As of late I have found myself experimenting with the writings of a Dutch author of the early twentieth century.
Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh (1882-1961) was a bit of a bohemian in the late 1890s. He had artistic friends, compatriots who painted landscapes and portraits as well as wrote poems about pleasant girls they couldn't kiss or understand. Some of them dreamed of translating Dante; they had an affinity for German literature. Some even entertained ideas of being good 'socialists' one day.
They also worked in cramped offices as clerks, working with men who were married and established and earning more. Men who worshiped the time tables and ledgers and the accounts.
So to compensate, Grönloh and his friends took long walks along the canals and dikes of Holland. The greater freedom they felt was under the Dutch skies along the Zuiderzee. They talked, they planned. They believed in God, in a greater power only because the world was so beautiful and how else could it be explained? They loved the sea and the sun's dappling rays upon its restless surface. To be able to paint that or write about such beauty seemed impossible. These jongens or young men belonged to a wonderful but vulnerable age.
Philip Blom, a Viennese researcher calls the time before World War One the 'Vertigo Years'. And when thinking of that time, it too seems almost impossible it ever happened. Yes, it was another world then. There was an adventurous spirit within the culture landscape of Europe. In Russia, it was the Silver Age of literature and art. France was Fin de Siecle. In Vienna, there was Jungenstil and the Secession Movement. In Munich, Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) was about to emerge and more. Throughout the rest of Europe a Neo-Romanticism mixed with Symbolism and the writings of Freud and Nietzsche were spurning creative minds to reconsider the world around them.
The Netherlands weren't untouched. Louis Couperus, an older contemporary of Grönloh was obviously influenced by psychology and the works of Ibsen, Tolstoy and Flaubert. Couperus wanted to show the world that the Dutch were capable of great works of literature and was even a bit too honest in his depiction. Perhaps Grönloh didn't want Couperus' fame and when he finally wrote his most famous pieces between 1911 and 1918, he published under the pseudonym, Nescio, Latin for 'I don't know'. The two writers differ in that Couperus would be likened to Zola or Balzac while Nescio embodied the era's restlessness with a yearning touch.
For me, this yearning touch I feel is addictive.
And this is where I enter in. My experimenting is purely artistic and at times, recreational. With some of my Dutch knowledge I have been rendering some of the prose passages in 'Little Titans' (or Titaanjes) into verse. I have referenced another translation for guidance as the Dutch language has changed more than the English in the last hundred years and some phrases, expressions and verbs are a bit different and difficult to interpret when using a modern Dutch-English dictionary.
I have also been giving the pieces titles.
Here is one of my favourites, the original Dutch prose 're-structured' in verse form followed by my interpretation/translation.
Or my re-envisioning.
Or my re-envisioning.
Naar Leiden
´t Was in December
Ik stond achter op de tram, heelemaal achter op
De tram reed maar door ´t land en stond
Stil
en
reed weer, uren durrde ´t
de
landen lagen
eindeloos
En de lucht werd hoe langer hoe blauwer
En de
Zon
scheen
alsof
er
bloemen
moesten groeien uit de
boerenkinkels
En de roode daken in dorpen en de zwarte boomen
En de
akkers
veel
met
riet
gedeckt
hadden
het lekker warm,
En de duinen stonden, in de zon met hun bloote
hoofd
En de
Straatweg
lag door
wit
En pijnlijk in ´t
Licht
En kon de zon niet verdragen
En de ruiten van de
Dorpslantaanrns
Flikkerden
Ook zij verdroegen met moeite ´t
felle
licht
Maar ik werd hoe lange hoe konden
En zoo long als de
Zon
Scheen
reed de tram...
En op´t laatst stond er een lijk op de tra te staren
In de malle groote
Koude
Zon
die vlamde alsof
de revolutie
moest begininnen,
alsof ze in Amsterdam bezig waren de kantoren
af te breken
En die geen vonkje leven in
M´n koude voete en
Dooie
Beenen kon brengen
En de
Zon
werd steeds
Grouter
En
Kouder
En
In
werd steeds
Kouden
En
bleef
Even groot
En de blauwe lucht keek vreeselijk
Ernstig
´Wat moest ik toch op die tram?´
...
Ja, ´t is een lange rit van Hillegom
naar
Leiden
En de
Dag is kort in
December.
To Leiden
It was in December
I stood in the back of the tram, all the way back
The tram just rode through the country
Stopping
riding on,
hours passing
the
landscape lay
endless
And up there, in the sky, it became blue and bluer
And the
Son
shone
as if
flowers could
spontaneously grow out of the
Country lads
And the red roofs in the villages and the black trees
And the
Fields
decked
out
with reeds
had it so nice and warm
And the dunes out under the sky, bare headed
Yet the
Lone road
stood out
pale
And pained by the
light
It couldn’t endure the sun
And the glazed panes of the
Village lanterns
flickering
They couldn’t endure the
bright
light as well
And I was getting colder, colder
And it was so long, with the tram
Riding
As long
As the sun.
.
And at last, there was a corpse on the tram staring
into the cheery goodness
of that cold
Sun
Flaring as if inciting the revolution
to finally begin
As if those working in their Amsterdam offices
Decided to just abandon everything
And still, it couldn’t spare a spark
For my cold feet, to
Bring
Life back to my dead legs.
And the
Sun was
still
Getting bigger
And
Colder
And
I would
always
Be cold
And always
The same
And then the sky looked down blue and disappointed
Asking in solemn
earnest
‘What are you doing on
that tram?’
...
Yes - it´s a long ride from Hillegom
To Leiden
And the
days are short in
December.
