The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy
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The Dedalus lists, offers its readers a new genre, literary fantasy. It is the genre of distorted reality; in which magic realism, surrealism, the occult, decadence, the grotesque and the fantastic merge; a European genre especially suited to the 1990s.
Literary fantasy is reflected in every aspect of the Dedalus list, from contemporary fiction to its classic programme, but above all in its anthologies. Dedalus began its series of European literary fantasy anthologies with British Fantasy: the nineteenth century - editor Brian Stableford (1991) and Austrian Fantasy: the Meyrink Yers 1890-1930 - editor Mike Mitchell (1992) and continues the series with Polish Wiesiek Powaga and Portuguese Fantasy - editors Eugenio Lisboa and Helder Macedo in 1994 with French Christine Donougher; Belgian Richard Huijing; and Germany Fantasy: the Romantics and Maurice Raraty following in 1995.
In making his selection for The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy Richard Huijing has given a wide definition to what literary fantasy is so as as to be able to include the most important Dutch writers of the last hundred years.
Edited and translated by
Richard Huijing
With a project as large as this one, many individuals have contributed suggestions, ideas and criticism. They know who they are and I hereby offer them all my heartfelt thanks.
Special thanks must go to George Barrington of Dedalus Ltd, for the trust he placed in me and my work; to Maarten Asscher, Editorial Director of Uitgeverij J.W. Meulenhoff and a very dear friend, whose tremendous efforts on my behalf went way beyond the call of duty and appeared to exceed the bounds of the possible on many occasions; to Eva Cossee of Uitgeverij Contact, Jacques Dohmen of Erven Em. Querido's Uitgeverij, Jos and Franc Knipscheer of Uitgeverij In de Knipscheer, Erik Menkveld of Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Wouter van Oorschot of Uitgeverij Van Oorschot and Nans Spieksma of Uitgeverij Nijgh & Van Ditmar, all of whom generously provided me with copious materials from their lists as well as doing me many other kindnesses.
Maurits Verhoeff, that fine literary 'snifferdog', made all the difference many a time with his enthusiasm and, especially, his cheering words and quiet good humour when times were hard and my spirits low. Theo de Groot, IT colleague and fine friend, performed logistical feats bordering on the miraculous, channelling the tidal wave of electronic mail between our two countries. I owe you!
Without the eagle eye of Ron Mooser, my trusty word-forword checker and researcher of bibliographical data, and of Louise Jakobsen, a fine and sensitive copy editor if ever there was, many a gaff and infelicity would have found its way into print. Any that now remain - and, alas, there always will be some that slip the net - are my responsibility, and mine alone.
Finally, my profound thanks to all the authors and other copyright holders concerned: without your co-operation and generosity this book could never have been.
I should like to thank the following for permission to use copyright material:
Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij: for Jan Arends Het Ontbijt (1972);
Remco Campert De verdwijning van Bertje S. (1954, 1971); Fritzi Harmsen van Beek Het Taxivarken (1968); Frans Kusters De Volledige Diagnose (1991); Harry Mulisch De Versierde Mens (1975).
Uitgeverij Contact: for Maarten Asscher Het Geheim van Dr Raoul Sarrazin (1992).
Uitgeverij J.W. Meulenhoff: for Huub Beurskens Hoogste Onderscheiding (1992); J.M.A. Biesheuvel Brommer op Zee (1972); Frans Kellendonk Dood en Leven van Thomas Chatterton (1983); Arthur van Schendel De Witte Vrouw (1936, 1976); Jan Siebelink Genegenheid (1978); Jan Wolkers Gevederde Vrienden (1959).
Uitgeverij G.A. van Oorschot: for Anton Koolhaas Balder D. Quorg, spin (1958).
Uitgeverij Erven Em. Querido: for Belcampo Uitvaart (1959); Willem Brakman Het Evangelie naar Chabot (1984); Inez van Dullemen Na de Orkaan (1983); A.F.Th. van der Heijden Pompeii Funebri (1984); Helene Nolthenius Omzien als Wapen (1981); P.F. Thomese Leviathan (1991).
Menno Heeresma Esq.: for Marcus Heeresma Stortplaats (1984).
Gerard Reve Esq.: for Gerard Reve Werther Nieland (1949, 1990).
Mrs Mieke Vestdijk: for Simon Vestdijk Het Stenen Gezicht (1935, 1974).
It has proved impossible properly to identify the copyright holders for one or two of the works included in this volume. Anyone concerned is invited to contact the publishers, Dedalus Ltd., at their offices in Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, with regard to the matter.
INTRODUCTION 9
STORIES
Arnold Aletrino In the Dark 15
Jan Arends Breakfast 24
Maarten Asscher The Secret of Dr Raoul Sarrazin 38
Belcampo Funeral Rites 49
Huub Beurskens Highest Honours 63
J. M. A. Biesheuvel Biker at Sea 74
Willem Brakman The Gospel According to Chabot 78
Remco Campert The Disappearance of Bertje S. 97
Louis Couperus Bluebeard's Daughter 100
The Son of Don Juan 106
Johan Andreas Der The Sacred Butterfly 112
Mouw
Lodewijk van Deyssel Curious Things on the Plain 118
Inez van Dullemen After the Hurricane 120
Jacob Israel de Haan Concerning the Experiences of Helens Marie Golesco 130
Fritzi Harmsen van Beek The Taxi Pig 139
Marcus Heeresma Dumping Ground 142
A. F. Th. van der Pompeii Funebri 155
Heijden
Jan Hofker Rustler 169
Frans Kellendonk Death and Life of Thomas Chatterton 171
Anton Koolhaas Baldur D. Quorg, Spider 183
Frans Kusters The Full Diagnosis 198
Harry Mulisch Decorated Man 202
Caret van Nievelt Souls Errant 218
Helene Nolthenius Looking Back: the Weapon 228
Gerard Reve Werther Nieland 232
Arthur van Schendel The White Woman 283
Willem Schurmann The Unbalanced King 288
Jan Siebelink Affection 309
P. F. Thomese Leviathan 319
Simon Vestdijk The Stone Face 350
Jan Wolkers Feathered Friends 359
NOTES ON THE AUTHORS 373
Richard Huijing is, a classical musician, a writer and literary translator, and an IT consultant specialising in multi-tasking operating systems architectures.
His translations include Parents Worry and Collected Poetry by Gerard Reve, The Body Mystic by Frans Kellendonk and The Laws by Connie Palmen.
He is currently engaged on editing and translating The Dedalus Book of Belgian Fantasy and translating Louis Couperus's The Chronicles of Small Souls and The Tattooed Lorelei by Jaap Harten.
Fancy that...
Those words may well cross many a reader's mind on lifting this volume from the shelf for the first time and comparing its girth with the reader's own estimation of the size of the corpus of Dutch literature known to the general book buying public, not only in this country but worldwide as well. It's an everlasting problem for a big language with a comparatively small flock of native speakers: how to make it and its wealth of literature travel beyond national borders and the borders of countries from its colonial past where (variants of) the language are still spoken today. Add to that a prevailing image of the Dutch as a people of sober habit, cleanliness, order and an almost unlimited capacity to speak languages other than their own, and the task of compiling an overview of Dutch literature as a whole, while concentrating on the fantastic within it, would seem to be a task so daunting as to be an almost impossible one. And so it has turned out to be, but for reasons quite different from those I might have expected: such was the wealth of material at my disposal that a second volume of similar size could have been filled with ease without any compromises as regards quality or suitable
subject matter. My turn to say: 'Fancy that!' And fancy is the word that rules the contents of The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy, that old and trusted expression denoting the entire range of products of the imagination in fiction, in Art as a whole, from the weirdly improbable to the macabre, from fairy tales to pipe dreams, from darkest perversion to religious ecstasy: the Dutch literary imagination in as many guises as could be found.
The Netherlands being a small nation as regards its physical size, and having been a trading nation for centuries, it is not surprising that foreign influences, fashions and trends have played a decisive part in the development of Dutch and therefore its fiction too. Add to that a strong scholarly tradition, rooted in ancient universities like Leiden in the North, and Leuven in the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium), where the exchange of views and cultural values were part of general discourse, and it is not difficult to see how the Netherlands, as a hub of European and world trade through the centuries, should by rights have become in similar fashion a hub for world culture, with a rich and vibrant national literature, renowned worldwide.
The fly in the ointment proved to be the predominant influence throughout the Northern Netherlands of Calvinism, a Protestant doctrine not really known for its enthusiasm for Art as a whole and Literature and Drama in could be worse to the censorious than a form of human endeavour based on freedom of spirit and boundless imagination? - which in many ways has shaped not only its adherents in the country over the ages, but the fabric of Dutch national life and the very language itself. Dogmatic in its approach and condemnatory, both by conviction and inclination, of most of man's natural actions, desires and dispositions, Calvinist morality or elements and residues of it, at the very least, have crept into every nook and cranny of Dutch consciousness and are now part and parcel of 'being Dutch', to such an extent that, at a guess, most Dutch people living in the Netherlands today would not notice their presence in their lives and language, even when pointed out to them. Not long ago, I heard a good Dutch friend of devout atheist and (in his own words) a 'paid-up member of the damned' - explain his inability to go out one Saturday evening by saying 'Ik moet mezelf nog klaarmaken voor de Zondag' ('I've still got to get myself ready for Sunday'). Questioned about it, he had no real explanation as to what precisely he meant but, even so, it certainly meant something to him, enough indeed to put off a good night on the tiles!
Let it be no surprise then that a good number of the fantasies here touch upon and deal with religion, both directly and indirectly. Whereas The Sacred Butterfly by Johan Andreas Der Mouw treads the floating paths of ecstasy, The Gospel According to Chabot by Willem Brakman revisits the crucifixion, taking in trade monopolies, rural courtship and cross dressing en passant, while Jacob Israel de Haan's Concerning the Experiences of Helenus Marie Golesco gives an extraordinary and penetrating perspective, from a Jewish background, on Christ, the Devil and true devotion.
As important in Dutch life is the notion of the burger and its concomitant burgerlijkheid (a notion perhaps best, but oh, so inadequately 'translated' by a cross between 'middle class' and 'petit bourgeois'), frequently portrayed in Dutch literature as the source of much misery, stifling the individual, while at the same time being the butt of derision and scorn. From here it is but a short step to the morbid, the province of Arnold Aletrino in his In the Dark, of Jan Hofker in his little gem Rustler, a hauntingly economical evocation of a man's last steps to the gallows, and of Marcus Heeresma who, in Dumping Ground, succeeds in combining all the sensuality of voyeurism and lust on a garbage tip with incisive criticism of our Western attitudes to the native peoples of South America.
So where's the fun, the fizz, the wit of Dutch fantasy? Whimsy of a high order is at the heart of the two fancies by the classic master of Dutch fiction, Louis Couperus. His The Daughter of Bluebeard and The Son of Don Juan are splendid examples of his style, his sly humour and his notably 'modern' thoughts on men and particularly women, given the date of their writing: 1915. Darker in hue is the humour of Fritzi Harmsen van Beek in The Taxi Pig while, in Looking back: the Weapon, Helene Nolthenius sets the trials of Orpheus in a completely new light, and Huub Beursken's Highest Honours shows bullish good humour from the generation of younger writers born in the fifties, an extraordinarily talented and fruitful bunch, a good number of whom I have been fortunate enough to be able to include.
To mention each and every one of the thirty or more authors whose work has been included in this collection would surely be perverse: exploration of the unknown is half the fun, after all. However, I cannot allow myself to conclude this bird's eye view of The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy without addressing a very particular, special form of fantasy fiction: the tale in which all is hidden, suggested, where the menace and brooding is implicit rather than explicit, where the perspective slithers about and warps and distorts while the readers not looking, as it were. To be able to publish just one such tale would already be a pleasure, to be able to include two, one an undisputed masterpiece of Dutch literature as a whole, Werther Nieland by Gerard Reve, the other the debut of a young writer of exceptional quality, P.F. Thomese's Leviathan, has to be my own, personal highlight in presenting this volume.
Omissions from a collection such as this are inevitable and, alas, unavoidable: space is not inexhaustible, rights cannot always be agreed, demands from one quarter or another enter the realm of fiction concerned and become quite fantastic. To have had to exclude anything for any such reason is as good a ground for sadness as any I can think of. The only subjects absent by design in this collection are clogs, windmills and tulips - cheese, however, put up a tougher fight than I had bargained
Note
For a general discussion of Literary Fantasy, see the introduction by Brian Stableford to The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy.
For David F., David P., Maureen D. and Mieke M.
Friends beyond compare.
Arnold Aletrino
It has already been almost a fortnight that I have been perpetually in the dark. My eye ailment does not heal. My spirit is becoming ill through all the solitude.
Today, I got up, a painful pressure above my sick eye and a head as heavy as lead, for I had not slept last night.
Now that, as I do every day, I have come into my dark sitting room, I feel, right through the double curtains, that it is cold, wet and miserable outside.
Again and again, the wind howls in gusts through the cracks in the window frames and blows with melancholy tones down the chimney and the flue. With each gust, the rain is driven against the windows with a clatter.
I attempt to rouse my cat to a cheerfulness which I myself lack and I lure her with a scrap of paper crunched into a ball on the end of a string, but she crawls into her basket close to the fire. She is cold and sad, like me.
Whether it is the fault of my irritability, I do not know, but it seems to me as if the reading aloud of the newspaper is interrupted more often than usual by domestic issues.
At last, the reading is finished and I do again what I have done so frequently: I walk back and forth like a bear in his cage, from the wall to the door and back again. Always the same: the wall, the little table, the sofa, the door ... the door, the sofa, the little table, the wall.
And during this monotonous progress, it is as if the clock ticks clearly: una ex his, hora mortis, una ex his, hora mortis.
The portraits on the wall, bored, stare down at me wherever I go: from the wall to the door, from the door to the wall. My own portrait, which was made in my sixteenth year, in particular.
Dozing along to my regular tread, I see how matters will turn out, later on, when my old folks are dead and the entire family has dissolved. Then I will take the portrait and hang it in my study, and when I am dead, it will be sold together with a house coat, a few old books and an easy a Jew. A few days later, and it will take pride of place on the bridge with an old stove and a few flat-irons, a pillar of mahogany footwarmersr and a few paintings by unknown masters, in sight of all and su
ndry and spattered with mud by passers-by. One rainy day, it will be sold for its frame, and my image, torn to shreds, blown into the canal and across the street.
Or, otherwise, a married brother or sister will keep it and hang it in the living room, but when they, too, are dead, it will be carried up to the loft, out of piety, by nephews and nieces who still have a vague recollection of me. For a while it stands peacefully among packing cases and dirty-linen baskets, next to a rungless ladder and a basket full of old, mouldy shoes. One day, it is soaked from its frame as this has to be used for something else. Afterwards, it then gets lost in a large, dusty portfolio, filled with old drawings, cardboard and papers of no value. One Sunday afternoon, when children are visiting and they do not know what to do any more, they go up to the loft to play, for here there are heaps of old toys and there are airing rods which they can use for gymnastics. When this, too, bores them, they drag out the big portfolio from its quiet comer. I see myself lying flat on the dusty floor. The little children's faces bend over me and I hear them ask: Who's that?' And one of the eldest answers: 'A great-uncle of father or mother, I believe, when he was still very young.'
I continue to walk from the wall to the door, from the door to the wall with an even, sleepy tread, for ages at a stretch.
Sometimes I sit staring in a book for a long time, nodding off. When I look up, it surprises me that nothing has changed. Why this should be, I do not know. All is still the same. The cat's toy hangs, motionless as ever, against the leg of the chair, the lamp shade is still as squiffy as ever, my portrait looks just as bored, and the clock ticks the same, continually.
I resume my walk, and wait, and listen to every sounding bell as a sign of someone in vain.
Gradually it becomes dead quiet in the house. Now and then, the silence is disturbed by the slamming of a door or the rattling of a bucket in the kitchen.