940s may well be entirely spurious. But it would be less damaging if the Dutch understood that they need to prove rather than to assume the absurdity of the analogy. The Dutch have good reason to consider themselves a ‘Guide Land’, even today. Nor is the myth of their progressiveness merely built on empty self-image - the Dutch really are so, in fruitful, appealing ways. But all nations are prone to hubris by the magnification of their own strengths - ‘freedom’ is one magical American word that has brought more than its fair share of tragedy and irony. And through my own personal experiences and scholarly research, I sense that if the Dutch ever step out of bounds and offend the gods, it is likely to come from an all-too-complacent trust in their own progressiveness.

JAMES KENNEDY

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A Piece of Wood, a Knife and a Man's Genius The Woodcut Albums of Frans Masereel

In early Spring 1919, in a dingy apartment in Geneva, Frans Masereel (1889-1972) produced the 167 woodcuts of the autobiographical story Mon Livre d'Heures with which he made a name for himself as an innovator in the art of woodcutting. Ten years later, the first of three American editions was published (My Book of Hours), but the impact of the album in post-war Europe was much stronger than it was in the United States. In Germany, in particular, low-priced editions of this ‘block-book’ and subsequent albums, as well as a number of large woodcuts and a great many book illustrations, made Masereel the most popular graphic artist of the twenties, after his friend George Grosz. Reproductions of his humanitarian-pacifist woodcuts and drawings were to be found not only in books, newspapers and magazines, but also in pamphlets and calendars, on leaflets and posters. It is not surprising, therefore, that a great deal has been written about him in German1.. The latest bibliography of his graphic work was published in Munich (1992), while most of his archive has been acquired by the Frans Masereel Foundation in Saarbrücken. On the Anglo-Saxon side, notable publications are few: the essay ‘Artist against War’ by John Willett, in The Times Literary Supplement of 29 July 1960; the book edition of The Radical Imagination: Frans Masereel (London, 1972) by Joseph Herman; and the introduction (‘The World of Frans Masereel’) to the catalogue of an exhibition in Toronto, Canada (Art Gallery of Windsor, 1981). Is it that Masereel's black-and-whites do not appeal to an Anglo-Saxon public? Ten years ago, the Redstone Press in London brought out ‘boxed editions’ of five Masereel albums to commemorate the centenary of his birth. Impressed by the positive response to these collector's editions, Penguin Books followed up with an inexpensive edition of Passionate Journey (My Book of Hours), of which 25,000 copies were printed. Six months after publication (October 1988), some 8,500 copies had been sold. John Willett was right: ‘The fact is that we can all perceive something brave and humane here, which has inspired fine actions and fine works of art, and (at times) a remarkable balance between the two. We can perceive it; but it has got to be made available first.’

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Addicted to his craft

Frans Masereel was born in the Flemish seaside resort of Blankenberge, north of Ostend. After the early death of his father - a retired textile manufacturer - 5-year-old Frans, with his younger brother and sister, was taken back by his mother to her native town of Ghent, where she remarried to a doctor. This open-minded, libertarian stepfather had a decisive influence on Masereel, who, as a youngster, took part in demonstrations against child labour and the degrading working conditions in local textile mills at the turn of the century. The appalling misery he saw in the impoverished inner-city of Ghent provoked the fierce social criticism in his post-war work. As a student at the Ghent Academy of Fine Arts, Masereel was far too wilful a talent to conform to academic views. So, in 1911, he left for Paris to improve himself as an artist. A close friend of his was Léon Bazalgette, the first French translator and biographer of the American poet Walt Whitman. To Masereel, Whitman's Leaves of Grass became one of the foremost sources of inspiration for the internationalist and humanitarian belief he propagated in his work: during the First World War, in Geneva, as a volun-

Frans Masereel, Woodcut from Die Geschichte von Ulenspiegel und Lamme Goedzak (1926). © SABAM Belgium 1999.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Frans Masereel, Woodcut from Du Noir au Blanc (1939). © SABAM Belgium 1999.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 227 teer with the International Red Cross and as a contributor to the newspaper La feuille, for which he drew hundreds of anti-war cartoons; then, from the end of 1922, back in Paris as an independent artist. Referring to this intense pacifist activity during the war years, Hermann Hesse noted that ‘Masereel was really the only man who, day by day, did something sensible, something good, something to be thankful for.’ Like Thomas Mann, Hesse wrote an inspired introduction to one of the woodcut stories - called ‘novels without words’ by Stefan Zweig - for which Masereel became known in the twenties: The Passion of Man (25 Images de la Passion d'un Homme), Passionate Journey (Mon Livre d'Heures), The Sun (Le Soleil), The Idea (L'Idée), Story without Words (Histoire sans Paroles), Memories of my Home-Land (Souvenirs de mon Pays), The City (La Ville), The Work (L'OEuvre). As an illustrator, Masereel produced his masterpiece with the woodcuts for a two-part edition of Charles de Coster's Ulenspiegel (Munich, 1926 and Antwerp, 1937), which was republished, in one volume, in New York during the Second World War (The Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel, 1943). Apart from the technical mastery and the constantly surprising flights of imagination, the finest woodcuts of Masereel are particulary impressive for their accessibility to the many and for their poignancy, which has, in no small way, to do with the medium itself. Turning over the pages of Passionate Journey, Thomas Mann reflected that ‘Today, as it did five hundred years ago, it requires nothing but a piece of peartree-wood, a small knife - and a man's genius’. On the other hand, noticing the influence of the newest medium, he called the album the most wonderful film he knew. As a painter and watercolourist Masereel created some marvelous portraits and seascapes, as well as a number of compelling visions of Parisian nightlife, but throughout his life he remained, above all, a ‘master engraver’. He was addicted to his craft, which, due to his social vision of art, gave him much more satisfaction than painting. ‘Selling a canvas is great’, he once said, ‘but it disappears into some gentleman's collection and that's the end of it, a first class funeral, that is what it boils down to. I chose wood-engraving because I can reach a large public with it.’ While art dealers and critics put Masereel among the Expressionists for convenience' sake, he himself never accepted the label and consistently refused to defer to systems and theories. Both his artistic views and his libertarian-socialist beliefs made him an outsider. ‘A survivor of that utopian socialism’, Willett rightly calls him. Despite his bitter disappointment with so-called socialist governments and parties that disgraced themselves by shamelessly repudiating the ideal of a world without violence and oppression, Masereel never allowed himself to be paralysed by the realisation of his powerlessness as an individual, nor to become a cynical observer of the human race. In the introduction to the woodcut series From Black to White (Du Noir au Blanc), which opens with primeval forest scenes, he says he didn't want the story to end in the jungle - ‘to suggest that the world will return to chaos’. Although he realised this probably would have made a more ‘artistic’ impression, both his nature and his reason were opposed to the cynicism and fatalism which pervaded modern art.

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‘Dear Herr Masereal’

When Masereel moved back to Paris from Geneva - until 1929 he was regarded as a draft evader by the Belgian State - it looked as if he would make a name for himself in America too. One of his fervent overseas admirers was Frank Crowninshield, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair which, in 1921 and 1922, published an extensive selection from The Idea and The Passion of Man. For this New York magazine Masereel produced dozens of ‘American’ brush drawings, most of them caricatures and satirical fantasies about a dehumanised society run by money and technology. The series opened in December 1922 with New York Harbor - As Imagined by Frans Masereel, a fog of industrial smoke, from which only the arm of the Statue of Liberty protrudes with the torch. In an issue from 1923 the editor presents him as one of the most interesting young artists in Europe: ‘because, in such series as Le Soleil and Passion, he has invented something like a new genre - the movie in woodcuts - but chiefly because, as a social satirist, he comes nearer than any other contemporary to filling the role of Hogarth and Daumier.’ Meanwhile, in Paris, Masereel was fascinated by the Americanised entertainment in bars, music-halls, jazz cabarets and nightclubs. A song by George Gershwin inspired one of his finest ‘black-and-white poems’ from the thirties: ‘I can't thank you enough for that wonderful proof of your large wood block called Somebody Loves Me’, wrote Crowninshield, after having received a print as a gift. Masereel had exhibitions all over Europe in the twenties, as well as in New York (1923) and in Moscow (1926). In 1929 he was honoured with a first big retrospective in Mannheim. However, he only got his first London exhibition in 1936, through his lifelong friend Stefan Zweig, who was living in England as an emigrant at that time. In a letter to Georg Reinhart, Masereel's Swiss patron, Zweig regretted that the exhibition had made little impression, as there were no drawings or woodcuts on display and the paintings exhibited did not, on their own, reflect Masereel's real stature as an artist. By omitting his major contribution to the graphic arts, the opportunity of introducing some of his finest works to the British public was sadly missed. ‘If they would finally introduce his woodcut books here too’, Zweig added, ‘we could win the Anglo-Saxon world for him as well.’ Since all Masereel books had been banned from German bookshops after the Nazi takeover in 1933, Zweig and Masereel's expatriate German publisher Regendanz toyed with the idea of establishing a small publishing company in London, which would deal, in particular, with the work of Masereel. Nothing came of it though. Nine months after the opening of his New York exhibition at the beginning of 1940, Masereel applied for a ‘special emergency visa’ so that, if necessary, he could flee to the United States with his French wife Pauline. In the end the Masereels survived the war without having to emigrate. After their flight from Paris, they stayed in Avignon for three years in the most wretched conditions. When the Germans took over the unoccupied zone in 1943, they assumed false identities and moved into an abandoned watermill that served as a ‘letterbox’ for the resistance. Shortly before the liberation, Masereel just managed to escape a German round-up in the region. As he had lost most of his possessions in Paris and in his little house at the seaside near Boulogne, it was not

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Frans Masereel, Somebody Loves Me (woodcut, 1933). © SABAM Belgium 1999.

Frans Masereel, Woodcut from Notre Temps (1952). © SABAM Belgium 1999. until 1949 that he could move back to the civilised world. He spent the last twenty years of his life in a flat near the old harbour of Nice, in relative isolation, although he remained as productive as he was before the war. Unquestionably, the most memorable of his woodcut series from the fifties and sixties are the illustrations for the Hemingway story The Old Man and the Sea. In this last period of his life several

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 honours were conferred on Masereel, including the Grand Prize for Graphics at the Venice Biennale (1951), the Joost van den Vondel prize (Hamburg, 1962) and the Käthe Kollwitz Medal (East Berlin, 1967). Masereel died in Avignon and was buried, in compliance with his explicit wishes, in his home town of Ghent. The Sunday Times and The London Review of Books called the Redstone edition of The City (1988) a masterpiece, but the other London editions appear to have been just as much a revelation for the critics. The Irish Independent referred to the ‘stunning woodcuts’ of Passionate Journey, whilst Story without Words was described by The Guardian as a series of ‘sixty woodcuts of great force and brilliance’. The New Statesman even had the latter printed as a desk diary for 1990, as a gift for new subscribers. Despite these attempts to make the name of Masereel ‘fashionable’, little or nothing has changed since 1960, when John Willett came to the conclusion that Masereel's work was ‘virtually unknown’ in England. In America it was saved from oblivion by German and Austrian immigrants, most notably the publisher Kurt Wolff (Pantheon Books, New York), and collectors like Walter Otto Schneider (Beverly Hills, California) and Walter Engel

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(Toronto, Canada). Amongst the letters and cards from American admirers - one of them is addressed to ‘Dear Herr Masereal’ - in the archives of the Frans Masereel Foundation, I found a letter of 1949, which was written in English by an Austrian immigrant, an assistant professor at New York University. No official tribute could have pleased Masereel more than these heartfelt words from a perfect stranger:

‘Dear Mr Masereel: It is more than 25 years ago that I became acquainted with your woodcuts. I was then 23 years of age - a student of engineering in Vienna, Austria, and full of enthusiasm for our Europe, for the new Europe and for the men who fought for this New and United Europe. I really enjoyed my youth. A horrible war was over and we believed that it was a war against the war. I believed that a new era had begun. I read the books by the great Romain Rolland, by the good European Stefan Zweig... Among the books which I liked best, especially one book was dear to my heart: your Livre d'Heures. This book had greater influence on me than any other book; however, I did not know this 25 years ago. 1938, everything I believed in was destroyed - however, I did not intend to leave the “Heimat”. It is hard to emigrate without being forced to do so. In 1939, I decided to leave Europe, and in 1940 I actually materialised my plans and settled down in the United States. I could not take too much of my belongings with me. However, among these very few things were your Livre d'Heures and another of your books which was given to me by my mother. Wherever I went I took these two books with me. Since then I acquired again several more of your books, and only recently a friend of mine gave me Jeunesse. In a New York bookshop I found recently a copy of the Holitscher-Zweig “Masereel” book. This book was formerly the property of the Austrian National Library and was “ausgeschieden”2. during the Nazi-regime. This book, with your signature, is now among my collection of Masereel books. Dear Mr Masereel, in a few days or so you will celebrate your sixtieth birthday. At this occasion, I want to thank you for everything you have given me within a quarter of a century. I am just one of the great number of your “readers” - one of those people whose life you have enriched - just one among thousands and thousands whom you have shown a way of living... Without knowing me, you have done so much for me; all I can do now is to say: I thank you!’

JORIS VAN PARYS Translated by Lindsay Edwards.

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Postwar British and American editions

Woodcut albums Passionate Journey (Mon Livre d'Heures, 165 woodcuts). New York: Lear Publishers, 1948; New York: Dover Publications, 1971; London: Redstone Press, 1987; London: Penguin Books, 1988. The first American edition of Mon Livre d'Heures was published in 1930 in Chicago (Argus Books) as My Book of Hours. Story without Words (Histoire sans Paroles, 60 woodcuts). London: Redstone Press, 1986 (in one volume with The Idea (L'Idée, 83 woodcuts)). The City (La Ville, 100 woodcuts). New York: Dover Publications, 1972; New York: Schocken Books, 1987; London: Redstone Press, 1988. The Sun (Le Soleil, 63 woodcuts). London: Redstone Press, 1990. Schocken Books, New York, published a selection of 60 woodcuts from different sets in 1988 with the title Landscapes and Voices.

Illustrated books The Creation - The First Chapters of Genesis (24 woodcuts). New York: Pantheon Books, 1948. Desiderius Erasmus, Moriae Encomium or The Praise of Folly (27 woodcuts from 1939). New York: Heritage Press, 1954. Hugh MacDiarmid, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (8 woodcuts). Falkland (Fife): Kulgin Duval & Colin H. Hamilton, 1969. Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (37 woodcuts). London: Journeyman Press, 1978.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Eindnoten:

1. In 1999 a German edition of the Dutch Masereel biography by Joris van Parys (Masereel. Een biografie. Antwerp / Baarn, 1995) is to be published by Edition 8 in Zurich 2. Eliminated

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A Big Kid The Work of Edgard Tytgat

Edgard Tytgat is standing at the window. His hands are playing with the horses on a miniature merry-go-round. The flag on top of it stands out stiffly, as if a strong wind is blowing. An intent, elderly man with spectacles and a cigarette between his fingers. Beyond the window-panes the city is advancing. For thirty years he has seen it creeping closer over the hills, like a relentless plodding monster. Soon the village of Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe will be swallowed up by the towers of Brussels. Edgard Tytgat is standing in the doorway. A woman in white appears at the window. It is Maria de Mesmaeker, Maya, his muse and his model, and for the last ten years his wife. Beside his master a dog sniffs suspiciously at the threshold. Under the animal's nose yawns a three-metre drop overgrown with weeds. When he depicted his house Tytgat had taken account of the way in which the world outside would develop. Only four years after the snapshot one could enter the dwelling by the street-door. The artist is losing his hair in this snapshot, but not more so than in the portrait of thirty years later. Edgard Tytgat was a child who was born old and did not get any older. Time had a special relationship with him. Tytgat wanted to become a clockmaker. Twice he had become ill while riding on a merry-go-round. Each time the illness had been long and serious. During the private lessons he had in those years he had fallen in love with the cuckoo-clock that hung in his schoolroom. He found it impossible to forget that clock, even when the family moved from Bruges to Brussels. When, at the age of fourteen, he had to decide what he wanted to be, to the absolute astonishment of his parents he took an apprenticeship with a clockmaker. He stayed with him for two years. Later on Tytgat signed his work both as ‘Tytgat’, in the orthodox spelling, and as ‘Tijtgat’ with an ‘ij’, the sound for the first syllable of his name, as in the Dutch word ‘tijd’ (‘time’). When he was 57 he wrote to his friend Adolphe Aynaud: ‘The name Tytgat goes back to the time of the Franks, Tempus Dei, then Titgoth, finally Tytgat’, and with childlike delight he added: ‘this is really marvellous, isn't it?’ Tytgat, the time of God, God as time or vice versa. Time as an attribute of God. Tytgat read his name like a programme - what is more, an artistic programme. There are no clocks in

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 233 his paintings. Yet he paints time over and over again, the moment between what is past and what is to come. Tytgat is 37 and painting a nude. The woman is standing in the corner of a room, catching the light that comes through the window. The floor is a chess board, set on the diagonal, the woman is getting up from a chair. Or is she about to sit down? She is laughing at a joke. Has the joke just been told, or is she about to tell it? She is putting her underclothes on, or taking them off. Whoever looks at this painting feels like an intruder, a voyeur because the woman is not laughing at whoever is looking but at an invisible third person. Placing the corner in the centre makes even the room look as if it is moving. Through the composition, through the interaction of the triangular relationship of model, artist and person looking, and through the snapshot of the model in motion, Tytgat shows an interval of time captured in a way that clearly points to what has gone before and to what is to come. A mystery, the secret of which is known only to him. The model is laughing towards the artist alone. ‘Edgard Tytgat lets himself be carried away by far too much anecdote’, wrote André de Ridder, one of the most prominent critics of the inter-war period, and the first to defend the work of Tytgat. His paintings are ‘blown-up prints’, wrote De Ridder. The critics did not really know what to make of Tytgat. At one and the same time he was called a Fauvist, an Impressionist and an Expressionist. Affinities with Nabis, Surrealism and Cubism were discovered in his works. He belonged to the Groupe des IX, the nine best painters in Belgium in the twenties, but in that company he was considered inferior. Paul Haesaerts, another important critic of that period, finally saw how hopeless it was to try to fit Tytgat into any category. When the painter was well over 60, Haesaerts

Edgard Tytgat (1879-1957) with miniature merry-go-round in his Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe workshop.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Edgard Tytgat and Maria de Mesmaeker in 1924. Only four years later their house could be entered by the street-door.

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Edgard Tytgat, Inspiration. 1926. Watercolour on paper, 50 × 70 cm. Private collection. © SABAM Belgium 1999. wrote: ‘It is better to put it simply and to admit that Tytgat is first and foremost a narrator, that he is in all innocence an anachronism in terms of the prevailing intellectual fashion’. It will be noted that Haesaerts is non-committal. Tytgat is not an anachronism per se, he is only an anachronism in relation to contemporary taste. The ‘prevailing fashion’ placed a taboo on narrative. Tytgat was well aware of what the critics thought. In the twenties, when he was a new comet in the artistic firmament, he even attempted to express himself more tautly. But his paintings remained ‘anecdotal’.

Paradise lost and regained

Two ‘tales’ dominate his work: that of the paradise lost of childhood, expressed in the many paintings of fairs, the circus, or festivities, and the tale of paradise regained, the erotic, personified in the nude young woman. But paradise is not a state, it is an event. The Model (1916), is suggestive but also enigmatic. Tytgat does not show the course of the event he is depicting, but chooses a single moment from it without betraying how it will end. He leaves interpretation and appreciation of what is going on to the imagination of the beholder. Has the naked maiden who comes floating into the artist's studio on a cloud in Inspiration (1926) come on an aeroplane that is still suspended in the sky? What is the artist going to paint on the empty canvas that is on the easel? What is he going to do with the maiden? Is it a real girl? Or is it a symbol? Or both? The possible interpretations of this work are legion. Tytgat compels one to think over and over again. In every painting something is happening, but precisely what is never unequivocal. In Remorse (1923) an unfaithful young man comes to confess on his knees to his beloved. But how she will react to his confession is not completely clear. In the same year as Inspiration Tytgat also painted Bourgeois Evening Party. Tytgat himself was certainly no bourgeois. He had once made a print

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 235 with an appeal to vote for the socialists, and in the thirties his works were considered by the Nazis to be ‘degenerate’. In Bourgeois Evening Party a woman is singing the last notes of an English love-song. A cellist and a flautist are playing the last notes. Two male singers are silent. The invisible audience likewise. In a moment there will be polite applause. What will it sound like? How many people are present? What cries will ring out? What does the salon where the ensemble are appearing look like? Tytgat leaves that to the person looking at the picture to work out. Still in that same miracle year of 1926 Tytgat captured Marc Chagall's visit to the entire Sélection group in the little village of Afsnee aan de Leie. Of the nineteen people in the scene, the central place is held not by Chagall, but by a man in white, more than likely Tytgat himself, who is helping a woman in a white dress out of a boat with a gesture that betrays more than chivalry or the pure desire to assist. What precisely is their relationship? Is she in love too? The couple's next few steps can provide the answer. But the person looking at the picture can only take the story further in his imagination. The Time of God. Tytgat illustrates the inestimable value of a fleeting second. By painting the moment he emphasises at the same time the importance of the minutes he leaves unpainted. Moreover, this work, Memories of One Sunday, is also of importance for other reasons. Tytgat felt much more affinity for Marc Chagall and Raoul Dufy than for his Belgian contemporaries. Chagall especially was excep-

Edgard Tytgat, Bourgeois Evening Party. 1926. Canvas, 98 × 80 cm. Private collection. © SABAM Belgium 1999.

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Edgard Tytgat, Memories of One Sunday. 1926. Canvas, 88 × 116 cm. Museum J. Dhont-Dhaenens, Deurle. © SABAM Belgium 1999. tionally popular with the Flemish Expressionists in the twenties. He was the living proof that a kind of great art different from that of Paris was possible. As Chagall's fame grew so did the distancing from French art. From 1924 on people were also looking at Kandinsky, De Chirico and the German Expressionists, and art criticism was underlining the importance of national identity. André de Ridder, staff critic of Sélection, speaks of ‘the genius of the North, the inspiration peculiar to our race, the furtherance of our Flemish tradition, not as a manifestation of regionalism but in order to reach as broad and profound a universality as possible’. That new climate also saw the beginning of appreciation for Tytgat who, from 1924, was included in the exclusive club of Sélection. The nationalistic turn in the mid-twenties had no political implications, though. Almost all the foremost Belgian artists of the years between the wars appeared on the Nazi black list.

Futurism à la Tytgat

Four years prior to The Model Marcel Duchamp painted his renowned Nude Descending a Staircase, a portrayal, which caused an outrage, of a manoeuvre within a defined period of time, a nude man coming down the stairs. Nude was inspired by the first film images and when, in January 1912, at the first exhibition of the Italian Futurists in Paris he saw Balla's Dynamism of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 237 a Dog on a Lead, Duchamp had had a shock of recognition: ‘He showed successive static positions too!’ Tytgat had been aware of Futurism since the publication of Marinetti's first manifesto in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. Tytgat's neighbour and close friend in those years, the painter Rik Wouters, for whom he frequently posed, was fascinated by Futurism. The Galerie Giroux, which showed both Tytgat and Wouters in 1912, brought the first exhibition of Italian Futurists to Belgium in that same year. It is very unlikely that Tytgat missed that exhibition, and even more unlikely that he hadn't discussed the controversial Italian movement with Wouters. Yet in Tytgat's work there is nothing of the bombastic tumult of Marinetti, and it is also far removed from the futuristic glorification of the city, war and fast machines. However, Tytgat does offer an original solution to the most crucial problem of Futurism: the pictorial representation of movement. His solution can be compared to that of Duchamp in that he does not opt for a futuristic subject (train, car, aeroplane...). Like Duchamp he makes no use of the futuristic style. He differs from Duchamp in basing his work not on the analysis of locomotion, but on the popular print, the forerunner of the strip cartoon. Unlike Balla and Duchamp he solved the problem of movement not by showing the consecutive stages of the movement, but by defining the static painting as the key scene in a film, as the representation of a process that the beholder must reconstruct. This ‘anachronistic’ and ‘anecdotal’ solution came naturally to Tytgat. It is true he had wanted to be a clockmaker, but he had none the less grown up among lithos and copper plates in his father's studio - his father was an engraver and lithographer. Tytgat turned back to the woodcut, which had fallen into disuse through the development of lithography at the end of the nineteenth century. In terms of style also he is close to crude popular woodcuts. What Muybridge was for Duchamp, the prints of Epinal and Turnhout were for Edgard Tytgat.

Naïve images

When the woodcut underwent a revival with the Expressionist avant-garde, for a few years Tytgat produced prints in black and white, as ‘the prevailing fashion’ dictated. But his unique place, and his great mastery, were to be seen especially in the colour prints he made before and after the twenties on his own hand press, and which were also what he himself liked best. ‘Popular artist’, that was how Tytgat preferred to style himself. Throughout his entire career he confronted the sophisticated art public with his ‘popular prints’. The naïve manner in which they are produced came to be appreciated and emphasised their explicit lack of pretentiousness. But even in this discipline Tytgat was not considered as the equal of the so-called great five: Jozef and Jan-Frans Cantré, Joris Minne, Henri van Straten and Frans Masereel. This time, too, was he criticised not only for his highly individualistic style, but also for his themes. Tytgat was hurt by this. The man who wanted to replace the atrocities of war with ‘beautiful colours’ complains that he is thought to be childish ‘because in these times it is no longer permitted to make the soul of the child sing, and to make

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 its fragile voice quiver by means of beautiful colours’. But in the same breath he adds that he will

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 238 use even more beautiful wood for prints which are intended for children ‘because their upbringing is so important’. Anyway the ‘popular artist’ Tytgat preferred the modest drudgery of the woodcut-maker to the spectacle of painting. It ‘really upsets’ him to realise that, if he is to achieve anything in the art world, he will have to give up making woodcuts and once more take up the painter's palette ‘to paint farms with three lime trees or the ruins of Villers’. Tytgat was almost 30 when he wrote that. He did not want to be just a painter. He became an exceptional painter. That was certainly sensed in his time too, but then, as now, seldom understood. De Ridder's criticism that his paintings are enlarged prints strikes home. But today that no longer sounds like a reproach. For Tytgat there was no hierarchical relationship between the two means of expression. On more than one occasion he produced the same representation as woodcut and as painting. It is also a mistake to conclude that because of his interest in the world of childhood he wanted to be a children's artist. He said himself: ‘I work for grown-up children’. He directed his efforts towards a public that looked critically and ironically at the ‘comédie humaine’ and he preferred subtlety and poetry to confrontation. Whereas Masereel continually parades his social commitment, the world of Tytgat is ambiguous, uncertain and tragi-comic. That he raises popular art to great art in this way makes him an innovator. Despite his ‘anachronism’ Tytgat continued to follow his own artistic evolution with great vigilance until the end. In 1949, eight years before his death, he wrote to Aynaud: ‘I must make great efforts not to weaken in my art and to keep on until death’. This absence of complacency preserved him from the impasse. At the end of his life he began a new chapter. The naked young woman from the erotic idyll now becomes the object of torture by

Edgard Tytgat, Susannah's Toilette. Sketch in ink for a woodcut. © SABAM Belgium 1999.

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Edgard Tytgat, The Embarkation of Iphigenia to the Isle of Sacrifice. 1950. Canvas, 97 × 130 cm. Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels. © SABAM Belgium 1999. men. She is henceforth the victim of bizarre sexual and sadistic fantasies. Tytgat presents these in wash drawings, a new medium that he mastered with the same ease as all others before. In the face of death paradise regained is an illusion. The old men in Susannah's Toilette (a woodcut from 1912) have come out of the bushes and are punishing the bathing maiden for her transient beauty and their bygone youth.

JEF LAMBRECHT Translated by Sheila M. Dale.

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Island-Hopping in the Musical Archipelago The Work of Peter Vermeersch

Composers often want their music to tell a story, but not Peter Vermeersch (1959-), who is more concerned to evoke images in his listeners' minds. ‘Communication’, Vermeersch once said in an interview, ‘is inevitably full of static because you simply don't know if you are making the audience see things as you do. Sometimes the effect is completely different, but that doesn't bother me. To me the actual result - nasty word, that - is much more important than what the composer intended... I'm not the sort who's out to express the pain of being, or whatever, or stirring up people's profoundest depths. I'm more for lightness. If you can say what you want lightly, the impact is ultimately all the more potent. As far as that goes I'm all the way with Calvino, where in Six Memos for the Next Millennium he makes out the most brilliant case for keeping things light, avoiding heaviness, for the surface of things... Especially now, with the endless dronings on about fin de siècle doom and gloom, I'm sure lightness is the way to get around the ghastly inertia. As a composer you want your work to be clear and transparent... In that sense Stravinsky is light music, because he knows how to make crystal clear what he wants the music to be, just like Bach or Frank Zappa, say.’

Peter Vermeersch (1959-). Photo by Rob Stevens.

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Vermeersch's work as a musician-composer does not lend itself to being pigeon-holed in any single slot. Listening to his compositions one encounters just about every musical genre known. This heterogeneity in no wise detracts from the force or quality of his work, but it does - a sign of strength - make for controversy. The world of music is like an archipelago in which island-hopping is regarded with distrust. Thus in the rock camp (where he is, above all, known as the producer of a number of dEUS CDS) Vermeersch is seen as the man who creates ‘difficult’ music, while in classical and contemporary circles many people fail to comprehend why he insists on going in for ‘racket’. Significantly, Vermeersch spent most of 1998 hunting around before he finally found a record company willing to take on the first CD of his new band, A Group.

A musical omnivore

Vermeersch, who grew up in the West Flanders countryside but has lived in and around Ghent since studying architecture there, came to music young, starting with clarinet lessons at junior music college. His father, meanwhile, inducted him into rock, from which he gravitated naturally to an interest in jazz. When towards the late seventies he founded his first band, it was almost inevitable that these broad-based influences should make themselves heard. Thus his early quintet Union represented an instrumental sound reflecting both Frank Zappa and jazz, as well as the radical funk punk of bands such as The Pop Group. Even then, humour - call it the lightness which Italo Calvino writes about - was already an important factor in Vermeersch's music. Union, however, like his joyful antics with the music theatre group Radeis in this early period, was to prove just a prelude. Vermeersch's real debut, when he first began to attract serious notice, came when composer Thierry de Mey invited him to collaborate on the score of Rosas danst Rosas (1983), dancer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's third choreography. Noteworthy in this context is that music and dance evolved in parallel, a feature which has also characterised his many collaborations with the choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. With the latter Vermeersch has over the years built up a close artistic relationship. Initially, in consonance with the dance figures which Vandekeybus was working on in the eighties, the music was fairly minimalist (despite being performed by the group Maximalist!). However, as the dancer-choreographer has extended his dance language over the present decade, so Vermeersch has been broadening out the musical spectrum of the ‘sound tracks’. Between What the Body Does Not Remember (1987) and Bereft of a Blissful Union (1996) lies a period of nine years, a timespan which saw Vermeersch's work evolve from a minimalism relying strongly on repetitive, percussion-based musical patterns, to compositions which display him to the full for the musical omnivore he truly is. Outstanding in this respect is the long item Brungle, the centrepiece of Bereft of a Blissful Union; written for string quartet and X-Legged Sally, Vermeersch's own band at the time, in its interweaving of classical, rock, funk, jazz, and even folk elements this is undoubtedly the composer's pièce de résistance to date.

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X-Legged Sally, which was established in 1988 and disbanded in 1997, occupied a unique place on the Belgian music scene. The group mixed experimental rock, metal, funk, and improvised music, spiced up with a splash of Zappaesque wit and an overall camp feel. How else could anyone have got away with, for instance, melting the boundaries between a French chanson and Bacharach show biz emotionality. Vermeersch also wrote fascinating songs for X-Legged Sally; numbers which, as he put it, might be complex, but never complicated. Over the band's last years, however, when it also included a singer, Vermeersch began to find it an increasing strain to integrate the improvisational side with the set, vocal approach. The band was wound up, and out of its ashes emerged A Group, which plays songs, and The Flat Earth Society, a modern big band. Wim Vandekeybus and X-Legged Sally (and off-shoots) have been two important vehicles for Vermeersch. A third has been actor Josse de Pauw. The two men first met at the time of Union, when X-Legged Sally provided the music for a performance by Radeis, of which De Pauw was then a member. From then on their paths crossed frequently, particularly in connection with the Kaaitheater of Brussels, for which Vermeersch has written the music for a number of productions, including Ward Comblez and Usurpation. Unlike the work with Vandekeybus, in which composition and dance have always had equal status, the music for these theatre productions was conceived as more of an accompaniment. At the moment it is difficult to judge these compositions in their own right, detached from the stage, as they are not out on CD. What was clear in performance, however - and this, ultimately, is how this music should be judged in terms of merit - is that Vermeersch knew exactly how to tap in to the required atmosphere, and thus lend added value to the productions as a whole. The most remarkable cooperation between Vermeersch and De Pauw to date has undoubtedly been The Soluble Fish (De oplosbare vis), a classical Lieder cycle to absurdist texts by De Pauw. This was a daring, masterly combination and therefore bound to receive (too) little acknowledgment in classical music circles.

The Soluble Fish (De oplosbare vis, 1994). Photo by Patrick de Spiegelaere.

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Charms (1997). Photo by Mirjam Devriendt.

The note-monger's craft

Vermeersch, there can be no doubt, is one of the most important composers to come out of Belgium over the past quarter century. That should suffice - even so, there are some who would put the man's sheer musical richesse and zest for genre-mixing down to postmodernism or - heaven help us! - fin de siècle-ism. I suspect that Vermeersch's response to such ‘analyses’ is likely to be confined to the tiniest hint of a sardonic smile. Several years ago, when I once asked him whether he would call himself an artist or an entertainer, he sighed, hesitated a moment, and then replied: ‘The two words are both equally disease-ridden. However, I would say “artist”, because it would be silly to say I'm not. Everyone knows more or less what to understand by that - somebody who spends his life doing things nobody needs. On the other hand, I am also an entertainer in the sense that what I do has to be entertaining. Lightness, thus.’ Given the choice, though, he'll call himself a note-monger - someone who doesn't sit around waiting for inspiration, but is concerned with discipline, with music as craftsmanship. Like the countryman, as he once said, tending his smallholding day in day out. How else to respond but that the veg Vermeersch coaxes out of his patch is a joy to consume...

CHRISTOPHE VERBIEST Translated by Sonja Prescod.

Discography

Maximalist!: What the Body Does Not Remember (1989); X-Legged Sally: Slow Up (1991), Killed By Charity (1993), Eggs and Ashes - Music from the Wim Vandekeybus Ultima Vox performances (1994), The Land of the Giant Dwarfs (1995), Fired (1997), Bereft of a Blissful Union (together with The Smith Quartet; 1997); Calvano-Verano-Vermeersch: Music and Stories from Immer das selbe gelogen; Peter Vermeersch: The Soluble Fish (De oplosbare vis; 1995), Music-Hall (1996); A Group: Volume 1 (1998).

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A Queen of Refined Manipulation The Work of Inez van Lamsweerde

Inez van Lamsweerde (1963-) has created an international furore in recent years with her appealing but slightly unsettling photos. The interest in this Dutch artist's work derives from the technical perfection it displays as well as, most certainly, the unusual way she portrays people. What she in fact does is to use a ‘paintbox’, a computer program with which one can alter photos almost undetectably, to manipulate photographic images and so weave contrasting elements into a new whole. For example, she puts a photographic model dressed in black patent leather into a room decorated and furnished in the style of the seventies: the combination of the two clashing styles produces a strange effect. Van Lamsweerde's glossy photos can be seen both in fashion magazines and in exhibitions in several museums. For convenience sake we call her a photographer, but her background and field of work are much more varied. Before she studied photography at art college she first trained in fashion. Her interest in fashion and the world of glamour and external appearances is clear to see in her work, even though the photos show that she devotes an extraordinary, almost obsessive attention to unusual poses and situations. When looking at her best works one is assailed by a feeling of unease without immediately knowing why. The ‘why’ will become clear when we examine several examples. In 1992 Van Lamsweerde spent some time in New York on a working grant. Inspired by the ubiquitous mania for fitness she saw there, and the advertisements for all manner of miraculous means of perfecting the body, she did the Thank You Thighmaster series of photos. This title is an ironical reference to a fitness device that was always extolled in television adverts by lively looking, super-slim women. Although Van Lamsweerde's photos do indeed show slim women, you can see at once they are not lifelike. Their naked bodies look as if plastic has been poured over them and they have an unnatural shine. Their hands are red and there are no natural irregularities visible on their bodies, like birthmarks and hair. The reason why these figures have such an unnatural, Barbie-like appearance is because in the photo Van Lamsweerde has put the head of a mannequin on the body of a nude model, which itself has also been modified in several ways. It looks creepy

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Inez van Lamsweerde / Vinoodh Matadhin, Yohji Yamamoto: Spring / Summer. 1998. Photo Groninger Museum.

Inez van Lamsweerde, Thank You Thighmaster: Pam. 1993. Photo Groninger Museum.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 but also fascinating. Is this a warning not to carry the fitness mania too far? Van Lamsweerde often develops subjects in the form of a series. The photos in a series can be seen as variations on a theme, as in the four-part 1993 Final Fantasy. Here too, the four jolly little girls, smiling rather strangely, prove not to be just ordinary girls. Their youthful innocence is indeed emphasised by their uninhibited childish poses, but their smiles do not fit. They turn out to be adult men's smiles: the photographer ingeniously inserted men's mouths into the girls' portraits, distinctly changing the effect. In the 1995 series The Forest, it is the men Klaus, Andy, Marcel and Rob who have been modified: their arms have been digitally fitted with female hands. This manipulation means that we feel unerringly that these are no ordinary advertising images, however colourful and charming the photos may be. The men are not the tough macho types from the fashion world and the girls in Final Fantasy are no longer innocent children. Both seem to have undergone a subtle change of character as a result of this swapping of body parts. These subtle combinations of opposites, such as young-old and man-woman, always bring about a sense of incongruity which holds the attention. The same sort of curious fusion is also to be seen in a short film Van Lamsweerde made with her partner Vinoodh Maradin as the regular intro to the weekly cultural television programme The Hour of the Wolf (Het uur van de wolf). At the start of the film the whole screen is evenly filled with bright

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Inez van Lamsweerde, Final Fantasy: Ursula. 1993. Duraflex in perspex, 100 × 150 cm (paintbox operator: Karin Spijker for I&I). Groninger Museum-Photo courtesy Torch Gallery, Amsterdam. red. Immediately after that we see a blue sky with exaggeratedly white clouds. Then the red field appears once more, as if a screen is pulled up from below. A woman in high heels, dressed only in black stockings and lingerie, slowly appears in front of the red background. Just when we are expecting to see the upper part of the woman's body, the picture suddenly changes. Instead of the bust of a woman we get a man's torso in elegant evening wear. When we get to the neck there is another sudden change of picture. This hybrid entity is not topped by a human head but by the head of a panting wolf. This short, mysterious film seduces and surprises the viewers and makes them curious. It is a striking start to a programme on culture - something they should do more often on television - but above all a characteristic work by Inez van Lamsweerde. After a while one can recognise her ingredients: they include the fracture of patterns of expectation and the presentation of exciting combinations of people and their surroundings. In her working method Van Lamsweerde raises questions regarding the manipulability of the human body, the sexual role played by women and children and the use of the mass media in art. From the relatively little that has been published about her work it is clear that her photos are considered controversial. It is claimed that her photo-manipulation impairs the inviolability of the human body. The interesting question is whether she deliberately seeks controversy. After all, when it comes to image manipulation, the impairment of the human body and role-swapping, there are numerous examples in art history that are much more extreme. One only has to think of Marcel Duchamp, Hans Bellmer, Andres Serrano and Cindy Sherman. Compared to them, Inez van Lamsweerde's work is relatively tame. It's true that she depicts provocative women, but she does not serve up porn. It's true that she manipulates bodies, but she does not deform them. What is so fascinating is precisely the fact that her photos evoke all manner of things but have no unambiguous intent. The themes selected may well be controversial. But they are developed in such a subtle way that one does not experience them as radical. The men have women's hands, but that does not make them women. The manipulation of the pictures of women in Thank You Thighmaster is certainly more drastic, but she does not make it extreme.

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Inez van Lamsweerde, The Forest: Marcel. 1995. Cprint / perspex / dibond (edition 4), 135 × 180 cm. Photo courtesy Torch Gallery, Amsterdam.

So the image itself is not really controversial, but it may well summon up confusing feelings. The photos' seductiveness - the lovely colours, the large format and the eye for detail - draws us towards them and then confronts us with the sight of ordinary people who as a result of some minor mutation no longer fit our expectations. The fact that such a relatively small change in the image has such experiential consequences makes it confrontational. Van Lamsweerde confronts us with the boundaries of our physical reality and our urge to classify. She involves us in a sophisticated game without a clear message. The fact that it confuses us anyway is proof of the work's power.

INGEBORG WALINGA Translated by Gregory Ball.

The author wishes to thank Saskia Bak for cooperation on the original version of this article.

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Writing for Love's Sake The Work of Hadewijch

On 17 February 1236, at Cambrai in Northern France, a béguine was burned alive on the orders of the Inquisition. Her execution had been sanctioned by no fewer than five bishops. But an entire regiment was brought in for the occasion, to maintain order and to protect the inquisitor responsible, one Robert le Bougre, from the fury of the populace. The case must have provoked considerable unrest. And it is likely that the inquisitor's dismissal in 1239 was not unrelated to his overly repressive approach, including at Cambrai in 1236. We know practically nothing about the béguine who was executed. Exactly how heretical were the ideas for which she was convicted is one of the many secrets which the Inquisition has guarded with its usual efficiency. But one can still wonder just how damning the facts were; the scale of the protest in the immediate area invites us to do so. Moreover, it is known that a more intense and personal approach to religion, particularly among women, was often enough to spur the (male) guardians of orthodoxy to most vigorous action. That the béguine executed in Cambrai is very probably the same as is mentioned in the ‘Vision-book’ of the great Brabant mystical writer Hadewijch is one of those happy chances of historical documentation. The woman condemned to the stake by Robert le Bougre was clearly very close to the writer; Hadewijch speaks of her as one of the twenty-nine deceased ‘perfect ones’ whom she has seen in a vision and says that ‘Master Robbaert’ killed her ‘om hare gerechte minne’ (‘because her true (spiritual) love’). This is interesting not just as an indication of the time and milieu in which Hadewijch lived (the early days of the béguine movement, around the middle of the thirteenth century); it also illustrates the marginal position with regard to institutionalised religion which she adopted in her mystical writings.

Love is all

It is generally accepted that Hadewijch herself was for some time the leader of a béguine community. The organisation and scope of such a community would be rather different from the image suggested by the numerous

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The Son of God between the Chandeliers and the Seven Churches, miniature from The Apocalypse in Thiois. 26 × 19 cm. West Flanders, c. 1400. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Néerl. 3, f. 2. béguinages still to be found in the Low Countries. In its early days the béguine movement consisted of very small groups of women, who might for instance share a house, and who, with no support or intervention from the church hierarchy, worked out by and for themselves a religion of poverty and charity and above all of intense love for God which they then followed as an unwritten ‘Rule’. Hadewijch and her writings - the Letters (Brieven) and Visions (Visioenen) in prose, the Poems in Stanzas (Strofische gedichten) and the poems in rhyming couplets, in all some three hundred pages in modern print - would have provided spiritual leadership to such a group, or possibly to several groups of béguines. Very occasionally in her letters we come across personal elements referring to the actual historical situation. Thus, in the twenty-fifth letter she tells her correspondent, an intimate friend, how deeply she cares for her and also sends, with friendly greetings, admonishments to Sara, who is not devoting

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 250 herself sufficiently to Love, and to Margriet who needs to beware of pride. Otherwise, though, the letters fall mainly into the category of general spiritual instruction. In splendid sentences, sometimes remarkably complex for a vernacular supposedly still in its infancy, Hadewijch sets out a mystical doctrine in which everything revolves around love - ‘Minne is alles’ (‘Love is all’) it says with radiant simplicity at the end of Letter 25 - but which constantly seeks to strike a balance between the ecstatic and the ethical; in other words, alongside ‘loving’ there is a constant concern with ‘doing’, the practice of virtue and charity. In essence, then, this teaching is founded in the orthodox-Christian tradition of Western mysticism. For key elements of her spirituality Hadewijch draws on St Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux and other monastic authors of the twelfth century. But she, more than her Latin-writing predecessors, saw the problematic but also absolute necessity of a synthesis between the (heavenly) love of God and the (earthly) human condition as a challenging, but at the same time perfectly solvable dilemma. Christ himself provides the answer, or rather is the answer. He is the Way, as he says in the Gospel; he has, historically, shown the way to the Father:

He himself says this: ‘I am the way. Oh, since he is the way, consider what ways he went - how he worked, and how he burned interiorly with charity and exteriorly in works of the virtues for strangers and for friends. And hear how he commanded men how greatly they should love their God - with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their strength; and that they nevermore forget this, sleeping or waking. Now consider how he himself did this, although he was himself God - how he gave all, and how he lived exclusively for veritable love of his Father and for charity towards men. He worked with vigilant charity, and he gave to Love all his heart, and all his soul, and all his strength. This is the way that Jesus teaches, and that he himself is, and that he himself went, and wherein is found eternal life and the fruition of the truth of his Father's glory.’

Utterly overwhelmed

If in her Letters Hadewijch appeals to the authority of the Latin mystical tradition and of the Bible itself - for example, the passage quoted above is an ingenious arabesque around John 14:6, with a couple of other biblical references worked in - the Visions seem rather to have been written to stamp her own authority, within the circle of her intended readers, on revelations which she received directly from God. Here she relates how, often on a feastday during a church service, on hearing a particular reading from Scripture or while receiving communion, she was ‘taken up in the spirit’ and in that ecstatic state received instruction on the thorniest points regarding the mystical life. Usually this instruction took the form of an allegory she observed, the meaning of which was then ‘explained’ by God or by an angel or a saint. Thus, in her first vision Hadewijch is led by an angel through an orchard containing all manner of symbolic plants, branches and flowers, and in other visions

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 she is shown mountains, roads, cities or whole kingdoms, each of which illustrates some aspect or other of the mystical life. Here too the overall structure is clearly agogic: the whole forms an ascending line - in the final visions (Vis. 13 and 14) all the heavens are opened

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 251 and God's countenance is revealed to the visionary - an upward spiral around what, here too, proves to be the central premise of Hadewijch's thinking: that to be united with God in love means, first and foremost, that on earth one must live in patient conformity with God's will, in the way Christ has shown us. In her Visions, too, Hadewijch leans on the Christian literary tradition. There are a great many reminiscences of the Apocalypse and possibly of the Visions of Hildegard of Bingen (who also features in the list of dead ‘perfect ones’ which ends with the executed béguine). It is very probable that miniatures, and specifically the iconography surrounding the Apocalypse, also contributed to Hadewijch's visionary fantasy. But the way in which she tells of her existence, emotionally and psychosomatically overwhelmed by the ecstatic experience, and the way in which her visionary imagination often develops its own dynamic and exceeds the bounds of the instructional content, give a strong impression of authenticity with regard to what are in part unquestionably genuine mystical experiences. For the history of the religious mentality, therefore, Hadewijch's Visions are irreplaceably valuable documents.

Courtly mysticism

But however interesting and elegant the prose of the Letters and Visions, it is above all to her Poems in Stanzas that Hadewijch owes her honoured place in literary history. With these ‘songs’ (recent research has confirmed the suspicion that they were intended to be sung) Hadewijch represents, all by herself, a distinct genre in the literature of her time: that of the mystical love poem in the style of courtly lyric, with its characteristic stanza structure, its initial nature scene, its conspicuous personification of Love, its clichés of presentation, imagery and vocabulary. However, despite all the resemblances, one cannot really speak of imitation or pastiche. Rather, Hadewijch has bent courtly lyric to her own world and her own (here again to some extent agogic) literary purposes. Her poems establish a register entirely their own, in which schemes and formulations from both the courtly and the religious sphere are daringly, but with conscious measure and taste, mixed and mingled. Alongside elements from courtly discourse we also find references to (predictably) the Song of Songs and to Latin hymnic literature, and it is possible that the Old Testament figure of Job served Hadewijch and her circle as an emblem of their own mystical ‘desolation’. Indeed, to a greater extent than in the Letters and Visions, with their focus on mystical content, the Poems in Stanzas are concerned with the personal-emotive moment that springs from the disparity between what an infinitely loving God can offer and the little that man with his limitations can cope with. Hadewijch's entire work, but especially the Poems in Stanzas, expresses in a way unique in her time the condition of man confronted with the riddle of the absolute, the transcendent, whatever you want to call it - that shining intangible Other of which every age is intuitively aware.

JORIS REYNAERT Translated by Tanis Guest.

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A Letter, a Vision and a Poem by Hadewijch

Letter 3

God be with you! I entreat you by the veritable virtue and fidelity that God himself is, think continually of that holy virtue which he himself is, and which he was in his way of acting when he lived as Man. O sweet love! now we are living as men. Now think of those noble works by which he was so ready to assist all men according to the needs of each; and then think of the sweet nature of Love, which he is eternally - so awesome and so wonderful to contemplate. Oh! wisdom leads very deep into God! So there is no security of life here except in the deep wisdom that seeks to touch him. Alas! He is always untouched, and so deep to touch that he must be moved with compassion because so few men seek or long, with eagerness or by the force of ardent works, to touch him even slightly in his mystery: who he is, and how he works with love. Here below we should to a large extent understand the customs of heaven, if the chains of love drew us far enough away from the customs of this world, and if we had enough heavenly thrust toward God, and brotherly love toward men in all things where they had need. Love's greatest need and love's most urgent business I attend to first. So also does the brotherly love that lives in the charity of Jesus Christ. It supports the loved brother in whatever it may be - in joy or sadness, with severity or mildness, with services or counsels, and finally with consolations or threats. In order that God may have nothing to reproach you with, keep your ability always in readiness for his sake. Thus we touch him on the side where he cannot defend himself, for we do so with his own work and with the will of his Father, who commanded him to do the work, and whose commandment he fulfilled. And that is the message of the Holy Spirit. Then Love reveals many heavenly marvels and many wonders.

Vision 7

On a certain Pentecost Sunday I had a vision at dawn. Matins were being sung in the church, and I was present. My heart and my veins and all my limbs trembled and quivered with eager desire and, as often occurred with me, such madness and fear beset my mind that it seemed to me I did not content my Beloved, and that my Beloved did not fulfill my desire, so that dying I must go mad, and going mad I must die. On that day my mind was beset so fearfully and so painfully by desirous love that all my separate limbs threatened to break, and all my separate veins were in travail. The longing in which I then was cannot be expressed by any language or any person I know; and everything I could say about it would be unheard-of to all those who never apprehended Love as something to work for with desire, and whom Love had never acknowledged as hers. I can say this about it: I desired to have full fruition of my Beloved, and to understand and taste him to the full. I desired that his Humanity

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 should to the fullest extent be one in fruition with my humanity, and that mine then should hold its stand and be

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 253 strong enough to enter into perfection until I content him, who is perfection itself, by purity and unity, and in all things to content him fully in every virtue. To that end I wished he might content me interiorly with his Godhead, in one spirit, and that for me he should be all that he is, without withholding anything from me. For above all the gifts that I ever longed for, I chose this gift: that I should give satisfaction in all great sufferings. For that is the most perfect satisfaction: to grow up in order to be God with God. For this demands suffering, pain, and misery, and living in great new grief of soul: but to let everything come and go without grief, and in this way to experience nothing else but sweet love, embraces, and kisses. In this sense I desired that God give himself to me, so that I might content him. As my mind was thus beset with fear, I saw a great eagle flying toward me from the altar, and he said to me: ‘If you wish to attain oneness, make yourself ready!’ I fell on my knees and my heart beat fearfully, to worship the Beloved with oneness, according to his true dignity; that indeed was impossible for me, as I know well, and as God knows, always to my woe and to my grief. But the eagle turned back and spoke: ‘Just and mighty Lord, now show your great power to unite your oneness in the manner of union with full possession!’ Then the eagle turned round again and said to me: ‘He who has come, comes again; and to whatever place he never came, he comes not.’ Then he came from the altar, showing himself as a Child; and that Child was in the same form as he was in his first three years. He turned toward me, in his right hand took from the ciborium his Body, and in his left hand took a chalice, which seemed to come from the altar, but I do not know where it came from. With that he came in the form and clothing of a Man, as he was on the day when he gave us his Body for the first time; looking like a Human Being and a Man, wonderful, and beautiful, and with glorious face, he came to me as humbly as anyone who wholly belongs to another. Then he gave himself to me in the shape of the Sacrament, in its outward form, as the custom is; and then he gave me to drink from the chalice, in form and taste, as the custom is. After that he came himself to me, took me entirely in his arms, and pressed me to him, and all my members felt his in full felicity, in accordance with the desire of my heart and my humanity. So I was outwardly satisfied and fully transported. Also then, for a short while, I had the strength to bear this; but soon, after a short time, I lost that manly beauty outwardly in the sight of his form. I saw him completely come to nought and so fade and all at once dissolve that I could no longer recognize or perceive him outside me, and I could no longer distinguish him within me. Then it was to me as if we were one without difference. It was thus: outwardly, to see, taste, and feel, as one can outwardly taste, see, and feel in the reception of the outward Sacrament. So can the Beloved, with the loved one, each wholly receive the other in all full satisfaction of the sight, the hearing, and the passing away of the one in the other. After that I remained in a passing away in my Beloved, so that I wholly melted away in him and nothing any longer remained to me of myself; and I was changed and taken up in the spirit, and there it was shown me concerning such hours.

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Poems in stanzas 5

1 However sad the season and the birds, The valiant heart that wills to suffer pain For Love, has no need of sadness; It shall know and understand all - Sweetness and cruelty, Joy and sorrow - That must be encountered for Love's sake.

2 Valiant souls who have come so far That they endure unsatisfied Love Shall in all ways, toward her, Be bold and undaunted, And ever ready to receive Be it consolation, be it blows, From Love's mode of action.

3 Love's way of acting is unheard of, As anyone who has experienced it well knows. For Love withdraws consolation midway; He whom Love touches Cannot hold out: He tastes Many nameless hours.

4 Sometimes afire and sometimes cold, Sometimes cautious and sometimes reckless, Love is full of fickleness. Love summons us all To pay our great debt For her rich power, Which she invites us to share.

5 Sometimes gracious and sometimes fierce, Sometimes aloof and sometimes close by: For him who understands this in fidelity to Love It is matter for jubilation: How Love knocks down And seizes At one stroke.

6 Sometimes stooping low and sometimes mounting high, Sometimes hidden and sometimes revealed: Before Love cherishes anyone, He suffers many adventures Ere he arrives Where he tastes The nature of Love.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 7 Sometimes indulgent and sometimes harsh, Sometimes dark and sometimes bright: In liberating consolation, in coercive fear, In accepting and in giving, Must they who are Knight-errants in Love Always live here below.

Translated by Mother Columba Hart OSB (in ‘Hadewijch: The Complete Works’, London, 1980)

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Hugo de Groot, a Passionate Thinker

Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), better known as Grotius, is one of that select band of Dutchmen who can boast an enduring world-wide reputation. Internationally he will always be regarded as ‘the father of international law’, whatever footnotes modern scholarship may add to that description. It is a title his country has frequently made great play with in this century. And for the ordinary Dutchman too Grotius' name lives on, though in quite another context: his spectacular escape from Loevestein prison hidden in a bookcase, the brainwave of his stout-hearted wife Maria van Reigersberch. As so often happens, history's verdict on Grotius represents a narrowing and therefore a distortion of the reality. The man himself, while flattered, would be at least as much astonished at the esteem in which he is currently held. He himself expected to achieve lasting fame for his historical writings, and especially for his account of the Dutch Revolt. But many of his contemporaries, too, would be surprised at our judgement. His reputation in his own country was inseparably linked to the Remonstrant conflicts, while in England, for instance, until well into the last century he was known primarily as an advocate of the restoration of church unity, against the historical trend.

Hugo de Groot at age 15. He is ‘le miracle d'hollande’ and proudly shows the commemorative medal he received from the hands of the French King (engraving by J. de Gheyn II).

Grotius lived at a crucial time in history. His life parallels the intense social struggle that would bring together the fledgling European nations in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which, after a century of chaos, shaped the modern system of sovereign states. This struggle, which led to the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, to the fall and execution of Grand Pensionary Oldenbarnevelt in Holland, and which finally embroiled Europe in the Thirty Years' War, also formed the background to Grotius' endeavours. For his life was defined by his deep social commitment. Single-minded zeal characterised his whole life - as his motto ‘ruit hora’ (‘time flies’) bears witness. For this missionary spirit there was always so much to do, so much that still had to

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 be finished. Restless activity is the hallmark of his life and, predictably, as his years increase so does his dissatisfaction and impatience with the tepid response which his mission encountered and the resistance his works provoked; impatience, in the end, with the very human shortcomings of his closest friends and family. He is weighed down by the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 256 many practical problems - political, financial or organisational - which, intentionally or otherwise, impede the carrying out of his grandiose plans.

Ideals and principles

However learned Grotius may have been, however impressive his scholarly works, it would be wrong to regard him solely as a scholar. At each crossroads in his career the road to a quiet academic life and the snugness of a university was open to him. But he never chose that path, no matter how predictably difficult the alternative. His character can be seen particularly clearly in the one choice which in his day dominated the lives of man-in-the-street and intellectual alike: that of religion. In this respect Grotius shows himself the exact opposite of his fellow-humanist from the Southern Provinces, Justus Lipsius, who was - at least in public - extremely flexible: a Lutheran in Jena, a Roman Catholic in Leuven, a Calvinist in Leiden. After escaping from Loevestein Grotius spent almost 25 years in exile, mainly in France, waiting for the day he could return. But neither the pension granted him by Louis XIII nor the kindred spirits in Charenton could deflect him from his chosen way and convert him to Pope or Calvin. This adherence to his principles - often described as stubborn - barred him, and so also his wife and children, from a life more appropriate to his universally acknowledged, much sought-after and truly exceptional talents. The drama of Grotius' life was, therefore, the result of his own choice in following a self-imposed ideal. But the magnitude of this ideal is typical of the man: reunification of the churches, construction of a universal system of law, integration of the classical and Christian pillars of Western civilisation. Like many before and after him, Grotius had to learn a harsh lesson: social ideals tend not to be compatible with a peaceful family life. The development of this ideal was by its nature a process of gradual awakening. It took shape, not surprisingly, in Loevestein. It represents

The spectacular escape from Loevestein prison hidden in a bookcase, as pictured in an 18th-century engraving.

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Grotius' conclusions after ten years of front-line engagement in the political and social hurly-burly. Holland was his teacher, but his conclusions related, rightly, to the European social system of which the Remonstrant riots were one consequence. The great ideas came, therefore, after the years of the ‘Dutch miracle’, after all its literary, scientific and (less durable) political triumphs. They came out of the years of exile and long-drawn-out social decline. But that internationalists, theologians or cultural sociologists still think it worth their while to study Grotius - that is the legacy of this much-maligned second part of his life, as rich in intellectual power as it was in conflict. Grotius' importance for his own time was determined by his writings. But it was his ideal that gave these writings their direction and, as an all-embracing concept, provided the key to their interpretation. This ideal is totally in line with his character; in the last instance, social commitment determined his work and his struggle. Let us now take a closer look at these two phases of his life, the ‘Holland years’ and those of exile in Europe.

The rise...

The young Grotius quickly made a name for himself in Holland and in Europe. His father, Jan, was a colourful figure with wide-ranging mercantile interests; he was also well-versed in humanism, municipal secretary of Delft and a governor of the young Leiden University where his brother taught law. Easy enough, then, for him to introduce his son into this relatively closed circle. Leading figures such as Justus Lipsius and Simon Stevin were regular guests in his house. Even so, young Hugo's rapid advancement was due to specific qualities of his own: a powerful analytical faculty, a true legal mind and a notable talent for system and organisation. He had a near-photographic memory and an exceptional feeling for and skill in languages. Gifts which the States found very useful during this period of nation-building and in justifying its position in Europe. In 1594, at the age of eleven, Hugo enrolled at Leiden University. As a protégé of the great Justus Scaliger, star of the university, he rapidly developed into a leading philologist and man of letters, and went on to become the finest Latinist ever to come out of the Netherlands. At the end of 1599, by now also a qualified lawyer and with an (honorary) degree from the famous University of Orleans, the fruit of a brief sojourn in France attached to an embassy, Grotius was enrolled at the Court of Holland in The Hague. It was the start of a lifetime's practice of the law. In The Hague his exceptional talent was quickly recognised. Grand Pensionary Oldenbarnevelt himself tested the promising youngster's abilities with historical assignments which led in 1610 to his famous De Antiquitate, an apologia for independence, and later to the Annales & Historiae, the majestic history of the Dutch Revolt which is among the purest and most intelligent imitations of Tacitan historiography the humanists ever produced. Highly rhetorical in tone, strongly moralising and tendentious, it is very far from complying with modern standards. Nevertheless, by the literary norms of his day it is an absolute masterpiece. At the same time Grotius enjoyed competing with the Leiden coterie of Heinsius and Dousa in a multiplicity of Latin poetic genres: series of epigrams to accompany

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 historical prints of Prince Maurice's campaigns, panegyrics on William of Orange or Maurice's and Stevin's mathematical in-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 258 vestigations and lengthy epithalamia for his friends. The high point of these is Adamus Exul, a biblical drama on the Fall of Man in the style of Seneca; full of elements from natural philosophy, it was a model for Milton's Paradise Lost. It was no coincidence that in 1603 the Dutch embassy attending the coronation of James I presented the King with a long (and politically loaded) Latin poem composed by Grotius celebrating England and its prince. But more serious matters soon claimed attention. In 1602 a dispute about the legality of the seizure of a Spanish caraque in the Straits of Malacca brought the young lawyer a flattering commission from the Dutch East India Company. The treatise he produced, De jure praedae, marks the beginning of a long Dutch tradition of concern for the right of seizure. At first the treatise remained confidential, but in 1609 a revised version of one chapter was published in the context of the negotiations leading to the Twelve Years' Truce. This was the famous Mare liberum contested by so many English writers, notably Selden in his 1635 Mare clausum. Even today, the problem has lost none of its relevance. Meanwhile, stormier times were approaching. As a trusted colleague of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius - now 25 years old, a judge-advocate (1607) and a married man (1608) - would feel their full force. Soon after the Truce came into effect it became apparent - as the Spaniards had anticipated, as Grotius himself had warned Oldenbarnevelt - that the unity of the Provinces was precarious. It would not take much to ignite the smouldering embers of dissension. A disagreement between Leiden professors on the doctrine of predestination - for centuries a contested point in theology - exacerbated by an ill-judged policy for appointing professors on the part of university governors, inflamed social tensions within the rather heterogeneous religious community in Holland. Concern for public order compelled the authorities to intervene. But The Hague's call for toleration foundered on the stubbornness of the preachers - known as Arminians and Gomarists after their leaders, Moderates and Strict Orthodox in dogma. Demands for a synod became ever louder. However, the numerical balance meant that the outcome of such a council was pre-determined. Besides the Catholics - a not insignificant faction - it would force yet another sizeable portion of the population into opposition: thus threatening, in Oldenbarnevelt's view at least, the cohesiveness of the Union.

... and fall of a gifted lawyer

Grotius, since 1613 Pensionary of Rotterdam, shared this concern. Moreover, his sympathies were with the weaker party, the moderate Arminians. For both reasons, it seems, he decided to involve himself in the dispute. In various writings he cited arguments from dogma and church history to draw attention to the doctrinal latitude which the faithful had always been permitted in this matter. In addition, he emphatically stressed the absolute authority of the government in religious disputes. This was pouring oil on the flames, the second point particularly. The quarrel divided families, sects and administrators alike. To maintain order Oldenbarnevelt resorted to the weapons of the local militia. Given the complex structure of the Union, this

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 raised the issue of the position of the Union army which was under Prince Maurice's command. Provocations by both sides played on the latent ten-

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Frontispiece of Hugo de Groot's textbook on Dutch law, written at Loevestein and published in 1631. The picture shows a trial in the Binnenhof ‘Rolzaal’ in The Hague.

Frontispiece of Brandt / Cattenburgh, History of the Life of Mr Huig de Groot (Historie van het Leven des Heeren Huig de Groot, 1732). sions between Oldenbarnevelt and Maurice on points of internal and foreign policy. In August 1618 Maurice settled the dispute by military intervention. Oldenbarnevelt died on the scaffold; Grotius, his intended successor, was sentenced to life imprisonment and ended up in the state prison of Loevestein, the Alcatraz of Holland.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Much has been said about Grotius' behaviour during his harsh interrogation, possibly involving physical threats, in the Gevangenpoort in The Hague. He is said to have talked freely, deserting Oldenbarnevelt and claiming that he had acted on ‘orders from above’. There is certainly some truth in this. By his own account totally unfitted for a military career, and nauseated by the torture sessions he attended in his capacity as judge-advocate, Grotius could not endure physical violence. With his sense of justice severely shaken, and intentionally misinformed, he seems to have panicked, briefly at least, at the threat of it. And this has told heavily against our Prinzipienreiter. The situation is the same as with his writings. Here too we find a tragic irony. By nature mild and peace-loving in true Erasmian style, the course of his life was determined by two works whose tenor runs counter to the many others: the acerbic Ordinum Pietas of 1613 and, above all, his Apologeticus or Verantwoordinghe, the stubborn, rigidly legalistic justification of his policy published soon after his escape from Loevestein. The content of the former tract, advocating the primacy of the States over the Synod in matters of church policy, undoubtedly reflects his honest conviction, but its peremptory tone was a political miscalculation. Here a misplaced confidence in support from James I, with whom he had had long discussions on

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Hugo de Groot at age 48, painted by M.J. Mierevelt in 1631, when De Groot briefly returned to Holland. church policy when he was in England as an envoy dealing with fishing matters, led him to overplay his hand. In the second case the explanation lies less in the injury to his sense of justice, more in wounded pride. Personal pride was not infrequently at the root of Grotius' problems. His contemporaries saw this trait as incompatible with his exalted ideals for humanity - and it made him vulnerable.

The great works

But - and this too is typical of his strong character - it is precisely in Loevestein that Grotius rediscovers himself, his energy and passion. These two years of imprisonment are a watershed in his life, a period of deep reflection. Emotionally, too, he blocks the road back. Everything he writes: religious poetry and prayers in the vernacular, Bible paraphrases for his children, most notably the Proof of the True Religion (Bewijs van de ware godsdienst), everything - in presentation, content, even the choice of language - shows the shift from a public audience to the personal atmosphere and intimacy of the family. Of greater long-term significance, though, is that from

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 261 now on man, and so humanity itself, are central to Grotius' thinking. This is his guideline for the imposing works that follow. Partly led by the ancient Stoic idea of ‘oikeiosis’ (the brotherhood of man), in his De jure belli ac pacis (1625) he addresses mankind as his target group, cutting straight through the domains of public and private law, regardless of conflicting legal cultures or religious barriers. His majestic De veritate religionis christianae (1627), an apologia for Christianity grounded in solid biblical study and in which he brings together all his theological, historical and literary-philological skills, is a parallel testimony. This was the work with which his contemporaries associated his name, and the one most often reprinted. In England it was reissued, in Latin or English, every third year until 1820. But there is more. Newly-discovered continents, new needs had called into being a new, applied scholarship and, as in theology, given rise to divided opinions. Grotius, the lifelong friend of Simon Stevin, was not averse to the new ‘mathematical’ thinking; but he feared, and history would prove him right, for the fate of the broad interdisciplinary humanist approach. In his view it was this and only this, with its combination of moral, legal and literary values, that could provide the basis for political and religious peace. In his Dicta Poetarum (1623) and Excerpta Tragicorum (1626) he collected and translated the golden maxims of Greek philosophers and men of letters for the sake of their moral implications, as the basis of Western common law. We find them quoted (ad nauseam of modern commentators) in the ever-growing body of footnotes to De jure belli. Thus Greek dramatists, Roman stoics and Church Fathers provide the building-blocks for such crucial concepts - in Grotius' view - as tolerance, irenism, human rights and humanitarian rules of war. He recognises in the early Church the basis for religious unity in substance and toleration in particularibus - the common creed for all Christians.

A legislator of mankind

Meanwhile, the course of his own life was in sharp contrast to these ideals. He was welcomed in Paris as a representative of the francophile policy of Oldenbarnevelt, and Catholic and Calvinist competed for his name and favour. But Grotius, unshakeable in his religious convictions, in career terms too kept his eyes fixed on his own country. When Maurice died in 1625 and Frederick Henry - friend of his youth, inclined to peace and free of the ‘hereditary burden’ of the troubles - restored many exiles to favour, Grotius' hopes were raised. But his exceptional prominence, his uncompromising attitude and his Verantwoordinghe meant that he was still hated as much as he was feared. In 1631, disillusioned after ten years of hopes and fears, and by now totally disregarded in France, he took the plunge. For the sake of his family and parents, and encouraged by the vain hopes of friends such as the eminent writers Vondel, Vossius and Hooft, he returned to Holland. Being neither very tactful nor very conciliatory in his conduct, the following year he had to flee again. But two embittered years, mostly in Hamburg, were forgotten in an instant when in 1634 Chancellor Oxenstierna offered him the post of Swedish Ambassador in Paris. In a splendid Latin drama on Joseph in Egypt he expressed his satisfaction at this foreign

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 rehabilitation from vilification in his own country. But this was just the time when the Swedish

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 262 star, after a brief glory, was fading in Europe and Richelieu was taking a different tone with his Lutheran ally. Grotius had little room to manoeuvre, his stubborn integrity and principled approach were no help to him in Paris, while his position was constantly being undermined from his own country. For other reasons too the last years of his life were not happy. As in the earlier decade Grotius was never at ease in Paris, despite the scholarly circle around the Dupuys. A move to England, which was discussed quite early on, might well have averted disaster. But now bureaucratic frustrations, money worries, problems about the children's education and endless bitter polemics about his unionist views gradually led to an estrangement even from his loyal but battle-weary wife Maria. Passed over for the peace negotiations in Westphalia, early in 1645 Grotius submitted his resignation in Stockholm. There has been much conjecture as to the destination of his return journey; in the event he got no further than Rostock, where his ship was wrecked and he himself died from the consequences a few days later. Grotius' body lies in Delft beside that of William the Silent, whose deeds and tomb he had once hymned. During his lifetime Hugo de Groot never settled accounts with his country; nor, in the 350 years since his death, has his country settled accounts with him. The tolerance of the land of preachers can be selective. No proper biography of him exists in Dutch; the last complete translation of The Law of War and Peace dates from 1705. But this sketch must not end on such a low note. Grotius' social convictions were forged in the furnace of the Dutch Revolt, his profound mental powers hardened in the fervour of Leiden humanism. His experiences with the experiment of a daring and complex form of government and the first deeply divisive crisis in Holland's establishment gave this exceptionally gifted man the opportunity to develop into the ‘New Justinian’ that his time called for, the ‘legislator of mankind’ as he is known to this day. To many he is a visionary thinker, in politics as well as in religion, to others a utopian; his learning never disputed, his passionate conviction invariably.

ARTHUR EYFFINGER Translated by Tanis Guest.

Further reading

KNIGHT, W.S.M., The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius. London, 1925 (reprint New York, 1962). NELLEN, H.J.M., Hugo de Groot (1583-1645). De loopbaan van een geleerd staatsman. Weesp, 1985. The World of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Proc. Colloquium KNAW, Amsterdam / Maarssen, 1984. Grotiana (New Series), Journal Grotiana Foundation (Assen, 1981-).

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Chronicle Architecture

A Bulwark against the Water The Ir. D.F. Wouda Pumping Station

Like a sober, brick-built castle, the Ir. D.F. Wouda pumping station (1920) stands proud on the IJsselmeer dike near the Friesian town of Lemmer. The largest and oldest steam-driven pumping station in the Netherlands now rubs shoulders with the Egyptian pyramids and the Grand Canyon: it was placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in December 1998 as a testament to the Dutch battle against the water, a masterpiece of Dutch aquatic engineering. And one which is still in use today. Eight giant flywheels flanking enormous grey turbines gleam behind the tall windows of the brick machine room. Taller than a man, the towering engines are like a macho relic of a bygone age. But when called upon, the mighty wheels still swing steadily into action. Then the tall chimney, stretching 55 metres into the sky, spouts a thick plume of smoke as the pumping station discharges 4,000 cubic metres of water into the IJsselmeer lake every minute. When it is running at full capacity, the station can pump six million cubic metres of water a day out of the Friesian lowlands. The Wouda pumping station is only called into action when water levels in the hinterland are extremely high. That's how it was in the past, that's how it is today. When Friesland was plagued by abnormal rainfall in 1998, the oldest working steam-driven pumping station in the Netherlands was in operation for no less than thirteen consecutive days. It performed its task noiselessly and faultlessly. Friesland, with neighbouring Groningen the most northerly province in the Netherlands, lies below sea level. Driving through the flat lowland landscape, one sees more water than land. In the past the excess water was discharged into the sea by natural means. But as the drainage of the land improved and water was removed more quickly, the system of lakes, watercourses and canals was no longer able to cope. Pumping the water away mechanically was the only answer. Following the devastating floods and dike breaches at the end of the last century, the Province of Friesland decided to build two pumping stations. Unfortunately the administration only gave permission for one, just outside Lemmer in the south of the province, where there was already a sluice. The intervention of the First World War meant that construction of the pumping station took no less than four years, but on 7 October 1920 the celebrations could begin. Queen Wilhelmina performed the official opening, because the national importance of the station was beyond question. The Ir. D.F. Wouda pumping station was built at a time when diesel engines were becoming increasingly popular. Despite this, it was decided to build a steam-driven station - the biggest and most advanced steam-driven station in the world. The engines - six Piedboeuf steam boilers and four steam engines running on superheated steam at 320 degrees Celsius, each driving two centrifugal pumps - were designed by the engineer J.C. Dijxhoorn together with the Dutch manufacturer Jaffa. Dirk Frederik

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Wouda (1880-1961), then chief engineer at the Province of Friesland Water Board, designed the outer structure. He designed a sober brick building to house the boilers, with a separate adjacent chimney and an airy, equally sober building to house the engines. From the outside the machine room is barely recognisable as such, but looks like a castle or a factory; it is completely symmetrical, with tall windows on both sides and a main entrance through truly impressive wooden doors. Far above the ground is the steel framework carrying the pitched roof. Wouda was seeking to achieve harmony, clean lines and simplicity. The result is a complex that presents a friendly but functionalist appearance. However,

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The Ir. D.F. Wouda Pumping Station near Lemmer. Photo by Frank de Jong.

Wouda was unable to resist decoration altogether. The boilerhouse, for example, has diagonal brickwork and round windows; the protruding piers are supported by round pillars; and the eaves are made from thick, corbelled courses of bricks. The interior atmosphere is crystal clear, and is finished with golden-yellow and blue tiles to create a pleasant working atmosphere. It was not until 1947, when Wouda retired, that the pumping station was given its present name, which has since adorned the wall above the main entrance in large, gold lettering. The gigantic, towering, gleaming engines in the machine room give the impression that time has stood still. And yet the pumping station has undergone some changes in its lifetime. In 1955 the Piedboeuf steam boilers failed their inspection by the Steam Equipment Supervision Service and were replaced with four enormous track-mounted boilers with a cross-section of 3.60 metres and a length of 5.30 metres. They continued to be fired by coal for another twelve years until they were converted to oil. This conversion was a great step forward, because from then on the pumping station could be operated by 11 people instead of 28 and the firing time was reduced from 24 hours to the present six hours. Gradually the old leviathan came to be used less and less. The completion of the dike around the Lauwerszee meant the pumping station was needed less often, and the opening of a second, electrical pumping station in Stavoren in 1967 pushed it into second place. And yet the Wouda pumping station still handles 6% of the surplus water in Friesland. And if the Stavoren pumping station is unable to cope, the Wouda station comes to the rescue. The addition of the Wouda pumping station takes the number of monuments of world interest in the Netherlands to five, joining Schokland, the Defence Line of Amsterdam, the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout and the historic city centre of Willemstad, capital of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles. It is a tremendous honour, but it will make virtually no difference to the pumping station. The buildings and machinery have always been perfectly maintained and kept in a supreme state of readiness, because in the battle against the water it is a question of ‘pump or drown’. Only the number of visitors - currently several thousand per year - will increase. To accommodate them, more parking space and a proper reception area are to be created in the near future.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 MARINA DE VRIES Translated by Julian Ross.

The Ir. D.F. Wouda pumping station is open to visitors by appointment (tel. +31 514 561 814). Cultural Policy

On Being a Nothing and yet Being Something The Promotion of Dutch Culture in the United States

When the mood took him, the well-known Dutch publisher Johan Polak was wont to say, in his deep voice and leaving you to ponder whether he was the most conceited person in the world or the most modest, that he was a nothing, that he didn't have a real job. After all, he could not write or translate, design, compose, print or bind, nor, he would lament, could he sell books. Yet from the late sixties until his death he was an important player in the world of books. For though, in his own estimate, he was a nothing, he was able to forge links between all those people who did have a job, and because he was able to forge the right links, his efforts helped to set up the Athenaeum Publishing House, a minor milestone in the history of the Dutch book trade. A promoter of culture abroad, or cultural attaché, as

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 265 the diplomats call it, is on a par with the Polak sort of publisher: he is no artist or musician, no dancer or critic, no theatre director. He himself can do nothing and he plays no direct role in artistic life. He stands aside. But in two respects a promoter of culture (as I am in New York) is even more of a nothing than the publisher. First, unlike Polak the connoisseur, he is not allowed to have any taste. He may pass no judgement on the quality of the art he promotes, but must take his cue from the authorities in the various fields. Whether or not the cultural attaché considers the artist Rob Birza or the composer Guus Janssen good, excellent or important is of no consequence. When Rudi Fuchs, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, invites Birza to hold an exhibition, or when the Netherlands Opera includes Janssen's Noah in its programme, that is where the matter rests. Second, the cultural attaché, unlike the publisher, who at least helps to market the odd book, is nowadays not expected to take a hand in organising anything as part of cultural promotion: he runs no touring exhibitions and does not help to stage concerts. His job is not to ‘offer’ particular artists or works of art to - in our case - American institutions, but to help stimulate ‘demand’ by these institutions for those works of art. Seen in this light, promotion of culture is thus a minor career in, indeed, nothing. Behind all these ‘negative aspects’, however, there lurks a world of activities that makes high demands on those involved in it. After all, if, as in Polak's publishing practice, the promoter of culture is expected to forge the right links between professionals in the various disciplines, then he must be au fait with not only, say, dance in the Netherlands, but also with dance in the United States. Being au fait implies familiarity with contemporary dance, with dance history and with the infrastructure. In that case, Balanchine, Robbins and Martins constitute not so much a string of choreographers' names, but a short summary of the history of the New York City Ballet. And the State Theater at the Lincoln Center and the Danspace Project at St Mark's, both in New York, must then be seen as an antithesis that can also be summed up as Uptown v. Downtown or Tradition v. Avant-Garde. Knowledge of the American cultural infrastructure, and the systematic recording of that knowledge in such a way that it can be handed down from one cultural promoter to the next, is one of the activities in which we engage with all due humility; the result nevertheless justifies our work. We have established a database and an associated archive, which together identify the most important places and people in the various American disciplines and distinguish those that are, or may be, of importance to the art world in the Netherlands. What links does the cultural promoter actually have to establish? In answering that question we must distinguish between what we have already referred to as Uptown and Downtown. Anyone who knows New York knows that Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum and the Metropolitan Opera are Uptown while the New York Theater Workshop, The Knitting Factory (a jazz club), and Artists' Space, a non-profit gallery of contemporary art, are Downtown. The very names of these institutions guarantee their status in the art world and their credit-worthiness. It goes without saying that the Uptown institutions are reasonably well able to maintain their international contacts and explore their international prospects unaided, as far as both ‘imports’ and ‘exports’ are concerned; they not only have the necessary

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 financial resources but are part of formal networks in which information flows freely. Moreover, what Dutch art these institutions do exhibit generally has the stature of a Van Gogh or of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and does not need much in the way of promotion. Hence we have little work to do for these institutions, except for offering our services when required. For example, we advised the Frick Collection about possible sponsors in the Dutch-American business community for their exhibition Venus and Mars. The World of the Medieval Housebook (Spring 1999), and we are involved in the activities of the American Friends of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. For the Pieter de Hooch exhibition in the winter of 1998 at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford (Connecticut) - Uptown not being a concept confined to New York - we organised a press conference. We also collaborated with the Lincoln Center on sponsorship and publicity for the appearance of the three companies of the Netherlands Dance Theatre at their Festival in July 1999. Our work for the Downtown circuit is more far-reaching. We are more actively involved: we ensure that those responsible for the programmes of the various institutions, be they conservators, curators or conductors, are kept informed about the latest developments in the discipline, and also about possible subsidies from the Dutch government. To that end we generally collaborate with Dutch institutions and foundations. The promotion of serious contemporary music in collaboration with Donemus, the Dutch foundation responsible for such work, illustrates this point. In 1997 and 1998 a Donemus staff member made a study in several American cities of the possibilities of presenting the work of such Dutch composers as Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Theo Loevendie and others. Interested programmers, conductors and artistic directors were then invited, with our assistance and with one of our staff as their guide, to travel to the Netherlands to attend an annual festival of contemporary music. The links established in this way between professionals, and which can count on our continuing support, has led in 1999 to a series of new musical events, the culmination of which was the Dutch Music Marathon by Boston Musica Viva in the spring. The basic premise of our work is the fact that the Netherlands has a great deal to offer the United States in a number of fields. Design, architecture, contemporary music and fine art are disciplines in which the Netherlands plays a leading international role and for which there are good prospects - demonstrated more

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 266 than once - in the United States. If those taking the cultural decisions in that country are made well enough aware of those special Dutch attributes, then these prospects will take concrete form in exhibitions, productions and performances. It is my conviction that if, like Johan Polak, you are able to establish the right links between the professionals in the USA and the Netherlands, then art is strong enough to promote itself. The creation of a structure capable of establishing contacts and revitalising them time and again over the long term, may not be nothing - but is it a real job?

FRANK LIGTVOET Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans.

Bookcases and Computer Screens The Royal Library in The Hague

In 1998 the Royal Library in The Hague celebrated its two-hundredth anniversary. This makes it slightly younger than the British Museum and about the same age as the Library of Congress. In terms of size it is much more modest than those two giants, but it nevertheless plays an important role on the Dutch, European and even global library scene. Like its sister institutions in London and Washington, the Royal Library is first and foremost the country's national library. This means it collects everything that appears in and about the Netherlands, in both electronic and printed form. This it does not by virtue of any statutory obligation as a ‘legal repository’, as in most other European countries including Great Britain; rather, publishers voluntarily give a copy of their publications to the department ‘Depot of the Royal Library’. In exchange for their goodwill, the titles of all the works submitted are then included in the national bibliography of the Netherlands, which appears both in book form and on CD-ROM. As many Flemish publishers also contribute to the repository, the Dutch and the Belgian national bibliographies partly overlap. Each year approximately 40,000 books and 12,000 magazines are added. A central database provides the other libraries in the country with access to the bibliography. In the nineteenth century the Royal Library led a rather private existence. Left behind by stadholder William V in 1795 when he fled to England before the advancing French army, the library in The Hague was declared by Parliament the ‘national’ library; it was to serve parliamentarians and scholars from the Netherlands and abroad. After the fall of Napoleon, William I, the first King of the Netherlands, greatly enriched the collection. The nineteenth-century librarians concerned themselves mainly with acquiring manuscripts, incunabula and old editions. Only at the end of the nineteenth century did the Royal Library start to systematically build up a consistent scholarly collection of books and magazines. In so doing the library restricted itself in principle to the ‘humanities’ in the broadest sense: language and literature, art, history, geography, theology, philosophy, law, social sciences and book and library science. So outside the field of the ‘humanities’ its sole function is as a repository for the publications of Dutch publishers; in this capacity it collects everything from school maths textbooks to... pornographic magazines.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The Royal Library, together with PICA, the successful Dutch centre for library computerisation, plays a national role by maintaining the Dutch Central Catalogue. For example, around four hundred Dutch research, university, public and specialised libraries can consult almost ten million titles of books, magazines, sets of works and conference proceedings on behalf of their users. Other tasks of national importance are the expertise the library is developing in the field of the conservation and restoration of documents threatened by atmospheric pollution, and its active participation in the inter-library lending traffic. The Royal Library has cooperation agreements with all kinds of sister libraries abroad (like the Albert I Royal Library in Brussels and the British Library) for a whole range of projects, including the retrospective cataloguing of early European editions. It is the seat of the International Federation for Documentation, whose responsibilities include the monitoring and also further development of the Universal Decimal Classification (a legacy of the American library pioneer Melvil Dewey); it is also the home of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, which plays a prominent role in the world-wide cooperation of librarians and library organisations. One of IFLA's most colourful chairmen in recent decades was the Fleming Herman Liebaers, chief curator of the Royal Library in Brussels; in his memoirs written in English, Mostly in the Line of Duty. Thirty Years with Books (1980), he paints a fine portrait of the similarities and dissimilarities between the Low Countries' two Royal Libraries as a mirror of two kindred and yet very different nations. Each year IFLA organises a congress for between two and three thousand participants from the five continents. The 1998 one took place in the Netherlands; not entirely by chance, since this year marked the bicentenary of the Dutch Royal Library. The gathering was not held in The Hague, the seat of government and the home of the Royal Library, but in the capital Amsterdam; so it was there, in the late-Gothic New Church, now an exhibition centre, that the library organised a large-scale exhibition entitled The Wonderful Al'phabet (Het wonderbaarlijk alfabet). Examples of all kinds were chosen from the almost two million volumes in the library's possession to fill twenty-six showcases, thereby giving some indication of the richness of its collections: from the A of ‘alles’ (meaning ‘everything’), the B of ‘Blaeu’ (atlases), the C of ‘competition’ (sport), the D of ‘doh-ray-mi’ (music) through the L of ‘lust’ (erotica and culinary matters), the M of ‘Madonna’ (the real and the pop star), the N of ‘natural’ (botany and zoology) and the O of ‘Orange’ (the Dutch royal house) to the W of ‘Winnetou’ (children's books), the X of ‘xerography’ (printing techniques),

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 267 the Y of ‘Y stream’ (the Netherlands as a land of water) and the Z of ‘zoek’ (meaning ‘search’, the modern technologies for locating documents wherever they may be). This exhibition has found a permanent record in a wonderful book of text and pictures entitled Collectors and Collections (Verzamelaars en verzamelingen, 1998). It is a fine supplement to the bilingual (Dutch-English) publication entitled A Hundred Highlights from the Royal Library, produced by the same publisher (Waanders, Zwolle) in 1994. In the Preface to that book the current Chief Executive of the Royal Library, Dr. W. van Drimmelen, writes: ‘The Royal Library is a treasure-house of books and manuscripts from many centuries. In the present publication one hundred of its finest and most interesting objects are shown and interpreted, objects which, except for temporary exhibitions, hardly ever leave their bookcases or cabinets because they are so extremely vulnerable. (...) Valuable objects can thus be made visible and accessible to a wider public than just the specialist researchers, and this is the underlying motive of this book. It contains a selection from the “Special Collections”, covering a period of more than a thousand years, from the Middle Ages into this century. Provenance from the Netherlands or, for the older period, from the Northern and Southern Netherlands, was the main selection criterion, but a link with the history of the collections has also played a part. The result is a pictorial atlas reflecting the development of book culture in the Netherlands. Although the image of a modern reading room or catalogue area might suggest that this development had now come to an end, this is by no means the case. True, where imposing bookcases once caught the visitors' eyes, computer screens have in many instances gradually stolen the show. The Royal Library, too, has played its part in applying new technical possibilities for the benefit of scholarly and scientific information services with great conviction, and continues to do so. But screens and electronics will never oust the book. The preservation of Dutch cultural heritage in written and printed form is, and will always be, one of the most important duties of the Royal Library.’ And the Royal Library does indeed link, in exemplary fashion, the past and the present, tradition and progress, the paper heritage and technological innovation. Those interested in taking a look at it from their home or workplace, in whichever part of the world that may be, should surf to the World Wide Web address http://www.konbib.nl. A simple enough exercise and well worth the effort... in my book!

LUDO SIMONS Translated by Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim.

Address

Royal Library Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5 / 2509 LK The Hague / The Netherlands Tel. +31 70 314 09 11 / fax: +31 70 314 06 51

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The first book in Dutch about cricket was written by Pim Mulier and published in 1897. Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague.

Film and Theatre

‘Film is a medium for women’ Patrice Toye and Rosie

When Patrice Toye (1967-) began to produce her first short films in the late eighties and early nineties - films such as Mother's Lover (L'Amant de Maman, 1989) and Women Want to Marry (Vrouwen Willen Trouwen, 1992) - and was also busily making all sorts of documentaries (for the Flemish television programme Sanseveria among others), it was quickly realised that she was a very promising film maker. Then, naturally, it was a matter of waiting for the time when Patrice Toye could make her first full-length film, to see if she could measure up to that promise. That debut came in the autumn of 1998, and Rosie, for which Toye also wrote the script, did indeed prove to have hit the mark. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto Festival, where it was admiringly described by the leading American professional jour-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 268 nal Variety as an ‘incisive look at adolescent angst’. Then it was the turn of its country of origin and there too it was a hit. At the Ghent Film Festival Rosie received the Silver Spur Prize for the Best Direction (from an international jury, which therefore could not be accused of chauvinism). At the end of December 1998 Rosie was also honoured by the UFK (Association of Film Criticism) with the André Cavens Award for the Best Belgian Film of the previous year. Patrice Toye herself calls her debut film ‘a universal and contemporary tale about everyday madness. The film has something of the fairy tale, but with a harsh streak of realism.’ Indeed she shares this concern for everyday affairs with Ken Loach, of whom she appears to be a fan: ‘His films always arouse a gut response in me, because I feel that Ken Loach not only makes fine films, but also beautiful portraits of people. He offers more than just a story. This has inspired me to the extent that I actually feel I'm something of a pupil of his.’ That the film opens in an institution for young delinquents - why Rosie has landed there we are only to learn later in the story - is surely no chance matter. Years ago Patrice Toye researched that milieu for a documentary that she wanted to make about young people who were detained in closed institutions because of their criminal past and misconduct. That project fell through. ‘Eventually I incorporated something of what goes on in those young heads into this film. So “Rosie” is not a story about one particular person - it's a sort of mixture of what was occurring in a number of young heads, and of what I actually felt myself. Clearly, I've broached a theme that is of considerable social relevance today - young people who've gone a bit astray. In recent years in Belgium there haven't been so very many films made that can act as a sort of social mirror of what's happening in our society at present. Everyone's looking for clarity, but we live in such a perplexing world. And so youngsters just try to find rules in their own way, or create their own.’ Among other things, Patrice Toye's research left her with the realisation that if only you look hard enough, behind those big, innocent children's eyes you can see equally big scars on their souls. Scars caused by all sorts of maltreatment or neglect. Scars which in their turn would become the seeds of their anti-social behaviour. At home Rosie (beautiful, natural interpretation by Aranka Coppens, making her first appearance, for which she won an award at the Angers Festival in early January 1999) does indeed fail to receive the attention and security that she needs as a girl of thirteen - with one foot in a child's land of dreams and the other in the more matter-of-fact adult world. She has never known her father, and her mother Irene (a brilliant role played by Sara de Roo), who works as a nurse, with whom Rosie lives in a tiny flat in a soulless housing estate, has too little time to look after her. Irene herself got pregnant far too young, and in a desperate attempt none the less to regain something of her lost youth (and not to scare off potential admirers too quickly) does not

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Patrice Toye, Rosie (1998). want Rosie to call her ‘mummy’ - she prefers to be regarded as her older sister. In the course of the film two male characters appear in Rosie's and Irene's flat. There is the mysterious Michael (played by Frank Vercruyssen), Irene's gambling addict brother, who is always needing money and sometimes also somewhere to stay for a few weeks. And there is the friendly young widower Bernard (played by Dirk Roofthooft) who has got to know Irene at work and who maybe affords some prospect of a less lonely future. In short, Rosie may not be growing up in an ideal family situation, but nor are the adults around her immediately to be seen as monstrous creatures who take pleasure in inflicting scars on the souls of children. Because Rosie is not just a film about good children and bad parents (or adults). Real life is seldom so unequivocal, and Patrice Toye would not wish to tell her tale so simply. Indeed, the film was sub-titled ‘A devil in my head’: ‘All too often it's assumed that children are angels, or unable to speak for themselves, or simply victims. I'm absolutely convinced that children or young people can themselves have wicked or black thoughts and can actually even be a little bit responsible for them.’ To escape from the harsh and boring reality surrounding her Rosie creates for herself a fantasy world in which, for instance, she dreams that she is a czarina, and where princes can ride around on white horses. It is with the same craving for a perfect world that she turns a good-looking local boy into the best friend of her dreams, Jimi (played by Joost Wijnant). This idyllic fairy- tale world is so vital to Rosie's existence that she - and with her, the audience - is not always sure where reality ends and fantasy begins. And, of course, in these circumstances terrible things can happen... Rosie is not only Patrice Toye's debut film, it is also the first full-length film by a female Flemish film maker. ‘I'm not proud to be the first’, she says. ‘Because actually I think it's rather disgraceful that it's taken such a long time, that it's nearly the Millennium before a woman has been able to make her first full-length

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 269 film here in Flanders. In itself it doesn't matter whether the director is man or woman - you just need to know how to tell a good story. But on the other hand I think film's such a sensitive medium that it's almost incredible that it has taken so long. In any case, for me film is very much a medium for women.’

JAN TEMMERMAN Translated by Sheila M. Dale.

Theatre Based on Commitment The New Realism of Trust

If the winning of prizes and awards is any measure, Trust of Amsterdam, under the artistic management of actor and director Theu Boermans, must be the best theatre group in the Netherlands. At the end of their first season, in 1989, Trust's production of War by the contemporary German playwright Rainald Goetz was chosen for the Flemish-Dutch Theatre Festival. This annual festival presents a selection of the best productions of the previous season as judged by a jury of experts. An honorary jury then awards the Festival Prize, worth 50,000 guilders, to one of them. In 1993 Trust won the prize for two productions at once: OVERWEIGHT, Unimportant: SHAPELESS by Werner Schwab and Friedrichswald, an adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It. At the end of the 1997-1998 season Trust again won high praise for a much talked-about Hamlet, receiving both the Theatre Festival Prize and the Gouden Gids Prize awarded by theatregoers. And this is only the start of a long list, especially if the awards to individual actors are included. What is remarkable is that this rain of prizes has fallen on Trust in the space of just ten years - a degree of public recognition unequalled in the post-war history of Dutch theatre. When Theu Boermans and thirteen kindred spirits

Trust, Friedrichswald (Theu Boermans' adaptation of As You Like It, 1992-1993). Photo by Ben van Duin. founded Trust in 1988, theatre in the Netherlands was in the doldrums. Generally speaking, neither the large companies nor the fringe groups were putting on plays that sparked fierce discussion. The productions that mattered came principally from Flemish groups and choreographers, who were at last working to international standards. No structural renewal of Dutch theatre had taken place for many years.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 When experiments were made, they were concerned more with design and style than with content or social commitment. With his newly formed company Theu Boermans was hoping to create attractive theatre based precisely on these latter aspects. He had the times on his side, in the sense that great changes were taking place in Europe: the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the tense situation in the Balkans, and the alarmingly rapid rise of far-right groups. Trust aimed to give the problems of a new age a place in the world of theatre, to wake people up not just by being eye-catching and heart-stirring but above all by appealing to their intelligence and intellect. What this aim required, in terms of direction and acting, was realism rather than symbolism, and explicit seriousness rather than understatement. For the Dutch theatre scene at that time these principles were quite new, or so it seemed. As to content, however. Trust went back more or less to the ideals of the fringe theatre of the seventies (e.g. Werkteater and Baal), while its approach to direction and acting showed similarities with the ‘drawn from life’ theatre of the repertory companies in the major cities. Looking back at Trust's work, one is struck by their preference for plays little known in the Netherlands by non-traditional, German-speaking authors. The most prominent example is the controversial Austrian Werner Schwab. Spread over three seasons. Trust performed all four of his so-called Faeces Dramas (Fäkaliendramen), as well as one of the pieces in his five-part Kings' Comedies (Königskomödien). No doubt Theu

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 270

Boermans recognised in Schwab's work his own belief that theatre must make the audience think, indeed disturb them. The pitiless enlargements of the human condition conceived by Schwab and realised by Trust are undoubtedly shocking. Not even the most hardened theatregoer will be left unmoved by a scene in which the people in a café abuse an elegantly dressed couple verbally and physically before eating their flesh to the bone in a bizarre and bloody feeding frenzy. The impact of such a scene is all the greater because, as stated, Trust tends to opt for realism rather than stylisation. As a director, Boermans generally only appeals to the audience's imagination when he has exhausted the technical resources of theatre. This is why some critics have on occasion accused Trust of a lack of reserve or, put more negatively, straining after effect. Another noticeable feature of Trust's record is the inclusion in every season of at least one production based on a classic text from the world repertoire. The group began its career with a version of Chekhov's The Seagull and in 1998-1999 its production of The Cherry Orchard sold out everywhere. In the intervening years Platonov and The Three Sisters were performed. The preference for Chekhov no doubt has to do with the fact that his plays lend themselves to being transposed to the present day, as the history of theatre, not just in the Netherlands, amply demonstrates. The same is true of Shakespeare. Friedrichswald, Boermans' adaptation of As You Like It, is a striking example of how Trust makes the classical repertoire relevant to contemporary society. Friedrichswald is about the last days of ‘the United States of Europe’, which began as a social paradise but has become a violent police state in which all trace of democracy has gone. In this final period a motley band, ranging from dogmatic Western scientists to fundamentalist terrorists, journey towards the idyllic Friedrichswald in order to evaluate the course of history there and lay the basis for a new view of the future. In a richly varied political collage Trust provides a convincing justification for setting a classic author in the here and now. In the view of adapter and director Boermans, Shakespeare's work contains as much of a message for the new Europe as the plays of Rainald Goetz and Werner Schwab. Social commitment and the resulting model of critical, realistic, ‘disruptive’ theatre - these are probably the elements that explain Trust's rapid success with audiences and critics alike. But these stunning achievements no doubt also have to do with their having ‘a home of their own’. In 1990 the group began converting a disused swimming bath in the centre of Amsterdam into a theatre, but after a few years they had to move again. Trust found a new location in an empty church, also in the city centre. Thanks in part to a structural government subsidy, this is now one of the most attractive medium-sized theatres in the Netherlands. The Trust's designers have shown great inventiveness in continually reshaping this space, not only to do justice to a production but to involve the audience as directly as possible. Trust has developed from a small, unsubsidised group of like-minded theatre makers into a company that can bear comparison with the large ensembles in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam. Somewhere in between the fringe and the centre, they have won repeated acclaim at home and abroad. But above all this is a company that wants to mirror a new era, a time of internationalisation, in which both former achievements and new expectations are examined critically, with a sense of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 realism but equally with a sense of beauty, sometimes mercilessly but just as often hopefully.

JOS NIJHOF Translated by John Rudge.

Address

Trusttheater Kloveniersburgwal 50 / 1012 CX Amsterdam / The Netherlands Tel. +31 20 520 53 10

History

The Last Medieval Emperor Charles V, the Man and the Myth

The year 2000 sees the commemoration of an illustrious birth in a number of places throughout Flanders. On 24 February 1500, in Ghent, one of the most important cities in the Low Countries of the day, a child of good fortune was born. By a dynastic coincidence the young Charles of Burgundy and Habsburg saw four separate inheritances fall into his lap, each of which formed an important political entity in its own right. From his paternal grandfather he inherited the old family possessions of the Habsburgs in Austria, Steiermark, Carinthia and Tyrol, and also, in 1519, the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. From his paternal grandmother he received the Burgundian Netherlands. His maternal grandmother left him Castile, together with the territories Castile had conquered in North Africa, the Caribbean and Central America. Finally, from his maternal grandfather he inherited Aragon together with its overseas possessions, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia. Charles V added several more areas to this impressive list of hereditary lands. In the Low Countries he annexed some provinces in the north and the east. In Italy he acquired the Duchy of Lombardy and in North Africa he captured Tunis. And, most sensational of all, in the space of twenty years (1519-1539) a couple of thousand Spaniards, under the conquistadors Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, took an area of America that was eight times as large as Castile and inhabited by a fifth of the world's population. So there came into being ‘a realm on which the sun never sets’, a superpower, such as no ruler before Charles V had been able to dream of and the like of which history has not seen since.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 271

F.J. Pinchart, Citizens of Ghent Kneeling before Charles V at Prinsenhof after the 1539-1540 Revolt. 1582. Watercolour after an older example. City Archive (Goetghebuer Atlas), Ghent.

The old theory of two swords, the spiritual sword in the hands of the Pope, the secular in those of the Emperor, has never been so closely translated into real life as under Charles V. The restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, the idea of a wholly united Europe, seemed a distinct possibility. ‘By the grace of God you are on the way to a world monarchy which will unite all Christian peoples under one shepherd’: so chancellor Mercurio Gattinara impressed upon his master in 1519 in the plainest terms. As a deeply religious man it was Charles' dream to lead all the West's Christian rulers in the battle to free Europe from the menacing clutch of the Turks. In 1535 he himself led an expedition against Tunis. But above all his time was the time of Luther, the rise of Protestantism and the wars of religion. So convinced was he of the truth and universal validity of the Catholic faith, that in his fury he jeopardised all his principles of government to combat heresy; though that did not stop him from having German Protestant mercenaries march on the Pope in 1527. They carried out the notorious ‘Sack of Rome’, in which the city was plundered, and for a time they held the Pope himself prisoner in Castel San Angelo. The noble task that Charles V imposed upon himself throughout his life as defender of the one, Catholic faith ended in total failure. At the end of his reign Christendom was more thoroughly divided than ever before.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 In the separate parts of his realm Charles V was judged by the other task he had set himself, namely the establishment of the house of Habsburg as a world power, a position from which he could observe and at-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 272 tempt to direct European politics. He was least successful within the German Empire itself. He detached the prosperous Low Countries from it and lost the bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun to France. The transfer to his brother Ferdinand of the Habsburg hereditary lands in 1521-1522 and of the Emperor's crown in 1556 - to the detriment of his son Philip II of Spain - meant the division of the Habsburg dynasty into an Austrian and a Spanish branch. But above all Charles V failed to strengthen the imperial power (long since seriously diminished) in the face of the princes of the empire and the rising cities, which allowed the splitting up of territories and the concomitant decline of the sense of empire to continue, especially in a realm that was totally divided in matters of religion. After the rule of ‘the last medieval Emperor’ people spoke of ‘the sorrow of Christendom’. The image of Charles V is more ambiguous for the old Low Countries, at least from an historical point of view. Here his rule signified in the first place the political unification of the Seventeen Provinces, namely present-day Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium, together with a substantial part of Northern France (Lille, Arras, Cambrai and French Flanders), but excluding the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1548 these ‘pays de pardeça’ were given a practically independent position within the German empire, as the Burgundian Kreis (Circle). As far as culture and economics were concerned they formed one of the most advanced areas in Europe, with, moreover, a level of urbanisation that was virtually unrivalled elsewhere. The cosmopolitan city of Antwerp was the trade metropolis of Europe. Nevertheless, Charles V gradually shifted the heart of his vast realm from Brussels to Spain, while at the same time it would appear that he made the Low Countries, with their many sources of affluence, more and more subservient to his worldly interests. The huge fiscal strains he imposed on them led to violent reactions, particularly in Ghent. In 1540 the Emperor did not hesitate to humble the city where he was born and to abolish all the ancient privileges of that medieval stronghold with a single stroke of the pen. The many drawbacks that his government undoubtedly had for the Low Countries have not stopped tradition being far more accommodating toward Charles V than toward his son. It has contrasted the prosperous period under their own imperial patron - with his strong Flemish-Brabant roots - to the rule darkened by tyranny of his successor, the alien, totally Spanish King Philip II. When the revolt against the latter ended with the partition of the Seventeen Provinces, people in the Southern Netherlands looked back with nostalgia on the ‘good old days’ under Charles V. This is the atmosphere in which folk tales grew up about a mischievous Emperor who liked to play roguish pranks with his Flemish and Brabant subjects. They remain vividly imprinted in the folk imagination to this very day. On the other hand, the imperial subjugator and torturer of heretics that was also Charles V, is vividly portrayed in Charles de Coster's La Légende d'Ulenspiegel (1867) and in Louis Paul Boon's Beggars' Book (Geuzenboek, 1979). The image of the historical figure of Emperor Charles V that comes down to us is thus in many ways a double portrait.

JOHAN DECAVELE Translated by Sheila M. Dale.

CONCISE VIEW OF THE PROGRAMME CHARLES V 1500-2000

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Ghent: Opening Weekend (11-12 September 1999), cultural history exhibitions Carolus, Charles v 1500-1558 (6 November 1999-30 January 2000), Mise-en-scène, Charles v and the Representation of the Nineteenth Century (4 December 1999-27 February 2000), Deranged Monarchs (Autumn 1999-Spring 2000), Over the Edges, Contemporary Art in the City of Charles v (1 April - 30 June 2000). Oudenaarde: Oudenaarde Tapestries (19 June - 3 October 1999). Mechlin: Los Honores (26 May-8 October 2000). Brussels: Language and Utopia in Twentieth-Century Art (23 June-24 September 2000). Leuven: The Treasure of Alamire, Music and Miniatures from the Age of Charles V (25 September-5 December 1999). Antwerp: Orbis Terrarum (22 June-24 September 2000). Information: tel +32 2 504 04 15 / fax +32 2 503 46 70. BTO-London tel +44 171 458 29 06 / fax +44 171 458 00 45 The Mercator Fonds publishing house is planning an English-language book (which will be edited by Hugo Soly) about a number of aspects of the figure of Charles V.

A Financial History of the Netherlands

This book attempts to describe the main features of almost five centuries of development in the relationship between banking, currency and public finance in the Netherlands. Its object is to demonstrate that since the middle of the sixteenth century the creation of a nation-state with a strongly integrated economy has, to a great extent, depended on developments in the financial system. The ‘Introduction’ provides a broad outline of the changing relationships between government, the economy and the financial system. This is followed by a summary of the key aspects of the three financial economic phases which can be discerned from the late sixteenth century to the present day: 1) provincial primacy, roughly 1570-1800; 2) the coming of the nation state, 1800-1914; 3) the nation-state's progress to wider monetary integration, from 1914 to the present day. Each phase started with a period of innovation and renewal, and ended with one of the constituent elements reaching its limits and thus putting a brake on the others. Around 1550 the Low Countries were fragmented into numerous regions and cities which, while loosely grouped into provinces (in Dutch: ‘gewesten’), maintained a high degree of autonomy. During the sixteenth century, the centralising policies of the Habsburg Empire meant that the political focus gradually shifted towards the provinces, culminating in the joint revolt against Spain and the ensuing creation of the Republic of the United Provinces in 1579. The currency system during the sixteenth century

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 273 was totally chaotic, with a wide variety of debased and foreign coins in use. To counter the confusion and so promote trade, in 1609 Amsterdam City Council established the Bank of Amsterdam, which would exchange any currency at the going rate for a credit on its books expressed in a unit of account called the ‘gulden’ (bank guilder). The unique stability of the guilder and the Bank's giro system provided a means of fast and reliable settlement, and as a result Amsterdam developed into the commercial capital of the world. The Napoleonic period brought not only many economic difficulties but also many changes of government. During the roughly 20 years of French occupation regional autonomy disappeared, to be replaced by centralised government. In the first few decades after 1813 the financial situation remained disorganised. There was no control over government finances. There was conflict between King William I and Parliament. This led to the fiscal, monetary and constitutional reforms of the 1840s. Within 20 years a national financial system came into being, channelling funds to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and extending credits through the agency network of the Nederlandsche Bank. This system had the great advantage of being uniform, flexible and secure, but at the cost of bolstering the financial centre and denying commercial banking a firm deposit base. As a result, commercial banking remained conspicuously weak. The international upward economic trend after 1895 brought the first indications of a new phase, characterised on the one hand by increasingly interventionist government policies and on the other by continuing integration between different sectors of the economy. In time the banks began to play a greater part in other sectors of the economy. This has repeatedly led to rescue operations by the government. After World War II the financial sector in the Netherlands was able to profit from the economic revival and develop into what it is today. There is a great deal more that could be said about the content of this book, but hopefully this short review will at least serve to whet the reader's appetite. It gives a fascinating account of the most significant developments in the financial history of the Netherlands, a country whose importance in financial terms has always been out of all proportion to its geographical size. The flap of the book says: ‘It provides valuable insights into the financial history of a country which, in many respects, paved the way for others in modern finance’. This claim is, in our opinion, justified. The book has been carefully produced and runs to some 200 pages, 31 tables and 29 illustrations, together with a glossary, a bibliography and an index. It is highly readable and those interested in the subject will find it well worth the reading.

JAN BERKOUWER Translated by Tanis Guest.

Marjolein 't Hart, Joost Jonker and Jan Luiten van Zanden (eds.), A Financial History of The Netherlands. Cambridge / New York / Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997; 232 pp. ISBN 0-521-58161-3.

Emotion at the Museum

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 In Flanders Fields

‘Every intelligent person in the world knew that disaster was impending and knew no way to avoid it.’ (H.G. Wells)

War is the father of all things, said Heraclitus, and they know a thing or two about war in Ypres. Half a million soldiers died in the Ypres Salient between 1914 and 1918 and more than a million were wounded. Ypres itself was systematically destroyed, and has its place on the list of cities devastated by war: Dresden, Hiroshima, Stalingrad, Rotterdam, Coventry... Eighty years on, there seems to be nothing left of that devastation. But appearances are deceptive. Eighty years after Armistice Day the city opened a modern, interactive museum to replace the old ‘war museum’. It uses the latest techniques to evoke the past, to tell the story of the ‘ordinary man’ in the war and to target the emotions. Event Communication, a London bureau which specialises in museum design, exhibitions and visitor attractions, was brought in to advise. Ypres museum has made a virtue of necessity: as its collection of objects was not particularly impressive (and it could not compete in that respect with the Imperial War Museum in London or the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne in northern France, which opened in 1992), the museum decided to concentrate on telling stories and recording evidence. Piet Chielens, Coordinator of the In Flanders Fields museum, elaborates: ‘Now that the World War I generation is dying out, a museum is needed to take its place. This museum gives those who lived through the events a chance to be heard. Without judging, without settling accounts, but with respect, even for the most ardent sabre-rattler.’ The voices of artists are given a special place in the museum. Those who lived to tell the tale evoke the chaos in words and images. For example, one installation juxtaposes John McCrae's poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ (with its famous, elegiac first stanza and its much less familiar martial ending) with Wilfred Owen's disenchanted ‘Dulce et decorum est’. While you read and hear Owen's poem about a gas attack, the smoke rises in four green Plexiglas columns, which gradually light up to reveal grinning gas masks. The museum has more of those installations in store: four soldiers from different armies around the tea paraphernalia of General Haig, commander-in-chief of the British army in Flanders, (an object from the old collection, here given a new lease of life in an allegorical context) indicate that the picnic is over. Another, of soldiers shaking hands through a transparent wall, represents the Christmas Truce. The queen of the installations is an evocation of no man's land in the battle of Passchendale, complete with light and sound ef-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 274 fects and emissions of smoke. Two large screens in an enclosed space show soldiers dragging themselves through the mud, struggling and stumbling in a re-enactment of scenes from the war. Sensitive types are warned about this installation, but - as so often - what sets out to arouse the deepest emotions, does not have quite the desired effect. In fact, the installation after that, which deals with the medical care provided after the massacre, is much more distressing. The sober testimony of nurses, doctors and Red Cross officers - their parts played by actors in four languages - make the horror of mutilated flesh very real. In addition to these installations, ‘kiosks’ equipped with CD-ROM supply the necessary background information. Five historical kiosks sketch the wider context of the war by means of texts, photographs and film excerpts, documents and maps. Four ‘object kiosks’ use an associative technique to tell the story of the chosen objects. The museum also contains three ‘people kiosks’, which chronicle in three stages the experiences of soldiers, nurses and local people. The idea is that the computer selects a character for you on the basis of a few questions (would you like a man or a woman?, a civilian or a soldier?). You then receive a badge with a bar code which you run through a computer at three different points in the museum. In this way I was able to follow the lives of the German soldier Otto Meyer, Belgian soldier Emile Ferfaille, Ypres man Alfred Caenepeel, British officer Charles Hamilton Sorley and the German artist Käthe Kollwitz. With the help of contributions from visitors, the museum hopes to go on adding to this series of biographies (it now has about two hundred) and to store as many individual stories as possible in the computers. The idea is to build a living archive of lives affected by the war.

Disaster tourists in front of Ypres Cloth Hall, 15 September 1919. Photo by Antony.

Only at the end of the museum visit - after thirty-three computers and video screens, three smoke machines and fifty loudspeakers (10,400 watts) - does the museum turn its attention to the building that houses it: the Lakenhallen, or Cloth Hall, reconstructed from its ruins. In 1918 Churchill tried to acquire the ruins of Ypres for the British people: ‘a more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the whole world’. A scale model allows the visitor to experience the return to the devastated town after the war, its steady rebuilding and the commemoration of the war itself. Before he leaves, he is shown the total number of wars (more than a hundred) chalked up since the end of the war that was to end all wars. The war museum has become a peace

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 museum. Dedicated to all wars, it chooses just one, and one city: Ypres, to represent them all. Without moralising, it demonstrates that at the end of the day there are no winners in war. And then the visitor is outside. The fountain splashes, the carillon plays. On the market square, over a pint of foaming lager, he gazes in disbelief at the flawless silhouette of the Cloth Hall, he admires the industrious tradespeople of this small, convivial, fake-medieval town who are happy to serve you in three languages. A coach recommending Salient Tours goes past, just like that photograph taken by Antony in 1919. Because, of course, In Flanders Fields is very much part of the tourist strategy of a region, the ‘Westhoek’, which is keen to present itself as a Peace Park. The disaster tourism of the early post-war years has long since been replaced by cultural tourism, boosted by the unrelenting commemoration industry. Yet the Great War is worth commemorating. The illusions and certainties of European civilisation were shot to ribbons in the trenches. After that things would never be the same again. The First World War is the war which shaped

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 275 our century and to this day still casts its shadow over Europe. The In Flanders Fields museum - which is scarcely a ‘museum’ at all - requires an attentive spectator and reader. It has a vision, it is rooted in the region but is nowhere provincial, even if only because you constantly hear and read four languages. It is what is known today as a ‘layered’ museum, a museum you can put together yourself, and so it is eclectic and postmodern in the sense that the big stories are replaced by the countless small ones. In creating it, a great deal of thought was given to young people in particular: it is determined to make an impression on them. All the gadgets and modern technology are designed to appeal to this younger generation. The question is how long a life-span these gadgets have and if they won't date more quickly than an old-fashioned museum approach, which clearly leaves the past as the ‘past’. If I have a fear, it is that most visitors will zap their way through the Cloth Hall in half an hour. And that would be a great pity, because those voices, which spill over into each other, should be allowed to penetrate, the excerpts, images, quotes and cries allowed to cut you to the quick. You should stop and hear out the many witnesses, directly, soberly and penetratingly performed by young actors in four languages, for it is they who make the most lasting impression. Those who actually want to see grenades, helmets and trenches, can make their way to the Sanctuary Wood - Hill 62 Museum in Zillebeke or to the Dodengang (‘Death Walk’ trenches) in Diksmuide.

LUC DEVOLDERE Translated by Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim.

In Flanders Fields Grote Markt 34 / 8900 / Ypres / Belgium Tel. +32 57 20 07 24 / Fax +32 57 21 85 89. http://www.inflandersfields.be

The Strange Case of Windmills and Wooden Shoes Holland Mania in the United States

In October 1903 Edward Bok, editor of Ladies' Home Journal, one of the United States' most popular monthly magazines, wrote that the Netherlands, not England, was ‘the Mother of America’. He garnished this thesis with instances of colonial Dutch influences on American politics, cultural institutions, social customs and language. Bok's article appeared at a time when the US was gripped by an obsession with all things Dutch. At the end of the nineteenth century the industrialisation of America was proceeding apace. The Netherlands, by contrast, was lagging well behind in that respect, even when compared with other West-European countries. For many Americans ‘good ole Holland’ was the timeless, idyllic land of windmills, clogs, Delft Blue and the Masters of the Golden Age. At the same time, large numbers of emigrants from Eastern Europe were arriving in the US and people were beginning to wonder about American national identity. With the American Revolution still only a century in the past, there was a good deal of resistance to any excessively Anglophile

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 view of the origins of American history and culture. For this reason many people felt that the roots of American society should be sought in Dutch history and culture; after all, there were excellent economic and political links with the Netherlands, there had never been a war between the two countries, and the Dutch Republic's international role in the seventeenth century could serve as a model for the still young but ambitious America. This ‘Dutch sensibility’ is the subject of Annette Stott's Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture, in which she discusses a range of aspects and manifestations of the Holland Mania which possessed the United States between about 1880 and about 1920. This period saw the emergence of a class of Americans whose wealth allowed them to acquire European art. Thus originated the great private collections, with works by such masters as Rembrandt and Vermeer being particularly sought after. To American nouveaux riches theirs was a ‘democratic’ art: paintings for and by the people, portraying scenes from everyday life. Unfortunately, there was nothing very democratic about the prices of these works from the Golden Age; the less affluent but still prosperous citizen also hankered after a roguish drinker by Hals or a family by Steen, however, so there soon arose a great demand for copies. A whole reproduction industry exploded into existence, and a troop of American painters, drawers and illustrators rushed to the aid of their European colleagues. A sizeable number of these took themselves off to the Netherlands to study the great originals and their birthplace in situ, the best known of them being John Singer Sargent and James Abbot McNeil Whistler. Special summer courses for Netherlandophile painters were even organised in the Netherlands. And those who lacked the means to travel to the Netherlands could find what they needed in journals such as The Art Amateur and Palette, which provided instructions on how to produce ‘Dutch’ paintings at home. Of all the artists' colonies in the Netherlands it was Volendam that exercised the greatest attraction. Volendam could boast a high degree of ‘strangeness and the picturesque’: its traditional local costume, tiny houses and imposing dikes and its windmills drew artists and tourists to the ‘magenta village’, and for many Americans it came to symbolise the Netherlands. At the root of this romantic response to rural life in the late-nineteenth-century Netherlands was the passion for the Masters of the Golden Age. Many American paintings of this period also illuminated the USA's Dutch past. These history pieces, with titles such as Landing of the De Vries Colony at Swaanendael, Lewes, Delaware, 1631 or Henrik (sic) Hudson, Entering New York Harbor, September 11, 1609, fitted in neatly with the theories of historians like Douglas Campbell and William Elliot Griffis. Camp-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 276 bell, a lawyer with a particular interest in jurisprudence in colonial New York, was the author of the two-volume treatise The Puritan in Holland, England and America: An Introduction to American History (1892). In his preface he makes no bones about the object of his work: to prove that Holland played the decisive role in the creation of the United States. At the same time, this Dutch connection was a way of linking up, via continental Europe, with ‘a unified and heroic history that extended back to antiquity, without recourse to the theory that it (the US) was a transplanted England’. William Elliot Griffis popularised Campbell's theories in some eight books and dozens of pamphlets and articles. As a minister of the Reformed Protestant Church he also expressed his arguments for a Dutch-based history in sermons and talks. Like Campbell, he was convinced that Holland was the epicentre of learning, art and civilisation in the sixteenth century, in contrast to feudal and barbaric England. Later, Spanish oppression

Stephen L. Bartlett, a Boston importer, called upon all the clichés of windmills, tulips and wooden shoes to sell Bensdorp's cocoa (1898 postcard, Mrs Annette Stott's collection). led many Dutchmen to emigrate to England, where their knowledge, skills and religious faith set an indelible stamp on the subsequent development of the English Commonwealth. Griffis was first and foremost an orator who sought to convince the man in the street of the rightness of his views. What mattered most to him was that his arguments should carry conviction; he did not concern himself with sources, facts and figures. His publications were highly accessible, particularly since he did not shrink from using simplification to give his message greater force. For instance, he calls the old Dutch Republic ‘the United States of the Netherlands’ rather than using the usual terms ‘the United Provinces’ or ‘the United Netherlands’. And in his travel book The American in Holland (1899) he guides the reader through the 11 provinces

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 and lectures him in high-flown phrases on the parallels between America and the Netherlands. Of Utrecht, for instance, where in 1579 the signatories of the Union of Utrecht declared their solidarity in the struggle against the Spanish king, he writes: ‘Well might every patriotic American uncover at the mention of this Dutch city's name, for here was the first seat of federal government in Northern Europe.’ Stimulated by this kind of language and by illustrations of Dutch art, American tourism to the Netherlands increased by leaps and bounds. With the aid of a plethora of travel guides with such lyrical titles as The Spell of Holland and Through the Gates of the Netherlands, the American travellers sought and found the picturesque locations they had come to see. Stott distinguishes three touristic approaches to the Netherlands, which together reflect the preconceived ideas of most Americans: ‘the artistic tour, the historic tour, and the mythic “windmills and wooden shoes” tour’. A trip to the Netherlands could even be good for your health. Neurasthenia, ‘the American disease’, was attributed to the pressures of modern industrialised society. In the past, British travellers had often spoken slightingly of the boring Dutch landscape; now ‘Holland's horizontal lines’ were seen as an antidote to the rapid pace of American life. In her book Stott also discusses a number of other forms of Holland Mania. The adjective ‘Dutch’ was a mark of quality not only in art and tourism, but also in business. Brand names that included the word ‘Dutch’ did particularly well (even today there is a brand of paint called Dutch Boy). American architects sought inspiration in Dutch houses and gables and developed a ‘Dutch colonial’ style of building; large numbers of houses and public buildings were adorned with brick motifs on their stepped gables and exterior walls. Many families furnished their living-rooms in ‘authentic Dutch’ style and opted for a ‘modern hygienic bathroom’ with Dutch tiles. The fascination with the Netherlands assumed such proportions that in various places in the US developments in the Boer War in South Africa provoked intense fellow-feeling with the Boers. Battles from that war were even re-enacted at the World's Fair in St Louis in 1904. In her ‘Conclusion’ Stott also mentions some Dutch

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 277 influences in the US from after 1920: the linear geometry, clarity of style and primary colours of De Stijl, the attraction exerted by ‘alternative’ Amsterdam in the sixties and seventies, etc. The success of Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches (1987) is yet another indication that there is still a lively American interest in the Dutch Golden Age. Then there are quite a number of Dutch-American communities who keep the memory of their heritage alive by means of festivals; for instance, Tulip Time in Holland, Michigan, an annual event since 1929. And the academic world is still busily engaged in the study of Dutch-American relations, with publications like Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt's The Dutch Republic and American Independence (1982) and Augustus J. Veenendaal's Slow Train to Paradise: How Dutch Investment Helped Build American Railroads (1996). But the real Holland Mania is clearly over, with interest now confined to isolated phenomena. In a sense the US has lost sight of the modern Netherlands, so that the American image of the country has changed little since the time of Holland Mania. And so Stott concludes that ‘(...) the real presence of Netherlands influence in the United States today seems almost invisible and the lament that ended a number of travel books around 1910 - that Americans view the Netherlands through an out-of-date and childish lens - may still apply’. Is updating the American view of the Netherlands still a matter of fighting windmills?

FILIP MATTHIJS Translated by Tanis Guest

Annette Stott, Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture. New York: The Overlook Press, 1998; 320 pp. ISBN 0-87951-906-1. Language

The History of Dutch Language Policy in Colonial Indonesia 1600-1950

In 1843, upon the conquest of Sind, victory was reported by Sir Charles Napier in a telegram famously consisting of just one word in Latin, ‘Peccavi’. Such an English pun (‘I have sinned / Sind’) in Latin garb marks the classical style so typical of the British empire, itself built on the Roman model. Its leaders, steeped in classical learning, regarded the classics as the model for British civilisation, and in 1835 Macaulay, against the objections of the Orientalists, put this western model at the heart of the educational policy for India, aiming to train a class of anglicised ‘brown sahibs’ for the Indian Civil Service. From then until Independence in 1947, this British policy led to the active dissemination of English language, education and culture in India. Universities were established - the first three, in Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, as early as 1857 - and publishers such as Macmillan's exported millions of books to India. Today, as a direct legacy of this British cultural policy, there is a very large English speaking middle class in India. In Indonesia today, there is no such Dutch speaking middle class, and that too is the direct result of the cultural policies pursued by the colonial Dutch. Empire building in the Indonesian archipelago, from the first arrival of the Dutch in 1596 until their

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 departure in 1949, was always subject to pragmatic and financial considerations. Not until the twentieth century were serious efforts made to invest in Dutch language education, but by then it was too late. And it did not help that government control of the colony extended well into the domains of religion, education, politics, the press, literature and ideas. But the crucial difference between this and the British approach is that Dutch colonial policies followed the orientalists' view of East and West as essentially and totally different in culture. Dutch colonial civil servants therefore did not go out to the East with a classical, western education, but were given an orientalist training and had to learn one or two indigenous languages. And by the middle of the nineteenth century the Dutch had explicitly rejected the educational and language policies of the British in India, and decided against giving education in their Indonesian colonies a pronounced Western orientation. Not surprisingly, by 1940 no more than 2% of the population knew Dutch. Comparisons such as these between the Dutch and British empires in Asia may reveal significant and far reaching differences between the cultural policies they pursued. This in turn may help to explain why in Indonesia today Dutch has all but disappeared. And why Dutch, in contrast to the languages of other European colonial powers, has never become a world language. Many other such comparisons and insights can be found in Kees Groeneboer's Gateway to the West, in which, with admirable clarity, he sets out the discussions and decisions that have shaped the colonial language policies of the Dutch. Historically, the Dutch settlements in the East Indies were never large. By 1795, there were no more than 543 Dutchmen living in Batavia amidst a large mestizo community, and the Dutch language had practically died out. Although in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the colonial ruling class greatly increased in number, it always remained a small minority: in 1930 there were only 190.000 Europeans, as against an indigenous population of 18 million. Dutch was the language of this small European governing class and their Indonesian associates; and Dutch language education was traditionally aimed at the children of this elite. Unlike the British in India, the Dutch in the East Indies did not proceed to disseminate their own language and culture amongst the great mass of the indigenous population. This restrictive education policy was motivated by the fear that the Dutch language, as ‘gateway to the west’, would bring all kinds of dangerous western ideas to the archipelago; since, surely, once the natives could read Dutch, they would not con-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 278

fine themselves to reading harmless books. Government control of education and censorship of libraries and the media were therefore necessary to ensure that the modernisation of the colony could be given the right direction. In language policy, the starting point for the Dutch was their realistic recognition of the fact that amidst the enormous linguistic diversity of the archipelago Malay was the lingua franca, the commonly used language of contact. In 1864 it was therefore decided to disseminate this language - and not Dutch - throughout the colony. To this end, the colonial government stimulated the study, standardisation and modernisation of Malay, imposing it via its institutions, via education, the missions and the media, and via the literary works produced by the state publishers Balai Poestaka. In this respect, the Dutch pursued a non-chauvinistic cultural policy that consciously avoided the linguistic imperialism of the British and other European colonial powers. For the Dutch language itself, meanwhile, the norm always remained the mother tongue as spoken by its European native speakers. As a consequence, all attempts to simplify the spelling of Dutch for the benefit of indigenous learners of the language were rejected; creolisation and so-called Indo-Dutch met with a sustained social and educational backlash; and ‘pure’ Dutch was often used as an instrument of social exclusion. The language thus became the symbol of colonialism, and when independence came it was quickly abolished and replaced by Bahasa Indonesia as the official national language of the Indonesian Republic. Dutch has now all but vanished from the archipelago, although there are still some 300 laws from the Dutch era, and Indonesian archives contain many miles of documents in Dutch. The rest, as they say, is history. It is a history very well told by Groeneboer, with a wealth of documentation, an excellent bibliography and many fascinating pictures, in a book that vividly demonstrates why for the foreseeable future Dutch will remain an indispensable language of scholarship in the field of Indonesian studies.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 REINIER SALVERDA

Kees Groeneboer, Gateway to the West. The Dutch Language in Colonial Indonesia 1600-1950. A History of Language Policy (Tr. Myra Scholz). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998; 400 p. ISBN 90-5356-323-7. Literature

‘And the whole world was ablaze’ Bart Moeyaert and Bare Hands

With Bare Hands (Blote handen, 1995), the Flemish author Bart Moeyaert (1964-) has become the writer he always wanted to be. One who writes from the depths of his soul; who dares to be personal in his work, and can play upon the instrument of language with finesse. What in the first paragraphs still seems to be an exciting boys' book with breathless boys, a yapping dog, a dead duck and an angry neighbour, turns into a human drama of power and powerlessness, love and revenge, security and loneliness. These themes are subtly elaborated in this book for young adults. Bare Hands is Bart Moeyaert's ninth book. His first book. Discordant Duet (Duet met valse noten, 1983), was published when he was nineteen. It was an adolescent novel in which he expressed his dreams, hopes and despair about friendship and love. His next book, Back Where We Started (Terug naar af) followed three years later. These days, Moeyaert finds his early works somewhat clumsy and over-realistic, but their emotional appeal still guarantees them a following among teen-age readers, themselves struggling with adolescence. Moeyaert has developed significantly as a writer since his debut. Inspired by the work of Aidan Chambers, particularly Dance on My Grave, he has explored the possibilities of linguistic and narrative techniques more and more. Because, says Moeyaert, ‘one of the finest principles of the better kind of narrative is mystery’. Suzanne Dantine (first published in 1989 and now reworked into Hornet's Nest - Wespennest, 1997) was his first successful attempt at mystery. Kiss Me (Kus me, 1991) a broody novel about four young people trying to discover each other's secrets, was his sec-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 279 ond attempt. Through a series of books for young readers, he has mastered the technique of restrained writing. Bare Hands is certainly a testament to his efforts: a gripping and poetic story about human failings. Every aspect of the book is successful: the narrative technique, the complexity of the characters, the theme, the evocative language and the economical, careful style. As a Dutch reviewer wrote: ‘You read the whole book with a knot in your stomach because it is so sad, and written in such a breathlessly exciting way, and because you suspect that these things could actually happen.’ Bare Hands is set on the threshold of a new year; on a cold, windy New Year's Eve. Ward and Bernie, two inseparable friends (‘We were one pair of shoes. We were only safe when I was with him and he was with me’), become entangled in an emotional confrontation with themselves and the big bad world outside. Power becomes powerlessness, for the two friends as well as for the adults who cannot undo what happens. What begins as an innocent game - fooling around with neighbour Betjeman's duck - turns into a drama which claims many victims. When the neighbour chases the boys through the desolate winter fields, and cannot catch them, he vents his anger on Ward's dog. The first chapter contains all the elements which make this adolescent novel so special: a painful situation, telling descriptions (‘I started out all wrong. In my mind I was on the other side, but my feet hadn't gone there yet.’), subtle allusions to what will be revealed later, and the sympathy of the narrator. At first that sympathy is with the boys, but gradually the reader is encouraged to feel more sympathy for Betjeman. What Betjeman did - killing Ward's dog with his artificial hand - is of course unforgivable, but a whole series of memories which come back to Ward clearly indicate that Betjeman was not acting only out of spite. It is not only the recurring motifs which make the story exciting, but also the dramatic irony; the reader is

aware of things long before Ward is. For example, that there is something terribly wrong with the dog; it takes Ward a long time to admit that Elmer is actually dead. Evocative descriptions of landscape, cold, sounds and the half-conversations between Ward and his friend, have already revealed something of the drama to the reader. Ward is afraid that Betjeman wants to take the place of his father, thereby depriving him of his mother's comforting attention. This remains unresolved; we do not learn whether these ideas are merely in Ward's head, or whether they are true. Ward sees

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Betjeman as an extremely lonely person; a bachelor farmer who lost his hand lighting fireworks last New Year's Eve. Thanks to the various flashbacks and glimpses of the future, but also to the short chapters, the reader gradually becomes part of the mystery this book seeks to cast some light upon. Like Ward, the reader discovers that people are essentially lonely. Even Ward's best friend Bernie has little to offer him in moments of despair. All the characters in the story - the boys, their mothers and Betjeman - long for a sense of security, a hot meal, familiar rituals. They have no words for this, only actions. But actions are just as irreversible as time. Two animals are dead, two people wounded to the depths of their souls. This cannot be undone. And so, on the threshold of a new year, the world is ablaze. Bernie's mother believes that you should start a new year with a clean page, not with arguments. Ward sees that too. But how can that be, if you have never learned to express your feelings, if you are completely immersed in your own fantasies and images? When those fantasies and images clash with reality, they explode into violence which - in this novel anyway - is discharged in the New Year's Eve fireworks. Moeyaert does not tell us what the future holds for the characters, or whether they will find a channel for their emotions. And that shows that he takes his readers seriously. He has the courage to leave them with unanswered, penetrating questions. Bare Hands shows how things can unwittingly go wrong; but the open ending and the many allusions to motherly comfort, the security of friendship and family, still offer the reader some hope. Moeyaert's sentences are rhythmic, and give the sounds the space they need. Such language helps to make Bare Hands a gripping drama which will leave few readers unmoved, as the many awards and translations testify. In addition to the Dutch Silver Slate and the Belgian Lion, Moeyaert also received the German prize for youth literature, and the Flemish three-yearly state prize. His book has now also reached Germany, Italy, the United States, Norway, France and Slovenia. A major author for young people has found not only a way to express himself, but also a way to reach his readers.

JOKE LINDERS Translated by Yvette Mead.

Bart Moeyaert, Bare Hands (Tr. David Colmer). Asheville, NC: Front Street, 1998; 111 pp. ISBN 1-886910-32-4.

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Translating for Enjoyment On Translating the Poetry of M. Vasalis

On September 13, 1990 I addressed a letter to Mevrouw Margaretha Droogleever-Fortuyn, the poet known to us as Vasalis. After a lapse of a good quarter of a century, I had once again taken to translating Dutch poetry and presenting it to literary editors in England. One of these wished to publish a poem of hers I had translated to commission a good thirty years before. Despite her reputation as one of the really big names in Dutch poetry, Vasalis had not published a collection since 1954. By choice she had lived remote from the literary scene, a very private person. Nevertheless, it seemed only polite to obtain her consent to republication, which came most charmingly and led to a correspondence and friendship lasting eight years. On August 31, 1998, the poet sent me a note by registered post to inform me she was dying and would I ring her? She was now 89. The note, on a simple slip of paper, was written in the same steady handwriting, with the same steady pen, as ever, neat and regular, in curled letters which seemed to be chasing each other to get to the end of the line first. It was written, too, with the same lucidity, so much to the point, with so little waste of words and yet so intimate and confiding, as all her letters had been. When I spoke to her on the phone she was just as steady and she expressed the explicit wish that no biographical writings should appear on her life. If anything at all was written, then let it confine itself to her poetry. This is all, therefore, I can tell here of biographical tint. But in the eight years of our correspondence I wrote her over one hundred letters and missives on carefully chosen picture postcards, to every one of which she replied. Many letters consisted of an exchange of ideas on everyday life, on poetry and personal matters (I had visited her and her husband), but most concerned the further translations I made from her poetry from 1990 on, encouraged by the interest she took in them. These I would send to her in various forms, many covered with explanatory notes and queries, often excited scribbles, large and small, hot from the pen, some typed out in more or less final versions, and she would go through them, giving them the same expert, sensitive attention to detail one finds in her poetry. Indeed, her comments, reactions and suggestions, tendered modestly and in pencil but at times quite brilliant in their insight and discernment, served to underline a quality that gives her poetry its unique touch. That quality comes from a combination of poetic sensitivity to life and to words with a scientific rationality and clarity of mind that keeps this poetry's feet on the ground, however philosophically far-reaching the theme may be. A simple example of this operating in her poetry is the poem in her first collection on a woman drowned in the River Amstel in Amsterdam. In this, everyday realistic details, such as the sand sticking to the dead woman's skin, are combined with the Eternal in the image of the moon, continuing silently on its course as the woman lies there. And in the translations an example is her suggestion to add something as ordinary-seeming as a full stop in a line where none was in the Dutch original, an addition which in the translation is quite brilliant in its effect. The love of, and the sensitivity to, words and the ideas behind them which she showed in responding to my translation almost half a century after most of the original poems had been written - in itself a remarkable feat - acted on me as a powerful

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 stimulus to continue with the work. The discussions on paper and sometimes by word of mouth showed that here was a poet who knew exactly what she wanted from words and what she was doing with them. This was also a woman in her eighties whose health had been impaired by a stroke but whose mind was still young and agile and not in the least impaired. She also had a fine sense of humour which set us on the same wave-length from the start, likening herself when in the Cévennes to an old peasant woman in black on a postcard, being led downhill by her goat and joking about ‘a Belgian Madame’, when I proposed henceforth to address her as ‘Madame’. Humour she used too as a gentle critical weapon. When in a note about her I referred to ‘a feminine response to life’ she only had to add a pencil note, saying, ‘I wonder what a feminine response is?’ and out the phrase went. She would not hesitate to show her will, but gently, and this was right and what I wanted. Thus, in a sketch for a translation of ‘October’, where I had written: ‘quietly autumn steps onto the scene’, she simply noted: ‘I don't ever use the word “scene” when nature is the topic’ and out went ‘scene’. This poem, accurate and seismic though it is in its sensitivity to the phenomenon of autumn, is not really about October. It owes its power to its philosopy of life, its approach, its vision, which remove it very far from ‘lady's poetry’. Her poetry has been said to be that - a criticism of those making so mistaken an assessment rather than of her. The fact that she is referred to not as ‘M. Vasalis’, her pseudonym, but as ‘Vasalis’, pure and simple, is itself an indication of her stature. A note she added to one version of this translation ‘October’ again illustrates her discrimination in choosing her words and her sense of humour. It reads: ‘It is a pity that English has no word for “beminnen”. Everything is called love, whether it is a meal, a climate, a dog or a child. “Beminnen” has another quality.’ Of all the translations I sent her there was only one she never got down to. I would sometimes send all versions, to show her the genesis and she would sometimes write out her own altered version for me to see. Some translators might object to that but I found it sheer pleasure, because she was so sincerely and expertly involved. It even led her to translating one or two of my own poems into Dutch... always modestly proffered. Her responses to my translations of her work proved entirely in line with her poetry itself, demonstrating extreme sensitivity in choosing the right word in the right

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 281 place and a seeming simplicity which was anything but that. It is an unusual thing to say, but the truth is that our collaboration made me fall in love with this splendid woman's mind.

If there is music for it, I want to hear it: I want music for the old, their strength reprieved, who are ploughed with furrows deep and sheer, and don t believe. Who still know lust and pain. Who loved, possessed and lost again. And if there is wisdom that is not fatigue, clarity that is not death, decline, that I want to see, that I want to hear. If not, let foolishness and clouded thought be mine.

JAMES BROCKWAY

Dutch-Language Caribbean Voices in English

Kenneth Ramchand, author of the famous study The West Indian Novel and its Background, had the surprise of his life at the July 1997 literature conference in Paramaribo, capital of Surinam. He had never realised how many cultural and historical links Surinam has with the rest of the region, and how strongly Caribbean the country is. In thirty years of literary studies, the Trinidadian had apparently not understood that there is more to Caribbean culture than its Anglophone and Francophone elements. Limited perspective is a common fault in many Caribbean studies. But from now on, lack of familiarity with the language will no longer be a credible excuse. A special issue of Callaloo was published at the end of 1998, entitled Caribbean Literature from Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba and the Netherlands.. And the second volume of A History of Literature in the Caribbean, the chief editor of which is James Arnold, will be published shortly, and will be devoted to English and Dutch-speaking areas.1 The special issue of Callaloo is a hefty tome; 287 large-format pages in small typeface, with three portfolios of beautiful reproductions of work by 13 artists. The issue contains translations of prose by 13 writers, literary criticism by 11 writers, and poems by 34 poets, plus a song of the Trio Indians. Guest editor Hilda van Neck-Yoder, Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at Howard University in Virginia, must have puzzled long and hard as to how she was to put all this material into some sort of order. In the end, she has not done so: there is no ordering by genre, theme or writer's age. In her introduction she makes a virtue of necessity by indicating that the best way to read the issue is by random selection: ‘Such a way of reading, invited by the layout, may suggest the construction of a Caribbean poetics that propels this rich and diverse conversation of voices in a multiplicity of languages’. For readers who do not want to read the chaos as chaos, she suggests reading the contributions by genre, or relying on the four introductory essays based on different languages. It seems logical that the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba and Surinam should be dealt with together. However, when we look more closely, they do not have very much in common. These regions were important in the colonial era, were ruled for centuries

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 by the same colonial power, and have therefore acted as a preservative for the Dutch language in the area. Yet in demographic, cultural and linguistic terms they are very different. There is enormous ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity in independent Surinam. The Antilles, which still belong to the Netherlands, are divided, roughly speaking, into the large, black Catholic population which speaks Papiamento, and the small white Jewish or Protestant population who communicate mainly in Dutch. The plantation colony of Surinam, long threatened by Indians and Maroons, and from the end of the last century by a large influx of Asians, has produced a totally different literature from the Antilles and Aruba. While Dutch is still the most important written language in Surinam, and Sranantongo (a language of the Creoles) and Sarnami (a creole language of the Hindustanis) have been accepted as literary languages, the Netherlands Antilles still appears to be in the final phase, with literary Papiamento producing few great new talents so far. It is no coincidence that the tone of Curaçao native Frank Martinus Arion's introduction takes a sombre view of black culture on his island. The Callaloo issue offers the reader a treasure of literary texts from Caribbean Dutch, and the various everyday languages of Surinam, the Antilles and Aruba. There is beautiful work by Leo H. Ferrier, Boeli van Leeuwen, Ellen Ombre and Hugo Pos, and fine poetry by Charles Corsen, Edgar Cairo, Trudi Guda, Elis Juliana, Michaël Slory and Bernardo Ashetu. Unfortunately, however, the issue does not give the reader a balanced picture. There are three reasons for this. The first is that Callaloo is a journal of African-American literature, which means that the emphasis has been placed authors of creole (i.e. African-American) origin. The work of Albert Helman, for example, is represented by three of his Sranan poems, but none of his Dutch poems are included, although many more of his poems were written in that language. The balance is even more bizarre when we see five poems by Frank Martinus Arion, but only one by the far more important poet Shrinivási. Major Antillean literary figures such as Tip Marugg (arguably the most famous prose writer), and the poets Luc Tournier and Oda Blinder, are not included at all. A second reason for the imbalance is the overemphasis on diaspora literature, work by Surinamese and Antilleans in the Netherlands. The issue contains no less than three translations of Astrid Roemer's poems and two interviews. In contrast, there is not a single interview with an author living in Surinam. Paul Marlee - the first author to have a Surinamese book translated into English (Guinea Pig, 1990) - is totally ignored. The third reason for the imbalance is that the contributions have been measured against that gruesome American norm: political correctness. As a result of a misplaced need to pamper (read: render infantile)

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 282 blacks, anything which has vaguely unpleasant connotations must be glossed over. Authors who have written painful - but nonetheless true - things about the Caribbean, such as the Curaçao critic Aart G. Broek and Leiden professor Gert Oostindië, are omitted from this issue of Callaloo. By contrast, the issue includes a respectable piece on Madame Bovary by the region's most critical essayist, Anil Ramdas, which could not possibly offend anyone. One would think that Marugg, Marlee, Blinder and Tournier are not included because they write in Dutch. Yet when one sees the forced motivation with which the work of a poet such as Hans Faverey - a large number of poems, plus an essay devoted to him - is pushed into the issue, then one begins to ask even more questions. On the basis of a single sentence in quotation marks in the work of Hans Faverey, Hilda van Neck-Yoder claims that his work is ‘deeply informed by his Caribbean and African heritage’, and that Surinam is present in his poetry as ‘unspoken text’. She places him on a par with authors such as Edgar Cairo and Astrid Roemer, who use creolised language. This is, of course, an absurd piece of reasoning, given that Faverey has never alluded to Surinam in his work, and that his entire oeuvre has functioned exclusively within the literary circuit in the Netherlands. This classification of Caribbean literature has failed in other respects too: the guest editor devotes half of her introduction to My Sister the Negress (Mijn zuster de negerin, 1935). ‘the first Caribbean novel in Dutch’ by Cola Debrot. Van Neck-Yoder gives a fine interpretation of this book about the white Curaçaoan, Frits, returning to his native island only to find that colonial relationships no longer exist. The book ends abruptly and ‘creates a space that elicits Caribbean voices’. This sounds fine in an introduction to an anthology of Caribbean voices, but is something else when we know that Debrot's book was preceded by at least ten other Dutch-language Caribbean novels, including Albert Helman's renowned The Silent Plantation (De stille plantage, 1932). Callaloo introduces ‘firsts’, but Trefossa was not the first to write poetry in Sranan, and Edgar Cairo was not the first to write about the poor of Paramaribo. According to the guest editor, this issue of Callaloo is already a historic one, because it is the first to present the Antilles, Aruba and Surinam together - and as Caribbean. I wish the journal all the best, but neither claim is true. English-speaking readers can choose from a wide selection of texts (largely well-translated) from the Dutch-speaking Caribbean region, and Hilda van Neck-Yoder deserves every credit for that. Alice van Romondt also points the way with a stimulating bibliography of work translated into English. But readers must be aware that this issue of Callaloo is not a true reflection of the literature of the Antilles, Surinam and Aruba, but a selection which distorts the total picture. In other words: there may well be a great deal of ‘unspoken text’ in Caribbean literature, which is contained in this issue in another form. I know of at least one poet who would have protested against such a partial selection: the avant-la-lettre feminist Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout. On 9 February 1999, America's First Lady Hilary Clinton chose a poem by Schouten-Elsenhout - the ‘Grandma Moses’ of Surinamese literature - to open her speech at the population conference for non-governmental delegations. I do not know where she found the poem - it was not published in Callaloo - but she must have been moved by the closing words:

Woman you are sublime

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 You shine You do not surrender in the middle of the battle of every day

MICHIEL VAN KEMPEN Translated by Yvette Mead.

Hilda van Neck-Yoder (ed.), Callaloo: Caribbean Literature from Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba and the Netherlands. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Vol. 21, no. 3, Summer 1998. ISSN 0161 2492.

Armand Baag, Mama Sranan. 1985, Canvas, 115 × 95 cm.

Eindnoten:

1 A. James Arnold, A History of Literature in the Caribbean, Volume 2: English and Dutch Regions (Amsterdam / Philadelphia, to be published by John Benjamins).

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 283

Snowed-in Poems The Poetry of Miriam Van hee

1998 was a good year for the Flemish poet Miriam Van hee (1952-). The Flemish Community awarded her the Cultuurprijs for her poetic oeuvre and De Bezige Bij published her collected poems: The Link between the Days. Poems 1978-1996 (Het verband tussen de dagen. Gedichten 1978-1996). Miriam Van hee's poetry enjoys considerable interest and appreciation in Flanders, both among literary critics and among readers. The critical view that her poetry is superficial, facile, too transparent, is the reverse side of this public attention. The familiarity of Van hee's poems is above all due to her use of a fairly limited, everyday vocabulary. Her universe is made up of words like ‘bicycle’, ‘sheet’, ‘snow’, ‘window’, ‘train’, ‘stairs’, etc. Her world seems to run parallel to ours: the reader is made to feel at home in these poems. And yet the simplicity of her poetry is deceptive. This is manifested in the concept of ‘snow’, an important motif in these poems. A snow-covered landscape appears simple, easy to survey, peaceful. The world is temporarily erased. In that respect Miriam Van hee's poetry itself seems ‘snowed-in’, and this is also the title of her third collection (1984). Her verse is muted, subdued. This however indicates that it is not ‘shallow’, but carries a hidden unrest. Besides simplicity, snow also represents absence, longing, despair, isolation: ‘in a while everything will be covered with snow / the tram tracks, / the feet with which / she could go to you’. The only things making a mark on the snow are tracks, the remains of presences, impressions, and even these are subsequently snowed over. Snow announces hope and doubt at once. In her snow poems, Van hee deals with her most important themes. ‘Snow is the same everywhere, / she thinks, only / here it is even more thorough (...) / only here it lasts longer, / that's why there are no bicycles, no consolation (...)’. As so often, Van hee makes ‘here’ problematical: ‘here’ is always inadequate compared to ‘there’. Similarly with the snow: on the one hand she emphasises that it is the same everywhere, and so there is no escape, that it cannot be better elsewhere. You cannot break away from ‘here’, after all being ‘here’ is anchored in yourself, you drag it along wherever you go. On the other hand, it is precisely that inescapability which makes the snow ‘here’ more thorough and longer lasting. The Dutch word ‘grondige’ (‘thorough’) is also very literal: bound to this ground and mixed up with earth - muck. That there are no bicycles ‘here’ means there is no movement, no passing, no illusion of a destination. The sudden appearance of a bicycle in many of these poems causes the reader and the author to feel a rush of expectation, until bicycle and bicyclist are inevitably ‘hidden away in the bends’. Of course, ‘here’ may also refer to the poem: in this poem the snow is more thorough and lasts longer. Van hee's ‘here’ can often be interpreted like this: ‘here / nothing passes (...) here / everything wears away: sorrow

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Miriam Van hee (1952-). Photo by Lieve Blanquaert. becomes stubbornness, the breath cut off / longing becomes absence’. On the one hand poetry stops the passing of things, on the other, poetry wears everything down to mere words, sounds. Effortlessly, a poem will replace one term with another, sorrow with stubbornness, longing with absence. When Van hee regrets the fact that there are no bicycles ‘here’, it is only a half-truth: she has nevertheless, albeit in a negation, brought a bicycle into her poem. Poetry is both power and powerlessness. This ambiguous attitude toward poetry is typical of Van hee:

What do I want to understand here

but that listening between shepherd and dog

what do I want to learn here but that slowness of callous on the feet

What do I want to find here but a path through here to chestnut trees the shade of leaves

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 284

In her poetry Van hee seems to want to ‘understand’, ‘learn’ and ‘find’. But what she wants to find through her poems is ‘a path through here’. By the detour of poetry she tries to find the reality of shade and chestnut trees. The ‘here’ which she creates from one poem to the next has to offer a view of a ‘there’. In poetry she seems to be searching for reality. This idea is also expressed through her fascination with windows and shop windows. They too are places which offer a view, places where one always stands between ‘here’ and ‘there’, as if in a kind of intermediate space. Van hee stands by a window ‘to look for light / to see snow or rain / to not be somewhere’. The same feeling of ‘not being somewhere’, which carries a positive connotation, she experiences when she is on her way somewhere. For that reason her poems are full not only of bikes but also buses, trains, trams, cars. The significance of this predilection for transportation is given a concise formulation in the title poem of her first collection, ‘The frugal meal’ (‘Het karige maal’): ‘And we of course know nothing / of the happiness of travellers / in an evening train.’ ‘Travel’ is associated with ‘happiness’. A typical example of a poem of this kind is ‘May on the A75’ (‘mei op de A75’), a contemporary variation on neo-Romantic escapism, in which roads and vehicles enrapture the poet. Only when on the way somewhere does Van hee manage to find a ‘you’: ‘I see you standing where you are not / among pedestrians, cyclists, / by the tram stop.’ Van hee herself draws the analogy with her poems as stops, as possible meetings: ‘so this poem again looks for you’. Writing, the poet is on her way and has a chance of meeting ‘you’. In the context of the lover, ‘you’, the motif of the sheet repeatedly appears. There too, the lover is only to be found between the folds and the sheet only briefly assumes the shape of those who have touched it. Like the snow, like language, the sheet is a blank, and nothing and no one makes a lasting impression. Van hee's poetry plays with a number of central concepts or constants, which change their meaning in ever changing contexts. Her verse is in this way both familiar and always different. There is no unequivocal or single truth, and the strength of her poetry is that she manages to show this by using simplicity, repetition, limitation, familiarity. The leaving out of punctuation fits in with this perfectly: it is a technique which simplifies and makes the verse unemphatic, but also makes it more ambiguous. Van hee attempts at the same time to question the simplicity she strives for. In her poetry, she searches for traces of meaning in the bare expanse of a snowy landscape, a worn down language.

ELKE BREMS Translated by Alissa Leigh.

The Defiant Muse

There is something refreshing about encountering a woman writer in the company only of other women. It provides the reader with an opportunity to form an impression of women's writing without reference to a male norm. Not long ago Women Writing in Dutch appeared as part of a series ‘Women Writers of the World’ (New York / London, 1994). It is a collection of prose and poetry in English translation intended

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 to serve as an introduction to each of the writers included. Now the Feminist Press of the City University of New York has published The Defiant Muse. Dutch and Flemish Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present, a bilingual anthology covering the same time span as Women Writing in Dutch. In her introduction, Maaike Meijer explains the anthology's brand of feminism as relating to the selection of works for inclusion: ‘we chose woman-identified works’ by which she means poems with a definite female view on the world, particularly where this view resists mainstream notions of sexuality and woman's social role, and where it is feistily or humorously expressed. Meijer is aware that attaching the label ‘feminist’ to all these poems could be deemed ‘ahistorical’, but declares herself happy to take that risk. Regardless of how the volume is labelled, it is particularly satisfying to read an anthology devoted wholly to poetry, and spanning the entire production of women's poetry in Dutch. Effectively it sketches in the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 285 development of that poetry for the reader, albeit in a highly selective way. The poems speak loudly for themselves, but nonetheless, Maaike Meijer's illuminating introduction heightens the reader's awareness of this development and its relationship to the context in which the poems were written. The anthology moves from anonymous ballads with a ‘feminist’ theme, to Hadewijch's overwhelming mysticism, to the witty, feisty, self-assured verse of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women like Anna Bijns and Katharina Questiers, and beyond. One entrancing short verse of Questiers' leaves the reader intrigued about her relationship with Cornelia van der Veer. It is entitled ‘To Miss Cornelia van der Veer. On finding the garter she left in my room’ (Iphis, as a helpful footnote tells the reader, was changed into a young man by Isis, so that she could marry a woman):

If Egypt's ancient goddess deigned to favour me As long ago so she granted Iphis's desperate plea, Then - England notwithstanding - I'd have a weapon made, And ‘Knight of this New Garter’ would he my accolade.

The first third of The Defiant Muse is devoted to what could be called a canon of women's poetry in Dutch up to the beginning of the twentieth century; indeed some of the writers are also included in Women Writing in Dutch, although not necessarily for their poetry. The remaining two-thirds of the volume gradually broadens out as it progresses through the twentieth century to include a wide cross-section of contemporary poets. There is a marked shift in tone from the celebration of female friendship found in seventeenth-century verse to the growing self-awareness which finds expression in the poems from around the turn of the twentieth century. Henriëtte Roland Holst expresses the confidence this gives in ‘My Soul's Awakening’. But alongside the self-realisation, this awareness also brings a sense of the difficulty of human relationships and, in the period after the Second World War, of alienation and depression. There is, for example, ‘soft squirming fear’ (Ankie Peypers); and ‘it is the black / ghosts that get to me’ (Loes Nobel); ‘and I slowly decomposing / into lonely outrage’ (Christa Eelman); ‘What I think and feel is enclosed / in the bleak walls of a foreign language.’ (Maja Panajotova). At the same time, these women are surrounded by lovers - women and men -, by children and by their mothers. Although love is associated with loss and pain, there are also poems which celebrate it, particularly the erotic mappings of the female body in Elly de Waard's poetry:

I slide Down the nodes of her back, Rope ladder toward a jungle of Bliss. Between the back roads and the End, is there a true mean?

Husbands do not make a strong showing in this anthology, they are overshadowed as in this stanza from ‘Bad Zwischenahn’ by Judith Herzberg:

The bride hobbles out of the church on too high heels and smiles her chafed smile under topheavy hair and lets herself be kissed by the uncles and stands

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 between the graves and looks her small new husband in the eyes.

The Defiant Muse will be approached in different ways by readers with different linguistic backgrounds. For those who read no Dutch, this is an anthology of Dutch and Flemish poetry in translation: the translations are the poems. On the other hand, access to the Dutch, which the volume provides by printing the original in parallel, means that it can be read simply as an anthology of women's poetry in Dutch, or by switching between the two languages. This last way of reading promotes comparison and provokes reflection on the different strategies employed by translators, and on the new ‘feel’ of the translated poem. It almost goes without saying that each reader would have translated a given poem differently, so commenting on the perceived quality of the translations is, in this reader's view, pointless - if one feels moved to engage with the translation by producing one's own version in response, so much the better.

JANE FENOULHET

Maaike Meijer (ed.), The Defiant Muse. Dutch and Flemish Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present. New York: The Feminist Press, 1997; 194 pp. ISBN 1-55861-152-5.

The Captain of the Butterflies Cees Nooteboom's Poetry

After the international success in English translation of Cees Nooteboom's fiction - including Rituals (Rituelen, 1980), In the Dutch Mountains (In Nederland, 1984), A Song of Truth and Semblance (Een lied van schijn en wezen, 1981) and The Following Story (Het volgende verhaal, 1991) and travel writing (Roads to Santiago - De omweg naar Santiago, 1992) -, The Captain of the Butterflies, a selection of seventy-seven poems - roughly a quarter of his output between 1955 and 1989 - opens a less familiar but important aspect of his work to a wider readership. The translations appear in the adventurous and wide-ranging Sun & Moon Classics series, which already included two Flemish prose titles (Stijn Streuvels' Flaxfield (De vlaschaard, 1907) and Maurice Gilliams' Elias (Elias of het gevecht met de nachtegalen, 1936). They are the product of more than a decade of collaboration between Leonard Nathan, an American poet and academic, and Herlinde Spahr, a US-based Dutch native-speaker with a doctorate in comparative literature, who contributes a brief introduction. Spahr's introduction also acknowledges the close involvement of

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 286 the poet himself (who adds a succinct author's note) in the translation process, which had its beginnings in his year as a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley in 1986.1 Nooteboom's ‘own comments and elucidations’, she writes, ‘often proved helpful in selecting the right alternative’. Beyond that, his ‘final grouping of the poems along thematic lines’ (‘Self and Others’, ‘Travels and Visions’, ‘Poems and Fictions’, ‘Thoughts and Theses’) provides the reader with signposts and to a large extent determines the ‘shape’ of the collection, overriding other possible ordering criteria such as chronology. If such a label is applicable to the translation of poetry, this anthology bears all the marks of an ‘authorised version’. In striving for maximum representativeness, covering ‘as many periods and styles as possible’, the translators confess that the constraints of language led them to favour poems ‘which survived best that shattering transfer from Dutch into English’. It would be fascinating to know what poems failed this test, just as translators at least would be interested in the translation strategies and tactics underlying particular choices, for example, the neutral rendering ‘coat’ rather than ‘cloak’ for Dutch ‘mantel’ in ‘Traveller’, which loses the period feel of the Japanese print evoked at the beginning of the poem, while easing the transition to the vision of nuclear holocaust, ‘the firestorm of blisters’ in its conclusion. But perhaps it is unfair to ask for such

Cees Nooteboom (1933-). Photo by Willy Dee. detail in this unassuming, engaging volume, whose notes are confined to a single page, and take the reader on a lightning tour of Nooteboom's imaginative world, both starker and darker than his fiction, of which it nevertheless bears many of the thematic and stylistic hallmarks: rootless wandering, isolation, time, death, and dense allusiveness and a lapidary quality that is arresting in individual images and poems, but can seem unrelieved. The tone of the Dutch writing is for me powerfully conveyed, for example, in the opening section of the title poem:

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 There is the captain of the butterflies! All days hang under his bituminous wings. The look of the air is vacant. No one flies so noiselessly as this chieftain.

Haze over the great ovens. The water consumed.

Suddenly the wind stirs A sound between his insignias, He alters direction.

Observed from the ground: He is a black and plumed machine With weapons and teeth.

Perhaps this teeters on the brink of portentousness (a common charge levelled by critics of Nooteboom's writing), but it is nonetheless visually compelling, resonant and consistent with his prose. No one, least of all the writer I think, would claim for Nooteboom the status of poetic ‘heavyweight’, on a par with such contemporaries as Hugo Claus or Hans Faverey. But his voice is undeniably a personal one, and this sampler adds a valuable dimension to his oeuvre for non-Dutch readers.

PAUL VINCENT

Cees Nooteboom, The Captain of the Butterflies (tr. Leonard Nathan and Herlinde Spahr. With an Introduction by Herlinde Spahr and an Author's Note). Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997; 118 pp. ISBN 1-55713-315-8.

Eindnoten:

1 See The Low Countries 1993-94: pp. 144-52.

Literature from the Low Countries in London

The ‘Stichting Frankfurter Buchmesse '93’ (SFB 93) is a Flemish-Dutch foundation which in 1993 organised the central feature on Dutch-language literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Afterwards, the number of translations of Dutch writers into German rose so significantly that the SFB decided to extend its strategy to book fairs in Barcelona (1995) and Göteborg (1997). In March 1999 it was London's turn, and plans are under way for Paris in 2001.

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Since the London International Book Fair does not spotlight any individual country or language area, on this occasion the SFB's programme was attached to a new event being held for the first time, the London Festival of Literature. From 21 to 27 March a total of eighteen Dutch-language writers (seven of them Flemish and eleven Dutch) were guests in London. They featured in some ten readings, discussions, workshops and a literary theatrical programme with readings, music and film excerpts. At each of these a splendidly produced brochure with information on the authors present and a selective bibliography of Dutch-language books in translation was presented to those attending. A promotional campaign in the London press and on the Underground was designed to draw attention to Low Countries literature among the wealth of attractions available in the capital. In the run-up to the event British literary critics, including Amanda Hopkinson, Paul Binding and Robert McCrum, were invited to Flanders and the Netherlands and put in touch with the literary world. On their return they wrote articles about the literature of the Low Countries and some of them served as moderators in the debates. A strategy which should pay dividends. Following on from the festival, the SFB promoted Dutch-language literature from a spacious stand at the London Book Fair (28-30 March). Along with such hallowed names as Hugo Claus, Harry Mulisch and Cees Nooteboom the company included a young writer of Moroccan descent, Abdelkader Benali, Jef Geeraerts, Connie Palmen and biologists like Tijs Goldschmidt and Midas Dekkers. Some five of these writers had yet to have a book translated into English and had had to content themselves with items in anthologies and periodicals. It is intended that this will now change. At the Roehampton Institute the children's writers Joke van Leeuwen, Anne Provoost and Bart Moeyaert debated keenly with Aidan Chambers. Tom Lanoye, Arnon Grunberg and Kristien Hemmerechts discussed morality and taboo at the ICA. At another gathering Adriaan van Dis, Margriet de Moor and Abdelkader Benali turned out to have ‘migration’ and ‘otherness’ in common. Harry Mulisch was able to talk about his magnum opus The Discovery of Heaven (De ontdekking van de hemel, 1992) at the Royal Society of Literature.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 As at Göteborg and Barcelona, the Flemish Behoud de Begeerte Foundation organised for the SFB a literary theatrical event in the Riverside Studios which was a success of its kind. This time the theme was love and jealousy, the title The Green-Eyed Monster. Authors read from their work, and the entertainment included music and film. At the final great Gala of Poetry poets from the Low Countries were nicely intercut with English-language poets such as Simon Armitage, Tracie Morris, Blake Morrison, Margaret Atwood, the Chinese poet BEI DAO and the Chilean Ariel Dorfman. A full house at the Peacock Theatre heard Dorfman begin by saying that never before had he recited poetry in a city where Pinochet was held prisoner. Claus, Hertmans and Nooteboom read their work in English (only Nooteboom read a poem in Dutch). The blind Frisian bard Tsjêbbe Hettinga* made a great impression with his incantatory, half-singing recitation. Because apart from the Chinese he was the only one to read in his own language, Frisian? And this brings us to the language problem. In what language should one read, in London? In English, or in Dutch with the English translation simultaneously projected? At the gala Claus read his cycle on Shelley in the beautiful translation by Theo Hermans and Yann Lovelock. But his defiant ‘Nu nog’, delivered in Dutch during The Green-Eyed Monster, was probably more powerful. And what good comes of it all? wonders the outsider hidden deep inside each of those involved, once the words have faded and the writers have gone home. Is it really worth the effort? Generally speaking, the ‘one language, many voices’ model seems to work well abroad. Just look at Claus and Nooteboom, who showed off each other brilliantly in their conversation with Paul Binding in the British Library. This literary week in London was a success in itself, but one cannot look for rapid results. Didn't Ovid say of the drip that wears away the stone: ‘non vi sed saepe cadendo’ - ‘not by its force, but by its constant falling’?

LUC DEVOLDERE Translated by Tanis Guest.

* Tsjebbe Hettinga, Strange Shores / Frjemde kusten (Tr. James Brockway). Ljouwert: Frysk en Frij. 1999; 61 pp. ISBN 90-73554-37-3.

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Music

Ictus at work. Photo by Mirjam Devriendt.

Emphatically Contemporary The Ictus Ensemble from Brussels

The Latin word Ictus denotes an emphasis in the spoken word or in music. The emphasis the Ictus Ensemble wishes to make is in the field of contemporary music (Brussels is a bilingual city: French and Dutch, and for strategic reasons many bi-cultural organisations opt for a name in a ‘neutral’ language such as English or Latin). Ictus was founded in 1994, and in a very short time has established a permanent place for itself in the musical life of Brussels. It received support in this from several powerful partners: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's internationally celebrated dance company Rosas, the Kaaitheater and the Brussels Philharmonic Society. So, after Liège, where the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles was founded as early as 1968, and Antwerp, where a similar ensemble called Champ d'Action came into being in 1989, the capital has also acquired a large ensemble that concentrates on the interpretation of contemporary music. Compared to these two other ensembles, Ictus' concert programmes are much more eclectic. One of the reasons for this is undoubtedly the way the ensemble came into being. Ictus was founded under the aegis of Rosas, and today still functions as that company's resident orchestra. The advantage of this is that they are guaranteed a certain number of productions every year, with numerous performances including foreign tours, which is an unprecedented luxury in the world of contemporary music. But it also means that they have much less scope to mark out an independent artistic policy of their own. Apart from this, their eclecticism also springs from a deliberate choice. Since it came into being, Ictus' concert programmes have been compiled by all the permanent musicians in the group, rather than by an artistic director or committee. The consequence of this is of course a considerable heterogeneity. By contrast with, for example, Champ d'Action, which selects only the most innovative repertoire from the broad range of contemporary music, Ictus' concerts offer something for everyone, and their repertoire reflects the diversity of its members' musical preferences. The group does however attempt to resist fragmentation by organising thematic concerts and musical portraits. And lastly, Ictus is also open to pioneering projects: in autumn 1998, for example, they gave an improvisation concert together with the jazz group Aka Moon. A performance planned for the largest Benelux pop

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 festival in Torhout / Werchter (from this year on only in Werchter) was cancelled at the last moment. The biggest difference between contemporary music ensembles and other musical groups is probably the fact that most of the work played is by living composers. This has the advantage that it makes possible artistic feedback to and from the composer, and Ictus naturally makes full use of this. Workshops and rehearsals with the composer advance both the understanding of the music performed and the artistic growth of the ensemble. This is certainly true for the works Ictus regularly commissions from renowned composers: the first performance of a new work brings with it an exceptional responsibility and creates a close artistic bond with the composer. This has been the case with works by such composers as Magnus Lindberg, Toshio Hosokawa, Philippe Boesmans and Helmut Oehring. The sampler / artist David Shea and Ictus members Jean-Luc Fafchamps and George van Dam have also come into their own as composers with the ensemble. Rosas undoubtedly provided the springboard for the group's international career. But now Ictus can make its way in the world of international contemporary music on its own merits. Proof of this is their numerous invitations to prestigious festivals abroad. For example, in November 1999 the group will once more be a guest at the Contemporary Music festival in Huddersfield, probably the most important festival of its type in Great Britain. Credit for this invitation goes to Ictus' good relations with several prominent British com-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 289 posers. In January 1998, for example, they were working intensively with Jonathan Harvey in Brussels. In April 1998 they gave the first performance of a new piece by Rebecca Saunders at the Witten Festival in Germany. Both James Wood and George Benjamin have conducted Ictus in performances of their own work. And the ensemble does not neglect the work of American composers. They have especially good memories of their collaboration with Steve Reich at the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels in 1998, as does the audience! Plans for the immediate future are also promising. Ictus remains true to its mission to present contemporary music in all its stylistic variations to audiences in Brussels and the rest of Europe.

MARK DELAERE Translated by Gregory Ball.

Discography

Thierry De Mey, Kinok. Megadisc, 1997. Luca Francesconi, Solo Pieces and Compositions for Ensemble. Megadisc (MDC 7834), 1998. Magnus Lindberg, Clarinet Quintet and Related Rocks (for 2 pianos, 2 percussionists and electronics). Megadisc (MDC 7835), 1998.

Science

Hugo de Vries in America

Almost a hundred years ago, in the autumn of 1900, the first volume was published of Die Mutationstheorie, the magnum opus of the Dutch biologist Hugo de Vries (1848-1935). The Amsterdam botanist was then at the height of his fame. One of the heavyweights of the University of Amsterdam, he had ushered in modern biology there with his study of the growth and life processes of plants in 1877. But it was his experimental research on the mechanism of heredity and the emergence of new species that had earned him international acclaim. Darwin's reputation had faded somewhat over the years. Few biologists were completely convinced of the correctness of his theory of gradual evolution. De Vries, on the other hand, by advancing the theory of saltatory evolution, succeeded in appealing to the imagination. Heredity theory became the new backbone of biology, especially after the rediscovery of Mendel's laws, also in 1900. It was in Die Mutationstheorie that De Vries offered an impressive summary of his research. His ideas about saltatory evolution were also enthusiastically received in far-off America. In 1903 this led to an invitation by the University of California at Berkeley to teach a course in mutation theory in the next summer session. After some negotiation De Vries accepted the invitation. The trip gave him the chance to visit the original habitats of Oenothera lamarckiana (the great evening primrose), the

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 plant that had been the subject of so many of his experiments in heredity theory. He was anxious to learn whether the plant had possessed the ability to produce mutants while still in its native setting, or whether that characteristic did not develop until after it was introduced to Europe. While in America, De Vries also wanted to visit the breeders of new varieties of fruits, such as the illustrious Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa, California. When it became known that De Vries was planning to go to America, other institutions also approached him with requests to visit their cities. It wasn't every day that one had the chance of showing off a celebrity like De Vries. The University of Chicago asked him to give several guest lectures, Columbia offered him an honorary doctorate. De Vries was invited to speak at the big international congress in St Louis, and his colleague Charles Davenport invited him to conduct the official opening of the new Station for Experimental Evolution in Cold Springs Harbor, near New York, which had been inspired by De Vries' own ideas. Thus an itinerary took shape that ran from May to October 1904 and took him from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and from there via Yellowstone, Chicago, Kansas and Washington back to New York and the Netherlands. Such an extensive journey through the United States was still quite unusual at that time, and when the account of his trip was published in 1905 (To California - Naar Californië) it found a ready market. The same was true of the report of De Vries' 1906 trip to America, which took him back to Berkeley (To California II - Naar Californië II, 1907). During this journey he visited such places of interest as the Grand Canyon and Salt Lake City, while also reporting on the consequences of the earthquake and fire that had ravaged San Francisco only a few months before his arrival. The pattern repeated itself in 1912. when De Vries travelled to the south-eastern United States to add lustre to the opening of a new university in Houston, the Rice Institute, and to search once again for Oenothera lamarckiana. This journey too was followed by the publication of a book (From Texas to Florida - Van Texas naar Florida, 1913). In the midst of all this travel De Vries also managed to write many letters to his wife and his mother in which he described the minor inconveniences and pleasures that are usually absent from accounts written for the public. It was a happy thought of De Vries' biographer, Erik Zevenhuizen, to turn these travel accounts and letters into an annotated anthology. It makes for an altogether pleasant read, from start to finish. In his relationships with students and colleagues, Hugo de Vries tended to be a moody, gruff sort of person, someone people respected but did not love. The letters, however, reveal quite a different personality. In his daily association with his hosts and their families, he seems the opposite of the ogre that he was in Amsterdam. He plays tag with the children of his hosts, patiently joins them in constructing towers out of building blocks, and is a willing participant in the Easter egg hunt. His letters also reveal his ordinary human side: he's constantly worried about the proximity of the toilet (something to do with his ailing ‘system’),

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Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) at Mr Sinclair's cactus farm. San Antonio, TX, October 1912. he's nervous about giving his first lecture, and he shares his concern about a mosquito in his room with his wife. The reader soon begins to wonder whether this was in fact the ‘real’ Hugo de Vries, whether the potentate of Amsterdam's botanical gardens was ‘just’ a pose, and if so, what does this say about the public aspect of science in the early twentieth century? Never a great writer, De Vries' letters are more chatty than compelling. If the criterion for a good travel report is the author's ability to evoke a clear picture of places where the reader has never been, then De Vries' accounts cannot be called successful. But even more striking is the fact that he never uses his experiences in the United States to take a critical look at conditions in Europe or the Netherlands. (The one exception is his emphasis on the practical courses in America, which he believes Europe would do well to emulate.) Good books by Europeans about America are always also books about Europe, but De Vries' books do not fit this category. He gives us little more than the usual criticism of American superficiality, their lack of table manners (children who comb their hair while eating breakfast), and their indifference to rank and class, while on the other hand praising their proverbial energy, practicality and hospitality. He never really penetrates the American culture. For example, nowhere does De Vries show any understanding of the significance that the wilderness has for the American national identity. He travelled across the United States at a time when President Theodore Roosevelt (with whom he shook hands in Washington) was setting aside huge areas of rugged landscape for parks and nature reserves in order to preserve the kind of land that the American pioneers were always defending themselves against, the land that ultimately made them what they were in the early twentieth century. But we hear nothing about ‘the wilderness’ and the formative role that the ‘frontier’ played in American history. Didn't his hosts speak of these things? Considering the resistance that Roosevelt's policy evoked, especially in the Far West, it seems very unlikely. Indeed, the whole notion of ‘nature’ that De Vries took with him on his journey was actually an unreflective, rather old-fashioned concept no longer in vogue in the Netherlands either. De Vries' love for nature was great, as Zevenhuizen notes in his introduction, but his preference was for a certain kind of nature - not the great outdoors that had been left to its own devices, but pleasant, organised, tamed nature that had become a servant of human civilisation. Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, where

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 nature induces an experience of the sublime, were only mildly fascinating to him; it was the charming hills of Long Island and the cultivated areas of the desert that pleased De Vries most. He looks at nature with the eyes of a agriculturist. He unhesitatingly makes distinctions between harmful and useful plants, dismisses attractive bits of untilled land as useless terrain and applauds the felling of large areas of virgin forest as a sign of progress. The poetry of Heimans and Thijsse, who revived natural history in the Netherlands at the turn of the century, bringing it new popularity and depicting even the commonest plants and animals as unusual natural phenomena, is completely absent from De Vries. His description of the consecutive growth zones observed while climbing Mount Hamilton (to visit Lick Observatory) tends to resemble a bulb grower's sales catalogue. What, finally, was the scientific importance of De Vries' journeys? The Amsterdam professor twice published his Berkeley lectures in books meant for a wider audience, and that certainly must have helped his theories become better known. But the search for Oenothera lamarckiana ended in failure. In Kansas and Alabama, De Vries found all manner of varieties and subspecies, but never the original plant. In the end, he cautiously concluded that the material he had

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 291 worked with in Amsterdam may not have originated in North America but in the more inaccessible South America, that even before its arrival in North America the evening primrose had undergone a great deal of crossbreeding, and that in general it was an unreliable choice for research. Naturally, the withdrawal of this evidence did not automatically mean the death of the mutation theory, but it did cast it in a doubtful light. At the same time, at the Station for Experimental Evolution in Cold Spring Harbor, which had been set up to pursue De Vries' ideas and, incidentally, had been opened by the man himself, research on the evening primrose was being carried out that showed results contrary to De Vries' own notions. This produced a rather remarkable situation: while De Vries allowed himself to be lionised all over the United States as the great European botanist, he and his American colleagues were coming up with one argument after another to bring down his mutation theory - which is as it should be in science.

K. VAN BERKEL Translated by Nancy Forest-Flier.

Hugo de Vries, O Wies! 't Is hier zo mooi. Reizen in Amerika. (Edited and with an introduction by Erik Zevenhuizen). Amsterdam / Antwerp: Atlas, 1998; 368 pp. ISBN 90-2542-370-1. Society

Gender and the Politics of Office Work

It is now more than twenty-five years since female students of history in the Netherlands first began to criticise the systematic absence of women from existing historiography. They were following in the feminist footsteps of their English and American sisters, who had raised the issue before them, and by doing so they shaped the feminist movement in the universities. Much has changed since that time. These days women's studies, or its more modern variant gender studies, is part of the curriculum at Dutch universities and they have research institutes dedicated to the subject, which is increasingly acknowledged as a distinct field of scholarship. As a result women's history has made great strides, nationally and internationally, and it is now generally recognised that without a knowledge of women's history and the relationship between men and women it is impossible to write modern cultural or social history. Women's history in the Netherlands can boast a number of publications of various kinds and its own association, and its scholars are in regular contact with their international colleagues. In Amsterdam there is a major international archive, the International Institute and Archive for the Women's Movement (IIAV), with important international collections. Among the more prominent historians is Francisca de Haan, who graduated in this field. Her thesis has now been adapted for the international market and published in English. The book is based on the arguments of the well-known American historian Joan Wallach Scott, who maintains that gender is a fundamental part of the origin of all

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 historical processes, even where at first sight this seems not to be the case. Building on this, De Haan demonstrates that the massive female presence now to be found in offices is the result of a hard-fought struggle: against reluctant employers, against trades unions, against an ethic which said that they would do better to stay at home, and against men. To understand what is innovatory about this argument we must first look at the place of women in the Dutch labour market. In contrast to the United States and the United Kingdom, women in the Netherlands have never been employed for paid labour outside the home in large numbers. Those who were, worked out of necessity; but in general it was still thought better that a woman should be provided for financially by her husband, the breadwinner. Until well into the sixties of the twentieth century Dutch statistics on female labour differed sharply from those of other Western countries. The fact that it was uncommon for women to go out to work led to hostility against working women and a moral climate which regarded paid work as not respectable. Partly because of this, the debate on the history of feminism over the last hundred and fifty years has contained little on the separate issue of the nature of female work or the controversy surrounding female work. At most, the discussion has focused on exclusion and the question why women did not work. Yet in the history of female labour there have been significant moments when these topics were discussed and argued about. De Haan calls the sum total of these ‘the women's labour movement’, which crystallised in the National Exhibition of Women's Work held in The Hague in 1898. This exhibition, which literally showed the work done by women, was organised and attended by women from all over the country. For months the press devoted attention to working conditions, terms of employment and the like. The initiative was continued in the National Bureau for Women's Labour. The effect was enormous, and new possibilities were opened up. There were debates about the need for female employees to be organised. In the years that followed women were admitted to many trades unions, including the office workers' union. But only after a violent struggle, which De Haan describes at length. Despite the gradual progress, and the accelerating increase in female office workers over the course of the twentieth century, office work continued to be divided into women's jobs and men's jobs. Women continued to occupy humble positions: subservient, lower-paid, employed mainly as clerical staff or secretaries. The post of secretary, though fairly low in the office hierarchy, was surrounded by the aura of glamorous novelty, by the image of the independent woman fending for herself, by connotations of class and education, and by the secretary's direct access to the boss and to senior management.

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Training schools were set up to improve the status of the secretary's job; the most famous was the Schoevers Institute where, from 1922 on, the training and responsibilities of secretaries were further developed. The institute and its director Mies Lanen acted as midwives in the greater professionalisation of women, including those higher up in the hierarchy. More than once this emancipatory development was in danger of being blocked by measures designed to prevent paid work, either by women in general or by married women. The argument used was that the ultimate and proper goal of women was marriage and motherhood. In times of high unemployment there was also the fear that women would take jobs away from men. De Haan demonstrates convincingly that women were not simply dependent on social structures and prejudices, but that their actions and activities also shaped history. They contested decisions, and by doing so affected their workplace and their environment in greater or lesser ways. And so the book ends with a chapter on memories of office work, based on a questionnaire completed by over 500 former female office workers. They provide a picture of the importance they attached to their work, of their origins, of their attitudes. Their stories tell how, along with the emancipatory function of office work, the office was also a place of humiliation and discrimination. The author herself states that these questionnaires have thrown light on the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, a theme which until the 'eighties had received too little attention. I would have liked to know more about this. And it is with these pages that my criticism begins. The questionnaires and their responses provide an excellent insight into such matters as everyday conversation, norms and codes. But precisely on sexual harassment I find the reproduced material rather thin. Questionnaires and letters of this kind should be seen as an opportunity to trawl up more information. But on the one hand these passages get bogged down in the theory of sexual harassment, while on the other they give only superficial information. Women say that it was a common occurrence, but these passages provide no insight into what shame they felt or how much they discussed it among themselves; we learn only that they tried to avoid it as far as possible. Can one acquire adequate information about the past by sending out 500 questionnaires? That is the question. Our view of the past is, after all, time-determined, volatile and mutable. A letter is a snapshot of how one feels about the past at the moment of writing. But memories of the past are by their nature fragmentary, and where memories of traumatic events are concerned memory itself is multi-faceted. The interesting point about modern historical research into subjective experiences from the past is that we know that almost every experience can be set against another, and is at least ambivalent. As an oral historian, I would not be satisfied with the answer that people tried to steer clear of the problem. I should want to know to what extent the retrospective view of office life is determined by the traumatic experience. In short, I would have interviewed those people. The same goes for other, less visible matters which play as large a part in office life as sexuality, as well as issues not discussed such as competition between women, jealousy, and perhaps such matters as unconscious differences of status and origin. De Haan sets the development of the struggle for office employment against the background of the Dutch phenomenon of pillarisation, and compares it with the advent of women in offices in other countries. She describes the Dutch reaction

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 against women office workers as fairly extreme. In a word, the office is one of those places where the battle of the sexes was carried on with great ferocity, and so she has made gender a category in the history of office work. This book is an adaptation and a translation of a thesis. It is the much, and rightly, praised product of lengthy study. But I have some doubts about this adaptation, which obviously provides speakers of other languages with a sound insight into a piece of Dutch history. Too much in the text has been cut, in proportion to the notes in the Dutch edition. Where the original edition discusses national debates, this edition furnishes a disproportionate amount of detail for an English-speaking readership. There are so many names, so many organisations and so many forms of almost self-evident knowledge of interest mainly to the specialist in Dutch historiography. Here, of course, we have the great problem with Dutch history in translation. Is it possible to translate a book like this mainly by means of abridgements, without radical reworking? In such a case, should not the Dutch context receive much more detailed treatment? These are questions which perplex me too, and to which I have no answer. But I can imagine that not everyone is happy with this edition. However, the book is indeed a splendid supplementary source for readers concerned with other aspects of the history of work or with women's history. It certainly provides an insight into the difficult struggle facing women in a country which is so hostile to female labour, and where so many things concerning women are still not regulated.

SELMA LEYDESDORFF Translated by Tanis Guest.

Francisca de Haan, Gender and the Politics of Office Work, The Netherlands 1860-1940. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998; 241 pp. ISBN 90-5356-304-0.

Controversial Conclusions and Useful Recommendations The First 25 Years of the Social and Cultural Planning Office

It was the Den Uyl government which decided in 1973 to set up the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) with a view to complementing the activities of the Central Planning Bureau, where economic forecasts are analysed. The 1960s saw radical social and cultural changes, and the government felt obliged to respond

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Is Dutch society muiti-cultural? Photo by Marian van de Veen. to them, the Social and Cultural Planning Office was set up to do just that. Den Uyl's government saw it as the means to achieving their policy of social equality and ‘levelling’. The SCP's first report was published in 1975 and contained only 240 pages; the report published towards the end of 1998 contained no less than 790 pages. The two-yearly reports comprise a number of standard sections dealing with the state of the Dutch nation: healthcare, welfare, social welfare, housing, education, leisure activities, media, culture and justice. But the SCP actually examines any area which may be relevant. Its last report, for example, looked at the involvement of ethnic minorities in social and political life in the Netherlands. As far as participation in politics is concerned, the SCP concluded that all attempts to narrow the gulf between people and government have hitherto failed. Twenty-five years of administrative reform policy, aimed at closing that gap, have produced only one result: the so-called corrective referendum. At the end of last year the spotlight fell on the SCP's report examining social change in the Netherlands over the past 25 years. In the report, the SCP put something of a damper on the widely applauded achievements of the first ‘purple’ coalition (of socialists and liberals): ‘The so-called polder model has not only produced benefits. Attempts by the government, employers and employees to modify wage claims and restrict social security by no longer covering all risks also have a downside: over the past ten years there has been a growing inequality of income. The standard of living of those on benefit has not kept pace with that of people in work.’ Another controversial conclusion concerned the multi-cultural society so applauded by progressive politicians: the SCP concluded that there was no such thing. Dutch culture remains a predominantly Western-European one, to which the one and a half million immigrants in the Netherlands have to adapt. This does not mean, of course, that ethnic groups do not maintain their own cultural practices in the home, but there is little room for them in society as a whole. By way of comparison, SCP researchers point to countries such as Surinam, where the Creoles, Hindustanis and Chinese co-exist in a truly multi-cultural society. Dutch society is at most multi-ethnic; a true ‘melting pot’ of ethnic cultures does not exist in the Netherlands. SCP researchers are by no means reluctant to publish contrary findings. This time, looking back over twenty-five years of social change, their findings matched those

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 from a report published four years earlier, namely that individualisation is the most significant ongoing trend. In 1970, single-person households accounted for 17% of all households; this figure has now doubled and the trend continues. The report also contained, among others, the following conclusions: - Improved healthcare has led to an ageing population. Average life expectancy has risen by 4 years over the past quarter of a century. However, this also means that, in their ‘twilight years’ people spend a comparatively longer period of time in poor health. An average Dutch person now spends 60 years of his life in good health. - The working population has increased by 2 million to almost 7 million. More than half are women. There has been a spectacular increase in employment opportunities over the past ten years. The nature of work has also changed considerably; there has been a shift from production to services, and a higher level of work is required. In 1971, 15% of the working population were employed in managerial and decision-making posi-

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tions. This figure has now doubled. The number of people in permanent employment decreased over the period examined. More people have part-time jobs, and 12% of those in employment are on flexible contracts. - Unemployment is highest among the low-skilled. Many guest workers who came to the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s have since lost their jobs. Five percent of the Dutch population are now unemployed, and this figure is expected to fall. Combating employment among immigrant groups, however, is still a major problem. - During the period in question, the Dutch population increased by some 2.5 million - a high figure by European standards. The housing stock increased by a similar number, and the quality of housing also improved significantly. - The number of young people of school age decreased by 20% between 1970 and 1998, but the number of young people actually at school decreased by only 1%. SCP researchers also concluded that there was over-consumption of education. Twenty-five years ago, that was no more than a dream. - Most people experience culture through the mass media. Visits to exhibitions and performances account for only a fraction of culture enjoyed through television, radio and the Internet. Theatre, ballet and concert attendance has increased, largely as a result of the popularity of pop concerts. After a decline in the 1980s, the cinema is now enjoying a revival and attendance is stable. Classical music concerts and opera are becoming more popular, but museums are becoming less popular. Television accounts for 28% of total leisure time. - In 1975, 450,000 crimes were registered by the police. Ten years later, this figure had doubled, reaching a record level of 1.3 million in 1994. This put the Netherlands on a par with other western-European countries. The trend is partly due to the fact that people are more willing to report crimes, although it is suspected that many crimes are not subsequently registered. According to the police, 70% of crimes are crimes against property; violent crimes account for 6%. The social climate is becoming increasingly hostile. - In the political sphere, the polarisation which characterised the 1970s decreased considerably, with the confessional parties being particularly affected. The Dutch Liberal party (VVD) profited most from this. In general, people clearly became less interested in politics.

Interest in the SCP's twice-yearly report is increasing all the time, especially among politicians. The SCP has an army of researchers who commission studies in the many areas examined, or use university research as the basis for their own studies. Once the research is complete, the SCP does not shrink from giving policy advice. That, after all, is why it was established. In its last report, the SCP recommended promoting flexible and part-time jobs, and making self-employment more attractive, in order to combat high unemployment among the low-skilled. But the SCP is not completely independent. Before its findings are published, they are submitted to the relevant ministries, where negative observations may be removed. It would appear that the SCP is prepared to sacrifice something of its independence in order to be taken seriously by the government and policy-makers. After twenty-five years in pursuit of social equality, researchers and politicians are now much more realistic. The SCP's original objectives have proved much more

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 difficult to realise than was thought in the beginning, and social inequality is increasing. Back in 1973, Den Uyl and his followers believed that society could be repaired, but it has not been as easy as he thought.

PAUL VAN VELTHOVEN Translated by Yvette Mead

The report Sociaal en Cultureel Rapport 1998. 25 jaar sociale verandering (SCP, 1998; 790 pp.) will appear in English at the end of 1999. Further information is also available at http://www.scp.nl

Football without Frontiers Euro 2000 in the Low Countries

On 10 June 2000, Brussels will more than ever before be the heart of Europe. That evening sees the kick-off of the ‘Euro 2000’ European Football Championships (soccer) at the King Baudouin Stadium. For three weeks, until 2 July, Belgium and the Netherlands will play host to the first mega-sporting event of the 21st century. It will be a unique tournament, the first to be hosted jointly by two countries. At long last, football without frontiers. Euro 2000 will be the most important sporting event for the Low Countries since the Olympic Games of 1920 (Antwerp) and 1928 (Amsterdam). The impact of sport has increased enormously since then, however, and the organisation of the forthcoming European Championships can therefore claim a place among the largest projects of this century. After the Olympic Games and the World Cup, the European Championships are the biggest sporting event in the world, and elicit the greatest global response. ‘The most important event for Belgium since the Expo, the World Exhibition in 1958’, says Michel D'Hooghe, President of the Belgian Football League, not without a certain sense of pathos. World-wide visibility is guaranteed. For three whole weeks 190 TV stations will be focusing their cameras on the Low Countries. A cumulative total of seven billion viewers is expected to follow the event. Between five and six thousand journalists will descend on the Low Countries. This event presents a first-class opportunity for both countries to project and promote themselves. Euro 2000 expects 1.23 million viewers for each of the 31 matches. The organisation's budget amounts to 2.6 billion Belgian francs (c. £43 million / $74 million), but the total economic input is estimated at 16 billion Belgian francs (c. £266 million / $457 million). The tournament will mean extra work for bus companies, railways and the hotel and catering industry.

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Tournament director Alain Courtois estimates that for the duration of the tournament 3,900 additional jobs will be created. For small nations such as the Netherlands and Belgium, a joint organisation is the only way of putting on such a mega-event. Euro 2000 had no alternative but to pursue a transnational policy. The Belgian and Dutch broadcasting associations (VRT and NOS) are forming a consortium. The same applies in the field of telecommunications, where Belgacom and the Dutch PTT are joining forces; the Belgian and Dutch railways will also be working together. The collaboration does present additional problems, however. Past tournaments have taken place in one country, under one legal system, and in one language. This time there will be two countries, each with its own sensitivities to be considered. Both Dutch and Belgian law (the latter sometimes differing in the Dutch and French-speaking regions of the country) will have to be respected and in some areas regulations will have to be harmonised. This will demand continuous consultation between the governments of the two countries. Apart from this, a sense of diplomacy has sometimes been necessary to reconcile these two different cultures, bringing together the assertive Dutch and the pragmatic Belgians. Generally speaking, however, the collaboration between the two countries has gone smoothly and the most difficult decisions have been taken in perfect harmony. Belgium will play host to 15 of the 31 matches. The final has been allocated to the Netherlands (Rotterdam). In exchange, Brussels has been given the opening match and Belgium (Ghent and Brussels) will also carry out the two draws which precede the tournament. The European Union sees the tournament as an ideal vehicle for enabling everyone to get used to the euro, the common European currency which will be introduced in 2002. All tickets will be priced in euros. Following the French ticket debacle (more tickets than seats), the European football authority UEFA was determined to prevent a repeat at all costs. Exclusive contracts with tour operators offering complete packages and speculating on sales in advance have been banned. The European irritation at the large number of tickets which the French kept for themselves must also not be repeated. No less than 69% of the available seats will be reserved for the ordinary football enthusiast. The distribution of the tickets also obviously plays a key role in the security plans. All tickets will be registered by name and no-one will be able to obtain more than two tickets. Following the problems during the World Cup in France with violent English football supporters in Marseilles and German rioters in Lens, very stringent precautions are being taken. The short distances between the stadiums pose an additional threat here. France kept an impressive police strength of no less than 5,000 officers in reserve during the World Cup, but Belgium and the Netherlands will not have an unlimited supply of officers during Euro 2000. Those responsible for maintaining public order are keen that information about football vandalism should travel faster than the hooligans themselves. Both preventive and repressive approaches will be harmonised in the two countries in accordance with the law. A legislative basis is being sought to enable troublemakers to be picked up early, including when they operate in groups. The biggest concern for the organisers, however, is the traffic. A great deal of effort is going into a carefully thought-out mobility plan to prevent the Low Countries

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 from becoming gridlocked with bumper-to-bumper vehicles for three weeks. Public transport will be promoted more than ever before. Euro 2000 expects to be able to tackle all the problems in advance and is looking forward to a real feast of football. In addition to the matches, all manner of activities are being organised to show off the rich history, culture, gastronomy and leading-edge technology which characterise the Low Countries.

FRANçOIS COLIN Translated by Julian Ross. Visual Arts

The Salve of Humour

In 1992 I visited the Netherlands for the first time and was fascinated by the ways in which contemporary Dutch art differed from New York art. My increasing interest was mostly met with puzzlement at home. My fellow critics and editors and my artist friends needed basic information: ‘What is it?’ they asked. ‘Who -?’ Since then, the information level has improved in New York. Now most of the questioning comes from the Dutch artists and critics I meet on my trips to the Netherlands. They ask, with incredulity and a little suspicion: ‘Why are you interested in Dutch art?’ That's one of the reasons right there: that modesty, that lack of American-style hubris. This characteristic also, however, explains the low profile of art from the Low Countries since the demise of Mondrian (and Magritte). There has been no movement that would allow the introduction of a group of artists, like the mobs of German Neo-Expressionists and the Italian Trans-Avantgardia in the 1980s, who were impossible to overlook. The American art public has no general idea of a Dutch or Flemish contemporary style or theme. Collective visibility is nil. But individually, the position is not so bleak. In fact, one might claim Dutch artists are on the ascendant - by stealth. Adriaan van der Have, proprietor of the Amsterdam gallery called Torch, made precisely this claim to me recently: many important galleries in the international art centres now have a Dutch artist or two on their roster, and if these cases are totted up, the international position of Dutch art is higher than it has been in decades, maybe centuries!

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Lily van der Stokker, Curlicue, 1994. Acrylpaint on wall. Photo courtesy Galerie Van Gelder, Amsterdam.

Twenty years ago, there were two Dutch artists of standing in New York. Jan Dibbets and Ger van Elk were both identified with the Conceptual art movement and showed their work at the prestigious Marian Goodman Gallery in Manhattan. Van Elk's often amusing works combine painting, photography and sometimes sculpture to toy with painting's history or his own dignity as he struggles to make art. Dibbet's works often have to do with measuring time, space or position by means of photography. He's usually deadpan, but I'm fond of an early seventies work of his in which a series of butted-together images of the same horizon are repositioned to make a gentle rise that he titles Dutch Mountains - a tongue-in-cheek reshaping of his sedimentary homeland. It's no accident that humour plays a part in my discussion of these artists' works, for humour was one of the distinctive qualities I noticed in contemporary art of the Low Countries. It made me want to understand a culture that would produce such work. Two artists who now exhibit regularly in the US can illustrate what I mean. Teun Hocks shows at PPOW Gallery in New York. He photographs, paints and ‘performs’: that is, he constructs a setting, costumes himself, poses, and makes a black-and-white photograph which he then colours. His works often mock or subvert an artistic convention, as when he depicts himself playing with a toy train on a circular track; according to the laws of perspective, if the little train makes a loop on that track and comes around behind him, it will be life-size and he'll be in trouble. Or he evokes social or cultural conventions, as when he shows himself as an adventurer on a barren plain below a belching volcano, who has gathered together a few twigs and wants to start a fire. He waits for a glowing cinder to land in the right spot, poised with a coffee pot in hand, needing an infusion of Dutch lifeblood. Hocks' work is usually based on the extension of logic to an illogical end, and calls up a gentle pathos. A recent piece, characteristic except that he does not appear in it, shows a sapling tied to a stout stake, with a watering can close by. Someone wants the little tree to flourish. And that must be the same person who has tied a noose to one of its branches, on the optimistic expectation of its growing to an optimal height. Lily van der Stokker makes wall paintings as well as smaller works on paper, and shows regularly at Feature Gallery in New York. She has said that she wants her

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 work to embody all the things that are currently unacceptable in art, such as niceness, sentiment and good cheer. So her wall paintings are full of curlicues and exclamation marks, like telephone doodles writ large. She adds words in several languages, including such phrases as ‘Wow’ and ‘Kusje kusje’. She accompanies these with simplified flowers painted effusive pinks and yellows. Given the teenage-bimbo aura of van der Stokker's paintings, what may be her funniest piece is a commissioned wall painting in her typical style that floridly spells out ‘Motherfucker’. Much contemporary work from the Low Countries deals with domestic matters. These works can range from architectural-functional to analytical, but they typically are about familiar, mundane things rather than the exotic or heroic. Humour can show up here, too, as in the fibreglass sculptures of Joep van Lieshout, who shows at Jack Tilton Gallery in New York and lately has been exhibiting his work under the corporate-sounding name of Atelier van Lieshout. He makes sinks, toilets, isolation pods, even complete camper vehicles. He has a businesslike catalogue for this merchandise, which is noted for its outrageous colours and kitsch taste - his toilets may be red or or-

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 297 ange, for instance, and the camper he parked outside his SoHo gallery was upholstered with egregiously fake fur. On the other hand, the Belgian Luc Tuymans paints the ignoble and the bland, from gas chambers to coffee-pot still lifes. He shows at David Zwimer Gallery in New York. His work does not display the elevated emotion and grand proportions of a German like Anselm Kiefer but is much closer to the settings, subjects and tone of his countrymen Magritte or Broodthaers, in his own foggy style, which produces a feeling of unease. Marijke van Warmerdam, who has shown at Jack Tilton and also with Bronwyn Keenan in New York, makes videos of almost astonishingly ordinary activities: a man in the shower (shown from the chest up), a woman brushing her hair, a boy balancing a soccer ball on his forehead. In their simplicity and repetitiveness, these actions can be so boring they're mesmerising, or so absurdly understated that they provoke laughter. Understatement is also basic to the photography of Rineke Dijkstra. She started out as a newspaper photographer, but struck out in directions that, if still repertorial, no longer seem objective. Among the series of her works that were featured last year in a ‘New Photography’ exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art were young people at the beach, barely pubescent, self-conscious of their bodies, posing dumbly

Teun Hocks, Untitled. 1991. Black and white photo + oil paint, 140 × 130 cm. Photo courtesy Galerie Torch, Amsterdam. before the water with supplementary illumination that makes them look detached from their settings. Another group of works, which Dijkstra photographed in a dance club in England, shows young women killing time before the unblinking gaze of the video camera for several long, long minutes; they lose their poise and grow either increasingly uncomfortable or increasingly self-possessed. If the camera seems to play a disproportionate part here, that should come as no surprise. Since the seventeenth century, the Dutch have been known as observers or

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 describers. It still seems to be true. And that's another of the things that separates them from typical New York artists (if there is such a thing). Much recent art in America has been concerned with identity and self-expression. Dutch work, even in a case like Teun Hocks, who appears in his own work, is never narcissistically focused on the artist's story. Hocks' work, I think, might be seen as a cross between Magritte's visual and conceptual puzzles and the seventeenth-century moralising of Jacob Cats, with whom Hocks shares a range of concerns but not a prescriptive attitude. American viewers who respond to his work know nothing of Cats. They just appreciate the droll humour. Those who don't respond are usually advocates of more strident and political art forms; they think humour is shallow. But it seems to me that the humour in Dutch art is a social salve meant to soothe differences and to make the artist less threatening; it always conceals deeper feelings and meanings.

JANET KOPLOS

Early Low Countries Painting in New York

From late September 1998 to early January 1999, for the first time in its history, the Metropolitan Museum in New York exhibited its own rich collection of ‘Early Netherlandish Painting’ - paintings which were produced in the Northern and especially the Southern Netherlands between 1420 and 1560. The From Van Eyck to Bruegel exhibition brought together works which, because of the terms of the donations, are normally scattered over four different sections of the Metropolitan and The Cloisters. The assembling of the 140 or so works of masters such as Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Gerard David, Rogier van der Weyden, Joos van Cleve, Robert Campin, Joachim Patinir and Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a festival of art history which curator Maryan Ainsworth described as a ‘once in a lifetime’ event. After January 3 all the works were returned to their original collections. The only remaining witness to the exhibition, which enticed several thousand visitors to the Metropolitan, is the impressive catalogue which accompanied it. In six thick chapters the catalogue reflects perfectly the thematic structure of the New York exhibition. First the reader discovers ‘Religious Painting from about 1420 to 1500’, with masterpieces

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 298 like Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion (c. 1430), Robert Campin's Annunciation Triptych (c. 1425-1430) and Hans Memling's Annunciation (1480-1489). In ‘Portraiture: A Meeting of the Sacred and Secular Worlds’ the aim of the ‘Netherlandish’ artists is probably expressed more clearly than in any of the other chapters: to capture precisely the tangible reality of the world as it is seen. Petrus Christus' stunning portrait A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius (1449) and Hans Memling's portraits of the Medici banker from Bruges, Tommaso Portinari, and his wife Maria (1470) are what catch the eye here. The choice of a chapter on ‘Workshop Practice’ was a clever idea on the part of the New York organisers. The description of the studios in Bruges, Tournai, and Antwerp where works were produced almost on an assembly line by specialised masters, journeymen and apprentices, allowed the curators to show some lesser works as well. The accompanying chapter in the catalogue also permits the analysis of the expanding market in works of art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A flourishing business, so it would seem, in which works were both commissioned and produced and sold in the open market - sometimes literally in the display windows of the studios.

Hans Memling, The Annunciation. 1480-1489. Canvas, 76.5 × 54.6 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

From the studio the catalogue moves to the paintings of the master Gerard David who was active in Bruges. The Metropolitan has the largest collection of his paintings in the world. The collection illustrates both his early and his late works, his rejuvenating approach to the art of landscape painting, his innovative approach to traditional themes and the original effects he achieved with light and colour, effects that were to influence whole generations of painters after him. The catalogue brings the reader right into the sixteenth century with the chapter on ‘Religious Painting from 1500 to 1550’ (painters such as Juan de Flandes and Joos van Cleve), and concludes with a crescendo: an analysis of The Harvesters

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of the paintings the New York Metropolitan is exceptionally proud of. The six chapters are preceded by four introductory essays. One of these, ‘How the Picture Got Here’, reads at times like an engrossing detective novel. It seems that the Metropolitan bought Bruegel's The Harvesters in 1919 for a mere 3,370 dollars, from the heirs of the Belgian artist Paul Jean Cels who had died in 1917. But the Metropolitan acquired most of the works through gifts, mainly from New York collectors in the first half of this century. The taste, the financial resources, and the generosity of collectors like Benjamin Altman, Robert Lehman, Michael Friedsam and Jack and Belle Linsky were what shaped the Met's rich collection. Other essays cover the growing market for art indicated above, the relationship between the Low Countries and Italy, and the evolution of taste for, and interest in, ‘Early Netherlandish Painting’ down the centuries. To sum up: a beautifully produced catalogue which - alongside catalogues such as that by Dirk de Vos of Hans Memling (1994) - forms a new milestone in the study of Early Painting from the Low Countries.

PETER VANDERMEERSCH Translated by Sheila M. Dale.

Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen (eds.). From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (distributed by Harry N. Abrams Inc.), 1998; 464 pp. ISBN 0-8109-6528-3.

The Mondrian Bible

The Catalogue Raisonné on Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) which appeared at the end of 1998 has turned out to be an impressive book. The product of more than 25 years' work by Mondrian experts Robert Welsh and Joop Joosten, it weighs almost 7 kilos and numbers more than 1100 pages. The book comprises two volumes and three sections. The first section deals with the works up to early 1911 and has been put together by the leading expert on Mondrian's early work, Robert P. Welsh. Section II covers all works from the summer of 1911 up to Mondrian's last, unfinished work Victory Boogie

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Piet Mondrian, Pier and Ocean (Composition no. 10). 1915. Canvas, 85 × 110 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. © SABAM Belgium 1999.

Woogie and has been compiled by an equally eminent Mondrian expert, Joop Joosten. Sections I and II contain as much information as could be garnered about all existing and lost works by Mondrian, and each work is illustrated. The title, signature, year of creation, materials and sizes have been established, but also the provenance of each work, the exhibitions where they have been shown, the critiques and the literature in which they are mentioned. Some of the works are provided with a commentary, in which reference is made, for example, to a closely related work, the origin or something about the provenance or significance of the work. Section III contains the necessary summaries, such as a list of exhibitions, auctions and a bibliography. Compiling this Mondrian bible has been a real painstaking labour of love. Notwithstanding all the authors' efforts, however, the Catalogue Raisonné is a big disappointment in one respect, and that is the quality of the printing. Anyone opening the book to look at the colour illustrations - and that is after all the first thing you do - sees the back of the illustrations through the other side of the page. On the pages containing Mondrian's early work this creates a restless impression and disrupts the viewing pleasure. On the pages containing the works from 1920 onwards, it is an out-and-out disaster. Mondrian's carefully constructed compositions of horizontals and verticals are joined by grey lines from the illustration on the other side of the page. The appearance of the works - which are so difficult to portray anyway - is totally ruined. Of course, anyone wanting to see the works really well must see them in real life, as it were, but what is the point of wasting such a perfect opportunity to bring together such a large group of works? Small things, such as the out-of-focus illustration of Composition no. 10 from 1912-1913 (section II, p. 20, no. 825), or the sometimes difficult to view illustrations of the more subtle works, such as the flowers, in the catalogue section, can be forgiven. But someone paying so much for a book can surely expect an expertly printed tome. And there is more criticism that can be levelled at the publisher. A brief acknowledgement or note on the publication would have been a good idea. The authors in their sections go to great lengths to explain the system they have used, but

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 an explanation for a number of general selections is nowhere to be found. The reasons governing the selection of colour illustrations, for example, would have been greatly appreciated. As would an acknowledgement of the fact that the catalogue is based on information from 1993. A not unimportant point, because in the last five years a fair number of new articles and books on Mondrian have appeared, and several works have changed hands - such as Victory Boogie Woogie. And why are the authors not introduced anywhere? And why is the choice of the year 1911 to separate the sections not explained anywhere? Initiates know that this is the result of the authors' respective specialisms, but for slightly less initiated users of the book, the division may appear somewhat arbitrary. Then there is the difference in approach between section I and section II. Both authors used the same technique in describing the works. However, Robert P. Welsh provides notes for each group of works created in a given period, such as the first period in Amsterdam (c. 1893-1897), and then describes the works in each group. In the section put together by Joop Joosten there are no such explanatory notes. These omissions aside, this oeuvre catalogue is a tremendous book. Of course there are errors and omissions. For example, by M. Halbertsma's 1981 article in the Journal of Women's Studies about Pier and Ocean from 1915 - designated in the catalogue as Composition 10 in Black and White (B79) is not mentioned (!). And one of the water-colours of a chrysanthemum with which I am familiar is nowhere to be found. Now that the book has appeared, these and probably many other data are bound to surface naturally, and this will only serve to make the picture more complete. Question marks can also be placed alongside the choices made. For example, I wonder why a drawing of a flower is designated as ‘dahlia’ (C101) while it bears a striking resemblance to another drawing of a flower which is designated as a ‘chrysanthemum’ (C73). Why, in the description of the ‘Hilversum Mondrian’ or Composition with Two Lines from 1931 (B229) is there not a single word about the sale which caused such a furore? Of course, this falls slightly outside the usual factual information, but on the other hand an English reader, for example, who has heard something about the matter, might expect that this is the place to find out which work was involved. The great significance of the catalogue, however, is

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 300 that we now have a virtually complete picture of Mondrian's oeuvre. Works which have already been regularly published or exhibited can now at last be compared with other, sometimes still ‘hidden’ works. Just leafing through the book, Mondrian's breadth as a painter becomes clear. For a long time, all attention was focused on his work under the banner of ‘neoplasticism’ and the path which led to it, but now a clear insight can be gained into the way Mondrian investigated all manner of possibilities. A fine example of this is the unusually - in Mondrian's oeuvre - mobile scene of a farmer's wife trying to control a cow, which Mondrian painted after the French artist Dupré. The photographic material in the catalogue also increases our understanding. Where necessary, the rear of a work is also shown, which sometimes contains yet another work (B146). And the section on his early work often contains photos of the subject, so that the choices Mondrian made with respect to his composition become clearer. In the list of exhibitions, photos of the exhibition are included where available. These photos not only show which works were shown at which exhibition, but also tell a great deal about the way they were presented: often much closer together than is normal in current gallery practice, and often hanging above each other. Finally, it is worth noting that the publication advances research on Mondrian enormously. Two thick volumes, in which virtually all available information is brought together, will save researchers a great deal of work and enable them to concentrate their efforts on the problems they are seeking to solve. Moreover, the presence of so much information and image material raises new questions which can only increase our understanding of Mondrian's oeuvre.

SASKIA BAK Translated by Julian Ross.

Robert P. Welsh and Joop M. Joosten, Piet Mondrian. Catalogue Raisonné (2 vols.). Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1998; 482 + 668 pp. ISBN 90-6153-367-8.

Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age

Michael North's Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age is a readable and comprehensive survey of Dutch seventeenth-century art from an economic and social-historical aspect. The first chapter provides a historical outline of different approaches to the interpretation of Dutch seventeenth-century art. From Hegel and Fromentin to contemporary studies, we are given an overview of successive theories of realistic reading, iconology and social-historical study of art. A particular point is made to emphasise that sociological analysis of Dutch art has been based on a model originally developed in the study of Italian Renaissance art. This idea reappears in the ‘Conclusion’ where the author suggests a brief typological comparison between Italian Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Bartholomeus van der Helst, The Amsterdam Merchant Daniel Bernard (1626-1714). 1669. Canvas, 124 × 113 cm. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

The strongest point of this historiographical introduction is its social-historical part. Sadly, however, it is selective and incomplete. For instance, there is no reflection on Simon Schama's cultural anthropology or any semiotics-related studies in art history, such as the book on Dutch marriage portraiture by David R. Smith or Mieke Bal's articles and monograph on Rembrandt. Also missing are considerations of recent innovative approaches by Svetlana Alpers and Celeste Brusati. Owing to the five-year gap between the original German publication and this English translation, the introduction is bound to be out of date. This becomes particularly noticeable when North's historiography is compared, for instance, to the anthology Realism Reconsidered edited by Wayne Franits and published in the same year as North's book. Franits' collection of old and new articles presents a more complete, contemporary and diverse survey of perspectives, issues and problems arising from our perception of the apparent naturalism of Dutch paintings in relation to their possible meanings.1. The second chapter establishes what a Marxist might identify as the economic basis for the art superstructure discussed in the rest of the book. Making no direct reference to art itself, the chapter gives an economic history of the Dutch Golden Age that is implicitly presented as the material condition for the development of contemporary art. We are told how the Dutch Republic became ‘a leading economic and world power’ with an ever increasing per capita income, even in the years of stagnation in the second half of the century. The third chapter explores how this high

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 301 national income was distributed and used in society, and analyses historical changes in the nation's lifestyle from the beginning of the ‘Golden Age’ to its end. Seventeenth-century Dutch society is described as ‘unique in early modern Europe’, its power belonging to a prosperous middle class which ‘stimulated much of the country's economic, social and artistic development’. Towards the end of this chapter art is finally brought onto the stage with a discussion of the place of paintings in society as status symbols. It is argued that art, while in general an object of luxurious consumption in early modern Europe, in the Netherlands had become an everyday commodity. It need hardly be mentioned that North makes the assumption that art extends no further than painting - virtually no discussion of architecture or sculpture is included. This fundamental chapter-division between ‘economics’, ‘society’ and ‘art’ is pursued under an implicit assumption, made explicit throughout the book, that economics and society influence art as a one-way process. It would seem much more productive to speak of the mutual shaping of art and society as part of the same discourse (as suggested, for example, by those authors mentioned above). The remaining part of the book is a study of what North refers to as the social ‘microhistory’ of art itself. The fourth chapter is dedicated to artistic production. There the author characterises the professional status of the painter in its relation both to the mechanical craftsmanship and the liberal arts. He analyses the artists' social background, typical education, subsequent income and the role of the Guild of St Luke in the regulation of artistic life. This is a helpful general introduction. The last two chapters deal with two interrelated aspects of artistic consumption in the seventeenth-century Northern Netherlands, the art market and art collecting. The author attempts a ‘reconstruction’ of certain ‘buying’ and ‘selling’ patterns in Dutch seventeenth-century art, both in their chronological and typological aspects. Three types of patronage, public, corporate and private, are distinguished. Using quantitative analysis North studies the historical transformations of collectors' preferences for different genres, subject matters, pictorial styles, schools and age of paintings, and also the possible dependence of these preferences on the collectors' social status and religious denomination. Some issues of class and gender stratification in the art-dealing business are also investigated. Most of the information will be familiar to students of the period acquainted with the publications of Michael Montias. Being an expert in monetary history (an earlier book was A History of Money, 1992), the author gives much attention to financial aspects of the art market, such as the fluctuations in picture prices, the comparison with commodity prices in general, and the relationship of picture prices to pictorial genres, artistic innovation, personal authorship, etc. The book presents a detailed and informative analysis of such specialised aspects of art dealing as the functioning of exhibition spaces, auctions and lotteries. This makes the last two chapters probably the most significant contribution of the book. Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age combines a broad overview with lively anecdotal detail. The text is accompanied by tables and diagrams. It is basically a summary of ideas known from the literature and never goes so far as to suggest new approaches. The very idea of the Dutch Golden Age is naturalised rather than represented as an artificial construct. At the same time, the text's incontestable value is in presenting the findings of numerous detailed social-historical studies in German

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 and Dutch to a wider English-speaking audience for the first time. The study can be recommended both to students of art history and to a wider readership interested in the Dutch culture of the period.

ANASTASSIA NOVIKOVA

Michael North, Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (Tr. Catherine Hill). New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1997; 164 pp. ISBN 0-300-05894-2.

Eindnoten:

1. Wayne Franits (ed.), Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. Realism Reconsidered. Cambridge, 1997.

Challenging Art History The Sculptures of Peter Rogiers

The young Flemish artist Peter Rogiers (1967-) is one of the great talents of contemporary Belgian sculpture. His work displays an unbelievably powerful urge to challenge the established traditions of art. Rogiers became known in the contemporary Flemish art world with his Degas dancer (since purchased by the Flemish Community), an almost cruel variation on the well-known Degas icon, but created in polyester and animal skin. The use of these materials alone, but compounded by the subtle twists the artist has incorporated, means the work exudes both an historical and an a-historical aura, simultaneously cynical and morbid. Rogiers' work has been linked to Mannerism, the style of art that set its face against the Naturalist movement which attempted to portray the world as a well-ordered place, lacking in soul and fire; Mannerism, by contrast, sought to draw attention to the subconscious, to complexity, to ambiguity and distortion. This ambiguity was already present in Rogiers' Degas dancer and other works, but he then went a step further and redefined the notion of ‘perspective’. Striking examples include the images he sculpts to represent the way they would be seen on a photograph: limited by their two-dimensionality, stretched by perspective. A misshapen and enlarged head, for example, with a tapering torso and stumps for arms and legs which are swallowed up in the vanishing point. That head can become so colossal that it appears about to burst, and indeed Rogiers went so far in his distortions

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 302 that he sometimes used balloons as heads. But his ‘desacralisation’ of ‘sculpture’ went even further: in his use of the most diverse materials, in his mutation or mutilation of the figurative image, in the imperfect balance which sometimes literally threatened to cause the works to topple. Peter Rogiers was searching for a subversive response to ‘the rich life of sculpture’. And he did this with the gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) anarchy characteristic of many Belgian artists: strike and soothe at the same time, knead and destroy form, admire and desanctify sculpture, follow and contest the discourse of the contemporary art scene. The controversial Rogiers look appeared to have become established in 1997, when it was the subject of a major exhibition at the Dhondt-Dhaenens museum in Deurle, near Ghent, and a fine future was being predicted for him (including on the art market). But the true recalcitrant artist in Rogiers hit back: in an exhibition in the Museum for Contemporary Art in Antwerp at the end of 1997, he aimed a powerful riposte against the canonisation of his still young work as ‘the new Flemish sculpture’. Rogiers exhibited abstract, indefinable constructions, hung on the walls and put together from the most diverse materials. They were unrecognisable, as if he wanted to show everyone his refusal to be pigeon-holed. They were totally free forms, which did not lend themselves to any form of cataloguing. In the spring of 1999 Rogiers again staged an important exhibition at his ‘home gallery’, Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. And it seems as if he has picked up the threads of his earlier work. Though we cannot be certain. True, the exhibition contained his baroque, eruptive images in polyester, wax, bronze or polyurethane, some of them once again showing distortion of perspective; but this time the true ‘déclic’ appears to

Peter Rogiers, Untitled. 1999. Oil, wax, mixed media, 190 × 105 × 55 cm. Photo courtesy Galerie Xavier Hufkens. lie elsewhere: the core of the exhibition was formed by a series of images crafted from polystyrene foam - images which, though made from unbearably light and vulnerable material, appear extremely heavy, massive and solid. The ‘sculptures’ contain shapes hidden behind other shapes, recognisability lurking behind the unrecognisable. But perhaps the most blasphemous aspect is the use of colour: the images each have their own bilious colour, something which is absolutely ‘not done’ in a ‘serious work of art’. One image is even a complete patchwork, a hotch-potch of different colours. And yet all these images are standing there, proud and grinning. Rogiers combined them with drawings, acrylic on paper, which appear to reveal

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 pieces of his sculptural puzzle. Or which just fail to do so. Peter Rogiers has by no means reached his final destination.

MARC RUYTERS Translated by Julian Ross.

In Search of Unity in the Arts The Work of Theo van Doesburg

It seems that he could turn his hand to anything. During his short life Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) demonstrated his talents as painter, poet, essayist, designer, typographer and architect. He is remembered as a great innovator and initiator and an inspiration to others. It was on his initiative that the famous journal De Stijl was set up, and for years Van Doesburg was its editor. He maintained numerous contacts in the international art world and was constantly on the lookout for new and like-minded artists and trends.

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Theo van Doesburg, Contra-Composition of Dissonants XVI. 1925. Canvas, 100 × 180 cm. Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

He never received any academic or vocational training in architecture or the plastic or applied arts, but mastered them by and for himself. His oeuvre is comparatively small and extremely varied, even within the different artistic disciplines. Some have described it as erratic. Van Doesburg abandoned principles he had previously embraced with apparent ease, and his theoretical writings contain quite a few contradictions. For instance, he wrote in 1924: ‘We have given colour its true place in architecture and declare that divorced from architectonic construction there is no slightest justification for painting.’ A remarkable comment, to say the least, given that in that very year he had begun to concentrate on painting again. In the preceding years Van Doesburg had investigated the possibility of bringing the arts together in a spatial environment and had been active mainly as an architect. This is where the quotation above fits in. In his view painting no longer functions independently, it derives from the coming together of a number of visual disciplines. Van Doesburg began his artistic career as a painter and writer. When the visual arts were taking a new direction throughout Europe around 1910, Van Doesburg was producing respectable little brown paintings. As a painter he seemed unable to articulate the new developments, even though he acknowledged them as a writer. In the pieces he wrote for the weekly De Eenheid and other obscure journals he several times concerned himself with the new trends, making it clear that painting was no longer about ultimate beauty but about the possibilities for expressing pure and profound feelings. In 1915 he successfully found a way to do this himself. The works he then painted seem to reflect a vision imbued with his knowledge of esoteric and spiritual matters and with the depictions of auras by the Dutch artists Erich Wichman and Janus de Winter. Fairly soon, however, he turned away from the unbridled rendering of states of mind and advocated an approach governed more by the conscious mind, so as to achieve an image that could express a complete reality. This far more disciplined approach was undoubtedly inspired by Paul Cézanne's view that natural forms can be reduced to mathematical forms, and the Cubists' development of this idea. His getting to know Bart van der Leck and Piet Mondrian in 1915 was also hugely important to the development of Theo van Doesburg's artistic ideas and his painting. At the time only a small group of people understood what these artists stood for; but Van Doesburg mastered their work and their ideas in no time at all. In his painting, too, he sought to associate himself with them.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Entirely in line with De Stijl's mission, in those years Van Doesburg produced ‘pure-expressive’ art; compositions consisting of lines or areas of colour against a background. Initially he still took something from visible reality as a starting-point and then abstracted from it in a number of stages. His later paintings consist solely of blocks of colour. Van Doesburg also liked to collaborate with the architects of De Stijl. Among other things he designed stained glass windows and a tiled floor for a hall in a building by J.J.P. Oud. In his early designs Van Doesburg started from painting and applied it to architecture. From the 1920s on he was greatly concerned with the question of the unity of the arts; in working with architects he sought to create a spatial environment which placed the beholder not in front of a work of art, but in the midst of it. A volume is no longer thought of as a succession of closed boxes but as an open, flowing rhythm. Van Doesburg's use of colour makes a real contribution to the rhythm and dynamic of the spaces. The Contra-Compositions with the oblique line which Van Doesburg produced from 1924 on derive from his architectural studies. In contrast to the static balance he had previously striven for, his compositions now have a dynamic balance in which time and space play their part.

SASKIA BAK Translated by Tanis Guest.

In March 2000 an overview of Theo van Doesburg's work will be shown at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.

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Short Takes

The British author and journalist Harry Pearson has visited Belgium several times since 1995, criss-crossing the country in every possible direction. A Tall Man in a Low Land. Some Time Among the Belgians encapsulates these experiences. Pearson displays a thorough knowledge of Belgian culture and history, and his book contains a wealth of interesting information for the English-speaking reader. But A Tall Man is not really an introduction to the country; Pearson is too much the satirical entertainer for that. What he provides is a mix of anecdotes, facts and fiction, well seasoned with dry British humour. One example is his refutation of the prejudiced British view of Belgium as dull. According to Pearson, that dullness is just camouflage; over the centuries the country has been conquered and occupied so many times that in the end its inhabitants have simply tried to make the place look as boring as possible, in the hope that any future invaders will simply pass straight through on their way to somewhere more interesting. In reality, he says, Belgium is an eccentric country with many curious features. Encountering Delirium Tremens beer for the first time, for instance, he wonders why no brewer has yet thought of simply calling his product ‘Cirrhosis’.

Harry Pearson, A Tall Man in a Low Land. Some Time Among the Belgians. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1998; 246 pp. ISBN 0-316-64734-9.

For the New York author Luc Sante Belgium is an extraordinary subject. Sante, who among other things writes for the New York Review of Books and Time, was born in Verviers in Wallonia, but his parents moved to the US when he was still very young. Yet he has always retained his Belgian citizenship. He himself says that he has no nationality; that makes for a sense of distance, a considerable help in his work as a writer. He is ‘a citizen of some country all his own, in which the surrealist comedy of Magritte and Tintin fuses with the language of Pynchon and Delillo’. In The Factory of Facts - the ‘facts’ being the material things which determine one's personality in the first few years of life: what one eats, what one sees, etc. - he looks in astonishment and admiration at his fatherland, which he revisited for the first time only in 1989. On the one hand he feels detached from this alien country (according to him, a hotchpotch of unrelated elements), while on the other he also feels a bond with it. Whether Sante can rediscover himself through a renewed acquaintance with the ‘facts’ is a question he leaves unanswered. He concludes: ‘I am not alone because everyone of us is an alien. That makes us all compatriots.’

Luc Sante, The Factory of Facts. London: Granta Publications, 1998; 276 pp. ISBN 1-86207-128-4. In 1794, soon after the publication of her celebrated ‘novel of terror’ The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe and her husband embarked on a ‘Tour’ through continental Europe. She described her experiences in the Low Countries in A Journey through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return down the Rhine. The ‘Dutch’ part of this account has now been republished by Academic Press Leiden, who entrusted its editing to the capable hands of A.G.H. Bachrach. In his foreword

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 he places ‘the greatest novelist of atmosphere before the nineteenth century’ in the context of eighteenth-century travel and women's literature. Despite Radcliffe's typical ‘Gothic’ taste for bleak and desolate scenery, she was also attracted to the flat landscape of Holland. Among her ancestors was a Dutchman, one of those who helped to drain the East Anglian fens in the seventeenth century, which explains her constant enthusiasm for and interest in examples of the ‘Dutch art of embankment’; for instance, on her arrival by ferry in Helvoetsluys. Her admiration for the virtues of Dutch water management has its limits, though; after visiting Amsterdam this is what she writes of its famous canals: ‘Many of them are entirely stagnant, (...) so laden with filth, that on a hot day the seculence seems pestilential’.

Ann Radcliffe, A Journey through Holland, Made in the Summer of 1794 (ed. A.G.H. Bachrach). Leiden: Academic Press Leiden, 1998; 120 pp. ISBN 90-74372-17-1.

Kevin Whitehead, New York jazz critic and middling drummer, submerged himself for two years in the Amsterdam jazz scene. The result is his book New Dutch Swing. Whitehead defines his subject on the cover: ‘Jazz+Classical Music+Absurdism = New Dutch Swing’. He deals with the typical Dutch (read: Amsterdam) variant of improvised music, where improvisation and composition blend into each other almost seamlessly. Whitehead writes as an insider - his two years of research was one long trek through jazz bars and concert halls - and with a great deal of humour about the historical context of New Dutch Swing and about improvisers, composers and bands.

Kevin Whitehead, New Dutch Swing. New York: Billboard Books, 1998; 338 pp. ISBN 0-8230-8334-9.

‘It overwhelmed me in the way “Heart of Darkness” did when I first read it’: thus Paul Theroux on Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost. In this book Hochschild gives a lively and penetrating account of the brutal regime in Congo Free State during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. In the quest for rubber and ivory in the Congo, then the personal property of the Belgian King Leopold II, the native population was treated abominably. Hochschild's narrative, compellingly subtitled ‘A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial

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Africa’, makes a gripping story but its historical accuracy is variable. The investigation of source material leaves a good deal to be desired (nowhere is there any indication that the author carried out any research in Belgium) and he is decidedly casual with numbers. It is noticeable, too, that Hochschild sometimes succumbs to sensationalism; time and time again Leopold is compared to Stalin and Hitler, though there is a clear historical difference between the undeniable exploitation and ill-treatment of the Congolese and systematic, organised genocide.

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston / New York: Houghton Miflin Company, 1998; 366 pp. ISBN 0-395-75924-2.

Since the end of August 1998 a weekly press review of events in Flanders has been published in French, German and English. In the first issue the editors explained their aims. Focus on Flanders is intended primarily for the international community in Brussels and Flanders, who often find it hard to follow events in Belgium because of the language barrier. Some of them can get round the problem by following French-language papers and broadcasts, but the picture they get from these is often one-sided. Where necessary the articles, taken from Flemish papers and periodicals, are introduced and further explained in a separate editorial comment (certainly not a superfluous luxury for the foreign reader). There is also room at the back for a cultural contribution and a ‘Forthcoming Events’ section for lovers of the theatre, music and dance.

Information: Lannoo Publishers, Kasteelstraat 97, 8700 Tielt, Belgium tel: +32 51 42 42 71 / fax: +32 51 50 11 42 / e-mail: [email protected]

‘Arts and Ideas’ by the London publishing house Phaidon is ‘a series that offers up-to-date, authoritative, enjoyable and thought-provoking books on every aspect of the history of art around the world’. The volume on Peter Paul Rubens written for the series by the American art historian Kristin Lohse Belkin certainly meets this description perfectly. It is a practical, jargon-free work. Lohse Belkin deals with all aspects of the Antwerp master's immense oeuvre clearly and concisely, but she also seeks out the man behind the artist. In this context she pays particular attention to Rubens' efforts for peace, both as diplomat and as painter, and to his relationship to and portrayal of women. Of his famous fleshy nudes she writes: ‘Rubens obviously did not believe in an idealised female body, he painted what he saw, with all its imperfections’. The artist saw woman as a sensual goddess and lover, but also as a mother, her body marked by childbearing.

Kristin Lohse Belkin, Rubens. London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1998; 351 pp. ISBN 0-7148-3412-2.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Adriaen de Vries, Triton. c. 1615-1617. Bronze, H 157 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (on loan from the National-museum, Stockholm).

When the work of sculptor Adriaen de Vries was exhibited in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum at the end of 1998, one reviewer spoke of the ‘rehabilitation of a long-lost son’. De Vries was born in The Hague around 1556, but settled in Italy early in his career. After all, in a climate dominated by the iconoclasms, the Reformation and the Eighty Years' War it was hard for a sculptor to make a good living in Holland. He studied in Florence with the sculptor Giambologna (Jean de Boulogne) and found a position in Turin as court sculptor. Later he was to become Kammerbildhauer at the Prague court of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II, of whom he cast an imposing portrait bust in bronze. For years the man who never produced a single figure in Holland, but who still signed his work ‘Hagiensis Batavus’ (‘the Dutchman from The Hague’), was regarded as an obscure peripatetic mannerist. Only now is he being recognised for what he was: a trailblazer of the Baroque and forerunner of Rodin. In 1989 the J. Paul Getty Museum went so far as to pay a record sum for a statue by De Vries. Three-quarters of his known works - the fifty or so bronze figures on display in Amsterdam and later in Stockholm - will also be exhibited there.

Adriaen de Vries, 1556-1626, Imperial Sculptor. 12 October 1999-9 January 2000 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

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In the previous volume of this yearbook Christopher Brown wrote at length on the life and work of Anthony van Dyck, pupil of Rubens, court painter to Charles I and portrait-painter of genius (see The Low Countries 1998-99, pp. 12-23). On 22 March 1999 it was exactly 400 years since Van Dyck was bom in Antwerp. The event was commemorated in the city of his birth with a number of exhibitions devoted to the different aspects of his work, such as his landscape sketches and engravings. The key feature, though, was the exhibition Van Dyck - the Painter held at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. This unique exhibition, which brings together works from museums and private collections all over the world, can also be seen at the Royal Academy in London until 15 December.

Van Dyck - the Painter. 16 September - 15 December 1999 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom.

When at the end of 1998 Time published its Design Top Ten for that year, at the head of the list was a design from the Netherlands. A villa near Bordeaux had pushed a cultural centre in New Caledonia and Apple's semi-transparant iMac into second and third place. The plans for this private home were drawn up by OMA, the Rotterdam office of Rem Koolhaas (see The Low Countries 1994-95, pp. 223-228). The design is full of technical tours de force: three levels, of which the uppermost seems to float in mid-air (it is suspended from an enormous steel beam and the middle floor is totally transparant), glass walls that open outwards, etc. There is also a mobile room cutting vertically through the three horizontal living spaces, like a lift without walls.

The Time design favourite of 1998: a villa by Rem Koolhaas near Bordeaux.

The whole has literally been made to measure for the physically handicapped client, but so unobtrusively and naturally that non-handicapped residents can do whatever they want with it.

1998 was a particularly productive year for Maryan W. Ainsworth, Senior Research Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She organised the exhibition From Van Eyck to Brueghel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and collaborated with Keith Christiansen on the catalogue of the same name (see the ‘Visual Arts’ section in this Chronicle). Soon after this, her substantial study Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition was published. In a

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 time when the typical late medieval painter is still mainly a simple craftsman, a servant of Prince and Church, David (c. 1455-1523), ‘the last of the Flemish Primitives’, is conspicuous as a shrewd entrepreneur and self-confident artist who cleverly takes advantage of the changing spirit of the times. The new wealthy merchant class was a powerful contributory factor in the gradual secularisation of art. David's studio often carried out commissions for foreign clients, and certain paintings were produced en masse. Ainsworth opts for an interdisciplinary approach, but she also examines over 100 paintings. Here the emphasis is on works in the possession of her own museum, which has the largest collection of paintings ascribed to David and his pupils.

Maryan W. Ainsworth, Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition. Ghent / Amsterdam: Ludion (in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), 1998; 348 pp. ISBN 0-87099-877-3.

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Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait is among the most famous paintings in the collection of London's National Gallery (which recently devoted an entire CD-ROM to it), but Trafalgar Square also houses some fifty other works by Flemish masters of the fifteenth century. Lorne Campbell's The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools is a recent addition to the Gallery's revised series of catalogues. It provides a detailed study and description of this fine collection, which includes such names as Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling and Rogier van der Weyden. Campbell includes a great deal of new information on the history and iconography of the individual paintings and on the techniques employed, and also takes a close look at the studios' working methods. He shows that very often commercial concerns took precedence over artistic perfection; the client who commissioned The Exhumation of Saint Hubert, for example, was evidently in a hurry to get hold of his picture, for Rogier van der Weyden's studio went at it so fast that the figure of Louis the Great ended up ludicrously larger than the other figures, while Louis' attendant has decidedly sloppy brushwork on one hand. The book raises new questions even about the much-studied Arnolfini portrait: have the couple portrayed perhaps been wrongly identified? For the answer, the reader should consult p. 192 of Campbell's outstanding catalogue.

Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools. London: National Gallery Publications Ltd, 1998; 464 pp. ISBN 1-85709-171-X.

Jules B. Farber, a journalist of American origin, loves Amsterdam. In 1975 he published his Amsterdam, City of the Seventies, a book for which he even managed to snare the then Crown Princess Beatrix and her husband, Prince Claus, for a unique double interview. In 1998 his other Amsterdam book, ...But Give Me Amsterdam, was reissued. It is a personal and fascinating account of the city he loves so much. Both an outsider and an insider, Farber gives us a clear, lively characterisation of Amsterdam (‘more a worldly village than a cosmopolitan city’) and Amsterdammers. The book covers more than 700 years of history, with attention to people, places, buildings, art, trade, industry etc. The photographs too have been carefully chosen. Along with the familiar pictures of canals, coffeeshops, Rembrandts and the like the book also contains far less obvious images, such as one of a baby's head preserved in spirits; originally in the collection of the Amsterdam anatomist Frederik Ruysch, it is now, thanks to the morbid interest of Czar Peter the Great, in the Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology in St Petersburg.

Jules B. Farber, ...But Give Me Amsterdam. Utrecht: Kosmos Z&K Uitgevers, 1998 (4th revised edition); 192 pp. ISBN 90-215-9376-9. At the end of 1997 the first issue of Voices from Holland appeared. The journal describes itself as ‘a bilingual quarterly update of news from the Netherlands’. Initially intended for Dutch expatriates and those of Dutch extraction in the US, as early as the winter issue of 1998 the editors announced that henceforth they would be aiming at all Dutch people overseas.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Voices from Holland is handsomely presented, and the content too is of commendable quality. Those seriously nostalgic for their homeland are well served with articles about clogs, tulips and the royal family on the internet, but more serious matters are covered too, in sections like ‘Economy and Finance’, ‘Arts and Culture’ and ‘Politics and Society’.

Information: Koop Tissingh (ed.), Rijksweg 46, 9731 AC Groningen, The Netherlands (fax: +31 842 13 01 69 e-mail [email protected])

If you live in New York and want to read books in Dutch, you should head for 295 Madison Avenue in the heart of Manhattan. There you will find the Dutch Library. Its collection comprises some two thousand books, mostly Dutch literature (sometimes in English translation) and world literature translated into Dutch. The library also has a modest non-fiction section and a number of rare works and first editions. Not far from the Dutch Library, too, is the editorial office of De Nieuwe Amsterdammer. This independent journal for the Dutch-speaking community on the American East Coast appears ten times a year, with news from the Netherlands and Flanders. A random selection from the last year's issues: Hans van Mierlo's political farewell, the dodgy state of student rooms in Ghent, the merits and demerits of the Euro and the opening of a factory producing ‘genuine Dutch rissoles’ in Brooklyn.

Information: Dutch Library, 295 Madison Avenue, 45th floor, New York, NY 10017, USA, tel / fax: 001 212 634 1693. e-mail: [email protected] / De Nieuwe Amsterdammer, 310 Madison Avenue, Suite 1810, New York, NY 10017, USA.

In 1975 Ghent acquired a Museum of Contemporary Art, but neglected to give it a home of its own. For nearly 25 years only parts of the rich collection, including among other things works by Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Panamarenko and Marcel Broodthaers, could be displayed in the rear section of the city's Museum voor Schone Kunsten. But at long last the efforts of Jan Hoet, the Museum's Director from its inception, who was also responsible for Documenta IX in 1992, have borne fruit. At the beginning of May 1999 the museum, renamed SMAK - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Municipal Museum of Current Art) - staged a grand opening in Ghent's refurbished old casino. With its works of art, but also with music (John Cale and a lot of jazz) and - believe it or not - a boxing match between Hoet and

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Jan Fabre's Man Who Measures the Clouds on the roof of the SMAK in Ghent. Photo by Dirk Pauwels / © SABAM Belgium 1999. the American artist Dennis Bellone. Bellone himself had suggested the fight, and the Museum Director accepted the challenge without batting an eyelid, for ‘Boxing is a metaphor for so many things. (...) You can't stop the fight, life is one long confrontation’.

SMAK. Citadelpark, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. Tel: +32 9 221 17 03 / fax: +32 9 221 71 09 / e-mail: [email protected]. An English-language catalogue (edited by Steven Jacobs) of the SMAK is published by Ludion (Ghent. 1999; 256 pp. ISBN 90-5544-247-X).

Each year more than half a million people visit the Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. The diary of this Jewish girl - Puffin published Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, the ‘definitive version’ with a third of the original text restored - hiding from the German occupiers in the back annexe of a canalside house is still widely-read and new books about Anne keep popping up. Among the most recent are: Anne Frank: The Biography (Bloomsbury; Mellisa Müller's biography which places Anne Frank's life within the realms of a larger historical arena), The Story of Anne Frank (Macmillan; Mirjam Pressler's companion volume to the original), Carol Anne Lee's Roses from the Earth (Viking) and Anne Frank Remembered (Simon & Schuster; the story told by Miep Gies. Otto Frank's secretary, who hid the family for three years). The late Pierre H. Dubois mentioned in the previous issue of this yearbook that the poetry of Elisabeth Eybers, a South-African poet residing in Amsterdam, penetrates with an air of irony and ambiguity to depths which are in their essence tragic: ‘as always that seeming lightheartedness is overshadowed by a lowering fear’ (see The Low Countries 1999-1999: pp. 207-211). The same holds for her latest collection Winter-Surplus (1999), which, like her previous volumes, contains both

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 English and Afrikaans ‘versions’ of the new poems. In the opening poem ‘Tweetalig / Bilingual’ she professes her debt to her English-speaking mother: ‘(...) the longer l live the more I enjoy / attempting to echo the same sort of chimes / that hauntingly call back my mother's voice’.

Elisabeth Eybers, Winter-Surplus. Amsterdam: Querido, 1999; 55 pp. ISBN 90-214-6186-2.

FILIP MATTHIJS Translated by Tanis Guest.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 309

Bibliography of Dutch-Language Publications translated into English (traced in 1998)

Access Access to civil procedure abroad / by Henk J. Snijders [also] (ed.)... [et al.]; transl. [from the Dutch] by Benjamin Ruijsenaars. München: Beck; The Hague [etc.]: Kluwer Law International; Athens: Sakkoulas; Bern: Stämpfli; London: Sweet & Maxwell, cop. 1996. XXXII, 369 p. Transl. of: Toegang tot buitenlands burgerlijk procesrecht. 2e ed. 1995. 1st Dutch ed.: 1992.

Baeten, Lieve Nicky's birthday / Lieve Baeten; [transl. from the Dutch]. Toronto [etc.]: Annick Press, cop. 1996. [28] p. Transl. of: Lotje is jarig. Hasselt. 1994.

Barend, Frits Ajax, Barcelona, Cruyff: the ABC of an obstinate maestro / Frits Barend and Henk van Dorp; transl. [from the Dutch] by David Winner and Lex van Dam. London: Bloomsbury, 1998. XXII, 264 p., [8] p. pl. Transl. of: Ajax, Barcelona, Cruijff: het abc van een eigenzinnige maestro. 1997.

Beelden Beelden aan zee museum: architect Wim Quist / [ed. Karel Jongtien; transl. from the Dutch James Brockway ... et al.; photogr. Kim Zwarts]. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, cop. 1998. 88 p. Transl. of: Museum beelden aan zee: een werk van Wim Quist. 1998.

Beer, Hans de Leave it to the Molesons! / stories by Burny Bos; pictures by Hans de Beer; transl. from the German version of the original Dutch text by J. Alison James. New York; London: North-South, 1998. 48 p. 1st English ed.: 1995. Transl. of: Familie Maulwurf verflixt und zugenagelt! 1995.

Beer, Hans de More from the Molesons / stories by Burny Bos; pictures by Hans de Beer; transl. [from the German after the original Dutch text] by J. Alison James. New York [etc.]: North-South Books, 1995. 46 p. Transl. of: Familie Maulwurf alles im Griff! 1995. (Ich lese selber). Simultaneously publ. in Dutch as: Bij familie Molde Mol is alles oké. 1995. (Hoera, ik kan lezen).

Beers, Lambert F. van Dutch-Japanese links / Lambert F van Beers; transl. [from the Dutch]: Ian Gaukroger. Sassenheim: Dujat Dutch-Japanese Trade Federation, cop. 1996. 127 p.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Bohlmeijer, Arno Chirpy: the girl of the sun / by Arno Bo (pseud. of Arno Bohlmeijer); [transl. from the Dutch]. London: Bloomsbury, 1997. 95 p. Transl. of: Musje: het meisje van de zon. 1995.

Bohlmeijer, Arno Something very sorry / Arno Bohlmeijer; [transl. from the Dutch]. New York: Putnam & Grosset Group, 1997. 175 p. 1st English ed. publ. as: I must tell you something. London: Bloomsbury, 1996. 1st American ed.: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Transl. of: Ik moet je iets heel jammers vertellen. 1994.

Bootsma, Jetske Miss Mouse Mo and the horrible hunger / [Jetske Bootsma; transl. from the Dutch: Jonathan Ward]. [Arnhem]: PlaatsMaken, cop. 1996. [20] p. Transl. of: Muis Mies. 1996.

Bredero, Adriaan H. Bernard of Clairvaux: between cult and history / Adriaan H. Bredero; [transl. from the Dutch], Edinburgh: T&T Clark, cop. 1996. XIV, 320 p. 1st English ed.: Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1996. Transl. of: Bernardus van Clairvaux (1091-1153): tussen cultus en historie: de ontoegankelijkheid van een hagiografisch levensverhaal. 1993.

Buiter, Hans The history of the power cable in the Netherlands / Hans Buiter; [transl. from the Dutch by M.S.C. Bakker]. The Hague [etc.]: Stichting Historie der Techniek, 1997. 147 p. Transl. of: Nederland-kabelland: de historie van de energiekabel in Nederland. 1994.

Burma Burma behind the mask / with a preface by Aung San Suu Kyi; ed. by: Jan Donkers & Minka Nijhuis; photogr.: Jan Banning; [with contributions by Alice Dijkstra... et al.; transl. from the Dutch by P.J. van de Paverd; with assistance by Fiona Godfrey... et al.]. Amsterdam: Burma Centrum Nederland, cop. 1996. 223 p. Transl. of: Achter de façade: handboek voor Burma. 1996.

Collectors Collectors and collections: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1798-1998 / [ed. board.: Marieke van Delft... et al.; transl. from the Dutch by Lysbeth Croiset van Uchelen-Brouwer... et al.; authors Anne de Vries... et al.]. Zwolle: Waanders, 1998. 232 p. Publ. on the occasion of the exhibition ‘The wonderful al'phabet’ in De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, August 18th, 1998 - October 18th, 1998, to mark 200 years Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Transl. of: Verzamelaars en verzamelingen. 1998.

Contemporary Contemporary poetry of the Low Countries / [comp. and introd. by] Hugo Brems & Ad Zuiderent; [ed. Jozef Deleu... et al.; transl. from the Dutch Julian Ross... et al.]. 2nd rev. ed. Rekkem: Flemish-Netherlands Foundation Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1995. 112 p. Transl. of: Hedendaagse Nederlandstalige dichters. 1992.

Couperus, Louis Ecstasy: a study of happiness / Louis Couperus: transl. from the Dutch by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. London: Pushkin Press, 1998. 1st English ed.: Londo: Henry & Co.. 1892. Transl. of: Extase. 1892.

Cultural Cultural policy in the Netherlands / [OCenW, Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen]. [Zoetermeer]: The Netherlands' Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Den Haag: Sdu Service Center [distr.], 1998. 212 p. Transl. of: Cultuurbeleid in Nederland. 1998.

Dagevos, J.M. Tolerance in the Netherlands / J.M. Dagevos; [transl. from the Dutch]. Rotterdam: Institute for Sociological-Economic Research (ISEO), Erasmus University Rotterdam; Rijswijk: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, Directorate for Social Policy [distr.], 1996. 20 p. Transl. of: Tolerantie in Nederland. 1996.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 310

De Bode, Ann Could you leave the light on? / Ann De Bode and Rien Broere [transl. from the Dutch]. [London]: Evans Brothers, cop. 1997. 33 p. (Helping hands) Transl. of: Mag het licht nog even aan? 1996. (Hartenboeken).

De Bode, Ann It's always me they're after / Ann De Bode and Rien Broere; [transl. from the Dutch]. [London]: Evans Brothers, 1997. 33 p. (Helping hands) Transl. of: Altijd moeten ze mij hebben. 1996. (Hartenboeken).

De Bode, Ann Tomorrow I will feel better / Ann De Bode and Rien Broere; [transl. from the Dutch]. [London]: Evans Brothers, cop. 1997. 33 p. (Helping hands) Transl. of: Morgen ben ik weer beter. 1996. (Hartenboeken).

De Bode, Ann You will always be my dad / Ann de Bode and Rien Broere; [transl. from the Dutch]. [London]: Evans Brothers, [1997]. 33 p. (Helping hands) Transl. of: Maar jij blijft mijn papa. 1996. (Hartenboeken).

Dekker, Ton In support of a discerning use of animals for human consumption / [text: Ton Dekker; ill.: Len Munnik; transl. from the Dutch], Den Haag: Dierenbescherming, 1997. 20 p. Transl. of: Pleidooi voor een kritisch gebruik van dieren voor menselijke consumptie. 1997.

Delivering Delivering IT services / Dennis Bladergroen... [et al.; transl. from the Dutch: Language Unlimited]. Deventer: Kluwer Bedrijfs-Informatie, cop. 1998. 112 p. Transl. of: Planning en beheersing van IT-dienstverlening. 1995.

Denters, Erik Law and policy of IMF conditionality / Erik Denters; [transl. from the Dutch]. The Hague [etc.]: Kluwer Law International, cop. 1996. XV, 291 p. (Legal aspects of international organization; vol. 27) Transl. and adapt. of: IMF conditionaliteit: juridische aspecten van betalingsbalanssteun door het IMF. 1993. Thesis Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Derks, Ton. Gods, temples and ritual practices: the transformation of religious ideas and values in Roman Gaul / Ton Derks; [maps: UvA Kaartmaker BV; transl. from the Dutch: Christine Jefferis]. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, cop. 1998. X, 325 p. (Amsterdam archaeological studies; 2) Transl. and adapt. of: Goden, tempels en rituele praktijken.: transformatie van religieuze ideeën en waarden in Romeins Gallië. 1996. Thesis Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Deshima The Deshima dagregisters: their original tables of contents / series ed.: Leonard Blussé. Leiden: Institute for the History of European Expansion, 1996. (Intercontinenta; no. 20-21) Vol. IX: 1780-1790/ [transl. from the Dutch and ed. by] Cynthia Viallé & Leonard Blussé]. Vol. X: 1790-1800 / [transl. from the Dutch and ed. by] Cynthia Viallé & Leonard Blussé].

Deuss, Bart Truth or dare: producing theatre with young people from diverse cultural backgrounds: practice, examples and pictures / [text Bart Deuss; photogr. Jean van Lingen; transl. from the Dutch Poppy Eveling]. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, cop. 1998. 72 p. Transl. of: Waarheid of doen?: handleiding voor ‘intercultureel’ theater met jongeren voorzien van regels, voorbeelden en foto's. 1996.

Dijk, P. van Theory and practice of the European convention on human rights / by P. van Dijk, G.J.H. van Hoof; in collab. with A.W. Heringa ... [et al.; transl. from the Dutch]. 3rd ed. The Hague [etc.]: Kluwer Law International; Utrecht: Studie- en Informatiecentrum Mensenrechten (SIM), cop. 1998. XXVII, 850 p. 1st English ed. of this publication: Deventer [etc.]: Kluwer Law and Taxation Publishers, 1984. Transl. and adapt. of: De Europese conventie in theorie en praktijk. 2e dr. 1982. (Rechten van de mens; 2). 1st Dutch ed.: 1979.

Dings, J.M.W. Speed limiters on vans and light trucks: environmental and economic effects / authors: J.M.W. Dings, W.J. Dijkstra, D. Metz; [transl. from the Dutch]. Delft: CE, Centre for Energy Conservation and Environmental Technology; Amsterdam: MilieuBoek [distr.], 1998. 60, XV p. Transl. of: snelheidsbegrenzing van bestelwagens en lichte trucks: effecten op milieu en economie. 1998.

Donner, J.H. The king: chess pieces / J.H. Donner; transl. [from the Dutch] by Richard de Weger; [comp. by and introd.: Tim Krabbé... et al.]. Alkmaar: New in Chess, 1997- 385 p., [8] p. pl. Transl. of: De koning: schaakstukken. 1987.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Draulans, Dirk The red queen: a novel of the war between the sexes / Dirk Draulans; transl. from the Dutch by Sam Garrett]. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 212 p. Transl. of: De rode koningin: roman over de oorlog tussen man en vrouw. 1994.

Driving Driving your car: the examination questions: 650 questions with the cbr theory-examination as starting point / [transl. from the Dutch]. 1st ed. Best: Veka Best Verkeersleermiddelen, 1998. 264 p. Transl. of: Autorijden: de examenvragen: 650 vragen met het cbr theorie-examen als uitgangspunt. 1997.

Duijker, Hubrecht The Bordeaux atlas and encyclopaedia of Châteaux / Hubrecht Duijker & Michael Broadbent; [transl. from the Dutch]. London: Ebury, 1997. 400 p. Transl. of: Bordeaux wijnatlas & encyclopedie. 1997.

Durlacher, Gerhard L. The search / Gerhard L. Durlacher / transl. from the Dutch by Susan Massotty. London: Serpent's Tail, 1998. Transl. of: De zoektocht: documentaire. 1991. (Meulenhoff editie; E 1146).

Dutch Dutch and Flemish feminist poetry from the Middle Ages to the present: a bilingual anthology / ed. and with an introd. by Maaike Meijer; co-ed.: Erica Eijsker, Ankie Peypers and Yopie Prins. 1st ed. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1998. XI, 194 p. (The defiant muse) A bilingual anthology in English and Dutch.

Dutch Dutch poetry in translation: Kaleidoscope: from medieval times to the present: with parallel Dutch text / transl. [from the Dutch] by Martijn Zwart; in collab. with Ethel Grene. Wilmette, IL: Fairfield, 1998. X, 256 p.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 311

A bilingual anthology in English and Dutch.

Duuren, David van The kris: an earthly approach to a cosmic symbol / David van Duuren; [transl. from the Dutch: Karin Beks; ed. of English text: Timothy Rogers; ill.: KIT, Photo Agency... et al.; cart.: G-O graphics]. Wijk en Aalburg: Pictures Publishers, cop. 1998. 95 p. Transl. of: De kris: een aardse benadering van een kosmisch symbool. 1996.

Eijndhoven, Josée C.M. van The unbearable lightness of the debate: the contribution of technology assessment to the debate about science and technology / by Josée C.M. van Eijndhoven; [transl. from the Dutch: STV Translations]. The Hague: Rathenau Institute, 1997. 47 p. Inaugural address Utrecht Transl. of: De ondraaglijke lichtheid van het debat. 1995.

Elders, Leo The philosophy of nature of St. Thomas Aquinas: nature, the universe, man / Leo Elders; [transl. from the Dutch]. [2nd pr.]. Frankfurt am Main [etc.]: Lang, cop. 1997. 387 p. Transl. of: De natuurfilosofie van Sint-Thomas van Aquino: algemene natuurfilosofie, kosmologie, filosofie van de organische natuur, wijsgerige mensleer. 1989.

Ex, Nicole The brocadian paradise: the restored walls of the Japanese Chamber in Huis ten Bosch palace / Nicole Ex; [ed. Bert Disser... et al.; photogr. René Gerritsen ... et al.; transl. from the Dutch Michael Rose]. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1997. 104 p. Commissioned by the Department of Programmes and Projects (DPP) of the Government Buildings Agency. Transl. of: Het brokaten paradijs: de wanden van de Japanse kamer in paleis Huis ten Bosch gerestaureerd. 1997.

Fokkens, Harry Drowned landscape: the occupation of the western part of the Frisian-Drentian Plateau, 4400 BC-AD 500 / Harry Fokkens; [ed. J.F. van Regteren Altena; transl. from the Dutch N. Forest-Flier; English ed. K.E. Waugh... et al.]. Assen: Van Gorcum; Amersfoort: ROB, Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek, 1998. 183 p. Transl. and adapt. of: Verdrinkend landschap: archeologisch onderzoek van het Fries-Drents plateau, 4400 BC tot 500 AD. Thesis Groningen 1991.

Frank, Anne

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The diary of a young girl: the definitive edition / Anne Frank; ed. by Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler; transl. [from the Dutch] by Susan Massotty. Harmondsworth [etc.]: Penguin Books, 1997. VII, 338 p. 1st English ed.: New York [etc.]: Doubleday, 1995. Transl. of: Het Achterhuis: dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942-1 augustus 1944. Rev. and augm. ed. 1991. Other ed.: New York [etc.]: Bantam Books, 1997.

Friedman, Carl The gray lover: three stories / by Carl Friedman; transl. from the Dutch by Jeanette K. Ringold. New York: Persea Books, 1998. A Karen and Michel Braziller book. Transl. of: De grauwe minnaar: verhalen. 1996.

Gemeentemuseum Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the collections / [ed.-in-chief.: Gerrit Jan de Rook... et al.; photogr.: Peter Couvée... et al.; transl. from the Dutch: Janey Tucker], Zwolle: Waanders; Den Haag: Gemeentemuseum, [1998]. 71 p. Transl. of: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, de collecties. 1998.

Gogh, Vincent van The letters of Vincent van Gogh / sel. and ed. by Ronald de Leeuw; transl. by Arnold Pomerans. London [etc.]: Penguin Books, 1997. (Penguin classics) Based on: De brieven van Vincent van Gogh / ed. by Han van Crimpen and Monique Berends-Albert. 1990. 4 vols.

Goldschmidt, Tijs Darwin's dreampond: drama in Lake Victoria / Tijs Goldschmidt; transl. [from the Dutch] by Sherry Marx-Macdonald. 2nd pr. Cambridge, Mass [etc.]: MIT Press, 1997. 274 p. Transl. of: Darwins hofvijver: een drama in het Victoriameer. 1994.

Graaf, Rob de 2SKIN / written by Rob de Graaf; [transl. from the Dutch: Liz Savage]. Amsterdam: Theatre Company Dood Paard, [1997]. 58 p. Transl. of: 2SKIN. 1996.

Haasse, Hella S. Forever a stranger and other stories / Hella S. Haasse; transl. from the Dutch and introd. by Margaret M. Alibasah. Kuala Lumpur [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 1996. XI, 127 p.; 20 cm. (Oxford in Asia Paperbacks) Contains: Forever a stranger, Lidah Boeaja (Crocodile's tongue), and: An affair (Egbert's story). Transl. of: Oeroeg. 1948, and the stories: De Lida Boeaja, and: Een perkara (Het verhaal van Egbert) from: Een handvol achtergrond: ‘Parang sawat’: autobiografische teksten. 1993.

Hageman, Kees

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 The garden table: elegant outdoor entertainment / by Kees Hageman, Elisabeth de Lestrieux, Jan Lagrouw; [transl. from the Dutch]. New York: Friedman / Fairfax, 1998. Transl. of: Genieten in de tuin. 1992.

Heiden, Maria Breakfast on the Maas: Hotel New York / [concept Maria Heiden... et al.; text Maria Heiden; transl. from the Dutch Stacey Knecht; photogr. Mark van den Brink]. [Amsterdam: Zoetendaal], 1997. 53 p. Theatre, commissioned by Hotel New York. Transl. of: Ontbijt aan de Maas: Hotel New York. 1997.

Heldring, Barbara Satricum: a town in Latium / [Barbara Heldring; transl. from the Dutch by the author]. [Repr., rev. and up-dated]. Tonden: Stichting NSL/Foundation Dutch Centre for Latium Studies, 1998. 60 p. (Satricana; vol. 1) 1st English ed.: 1988. Transl. and adapt. of: Satricum: een stad in Latium. 1984.

Herzberg, Abel J. Between two streams: a diary from Bergen-Belsen / Abel J. Herzberg; transl. from the Dutch by Jack Santcross. London [etc.]: Tauris, cop. 1997. XI, 221 p. Transl. of: Tweestroomenland: dagboek uit Bergen-Belsen. 1950.

Heyer, C.J. den Jesus and the doctrine of the atonement: biblical notes on a controversial topic / C.J. den Heyer; [transl. from the Dutch]. London: SCM, 1998. 144 p. Transl. of: Verzoening: bijbelse notities bij een omstreden thema. 1997.

Heyer, C.J. den Jesus matters: 150 years of research / C.J. den Heyer; [transl. from the Dutch by John Bowden]. London:

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 312

SCM, 1996. XIV, 193 p. Transl. of: Opnieuw: Wie is Jezus?: balans van 150 jaar onderzoek naar Jezus. 1996.

Holsonback, Anita Monkey see, monkey do: an animal exercise book for you! / Anita Holsonback; with rhymes by Deb Adamson; ill. by Leo Timmers; [transl. from the Dutch]. Brookfield, Connecticut: The Millbrook Press, 1997. [36] p. Transl. of: Van apedraf tot kikkersprong: een bewegingsboek voor kinderen. 1995.

In In royal array: Queen Wilhelmina 1880-1962 / comp. by Elisabeth van Braam and Eelco Elzenga; with introd. by Elisabeth van Braam, Ietse Meij and Bernard Woelderink; photogr. by Robert Mulder; [ed. by E. Elzenga... et al.; final ed. by A.D. Renting; transl. from the Dutch by Patricia Wardle]. Zwolle: Waanders, cop. 1998. 253 p. Publ. in collab. with Stichting Historische Verzamelingen van het Huis Oranje-Nassau and Stichting Paleis Het Loo Nationaal Museum, on the occasion of the exhibition at Paleis Het Loo, Apeldoorn, from August 29th, 1998 to January 3th, 1999 to mark the centenary of the inauguration of Queen Wilhelmina. Transl. of: Koninklijk gekleed: Wilhelmina 1880-1962. 1998.

Jacob-Debeuf, Odette Anne-Pinne Poonika in the village of the witches / Odette Jacob-Debeuf; [transl. from the Dutch; ill.: Group Jade]. Turnhout: Van Hemeldonck, cop. 1998. 47 p. Transl. of: Anne-Pinne Poenika in het heksendorp. 1988.

Jager, J.L. de Albert Heijn: the life and times of a global grocer / J.L. de Jager; transl. [from the Dutch] by Paul Vincent. [Breukelen: Van Lindonk Special Projects BV], 1998. 228 p., [16] p. pl. Transl. of: Albert Heijn: de memoires van een optimist. 1997.

Joris, Lieve Mali blues: traveling to an african beat / Lieve Joris; transl. [from the Dutch] by Sam Garrett. Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet, 1998. 291 p. (Lonely Planet journeys) Transl. of: Mali blues en andere verhalen. 1996. Partially earlier publ. as: Amadou: Afrikaanse notities. 1994.

Kemenade, Willem van China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, inc. / Willem van Kemenade; transl. from the Dutch by Diane Webb. London: Little, Brown, 1998. 1st English ed.: New York: Knopf, 1997. Transl. and adapt. of: China BV: Hongkong Taiwan: superstaat op zoek naar een nieuw systeem. 1996. Other English ed.: New York: Vintage Books. 1998.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Klinkers, Ellen Growing old in a multi-cultural society: the elderly from minority ethnic groups meet experts in the field of ageing: European Network on Ageing and Ethnicity (ENAE) report / ed. by Ellen Klinkers; [transl. from the Dutch]. Utrecht: NIZW, cop. 1998. 77 p. Publ. in cooperation with: Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work. Transl. of: Oud worden in een multiculturele samenleving. 1998.

Kossmann-Putto, J.A. The Low Countries: history of the Northern and Southern Netherlands / J.A. Kossmann-Putto & E.H. Kossmann; [ed. Jozef Deleu ... et al.; transl. from the Dutch by J. Fenoulhet... et al.]. 7th ed. Rekkem: Flemish-Netherlands Foundation Stichting Ons Erfdeel, cop. 1997. 64 p. 1st English ed.: 1987. Transl. of: De Lage Landen: geschiedenis van de Noordelijke en Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Rekkem: Vlaams-Nederlandse Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1987.

Kraan, Hanna Flowers for the wicked witch / Hanna Kraan; with drawings by Annemarie van Haeringen; transl. [from the Dutch] by Wanda Boeke. 1st ed. Arden, North Carolina: Front Street Lemniscaat, 1998. Transl. of: Bloemen voor de boze heks. 1994.

Kranenburg, Kees Model-based Application Development (MAD): generating information systems from models and business rules / Kees Kranenburg. Ad van Riel; [transl. from the Dutch]. Deventer: Kluwer BedrijfsInformatie, cop. 1998. 136 p. Transl. of: Model-based Application Development (MAD): modelleren en genereren van informatie-systemen. 1995.

Lambregts, B.W. The development and financing of public real property in urban areas in Belgium, Germany, France and Great Britain / B.W. Lambregts, M. Spaans; [transl. from the Dutch: Nancy Smyth van Weesep]. Delft: Delft University Press, 1998. 126 p. (Housing and urban policy studies; 14) Publ. of OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies. Transl. of: Ontwikkeling en financiering van publiek stedelijk vastgoed in België, Duitsland, Frankrijk en Groot-Brittannië. 1997. (Stedelijke en regionale verkenningen; 15).

Lammertse, Friso Dutch genre paintings of the 17th century: collection of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen / Friso Lammertse; with contributions by Jeroen Giltaij and Anouk Janssen; [transl. from the Dutch by Yvette Rosenberg... et al.; photogr.: Tom Haartsen... et al.]. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, cop. 1998. 209 p. Transl. of: Nederlandse genreschilderijen uit de zeventiende eeuw: eigen collectie Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, 1998.

Lennep, Emile van

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Working for the world economy: a personal history / Emile van Lennep; with Evert Schoorl; [transl. from the Dutch by Anita Graafland... et al.]. Amsterdam: Nederlands Instituut voor het Bank- en Effectenbedrijf (NIBE), cop. 1998. 317 p. Transl. of: Emile van Lennep in de wereldeconomie: herinneringen van een internationale Nederlander. 1991.

Lifelong ‘Lifelong learning’, the Dutch initiative / [project team ‘Lifelong learning’; transl. from the Dutch by: E.L. McCallister]. [Zoetermeer: Ministry of Education, Culture and Science]; Den Haag: Sdu Service Center [distr.], 1998. 23 p. Transl. of: Nationaal actieprogramma ‘Een leven lang leren’. 1998.

Linkels, Ad Sounds of change in Tonga: dance, music and cultural dynamics in a Polynesian kingdom / Ad Linkels; photogr.: Ad & Lucia Linkels: [transl. from the Dutch], 3rd [i.e. 2nd] rev. ed. Tilburg: Mundo Etnico, 1998. 120 p. 1st English ed.: Nuku'alofa, Tonga: Friendly Islands Book Shop, 1992. Transl. of: Geluiden van verandering in Tonga. 1988.

Lippe-Biesterfeld, Irene van Dialogue with nature / Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld;

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 313 transl. from the Dutch by Beatrix Descamps. Forres: Findhorn, cop. 1997. 151 p. Transl. of: Dialoog met de natuur: een weg naar een nieuw evenwicht. 1995.

Loos, Wiepke Waterloo, before and after: paintings from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, 1800-1830 / Wiepke Loos, Guido Jansen, Wouter Kloek; [transl. from the Dutch Wendie Shaffer... et al.]. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum; Zwolle: Waanders, cop. 1997. 100 p. Transl. of: Voor en na Waterloo: schilderijen uit de collectie van het Rijksmuseum, 1800-1830. 1997.

Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon On the theory of the reflection and refraction of light / Hendrik Antoon Lorentz; ed. and transl. [from the Dutch] Nancy J. Nersessian and H. Floris Cohen. Amsterdam [etc.]: Rodopi, 1997. v. 185 p. Transl. of: Over de theorie der terugkaatsing en breking van het licht. 1875. Thesis Leiden.

Low Low leans the sky. Rekkem; Raamsdonksveer: Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1998. 160 p. Text in English and Dutch. Containing all texts which were read and performed at the National Gallery, London, on March 24 and at the City Chambers, Edinburgh on March 26, 1998. On the occasion of ‘Low leans the sky’, a literary manifestation to celebrate five years of the yearbook ‘The Low Countries’.

Lucussen, Jan Newcomers: immigrants and their descendants in the Netherlands 1550-1995 / Jan Lucassen & Rinus Penninx; [transl. from the Dutch by Michael Wintle]. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1997. 247 p.: ill.; 25 cm. Transl. of: Nieuwkomers, nakomelingen, Nederlanders. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1994. (Migratie- en etnische studies).

Lugt, Frits Rembrandt: 1899: een biografie = une biographie = a biography / door Frits Lugt; met een inl. van Ella Reitsma; [vert.: John Rudge... et al.]. Paris: Fondation Custodia, 1997. 124 p. Publ. on occasion of the 50-year jubilee of the Fondation Custodia simultaneously with the catalogue of the exposition: ‘Rembrandt and his school’, drawings from the collection Frits Lugt exposed in the Institut Néerlandais at Paris, October 2nd, 1997 - November 30th, 1997 and in Teylers Museum at Haarlem, December 14th, 1997 - February 15th, 1998. Text of the introduction in English, French and Dutch.

Marijnissen, Jan Enough!: a socialist bites back / Jan Marijnissen; [transl. from the Dutch by Steve McGiffen], [Rotterdam]: Socialistische Partij, cop. 1996. 160 p. Transl. and adapt. of: Tegenstemmen. 1996.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Mastering Mastering the city: North-European city planning 1900-2000 / Koos Bosma and Helma Hellinga (eds.); [English transl. from the Dutch D'Laine Camp... et al.]. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers; The Hague: EFL Publications, cop. 1997. 2 vols. (128, 356 p.). Issued on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Mastering the city’, December 18th, 1997 - April 5th, 1998 in the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. Transl. of: De regie van de stad: Noord-Europese stedebouw 1900-2000. 1997.

Meij, Ietse Haute couture & prêt-à-porter: mode 1750-2000: a choice from the costume collection Muncipal Museum The Hague / Ietse Meij; [transl. from the Dutch: mevr. Cimms; eds. Ietse Meij... et al.; photogr. Erik Hesmerg... et al.]. Zwolle: Waanders; The Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 1998. 127 p. Transl. of: Haute couture & prêt-à-porter. 1998.

Menger, Truus Not than not now not ever / Truus Menger; transl. [from the Dutch]: Rita Gircour. 8th ed. [Amsterdam]: Nederland Tolerant, Max Drukker Stichting, 1998. 212, [8] p. Transl. of: Toen niet, nu niet, nooit. 1982.

Möring, Marcel East Bergholt / Marcel Möring; [transl. from the Dutch by Greta Kilburn... et al.]. Rotterdam: Story International, 1997

Möring, Marcel The great longing: a novel / Marcel Möring; transl. from the Dutch by Stacey Knecht. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers: |HarperPerennial], 1996. 211 p. 1st English ed.: London: Flamingo, 1995. (Flamingo original). Transl. of: Het grote verlangen. 1992. (Meulenhoff editie; [1200]).

Moeyaert, Bart Bare hands / Bart Moeyaert; transl. [from the Dutch] by David Colmer. 1st ed. Asheville, N.C: Front Street, 1998. Transl. of: Blote handen. 1995.

Mol, Pauline Hello Monster, once upon a dragon / Pauline Mol; transl. from the Dutch by Rina Vergano. Amsterdam: Internation Theatre & Film Books, 1998. (Theatre in translation) Transl. of: Dag monster: een theatersprookje voor kinderen en volwassenen naar Belle et la Bête. 1987.

Mooij, Annet Out of otherness: characters and narrators in the Dutch venereal disease debates 1850-1990 / Annet Mooij; transl. from the Dutch by Beverley Jackson. Amsterdam [etc.]: Rodopi, 1998. 295 p. (Clio medica; 47) (The Wellcome institute series in the history of medicine)

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Transl. of: Geslachtsziekten en besmettingsangst. 1993.

Moor, Margriet de The virtuoso / Margriet de Moor; transl. from the Dutch by Ina Rilke. London: Picador, [1997]. 201 p. 1st English ed.: 1996. Transl. of: De virtuoos. 1993.

Mulisch, Harry The discovery of heaven: a novel / [Harry Mulisch; transl. from the Dutch by Paul Vincent]. London [etc.]: Penguin Books, 1998. 730 p.; 20 cm. 1st English ed.: New York: Viking, 1996. Transl. of: De ontdekking van de hemel. 1996.

Netherlandic Netherlandic secular plays from the Middle Ages: the ‘abele spelen’ and the farces of the Hulthem manuscript / transl. [from the Mediaeval Dutch] with an introd. and notes by Theresia de Vroom. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1997. 246 p. (Carleton Renaissance plays in translation; 29) Transl. of: Esmoreit, Lippijn, Gloriant, De Buskenblaser, Lanseloet van Denemarken, Die hexe, Vanden winter ende vanden somer, Rubben, Truwanten, and: Drie daghe here.

Netherlands The Netherlands Architecture Institute / texts Ruud Brouwers... [et al.]; photographical essay Jannes Linders; [transl. from the Dutch: Robyn de Jong-Dalziel]. Rev. ed. [Rotterdam]: NAi Publishers, cop. 1998. 83 p.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 314

1st English ed.: 1993. Transl. and adapt, of: Het Nederlands Architectuurinstituut. 1993.

Nijkerk, Alfred Arn. Handbook of recycling techniques / by Alfred Arn. Nijkerk and Wijnand L. Dalmijn; [transl. from the Dutch]. 4th, [rev. and expanded] pr. The Hague: Nijkerk Consultancy, 1998. 216 p. Written within the framework of the Dutch National Reuse of Waste Research Programme (NOH), project number NOH/353293/0710. Publ. in collab. with NOVEM and RIVM. 1st English ed.: 1994. Transl. of: Handboek der recycling technieken. 1994.

Oostmeijer, Anneke Pergamano: colourful parchment / Anneke Oostmeijer; [photogr.: De Studio, fotografie + digitale beeldbewerking; patterns: Anneke Oostmeijer; transl. from the Dutch: Ellarik Services]. Baarn: La Rivière, creatieve uitgevers, cop. 1998. 48 p. Transl. of: Pergamano: schilderachtig perkament. 1998.

Ospina, Martha Pergamano: painting on parchment / Martha Ospina; [photogr.: De Studio, fotografie + digitale beeldbewerking; transl. from the Dutch]. Baarn: La Rivière, creatieve uitgevers, cop. 1998. 72 p. Transl. of: Pergamano: basisboek schildertechnieken op perkament. 1998.

Peters, Philip Marcel van Eeden: drawings / Philip Peters; [transl. from the Dutch: Philip Peters]. The Hague: Galerie Maurits van de Laar; Amsterdam: Wetering Galerie. 1998. 30 p. Transl. of: Marcel van Eeden: tekeningen. 1997.

Ploeg, Peter van der Princely patrons: the collection of Frederick Henry of Orange and Amalia of Solms in The Hague / Peter van der Ploeg, Carola Vermeeren; with contributions by Ben Broos... [et al.; transl. from the Dutch by Helen Bannatyne... et al.; ed. Marlies Enklaar]. The Hague: Mauritshuis; Zwolle: Waanders, cop. 1997. 276 p. Catalogue on occasion of the exhibition ‘Princely patrons’ in the Mauritshuis, The Hague December 6th, 1997 - March 29th 1998. Transl. of: Vorstelijk verzameld. 1997.

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. 10 p. [Poems] / Robert Anker; transl. [from the Dutch] by Ko Kooman. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: In het vertrek. 1996.

Poetry

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. [Poems] / Huub Beurskens; transl. [from the Dutch] by Greta Kilburn. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from non published poems.

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. 19 p. [Poems] / Stefan Hertmans; transl. [from the Dutch] by Peter Nijmeijer. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: Annunciaties. 1997.

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. 31 p. [Poems] / René Huigen; transl. [from the Dutch] by Deborah Ffoulkes. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: Een paleis der ingewanden. 1989, and: Laatste gedichten. 1994. (Eigentijdse poëzie; 1).

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. [Poems] / C.O. Jellema; transl. [from the Dutch] by Paul Vincent. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: Spolia. 1996.

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. 12 p. [Poems] / Renée van Riessen; transl. [from the Dutch] by John Irons. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: Jagend licht. 1984, De vrouw en de trommel. 1987, and: Gevleugeld/ontvleugeld. 1996.

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. 21 p. [Poems] / K. Schippers; transl. [from the Dutch] by Peter Nijmeijer. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: Een leeuwerik boven een weiland. 1980.

Poetry 28e Poetry International. Rotterdam: Poetry International, [1997]. 20 p. [Poems] / Dirk van Bastelaere; transl. [from the Dutch] by Francis R. Jones. Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of a choice from: Pornschlegel en andere gedichten. 1988, Diep in Amerika: gedichten 1989-1991. 1994, and: Dietsche Warande & Belfort.

Princely Princely display: the court of Frederik Hendrik of Orange and Amalia van Solms / comp. and ed. by Marika Keblusek and Jori Zijlmans; [transl. from the Dutch by Wendie Shaffer... et al.]. The Hague: Historical Museum; Zwolle: Waanders, cop. 1997. 254 p. Publ. in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Princely display’ in the Historical Museum, The Hague, December 6th, 1997 - March 29th, 1998. Transl. of: Vorstelijk vertoon. 1997.

Provoost, Anne

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Falling / Anne Provoost; transl. [from the Dutch] by John Nieuwenhuizen. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997. - 284 p. (Ark fiction) Transl. of: Vallen. 1994.

Quintana, Anton The baboon king / Anton Quintana; transl. [from the Dutch] by John Nieuwenhuizen. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998. 189 p. (Ark fiction) Transl. of: De bavianenkoning. 1982.

Rood, Lydia A mouthful of feathers / Lydia Rood; transl. [from the Dutch] by John Nieuwenhuizen. Carlton Victoria: Cardigan Street, 1996. 199 p. Transl. of: Een mond vol dons. 1993.

Rozenman, Joshua Zinnen-Beelden = Cast images / Joshua Rozenman; ingel. door/introd. by Gary Schwartz; met literaire bijdragen van/with literary contributions by Karin Spaink... [et al.; vert.: David Colmer... et al.; fotogr.: Yves Paternoster]. Groningen: Philip Elchers, 1997. 52 p. Text in Dutch and English. Number of copies printed: 1100; 1-100: luxe edition, signed by the artist in book case with print, signed by the artist; 101-1100: standard edition.

Ruyters, Marc Contemporary sculptors of the Low Countries / Marc Ruyters and Elly Stegeman; editorial board Jozef Deleu ... [et al.; transl. from the Dutch by Tanis Guest]. Rekkem: Stichting Ons Erfdeel, cop. 1998. 128 p.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 315

Transl. of: Hedendaagse beeldhouwers in Nederland en Vlaanderen. 1998.

Salman, Ton The diffident movement: disintegration, ingenuity and resistance of the Chilean pobladores, 1973-1990 / Ton Salman; [transl. from the Dutch by Sheila Gogol]. Amsterdam: Thela Publishers, 1997. IX, 253 p. (Thela Latin America Series; [10]) Transl. and adapt. of: De verlegen beweging: desintegratie, inventiviteit en verzet van de Chileense pobladores, 1973-1990. 1993. (CEDLA Latin America studies; 71). 1st Dutch ed.: thesis Universiteit van Amsterdam 1993.

Sanders, Stephan The great outdoors / transl. from the Dutch by David Colmer. [Amsterdam]: De Bezige Bij, 1998. Publ. on the occasion of the Gay Games Amsterdam, 1998. Transl. of: De grote woede van M.: novelle. 1994.

Schaap, Cees D. Fighting money laundering: with comments on the legislations of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba / Cees D. Schaap.; [transl. from the Dutch]. London; The Hague [etc.]: Kluwer Law International; Amsterdam: NIBE, 1998. IX, 164 p. Transl. of: Bestrijding money laundering: met aandacht voor de Nederlands-Antilliaanse en Arubaanse regelgeving. 1995. (NIBE-katern; 30).

Siebert-Hommes, Jopie Let the daughters live!: the literary architecture of Exodus 1-2 as a key for interpretation / by Jopie Siebert-Hommes; [transl. from the Dutch by Janet W. Dyk]. Leiden [etc.]: Brill, 1998. XII, 144 p. (Biblical interpretation series; vol. 37) Transl. of: Laat de dochters léven!: de literaire architectuur van Exodus 1 en 2 als toegang tot de interpretatie. 1993. Thesis Universitieit van Amsterdam.

Soesman, Albert Our twelve senses: how healthy senses refresh the soul: an introduction to anthroposophy and spiritual psychology based on Rudolf Steiner's studies of the senses / Albert Soesman; transl. [from the Dutch] by Jakob M. Cornelis; introd. by Cheryl L. Sanders. Repr. with new introd. Stroud, Glos.: Hawthorn, 1998. 147 p. (Foundations of human wisdom series) Earlier English title: The twelve senses: an introduction to anthroposophy based on Rudolf Steiner's studies of the senses. Stroud: Hawthorn, 1990. (Social ecology series). Transl. of: De twaalf zintuigen: een inleiding in de antroposofie aan de hand van de zintuigleer van Rudolf Steiner. 1987.

Spies, Marijke Arctic routes to fabled lands: Oliver Brunel and the passage to China and Cathay in the sixteenth century / Marijke Spies; transl. from Dutch by Myra Heerspink Scholz. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, cop. 1997. 168 p.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Transl. of: Bij noorden om: Olivier Brunel en de doorvaart naar China en Cathay in de zestiende eeuw. 1994.

Stevens, Harm Dutch enterprise and the VOC: 1602-1799 / Harm Stevens; [transl. from the Dutch: Sammy Herman]. [Zutphen]: Walburg Pers, cop. 1998. 95 p. Publ. in cooperation with: Stichting Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Transl. of: De VOC in bedrijf: 1602-1799. 1998.

Symons, Jerome Nadruk / [tekst: Jerome Symons; interviews: Flos Wildschut; Engelse vert.: Jonathan Ward; eindred.: Trudy van Riemsdijk-Zandee]. [Arnhem]: PlaatsMaken, cop. 1998. 79 p. (De druk) Edition supporting the project ‘De druk’. Text in English and Dutch

Tabaksblat, Morris Dialogue within society: the Unilever view on responsible business practice / speech by Morris Tabaksblat; [transl. from the Dutch]. Rotterdam: Unilever, 1997. 24 p. Veerstichting symposium, October 14th, 1997, St Peters's Church, Leiden. Transl. of: Dialoog binnen de samenleving. 1997.

Tellegen, Toon In N. / Toon Tellegen; transl. [from the Dutch] by Claire Nicolas White. Merrick, New York: Cross-Cultural Communciations, 1993. 48 p. (A cross-cultural review chapbook. Dutch writers chapbook; 1) Text in English and Dutch. Transl. of: In N. en andere gedichten. 1989.

This This time is our time: the messages of the Lady of all Nations: a summary / [Stichting Vrouwe van alle Volkeren; transl. from the Dutch]. Amsterdam: Stichting Vrouwe van alle Volkeren, cop. 1997. 40 p. Transl. of: Deze tijd is onze tijd: de boodschappen van de Vrouwe van alle Volkeren: een samenvatting. 1997.

Thomas, Anne The children's party book: for birthdays and other occasions / Anne and Peter Thomas; [transl. from the Dutch]. Edinburgh: Floris, 1998. 120 p. Transl. of: Kom je ook op mijn feestje. 1998.

Touch A touch of the Dutch: plays by women / [sel. and forew. Cheryl Robson; introd.: Mieke Kolk; transl. from the Dutch]. [London]: Aurora Metro Press; [Amsterdam]: Theater Instituut Nederland, cop. 1997. VI, 226 p. (Plays by women. European series) Contains: Write me in the sand / by Inez van Dullemen; transl. [from the Dutch] by Anthony Akerman; transl. of: Schrijf me in het zand. 1989.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 (Theater van het Oosten; 1), and: The Caracal / by Judith Herzberg; transl. [from the Dutch] by Rina Vergano; transl. of: De Caracal. 1988. (Toneelgroep Amsterdam; 4), and: A thread in the dark/ by Hella Haasse; transl. [from the Dutch] by Della Couling; transl. of: Een draad in het donker. 1963. (De boekvink), and: Eat / by Matin van Veldhuizen; transl. [from the Dutch] by Rina Vergano; transl. of: Eten. 1991. (Carrousel; 3), and: Dossier Ronald Akkerman / Suzanne van Lohuizen; transl. [from the Dutch] by Saskia A. Bosch; transl. of: Dossier Ronald Akkerman. 1994.

Traffic Traffic manual: theory B: driving license B / [authors: VERJO trafic editors group: J.F. Verstappen; transl. from the Dutch: T.C. Warnock]. 9th rev. ed. Sint-Michielsgestel: VERJO, 1997. 114, 11, 3 p. (Verkeerswegwijzer; 9) 1st English ed.: 1987. Transl. of: Wegwijzer verkeerstheorie AB.

Van Cauwenberge, Johan Dantology: poems and objects / by Johan Van Cauwenberge; transl. [from the Dutch]: Philip Dumalin; [introd. essay by Frans Boenders]. [Leuven]: P, 1997. 53 p. Poems in Dutch and English translation. Transl. of: Dantologie. 1994.

Velthuijs, Max Frog is frog / Max Velthuijs; [transl. from the Dutch by Megan Larkin]. London: Andersen, 1998. [32] p.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 316

1st English ed.: 1996. Transl. of: Kikker is kikker. 1996.

Verburg, Pieter A. Language and its functions: a historico-critical study of views concerning the functions of language from the pre-humanistic philology of Orleans to the rationalistic philology of Bopp / Pieter A. Verburg; transl. [from the Dutch] by Paul Salmon; in consultation with Anthony J. Klijnsmit. Amsterdam [etc.]: Benjamins, cop. 1998. XXXIII, 577 p. (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series 3, Studies in the history of the language sciences; vol. 84) Transl. of: Taal en functionaliteit: een historisch-critische studie over de opvattingen aangaande de functies der taal vanaf de prae-humanistische philologie van Orleans tot de rationalistische linguistiek van Bopp. 1951. Thesis Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Verhoog, Jeroen A passion for metal: ROBA 60 / [text: Jeroen Verhoog, Hans Warmerdam; transl. from the Dutch: STV Translations]. [Noordwijk: Bureau voor Bedrijfshistorie], [1997]. 80 p. Transl. of: Een passie voor metaal. 1997.

Versteegen, Jos A cultural travel guide to gay and lesbian Amsterdam / Jos Versteegen: transl. [from the Dutch] by Sandra R. Reijnhart; [photogr.: Sandra Haverman... et al.]. Haarlem: Gottmer, cop. 1998. 123 p. Publ. on the occasion of the Gay Games Amsterdam, 1998.

Visible Visible assets: 15 years of art at Gasunie / [ed. Chris de Boer and Jan Hekman; final ed.: Chris de Boer... et al.; English transl. from the Dutch R.W. Wood... et al.; photogr. John Stoel]. Groningen: Gasunie, 1997. 185 p. Under the auspices of the company's art committee to mark the occasion of the fifteenth autumn exhibition. Transl. of: Bovengronds bezit. 1997.

Visser, Carolijn Voices and visions: a journey through Vietnam today / Carolijn Visser; [transl. from the Dutch by Susan Massotty]. Boulder, Colorado: Palladin Press, 1997 1st English ed.: Boulder, Colorado: Sycamore Island Books. 1994. Transl. of: Hoge bomen in Hanoi. 1993. (Meulenhoff editie; E 192).

Visser, Piet Menno Simons: places, portraits and progeny / Piet Visser, Mary S. Sprunger; with assistance from Adriaan Plak; transl. [from the Dutch] Gary K. Waite; photogr. Iman Heystek, Esther van Weelden. Krommenie [etc.]: Knijnenberg [etc.], cop. 1996. 168 p. Publ. in cooperation with University Library of Amsterdam, Eastern Mennonite University.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Comp. on occasion of the 5th centennial of Menno Simons' birthday in 1996. Transl. of: Sporen van Menno: het veranderende beeld van Menno Simons en de Nederlandse mennisten. 1996.

Vreuls, H.H.J. Novem energy guide 1998 / [comp. by H.H.J. Vreuls; final editing: Van Haalen & Partners; transl. from the Dutch: Plain English]. Sittard [etc.]: Novem, [1998]. 127 p. Comp. as part of Novem's monitoring work for the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs. Transl. of: Novem energiegids 1998.

Vries, Anke de Bruises / Anke de Vries; transl. [from the Dutch] by Stacey Knecht. Arden, North Carolina: Laurel-Leaf Books, 1997. 168 p. 1st English ed.: Arden, North Carolina: Front Street, 1995. Transl. of: Blauwe plekken. 1992.

Vries, Anke de Piggy's birthday dream / Anke de Vries; pictures by Jung-Hee Spetter; [transl. from the Dutch]. Arden, North Carolina: Front Street Lemniscaat, cop. 1997. [28] p. Transl. of: Lang zal ik leven! 1997.

Vroon, Piet Smell: the secret seducer / Piet Vroon; with Anton van Amerongen and Hans de Vries; transl. from the Dutch by Paul Vincent. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. X, 226 p. Transl. of: Verborgen verleider: psychologie van de reuk. 1994.

Vulnerable The vulnerable animal in intensive livestock farming / [Study Committee on Intensive Farming; transl. from the Dutch by] Gethin Thomas. The Hague: Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals, 1996. 144 p. (Intensive livestock farming and animal protection; 13) Transl. of: Het kwetsbare dier in de intensieve veehouderij. 1994. (Intensieve veehouderij en dierenbescherming; 13).

Werdmölder, Hans A generation adrift: an ethnography of a criminal Moroccan gang in the Netherlands / by Hans Werdmölder; [adapted transl. from the Dutch by Tanya R. ten Kate... et al.]. London; The Hague [etc.]: Kluwer Law International, cop. 1997. XII, 151 p. Transl. of: Een generatie op drift. 1990.

Wetering, JanWillem van de The streetbird / Janwillem van de Wetering. New York: Soho Press, 1997. (Grijpstra & De Gier, the Amsterdam cops; 9) 1st American ed.: New York: Putnam, 1983. 1st Dutch ed. publ. as: De straatvogel. 1982.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Wonderful The wonderful al'phabet / [eds. DáRTS and Koninklijke Bibliotheek; transl. from the Dutch by Erik Geleijns]. [Amsterdam]: Elsevier Science, [1998]. 125 p. Texts accompanying the exhibition ‘The wonderful al'phabet’ on the occasion of 200 years Koninklijke Bibliotheek in De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, August, 18th 1998 - October, 18th 1998. Transl. of: Het wonderbaarlijk al'fabet. 1998.

Editor: Dutch Book in Translation Koninklijke Bibliotheek The Hague The Netherlands

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 317

Contributors

Saskia Bak (1964-) Staff member of the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden Radesingel 14b, 9711 EJ Groningen, The Netherlands

K. van Berkel (1933-) Professor of the History of Natural Sciences (University of Groningen) Fonteinkruid 8, 9801 LE Zuidhorn, The Netherlands

Jan Berkouwer (1947-) Professor of Economics (University of Stettin) / Lecturer in Economics and Law (Holland College, Diemen) Kerkweg 83, 2825 NA Berkenwoude, The Netherlands

Frans Boenders (1942-) Art critic / Chief editor Kunst en cultuur Spichtestraat 18, 9771 Nokere, Belgium

Eugenie Boer Curator of the Louis Couperus Museum Woelwijklaan 3, 2252 AM Voorschoten, The Netherlands

Elke Brems (1971-) FWO Researcher (Catholic University of Leuven) Volhardingslaan 2, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium

James Brockway (1916-) Poet / Writer / Translator Riouwstraat 114, 2585 HH The Hague, The Netherlands

François Colin (1948-) Sports editor Het Nieuwsblad Dassastraat 28, 2100 Antwerp, Belgium

Johan Decavele (1943-) Director of the Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Ghent Verloren Broodstraat 16, 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium

Mark Delaere (1958-) Professor of Musicology (Catholic University of Leuven) Sint-Annastraat 30, 3050 Oud-Heverlee, Belgium

Jozef Deleu (1937-) Chief editor / Managing director ‘Stichting Ons Erfdeel’ Murissonstraat 260, 8930 Rekkem, Belgium

Luc Devoldere (1936-) Deputy Editor ‘Stichting Ons Erfdeel’ Murissonstraat 260, 8930 Rekkem, Belgium

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Arthur Eyffinger (1947-) Librarian at the International Court of Justice of the United Nations Statenlaan 4, 2582 GL The Hague, The Netherlands

Reindert Falkenburg (1952-) Deputy Director of Academic Affairs (State Bureau for Art-historical Documentation) Libellenveld 3, 2318 VE Leiden, The Netherlands

Jane Fenoulhet (1950-) Senior lecturer in Dutch (University of London) University College London, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT, United Kingdom

Eep Francken (1948-) Lecturer in Modern Dutch Literature (University of Leiden) Merelstraat 46, 2333 XM Leiden, The Netherlands

Ton Gloudemans (1958-) Lecturer in ‘media and education’ Raiffeisenlaan 27, 3571 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands

Amy Golahny (1951-) Professor of the History of Art (Lycoming College), Art Department (Lycoming College) Williamsport, PA 17701, USA

Noël Golvers (1950-) Researcher (Catholic University of Leuven) / Lecturer in Latin (Catholic College of Higher Education, Leuven) C. Meunierstraat 70, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

Marijke de Groot (1947-) Free-lance art historian Herenstraat 9, 1015 BX Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ton Hoenselaars (1956-) Senior Lecturer in British Literature (University of Utrecht) English Department, University of Utrecht, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands

Jan van Hove (1953-) Journalist De Standaard Dambruggestraat 6, 2060 Antwerp, Belgium

Christiaan J.A. Jörg (1944-) Head of Research (Groninger Museum) / Associate Professor of East-West Relations (University of Leiden) Rijksstraatweg 344, 9752 CP Haren, The Netherlands

Michiel van Kempen (1957-) Lecturer in Dutch (Facultés Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur) Rue du Rivage 10, 5100 Dave (Namur), Belgium

James Kennedy (1963-) Assistant Professor of History (Hope College) / Research Fellow (Van Raalte Institute) 280 West 12th Street, Holland, MI 49423, USA

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Janet Koplos Senior editor Art in America 575 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, USA

Jef Lambrecht (1948-) Journalist VRT Radio Kattenberg 45, 2140 Borgerhout, Belgium

Ton Lemaire (1941-) Writer Theveny, 24110 St Astier, France

Pieter Leroy (1954-) Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, section ‘Environment, Nature and Landscape’ (University of Nijmegen) Grameystraat 4, 6525 DP Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Selma Leydesdorff (1949-) Professor / Director of the Belle van Zuylen Institute (University of Amsterdam) Hogeweg 58, 1098 CE Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Frank Ligtvoet (1954-) Cultural attaché Consulate-General of the Netherlands 1 Rockefeller Plaza (11th floor), New York, NY 10020-2094, USA

Joke Linders (1943-) Children's literature critic / Lecturer in Children's and Adolescent Literature (Colofon / Script Plus) Schaepmanlaan 14, 2081 EZ Santpoort-Zuid, The Netherlands

Filip Matthijs (1966-) Editorial Secretary The Low Countries Murissonstraat 260, 8930 Rekkem, Belgium

Jos Nijhof (1952-) Teacher / Theatre critic Berkenkade 14, 2351 NB Leiderdorp, The Netherlands

Anastassia Novikova (1971-) PhD student in History of Art (University College London) 16 Leyburn Close, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge CBI 9 XR, United Kingdom

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 318

Joris van Parys (1944-) Translator Brugse Heirweg 4, 9190 Stekene, Belgium

G.F.H. Raat (1946-) Lecturer in Modern Dutch Literature (University of Amsterdam) Mariënstein 113, 1852 SJ Heiloo, The Netherlands

Joris Reynaert (1945-) Senior Lecturer in Dutch Literature (University of Ghent) Avennesdreef 10, 9031 Ghent, Belgium

Filip Rogiers (1966-) Journalist Knack E. Demolderlaan 46, 1030 Schaarbeek, Belgium

Wim Rutgers (1941-) Lecturer in Dutch (University of Aruba) Sabanilla Abao 32, Santa Cruz, Aruba

Marc Ruyters (1952-) Editor De Financieel-Economische Tijd / Art critic Drie Eikenstraat 282 / 4, 2650 Edegem, Belgium

Reinier Salverda (1948-) Professor of Dutch Language and Literature (University of London) University College London, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT, United Kingdom

Ludo Simons (1939-) Chief Librarian (UFSIA, Antwerp) Rudolfstraat 45, 2018 Antwerp, Belgium

Erik Slagter (1939-) Art critic IJsbaanstraat 6, 7203 JH Zutphen, The Netherlands

Isabel Tanaka-Van Daalen (1959-) Arts and Sciences Liaison Officer (Japan-Netherlands Institute) Chiba-Ken, Abiko-Shi, Nakabyo 1423, 270-1121 Japan

Jan Temmerman (1952-) Film critic De Morgen Sportstraat 398, 9000 Ghent, Belgium

Peter Vandermeersch Chief editor De Standaard Adolf Maxlaan 56, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Hans Vandevoorde (1960-) BOF Researcher (University of Ghent) Duifhuisstraat 57, 9000 Ghent, Belgium

Stephan Vanfleteren (1969-) Photographer Jean Robiestraat 41, 1060 Brussels, Belgium

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Paul van Velthoven (1947-) Journalist Haagse Courant Geestbrugweg 68, 2281 CP Rijswijk, The Netherlands

Frans Vera (1949-) Senior staff member of the Strategic Policies Division of the Minister's office (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries) P.O. Box 20401, 2500 EK The Hague, The Netherlands

Christophe Verbiest Music critic De Morgen Diksmuidelaan 35 / 5, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Paul Vincent (1942-) Translator 3 Lancaster Gardens London W13 9JY, United Kingdom

Marina de Vries (1958-) Journalist Het Parool P. Aertszstraat 69 II, 1073 SK Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Truusje Vrooland-Löb (1949-) Writer N. Japiksestraat 61, 1065 KE Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ingeborg Walinga (1965-) Art critic Bernouilliplein 24A, 9714 BV Groningen, The Netherlands

Translators

Gregory Ball (B) A.J. Barnouw (+) Wanda Boeke (USA) James Brockway (NL) Paul Claes (B) Sheila M. Dale (UK) Christine D'haen (B) Lindsay Edwards (UK) Jane Fenoulhet (UK) Peter Flynn (B) Nancy Forest-Flier (NL) Tanis Guest (UK) Mother Columba Hart (USA) Alissa Leigh (Nl) Yvette Mead (NL) Elizabeth Mollison (NL) Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim (B) Arnold J. Pomerans UK) Sonja Prescod (UK) Julian Ross (NL) John Rudge (NL) Paul Vincent (UK) Diane L. Webb (NL) ADVISOR ON ENGLISH USAGE

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 Tanis Guest (UK)

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 321

The Low Countries

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7 322

Johannes Christiaan Schotel, Stormy Sea (detail). Early 19th century. Canvas, 124 × 163 cm. Teylers Museum, Haarlem.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 7