FRANS-WILLEM KORSTEN A Dutch Republican Baroque amsterdam studies in the dutch golden age A Dutch Republican Baroque Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age Editorial Board Frans Blom, University of Amsterdam Michiel van Groesen, Leiden University Geert H. Janssen, University of Amsterdam Elmer E.P. Kolfin, University of Amsterdam Nelleke Moser, VU University Amsterdam Henk van Nierop, University of Amsterdam Claartje Rasterhoff, University of Amsterdam Emile Schrijver, University of Amsterdam Thijs Weststeijn, University of Amsterdam Advisory Board: H. Perry Chapman, University of Delaware Harold J. Cook, Brown University Benjamin J. Kaplan, University College London Orsolya Réthelyi, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Claudia Swan, Northwestern University A Dutch Republican Baroque Theatricality, Dramatization, Moment, and Event Frans-Willem Korsten Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Gerard van Honthorst, Laughing violinist, 1624 Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Layout: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 212 3 e-isbn 978 90 4853 205 6 doi 10.5117/9789462982123 nur 685 © F.W. Korsten / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Contents Acknowledgments 9 1. Republican baroque: a thunderclap, a city hall and two executions 11 1.1. Artifice: multiple worlds and one actualized 11 1.2. Why a Dutch republican baroque; and why not a Golden Age? 18 1.3. City hall: affect—or what moves and what drives 23 1.4. Thunderclap: moment and event 28 1.5. Two executions: theatricality and dramatization 31 1.6. Republican baroque and slavery 37 2. The dramatic potential in history: Rome and the Republic – Grevius, Vondel, Knüpfer, and Job 41 2.1. Two incompatible political models: transfer or disruption? 41 2.2. Allegory tied into a knot: history’s continuity dramatically disrupted 44 2.3. Perverse powers, or how to make fun of the theater of torture 50 2.4. Catholic Rome and the figure of Job: subjection to the only possible world 58 3. The cruel death of worlds and political incompatibility – the brothers De Witt 65 3.1. Foundations of law: the master/father of a political house 65 3.2. The lynching of the De Witts: condensation and spectacle 71 3.3. The ship of state and the cruel political choice between incompatible worlds 75 3.4. Combat, the dramatic logic of cruelty, and the potential of difference 79 4. A happy split of worlds or the comedic sublime – Frans Hals 83 4.1. Happiness, the comedic, and the sublime 83 4.2. From Steen to Vondel: comical and tragic counterpoints to the comedic 87 4.3. The sublime intensity of the moment 92 4.4. Freedom: necessity and contingency 97 5. The seas or the world as scene – Focquenbroch and Grotius 103 5.1. Pre-colonial mise-en-abyme: Focquenbroch and a non- republican baroque 103 5.2. Moment of exchange and the non-existent ‘proper’ 108 5.3. Juridical staging: commerce and the seas 111 5.4. The precariousness of mise-en-scène 116 5.5. Amsterdam: city and sea as world scene 119 6. Not a frame but a lens: the touch of knowledge – Rumphius, Vossius, Spinoza 125 6.1. Spectacle or theater: Rumphius as knowledge-trader 125 6.2. Nature internalized: res cogitans reconsidered 131 6.3. Sensing the world differently: the telescope 134 6.4. Reading through a lens: intensity and texture before scripture 141 7. Public theater, collective drama and the new – Van den Enden and Huygens 149 7.1. Theatrum mundi, public acting and the plane of collective imagination 149 7.2. Speaking for those who understand: a school drama in a theater 156 7.3. Dramatization: Theatrum mundi versus mundus dramaticus 163 7.4. Fluid borders between theatricality and dramatization: Huygens’ ‘Sunday’ 168 8. Interrupting time for the sake of division: history and the tableau vivant – Rembrandt (Abraham and Isaac), Quast, Vondel, and Vos 173 8.1. Abraham and Isaac: the opening of history through the what-if 173 8.2. The virtual: narrative versus interruption 178 8.3. A fool waiting for the political moment: tableau vivant between retrospection and anticipation 181 8.4. The political potential in the tableau and the nature of freedom 185 8.5. Moment of closure: spectacle and a revolting tableau 191 List of illustrations 197 Bibliography 201 Index 219 Index of names 227 to my colleagues of the department FLW Now what is the meaning of ‘one’s real nature’, from which one tries to appear ‘different’? First answer: ‘One’s real nature’ can be taken to be the sum of one’s animal impulses and instincts, and what one tries to appear as is the social- cultural ‘model’ of a certain historical epoch that one seeks to become. Second answer: It seems to me that ‘one’s real nature’ is determined by the struggle to become what one wants to become. ‒ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Cultural Writings Acknowledgments This book has been in the making for about five years. Some chapters appear for the first time in this book (Chapters 1, 5, and 9), other chapters have parts that are new. For the rest I used previously published articles: some almost entirely, some taken apart and distributed, and all reconsidered and when needed, rewritten. Most importantly, I reconsidered arguments and the precision of terms used in earlier publications in order to come to a more systematic consideration of the notions theatricality, dramatiza- tion, moment, and event. I thank editors and journals, in order of time of publication, for their permission to use or re-use: ‘Moments of Indecision, Sovereign Possibilities: Notes on the Tableau Vivant’ (part of chapter 8); ‘The Invention of the Moment: Telescope, Literalness and Baroque Theatricality of the World’ (part of chapter 6); ‘Mundus Dramaticus: a School Drama and Dramatization – Franciscus van den Enden’ (chapter 7); ‘Rehearsal in Occurrent Art: Zdjelar’s Don’t Do it Wrong, One or Two Songs..., Shoum, Everything Is Gonna Be, and My Lifetime – Malaika’ (a small part of chapter 5); ‘What Roman Paradigm for the Dutch Republic? – Baroque Tragedies and Ambiguities Concerning Dominium and Torture’ (chapter 2); ‘The comedic sublime: the work of Frans Hals in a Dutch Baroque’ (chapter 4); and ‘Theatrical Torture versus Dramatic Cruelty: Subjection through Representation or Praxis’ (chapter 3 and parts of chapter 2 and 8). I am very grateful to a greater number of scholars than I can thank here. I thank Inge ’t Hart and Tyler Sage as the intelligent, sharp, thorough, and attentive editors of this book. And I thank the peer reviewers of AUP and AUP’s editorial board, especially Inge van der Bijl, Victoria Blud and Chantal Nicolaes. I want to thank my inspiring group of PhD students in Leiden as a whole, and more specifically those with whom I talked about chapters or who commented on some of them: Marijn van Dijk and Tessa de Zeeuw. Some of my PhD students became colleagues, meanwhile, and came to belong to the larger company of people with whom I conversed, at one moment or another, on the baroque or with whom I had the pleasure to write together: Mieke Bal, Jan Bloemendal, Joost de Bloois, Bennett Carpenter, Brian Cummings, Jan-Frans van Dijkhuizen, Martin van Gelderen, Lia van Gemert, Bram Ieven, Hanneke Grootenboer, Helmer Helmers, Olga van Marion, Marrigje Paijmans, Jürgen Pieters, Sara Polak, Freya Sierhuis, Nigel Smith, Kristine Steenbergh, René van Stipriaan, Maartje Wiersma, and Kitty Zijlmans. Then there were the participants in the NIAS meetings 10 A DUTCH REPUBLICAN BAROQUE ‘Emotion and Subjectivity, 1300-1900’ and ‘Elevated Minds’ organized by, respectively, Tara MacDonald and Kristine Johanson, and Stijn Bussels and Bram van Oostveldt. Finally, I have been happy to participate in the FWO/NWO funded project under the acronym ITEMP (Imagineering Techniques in the Early Modern Period). Here I am proud of being part of a Belgian-Dutch team with, respectively, Kornee van der Haven, Inger Leemans, Karel Vanhaesebrouck, and PhD students Yannice de Bruyn and Michel van Duijnen. I thank the foundation Letteren en Samenleving Rotterdam for making it possible that I was allowed to hold the chair by special appointment ‘Literature and Society’ at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Com- munication for a third term now. And I am extremely lucky to have found such a loyal, friendly, and professionally high level working place in Leiden with my colleagues from the Film- and Literary Studies department: Ernst van Alphen, Maria Boletsi, Eric de Bruyn, Yasco Horsman, Janna Houwen, Isabel Hoving, Madeleine Kasten, Liesbeth Minnaard, Pepita Hesselberth, Eliza Steinbock, Peter Verstraten, Astrid van Weyenberg, and, most recently, Jesper Doolaard and Mathijs Peters. It is in, and thanks to, their inspiring company that I was able to work on this book. I thank them for it. 1. Republican baroque: a thunderclap, a city hall and two executions 1.1. Artifice: multiple worlds and one actualized On 5 April 1654 a war between the Dutch Republic and the Commonwealth of England came to an end with the Treaty of Westminster. This did not solve the vast tensions between the Dutch and the English.