Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies Revue canadienne ... · (CSSC). The managing editor was...

Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies Revue canadienne d’études néerlandaises

36.1 (2015)

Proceedings of the CAANS-ACAEN meeting in Ottawa, 30-31 May, 2015

From the editor / De la redaction / Van de redactie i-vi

Appendix: Inge Genee & Madoka Mizumoto

“We delight in incongruities.” Some thoughts on reading thirty-five years of

CJNS/RCÉN editorials vii-xx

John O. Buffinga 1-20

Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) as a study in visual contrasts

Mary Eggermont-Molenaar 21-32

Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada

Review Christopher Joby 33-36

The multilingualism of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) Reviewed by Ton Broos

Cover illustration: View of the University of Ottawa campus. Source: http://congress2015.ca/.

http://congress2015.ca/

Can. J. of Netherlandic Studies/Rev. can. d’études néerlandaises 36.1 (2015): i-vi

From the editor

Inge Genee

It is fall 2016 and this is our spring 2015 issue. Yet again we must apologize to our

readers for the long wait. The current issue contains the Proceedings from our

annual meeting held in Ottawa on May 30-31, 2015. Two contributions were

submitted, and we also received a review article.

John Buffinga continues the critical discussion of aspects of the work of

important Dutch filmmakers which he begun in 2014 with a paper on Paul

Verhoeven’s movie Zwartboek / Black Book (see issue 35.1). This time his subject

is the scenery, if you will, in Alex van Warmerdam’s movie Borgman. His paper is

entitled Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) as a study in visual contrasts. The

contrast between Verhoeven’s and Van Warmerdam’s work is stark, to put it

mildly, and I encourage you to follow the link to the TV interview conducted with

Van Warmerdam by Matthijs van Nieuwkerk on the occasion of the release of

Verhoeven’s film in 2006. You may not agree, but you will be amused.

Mary Eggermont-Molenaar’s contribution is about the Leiden professor

Rudolf Pabus Cleveringa, who is well known in Dutch academic and non-academic

circles for having publicly protested against the anti-Jewish policies of the German

occupiers in WWII. His courage landed him in jail, and after the war it inspired an

annual commemoration of his speech which takes place at multiple locations in

the Netherlands and abroad on November 26th. In a contribution entitled

Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada Eggermont-Molenaar describes how she intro-

duced this tradition to Canada beginning in 1986, first to Calgary and later

spreading to other locations.

Finally Ton Broos reviews Christopher Joby’s book The multilingualism of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687).

In addition to these contributions we also present a written version of the

talk presented by your editorial team at the conference in Ottawa. On the occa-

sion of that conference we attempted to write a short history of editorial policies

and processes at CJNS/RCÉN as they can be gleaned from 35 years of editorials

and forewords. While this is not a scholarly article per se, we thought it might

nevertheless be of interest to members and readers, so we present it as an

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FROM THE EDITOR / DE LA RÉDACTION / VAN DE REDACTIE


appendix to this editorial under the title “We delight in incongruities.” Some thoughts on reading thirty-five years of CJNS/RCÉN editorials.

We are, as always, grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the articles

published here, for their careful and detailed comments. Also as always, I would

like to thank Dr. Basil D. Kingstone for all French translations in this issue. This

issue was produced with in-kind support from the University of Lethbridge Journal

Incubator in the Lethbridge Centre for the Study of Scholarly Communications

(CSSC). The managing editor was Madoka Mizumoto.

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De la rédaction

Inge Genee

Nous voici rendus à l’automne 2016, et voici notre numéro du printemps 2015.

Encore une fois, nous devons demander pardon à nos lecteurs pour la longue

attente. Ce numéro contient les Actes de notre réunion annuelle tenue à Ottawa

les 30 et 31 mai 2015. Deux communications nous ont été soumises, et nous avons

aussi reçu un compte rendu étendu.

John Buffinga continue la discussion critique de certains aspects des

oeuvres de cinéastes néerlandais, qu’il a commencée en 2014 avec un article sur

le film de Paul Verhoeven « Zwartboek / Black Book » (voir notre numéro 35.1).

Cette fois, il traite du décor, si vous voulez, du film d’Alex van Warmerdam

« Borgman ». Son article s’appelle « Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) as a

study in visual contrasts ». Le contraste entre l’oeuvre de Verhoeven et de van

Warmerdam est en effet frappant, pour en dire le moins, et je vous encourage à

suivre ce lien à l’interview TV fait par Matthijs van Nieuwkerk avec van

Warmerdam à l’occasion de la sortie du film de Verhoeven en 2006. Vous ne serez

pas forcément d’accord avec ce qu’il dit, mais vous serez amusé.

La contribution de Mary Eggermont-Molenaar porte sur Rudolf Pabus

Cleveringa, professeur à Leyde célèbre aux Pays-Bas, et pas seulement dans les

cercles universitaires, pour avoir protesté en public contre la politique antisémite

de l’occupant allemand pendant la guerre de 1940. Son courage lui valut d’être

emprisonné, et depuis la guerre des discours commémoratifs sont prononcés tous

les 26 novembre dans maints endroits aux Pays-Bas et à l’étranger. Comme

Eggermont-Molenaar le rappelle dans son article « Cleveringa-lezingen in

Canada», c’est elle qui a introduit cette commémoration au Canada, d’abord en

1986 à Calgary, imitée ensuite à d’autres endroits.

Le numéro est complété par le compte rendu par Ton Broos du livre de

Christopher Joby « The multilingualism of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) ».

En plus de ces articles, nous vous offrons une version écrite de l’allocution

présentée par votre équipe éditoriale à cette même réunion. À cette occasion

nous avons essayé d’écrire une courte histoire des politiques et processus

rédactionnels du CJNS/RCÉN reflétés dans 35 années d’éditorials et de préfaces.

Ce n’est pas un article scientifique, mais nous avons trouvé que cela pourrait

intéresser les participants et nos lecteurs; nous l’offrons donc en appendice au

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présent éditorial sous le titre « We delight in incongruities. Some thoughts on

reading thirty-five years of CJNS/RCÉN editorials ».

Comme toujours, nous tenons à exprimer notre reconnaissance au comité

de lecture anonyme pour leurs commentaires attentifs et détaillés sur les articles

publiés ici, et comme toujours, au docteur Basil D. Kingstone pour ses traductions

françaises. Ce numéro a été produit avec le soutien technique de l’University of

Lethbridge Journal Incubator, du Lethbridge Centre for the Study of Scholarly

Communications (CSSC). La directrice de la rédaction était Madoka Mizumoto.

V


Van de redactie

Inge Genee

Het is herfst 2016 en dit is het lente-nummer van 2015. We verontschuldigen ons

wederom voor het lange wachten. Dit nummer bevat de Verhandelingen van onze

jaarvergadering die plaatsvond in Ottawa op 30-31 mei 2015. We ontvingen twee

bijdragen en een apart recensie-artikel.

John Buffinga gaat verder met de kritische behandeling van het werk van

belangrijke Nederlandse filmmakers waarmee hij begon in 2014 met een artikel

over Paul Verhoeven’s film Zwartboek / Black Book (zie nummer 35.1). Zijn artikel

in dit nummer gaat over de enscenering in Alex van Warmerdam’s film Borgman.

De bijdrage heeft als titel Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) as a study in visual contrasts. De tegenstellingen tussen het werk van Verhoeven en Van

Warmerdam zijn op zijn zachtst gezegd extreem, en ik raad u in dat verband aan

om op de link te klikken naar het TV-interview met Van Warmerdam dat Matthijs

van Nieuwkerk hield ter gelegenheid van de verschijning van Verhoeven’s film in

2006. U zult het er misschien niet meer eens zijn, maar u zult zich zeker vermaken.

De bijdrage van Mary Eggermont-Molenaar gaat over de Leidse professor

Rudolf Pabus Cleveringa, die in Nederland in academische en niet-academische

kring bekend is vanwege zijn openbare protest tegen de anti-Joodse maatregelen

van de Duitse bezetters in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Zijn moed deed hem in de

gevangenis belanden, en na de oorlog wordt zijn protestrede jaarlijks op 26

november herdacht op diverse locaties in en buiten Nederland. In haar bijdrage

Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada beschrijft Eggermont-Molenaar hoe zij deze traditie

ook in Canada heeft geïntroduceerd, eerst in Calgary vanaf 1986, en later ook op

andere locaties.

Ten slotte bespreekt Ton Broos het boek The multilingualism of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) van Christopher Joby.

Behalve deze gewone bijdragen presenteren we ook een schriftelijke

versie van de lezing die uw redactie-team gaf op het congres in Ottawa. Ter

gelegenheid van dat congres deden we een poging om een korte geschiedenis te

schrijven van het redactiebeleid bij CJNS/RCÉN zoals dat naar voren komt in 35

jaar redactionele voorwoorden. Hoewel dit in de strikte zin des woords geen

wetenschappelijk artikel is dachten we dat het toch interessant kan zijn voor onze

leden en lezers, dus we presenteren het als een appendix aan dit redactioneel,

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onder de titel “We delight in incongruities.” Some thoughts on reading thirty-five years of CJNS/RCÉN editorials.

We danken, als altijd, de anonieme reviewers van de artikelen in dit

nummer voor hun zorgvuldige en gedetaileerde commentaren. Ook bedanken we

Dr. Basil Kingstone voor alle Franse vertalingen in dit nummer. Dit nummer is tot

stand gekomen met steun van de University of Lethbridge Journal Incubator van

het Lethbridge Centre for the Study of Scholarly Communications (CSSC). De

redactie-assistent was Madoka Mizumoto.

Can. J. of Netherlandic Studies/Rev. can. d’études néerlandaises 36.1 (2015): vii-xx

Appendix “We delight in incongruities.” Some thoughts on reading

thirty-five years of CJNS/RCÉN editorials

Inge Genee & Madoka Mizumoto

Introduction

Most issues of CJNS/RCÉN are prefaced by an editorial. Now that all our current and back issues are available on-line, it is easily possible to inspect them all together and get some idea of developments in editorial policy and some of the issues that have concerned the editors over time.1 While some things have surely changed since the early 1980s, others have remained remarkably similar. A careful reading of the editorials published between 1979 and 20142 reveals a journal explicitly envisioned as multidisciplinary, multigeneric and multilingual, with a small but very loyal base of readers and contributors, and a unique approach to assisting its authors; despite some challenges and changes along the way, it is, perhaps surprisingly, still going strong after 35 years.

The Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies / Revue canadienne d’études néerlandaises (CJNS/RCÉN) is owned and administered by the Canadian Associa-tion for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies / Association canadienne pour l’avancement des études néerlandaises (CAANS/ACAÉN). The Association was founded in 1971 at a meeting of the Learned Societies (now Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, CHSS) at Memorial University in St. John’s 1 This is an updated version of a talk presented at the Annual CAANS/ACAÉN meeting held in Ottawa on May 30-31, 2015. The text was written by Inge Genee and the research was conducted by Madoka Mizumoto. A lively discussion followed the talk, and was continued at the AGM after we presented our Editor’s annual report, which raised some of the same issues alluded to in this essay. 2 A few issues are missing an editorial, and usually there is a single editorial for any double issue, so 34 volumes does not quite equal 72 editorials: not counting the current issue, we have 47 editorials: 13 by Adrian van den Hoven (1979-1989, issues I,i-X,ii), 26 by Basil Kingstone (1990-2010, issues XI,i-XXXI,ii), and 8 by myself (Inge Genee; 2011-2014, issues 32.1-35).

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INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.”


Newfoundland. From the beginning a Newsletter was published, but the precarious existence of the still very small association did not allow for something more official in the first few years. Things changed for the better in 1978. Gus Dierick, an early and very active member of CAANS/ACAÉN, writes on its website, “it could be argued that it was a conference organized by the CAANS-Windsor Chapter in 1978, in which 19 professors and students participated, which gave new impulse to the Association, for the following decade, the 1980s, saw the mandate originally enunciated by Prof. Levenson beginning to be fulfilled in earnest.” Part of this new impulse was the establishment of a scholarly journal. Its first issue appeared in the fall of 1979.

In the 35 years of its existence, CJNS/RCÉN has had three editors-in-chief. The first editor was Adrian van den Hoven of the University of Windsor, who set the general tone and editorial direction for the journal and ran it for the first decade from 1979 to 1988. The second editor was Basil Kingstone, also of the University of Windsor, who took the helm in 1989 and ran the journal for more than two decades. Professor Kingstone retired from his position in 2011 and Inge Genee from the University of Lethbridge has been the editor since then. The editors-in-chief are supported by an editorial board, which tends to contain about four to six members. The current editorial board contains six members.

A multidisciplinary, multigeneric, multilingual journal

Unlike most other scholarly journals in the humanities, CJNS/RCÉN is deliberately and emphatically multidisciplinary, multigeneric, and multilingual.

CJNS/RCÉN has always published articles from any discipline or scholarly approach and on any topic, as long as they contain “Netherlandic” subject matter in the broadest sense of the word. Adrian van den Hoven already mentions that architecture, political science, art and literature are suitable subject matter in his first editorial3 in 1979: “In my office there hangs a picture of Leuven’s city hall, a building which I count among the world’s architectural masterpieces. An article dealing with its various aspects would fit perfectly in this journal. For that matter,

3 Since all references in this essay are to editorials and articles published on our website, we have chosen to use hyperlinks to the original sources rather than in-text references, which would become unnecessarily repetitive. We hope this will encourage the reader to click on some of the links and read the quotes in their original context, and perhaps even (re-)read some of the other contributions referred to as well. Most of them have stood the test of time very well and are still interesting to read.

INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.” IX


so would a discussion of South Africa’s apartheid policies, an analysis of Karel Appel’s paintings, the writings of Hugo Claus, of Lucebert, or of Vondel.”

Image 1. Cover of issue I,i (fall 1979), the first issue of CJNS/RCÉN.

This deliberate multidisciplinarity is reconfirmed by Gus Dierick and Basil Kingstone in their Foreword to the special issue entitled Voorwaarts/Forward. An anthology of writing from the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, which they edited in 1996 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of CAANS: “The present anthology is meant to demonstrate the wonderful variety of scholarship which the organization has been able to tap into, and to emphasize the particular strengths of our journal. Both the regular and the special issues of the CJNS attest to the

X X



good health of interdisciplinary Netherlandic studies in Canada and, in the modest measure in which we have been able to solicit contributors, the United States.”

The multidisciplinary approach presents some obvious challenges. Already in the editorial to the very first issue in 1979 Adrian van den Hoven noted that “[s]ome people will object to the broadness of our approach and insist that it must perforce result in a mismatch. However, we delight in incongruities […].” In general, breadth of subject matter and approach is taken as a positive thing. The second editor, Basil Kingstone, comments on it on several occasions: in the editorial to issue XVI.i (1995) he mentions that “[t]he wide range of topics is […] gratifying”; in the editorial to issue XXI.i (2000) he is pleased that the contributions “show a healthy variety”; and in 2001 he begins his editorial to issue XXII.ii by writing: “This issue offers an encouraging variety of articles.” The challenges alluded to by Van den Hoven are not often explicitly discussed in the editorials, but appear to include the following:

• Multidisciplinarity may be interpreted as a lack of disciplinary focus or specialization, which may result in potential contributors preferring to submit their work to more specialized journals, thus potentially reducing the number of submissions.

• Multidisciplinarity may also result in readers who are not already familiar with the journal not necessarily looking in CJNS/RCÉN for specialized content in their field.

• Multidisciplinarity makes the work of the editor-in-chief and editorial board more complicated, as we frequently receive contributions on topics with which none of us is sufficiently familiar to make a sound judgement about the content. Finding suitable specialists to review such submissions becomes an even more important task in such cases and can occasionally be quite tricky.

INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.” XI


Image 2. Cover of special double issue XVII,i-ii (1996): Voorwaarts/Forward. An anthology of writing from the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies. On the occasion of the 25th

anniversary of the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies (1971-1996). Edited by Augustinus P. Dierick and Basil Kingstone.

In addition to being multidisciplinary, CJNS/RCÉN is also multi-generic. Besides the usual scholarly articles, it aims to include contributions in other genres. Van den Hoven writes in 1979: “… any well written article, story or poem, dealing with an aspect or aspects of Netherlandic culture in the broader sense of the word, would be welcome.” Memoirs and personal reflections are also included occasionally. In

XII



addition, the journal has, from the beginning, included book reviews in a separate review section. The first poetry appears already in the second issue (I.ii 1980), a small set of poems about WWII by Maria Jacobs and a similar set without a specific theme by Kees Snoek, both in the original Dutch with translations in English and French. The same issue also contains some personal pieces, one a memory of an unloved grandfather, the other a reflection on a trip “back home” by a Canadian immigrant.

In the best Canadian tradition, the journal was originally envisioned as being bilingual, and Van den Hoven in his first editorial accordingly solicits contributions in English and French. Beginning with the double issue IV,ii/V,i (1983/1984), the editorials themselves are usually also presented in both English and French. It appears that Dutch was included as an acceptable language for publication later on.4 The first Dutch language article was published in the Fall 1998 issue (XIX,ii), a paper by Claire Carbonez-DeJaeger entitled “De Belgische aanwezigheid in Canada”. Dutch poetry with English and French translations was included much earlier, as mentioned above.

A more emphatically trilingual policy has been pursued in recent years: beginning with issue 32.1 (2011) all editorials are now presented in English, French and Dutch, and beginning with the special double issue 33.2-34.1 (2012-2013) Islam in the Netherlands: Entering the twenty-first century all contributions are now accompanied by abstracts in English, French and Dutch.

Over a period of 35 years, CJNS has published 382 contributions (including articles, translations, stories, poetry) and 91 reviews. Of the 382 contributions, 341 (89%) are in English, 25 (6.5%) in French, 15 (4%) in Dutch, and one in German. This last one is a little surprising. It is a paper by Fritz Wagner from the Freie Universität Berlin entitled “Zu Goethes Reineke Fuchs” for the thematic issue on Le Roman de Renard / On the Epic of the Beast (IV,i, 1983), accompanied by an English abstract (abstracts were not usually included in the early years).

4 Basil Kingstone (pers. comm.) informs me that as far as he remembers articles in Dutch would always have been accepted, but in the early years none were received. I have not found any editorial comment to indicate an explicit policy change, but the inclusion of Dutch poetry with translations early on seems to suggest that the journal was, implicitly at least, trilingual from the very beginning.

INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.” XIII


Image 3. Cover of special double issue 33.2-34.1 (2012-2013).

Authors and audience

Both CAANS/ACAÉN and CJNS/RCÉN enjoy a small but dedicated following. This is reflected in author and reader statistics.

The 382 independent contributions published in Volumes 1-34 were produced by 240 different authors. 60 of these contributed more than one piece: 33 contributed two pieces, while the remaining 27 each contributed 3 or more pieces. It will not surprise anyone that those who have contributed multiple pieces to tend to be those who have also been most active, either in CJNS/RCÉN, as

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editors, guest editors, or editorial board members, or in CAANS/ACAÉN, as members of the executive, or both.

Image 4. Cover of special issue IV,i (spring 1983), edited by Haijo Westra.

Between the lines we can read that unsolicited submissions from scholars not already associated with CAANS/ACAÉN and/or from outside of Canada are comparatively rare. Van den Hoven writes in the fall 1987/spring 1988 issue: “We are very happy about three developments […]: firstly, the increasing number of

INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.” XV


submissions from the US […]; secondly, the increasing number of articles on art history […]; and thirdly, the rising number of women contributors.” Some of Kingstone’s comments allude to the same: “We enjoy receiving unsolicited manuscripts,” he writes in issue XII.ii (1991). In issue XV.i (1994) he says: “This issue has a number of encouraging features. For one thing, the contributions come from a variety of places, and for another, there are articles in all our working languages. And thirdly, we have several reviews.” Issue XXII.ii (2001) contains four contributions, two of which, as Kingstone mentions in his editorial “were unsolicited. The contributors also come from a variety of places – Vancouver, Toronto, Milwaukee and Ljubljana – and that is a healthy sign too.”

Special issues by guest editors are another way to attract contributors not normally associated with CAANS or CJNS. The guest editors of the special issue XIV.1 (1993) mention: “To our pleasant surprise, contributions made their way to the Journal from three continents and six different countries. […] These are signs that our journal is becoming known far and wide, and that the culture of the Low Countries has numerous adepts, and continues to fascinate.” The most recent special issue was the already mentioned double issue 33.2-34.1 (2012-2013) Islam in the Netherlands: Entering the twenty-first century, whose guest editor and contributors were experts not otherwise associated with CAANS.

The readership is expected to be mostly in Canada. As Van den Hoven writes in his first editorial: “[A]s this journal emanates from Canada, we are especially interested in articles that touch upon questions which also (in)directly concern Canadians. To give an example, the Belgians are struggling with a language conflict similar to ours. Holland is becoming a multiracial society just as is Canada. Therefore, in either case, there may be lessons to be learned. In addition, we are interested in finding out what has happened to all those “Lowlanders” who settled in Canada.” The localization of the readership in the first 30 years is related to the fact that CJNS/RCÉN is connected to CAANS/ACAÉN in more than one way. Membership of the Association includes a subscription to the journal, and since the vast majority of individual members tend to be located in Canada, this means most readers are also in Canada. Institutional members included several libraries located in the Netherlands, UK, other countries in Europe, and the US. However, since the transition to publication online only, beginning in 2011 (see the editorial to issue 32.1), non-Canadian and non-institutional memberships have decreased, but international readership has increased.

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Issue types

CJNS/RCÉN normally publishes two issues per volume, but there have been several double issues as well. The majority of issues are regular omnibus issues. These may contain articles independently submitted to the editor or solicited by the editor or a member of the editorial board. Some articles begin as oral presentations at the CAANS/ACAÉN annual meeting which is held each year in conjunction with Congress in the last week of May. In earlier years such contri-butions usually became part of regular issues, but more recently they often appear as separate Proceedings issues, provided there are enough such contributions to fill an issue. The review process is the same in both cases.

As mentioned above, there are also special thematic issues on a specific topic, which may be guest edited. The first of these was edited by Adrian van den Hoven in May 1983. In his Foreword, Van den Hoven writes: “This is the first issue of what, we hope, will become a regular feature of CJNS/RCEN: namely, special issues intercalated with regular issues. These special issues, under the editorship of a specialist, will deal with one theme, one question, one problem and bring together papers by experts in the particular field.” The most successful of these thematic issues probably remains the double issue Volume XXVIII (2007) on the occasion of the 400th birthday of Rembrandt van Rijn, guest edited by Augustinus P. Dierick and Ton Broos. Two of our special issues, Volumes XX (1999) and XXV (2004) are not collections of articles but rather books, both co-published with the University of Calgary Press.

Publication schedule

CJNS/RCÉN normally publishes twice per year, in spring and fall. It is sometimes a struggle to produce the scheduled issues in a timely manner. Various factors contribute to this, but the most important ones are probably difficulties receiving enough high quality submissions to fill the scheduled issues in a timely manner, and work load constraints for the editors, who are not paid for their work and usually do not have much in the way of editorial assistance. Early on, in spring 1981, Adrian van den Hoven’ editorial reports on attempts to solve the first problem by appointing “contributing editors […] whose role it is to contribute or induce other persons to contribute to the Journal on a regular basis. Minimum requirement: one submission per year.” He also urges “those who organize, or are about to organize conferences bearing directly or indirectly on Netherlandic

INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.” XVII


studies” to “inform us ahead of time. Also, they should tell their contributors of the existence of CJNS/RCEN and request that they submit their papers to us as well.” In fall 1985 he adds to this plans for “an International Advisory Board of prominent scholars in Netherlandic studies” in order to “expand both our readership and our contributorship outside Canada.”

Image 5. Cover of volume XXVII (2007): About and around Rembrandt. Special issue in

commemoration of the 400th birthday of Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn. Edited by Ton Broos and Augustinus P. Dierick

Despite all these efforts, delays in the publication schedule do occur, and remarks in the editorials allude to this, sometimes covertly, sometimes more explicitly. The double issue which is Volume III (1982) “has had an extremely long gestation

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period.” The double issue IV.ii/V.i (1983) “presents its readers with a considerable backlog of material.” In issue VI.ii (1985) Van den Hoven writes: “We are still running a year behind, as is not uncommon with scholarly journals, but hope to remedy this soon.” But in the double issue Volume VII (1986) he again mentions “a great effort to catch up to the present”, and in the double issue VIII.ii-IX.i (1987-1988) he begins: “This issue is the first stage of a big effort to catch up with our publication schedule.” Basil Kingstone writes in issue XIV.ii (1993): “We hope to get this issue out with less delay than the last one.” In the same editorial he gives us a little view in the pre-computer age editorial kitchen in explanation for the delay of a previous issue: “[T]he issue was completely retyped to make the camera-ready copy for the printer, though many of the contributors undoubtedly composed their piece on a computer or could have it typed up on one. So we appeal to you: do please send diskettes, plus a printed copy. The diskettes can be converted to Word Perfect 6.0 and the layout lost in the conversion can be typed back in, much faster (and with less errors creeping in) than if the whole thing is retyped.” In issue XXI.i (2000) he writes: “Your editor is retiring from teaching and is thus in a position to devote more time to other pursuits, including publishing your Journal. He even dreams of doing something few scholarly journals achieve, namely putting each issue in the mail in the year and season it says on the cover!” I myself allude to delays in the editorials to issues 34.2 (2013), 35.1 (2014), and 35.2 (2014), all of which were late. In a similar vein, Joan Magee discusses gaps in the publication schedule of the first few years of the Newsletter in her overview article in volume III (1982).

Editorial process and peer review policies

Quality control can be difficult to manage for a journal like CJNS/RCÉN. The multidisciplinary approach means that no editor is able to assess all submissions. Even with a broad editorial board this is difficult to do. It looks like initially contributions were entirely reviewed internally within the editorial board. Thus it would have been important to have a sufficient number of active members. Adrian van den Hoven mentions in his editorial to issue II.i (1980) that “[w]e have expanded our editorial board greatly.” In the next issue he is more specific about the review process: “As of this issue, each article is being refereed by Associate editors according to their special competence. In practice, this means that each article, story, or poem is read, accepted, or rejected by at least three persons (for

INGE GENEE & MADOKA MIZUMOTO: “WE DELIGHT IN INCONGRUITIES.” XIX


example, yours truly just had one story rejected).” In the editorial to issue VI.i (1985) he expresses his satisfaction with the general state of affairs at CJNS and also mentions that “[i]ts editorial board is made up of well established scholars, each of whom is competent in several areas and each of whom is eager to insure that CJNS maintains its scholarly standards.”

While CJNS/RCÉN’s rejection rate has always been relatively low, it is by no means the case that all submission are accepted. Van den Hoven already mentions above that one of his own submissions was rejected, and in the same editorial he expresses the tension between on the one hand getting enough submissions to fill the pages of the journal and on the other hand protecting the quality as follows: “[I]n order for it to prosper a journal requires the cooperation and active collaboration of many and a tiny handful of people would soon become inadequate. Therefore, if you have an interest in matters Netherlandic or if you know of someone who does, send in your/his/her name and plans for future submissions, and the name will go on the masthead. Of course, this is not a guarantee that whatever one sends in will be published (it is not true for my own work), but it does mean that CJNS/RCEN will continue to receive a steady flow of articles dealing with any and all aspects of ‘Neerlandia’.”

As a small journal, we see it as an important service to the scholarly community to assist especially younger scholars in revising their contributions so they become publishable. Larger journals with the luxury of many more submissions than they can publish will tend to reject those that are not already close to ready on first submission. We tend not to work like that, and it is that policy that explains, in part, our low rejection rate. As I wrote in the editorial to issue 35.1 (2014), if we feel there is something of substance and interest in a submission but it is not ready for peer review, “we prefer instead to work with authors to revise their papers and sometimes seek extra peer reviewers (in addition to the normal number) to help with this process. This can be quite time-consuming, as you can understand.” On the other side of the process we also frequently provide quite a lot of practical assistance with formatting for those authors who struggle to format their paper fully according to our stylesheet. I explain this in the same editorial: “[…] most journals will not send out a submission for peer review until it has been formatted exactly according to their style sheet. We tend not to be so strict. When a submission comes in, we determine if it qualifies as a scholarly article and if its subject matter is appropriate. If it is, we send it out for review. When the reviews are in and we are ready to send

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comments and suggestions for revisions to the author, we then ask the author to ensure their revised version is correctly formatted. Most authors are very careful at this point and pay special attention to our author guidelines. But if there are still aspects that are not perfect, or if an author is uncomfortable with it, we often take over part of that process.” Since 2011 we have the support of a part-time managing editor funded by the University of Lethbridge Journal Incubator to help with some of the practical things, such as formatting and proofreading.

Conclusion

CJNS/RCÉN is a small niche journal that continues to fulfil a need in publishing high quality content with a Netherlandic focus from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and on a wide variety of topics. Its “incongruities”, in particular its multidisciplinary, multigeneric, and multilingual character and its approach to assisting its authors, are at the same time its main strengths and challenges. An examination of 35 years of editorials shows that these concerns have existed from the beginning. Given that they have always found solutions, if sometimes resulting in publication delays, we may trust that the future will continue to be kind to our journal.

Can. J. of Netherlandic Studies/Rev. can. d’études néerlandaises 36.1 (2015): 1-20

Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) as a study in visual contrasts

John O. Buffinga

The main focus of this article is on the setting in the Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s 2013 film Borgman: the lush forest from which emerge the eponymous Borgman and his gang at the beginning of the film, and to which they return at the end, and the ultra modern, box-like, upper middle-class villa set in a clearing on the edge of the forest that occupies the central part. While this curious bookending appears to confront the viewer with the two opposing worlds of a primordial forest and modern civilization, I argue that the two are in fact intertwined: the evil or the irrational of the forest can erupt at any time, even in the meticulously maintained façade of modern civilization where people live under the illusion of being safe. The central symbols that unite the two worlds are open doors and large windows. While the filmmaker allows the viewer plenty of interpretive leeway, he refuses to be fixed. What my reading makes clear, though, is that the separation between the two worlds is fluid. The symbolic function of doors and windows as portals and passage-ways suggests that one domain readily infiltrates another, resulting in a strange but playful mix of civilization and the primordial, the rational and the irrational, order and chaos, comedy and drama, and, finally, of Calvinism and Catholicism. What this all means is up to the interpreter. However, this much is certain: the opening of a window or a door has consequences, and we better be prepared for who or what we are potentially letting into our lives.

Key terms: Contemporary Dutch cinema; psychological thrillers; absurdism; home; invasion stories; black comedy.

Introduction

A dog barks.1 So begins Alex van Warmerdam’s film Borgman (2013). Then we see a priest, a forest warden, and a blacksmith arming themselves with a spade, a

1 This article is an expanded version of a paper first presented at the CAANS/ACAÉN annual meeting held at the University of Ottawa on May 30-31, 2015.

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JOHN O. BUFFINGA: ALEX VAN WARMERDAM’S BORGMAN (2013) AS A STUDY IN VISUAL CONTRASTS


shotgun, and a long spike in order to flush out (human) intruders from a forest where they are literally holed up in underground hollows. They escape. A caption that sounds vaguely biblical briefly appears on the screen before the opening sequence, and reads: “En ze daalden neer op aarde om hun gelederen te verster-ken.” (‘And they descended on earth in order to increase their ranks.’)2 As this cryptic motto appears only fleetingly, one might promptly forget it. However, it does contain the plot of the film in a nutshell. Those who descend are the intruders, led by the eponymous vagrant (Camiel) Borgman, and their purpose in the film appears to be the recruitment of new members. They do so by insinuating themselves bit by bit into the comfortable lives of a well-to-do middle-class family – consisting of Richard, a television executive, his artist wife Marina, their three children, and an au pair – that lives in a leafy neighborhood somewhere in the Netherlands. While some characters appear to be receptive to the mysterious cause of the intruders, others are clearly not. The ones who are in the way are systematically killed off. Real violence, however, remains off-screen. While the chase of the intruders by a priest, a forest warden, and a blacksmith in the opening scene has the audience immediately in its grip, the movie does not go back to it and it is therefore never explained. In fact, very little is explained in the film; we never find out who the intruders are, where they come from, what their mission is, or how and why they select their new recruits. We are clearly in the realm of mystery here, and, by all accounts, van Warmerdam would have it no other way.

Who is Alex van Warmerdam?

Alex van Warmerdam was born in 1952 in Haarlem (Noord-Holland), in an intensely Catholic enclave within a Protestant community. Although the family later moved to Den Bosch (Noord-Brabant), they moved back to Noord-Holland while van Warmerdam was a teen, settling in the port city of IJmuiden, 17 kilometers north of Haarlem. Here he continued to be exposed to the typical kind of ‘Calvinist Catholicism’ that exists in Catholic enclaves in some predominantly Protestant parts of the Netherlands. Although Van Warmerdam describes his upbringing in multiple interviews as “netjes, braaf, katholiek” (‘tidy, good, Catholic’; Nas 1999, 34), the solid bourgeois side was always mixed with the artistic, as his father was a set designer who also conducted theater workshops. Alex van Warmerdam himself evolved over time as a Dutch polymath, becoming a celebrated screenwriter, film director, and actor, as well as a painter and a playwright. In 1980 he founded the theater group De Mexikaanse Hond (‘The Mexican Dog’) together with his brother Marc van Warmerdam. In addition to six short films and TV films, he has thus far produced ten feature films, beginning with

2 All translations are my own.

JOHN O. BUFFINGA: ALEX VAN WARMERDAM’S BORGMAN (2013) AS A STUDY IN VISUAL CONTRASTS 3


Abel in 1986 and followed, among others, by De Noorderlingen in 1992, De Jurk in 1996, Ober in 2006, and Schneider vs. Bax in 2015. Borgman premiered in 2013. It became the first Dutch movie in 38 years to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival the same year, and it was also the official submission of the Netherlands to the Oscars 2014 best foreign language film category, suggesting that the movie was critically well received. However, neither the director nor his films are easy to categorize. As Van Warmerdam writes, directs, and even performs in most of his own movies, sometimes playing the lead role, he is very much an art-house director and an auteur in the sense that he is a filmmaker whose individual style and complete control over all elements of production give his films a very personal and recognizable stamp. In this sense he is far less compromising than his older contemporary, the famous Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, born in 1938. Although Verhoeven is known in the Netherlands primarily for his 1973 film Turks Fruit (‘Turkish Delight’), based on the novel of the same name by Jan Wolkers, he is best known in North America for directing the Hollywood science fiction films Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Starship Troopers (1997), as well as the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992). In other words, Verhoeven’s years in Hollywood resulted in him becoming more commercial and mainstream. This is also evident in his 2006 film Zwartboek / Black Book, the first film that he directed following his return to the Netherlands in 2002 (see Buffinga 2014).

Refusing to compromise his artistic vision, Van Warmerdam makes no concessions to mainstream appeal, and he openly criticizes Verhoeven for doing so. This results in considerable hilarity in interviews with Van Warmerdam in which he is asked to give his opinion on Verhoeven’s work and openly condemns Black Book, such as an interview with Matthijs van Nieuwkerk during the Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht on 29 September, 2006, available on YouTube. Moreover, many of Van Warmerdam’s films are veritable family enterprises, which adds to the unique and personal style of his films, and Borgman is no exception: his brother Marc van Warmerdam is the producer; another brother named Vincent was responsible for the musical score; the director himself appears as Ludwig, one of the intruders; his wife Annet Malherbe plays the role of Brenda, another recruit in the film; their son Mees van Warmerdam has a small role as an altar boy in the opening sequence. Filmed in Bloemendaal, Noord-Holland, Borgman is a Netherlands/Belgium/Denmark co-production. This may explain, in part, why two of the lead actors, Jan Bijvoet and Jeroen Perceval, who play the vagrant Borgman and the husband Richard respectively, are from Belgium, while a third actor, Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, who plays the au-pair girl named Stine, is from Denmark.

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Nothing is easy to pin down in Van Warmerdam’s work, and this is conscious and part of the director’s appeal. In Borgman the director blends the realistic and the fantastic, and mixes comedy with drama, the horror genre with the absurd, the uncanny, and the archetypal. The result is a playful mix that is surreal in the sense that it is strange and unusual and has the qualities of a dream. The absurdist quality of his films stands out so much that one finds the word absurdism in many of the critical material written about Van Warmerdam’s work, such as Loes Nas’ article on the early work De wondere wereld van Alex van Warmerdam: Absurdisme in de eigentijdse Nederlandse film (‘The wondrous world of Alex van Warmerdam: Absurdism in contemporary Dutch cinema’; Nas 1999), or Peter Verstraten’s article Middle-of-the-road Absurdism: The cinema of Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam (Verstraten 2014). Verstraten calls the absurdism “middle-of-the-road” because of the director’s deadpan humour, whereby a fairly ordinary starting point typically leads to increasingly bizarre ends. In fact, Van Warmerdam is credited for introducing this absurdist quality to Dutch cinema, which, up until he came onto the scene with Abel (1986) was dominated entirely by the realist tradition (Nas 1999, 32). This, too, distinguishes him from Paul Verhoeven, who tends to avoid artistic conventions that take us out of a recognizable world.

Van Warmerdam is a liberal borrower of generic conventions, both in terms of narrative genres and film genres, and is loath to use any of them in their pure form. To do so would mean giving up the playful aspect for which he strives. This confounds the viewer and makes the film difficult to ‘read’. The director has been quoted as saying: “Ik wil dat het allemaal niets betekent, maar op een manier dat het iets zou kunnen betekenen.” (‘I want it all to mean nothing, but in such a way that it could mean something.’) (Schuhmacher 2013). Van Warmerdam himself is averse to putting in his films explicit (social) messages, psychological motivations, and unilateral meanings (Verstraten 2014, 6, 19). This does not mean, of course, that critics have to let themselves be limited by what artists do or do not want to explain about themselves and their work. However, the director gives viewers so much interpretative leeway that this critic decided to forego the search for social messages and focus instead on the more structural aspects of the film, particularly in terms of its setting. To me the most striking elements in the film are the visual contrasts. For example, the movie opens in the verdant surroundings of a lush forest from which emerge the eponymous Borgman and his mysterious accomplices. The upper middle-class villa, which provides the setting in the central part, is a “box-like compound of ultramodern hard-edged sterility on pristine grounds” (Rooney 2013, n.p.) set in a clearing on the edge of the forest. At the end Borgman and his gang return to the forest from whence they came. While this curious bookending appears to confront the viewer with the two



opposing worlds of a primordial forest and modern civilization, the two are in fact intertwined: the evil or the irrational of the forest can erupt at any time, even in the meticulously maintained façade of modern civilization where people live under the illusion of being safe. The central symbols that unite the two worlds are open doors and large windows.

The forest

The forest appears dense and lush and green, achieved through close range camera work and a number of travelling shots. The film’s lead, Camiel Borgman, looks every bit a drifter or vagabond with his long, straggly hair, unkempt beard, and dirty clothes. Asleep in an underground lair in the middle of the forest, he conjures up “childhood tales of trolls”, demons and monsters, or “Stoker’s vampires buried with their earth” (Callagher 2014, n.p.). However, the hideout is well stocked and equipped with a primitive but well-functioning periscope made from a steel pipe with an elbow piece. Moreover, this drifter uses a cellphone to try and warn his accomplices Ludwig and Pascal, who are sound asleep in their own underground hideouts, about the posse that is tracking them. The anachro-nism evoked by the use of a cellphone in a forest with hideouts that appears to be set in the 19th century is van Warmerdam’s playful way of working with a wink and a smile, counting on the audience’s recognition of the chronological inconsistency. But then again, this forest is closer to civilization than the camera work with which it is portrayed seems to suggest. We are after all in the Nether-lands! At the edge of the forest, Borgman comes upon a modern service station with a public restroom where he washes his hands and adjusts his straggly hair.

Figure 1. Borgman appears from his underground lair. Still from movie. Reproduced from New York Times, June 6, 2014.

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The house

As is characteristic of many of Van Warmerdam’s films, it is a seemingly small event at the outset that sets the action in motion: “A family having Christmas dinner in Abel (1986); a waiter serving patrons in a restaurant in Ober (Waiter, 2006), or a household watching while a woman is eating her meal, as in De laatste dagen van Emma Blank (‘The Last Days of Emma Blank’, 2009)” (Verstraten 2014, 13). In Borgman it is the hobo Camiel Borgman’s knock on the door of unsuspecting homeowners. After scouting out a wealthy neighborhood and ringing the doorbell of a large villa in the Amsterdamse Stijl (‘Amsterdam School’) – a style of architecture in brick that was popular in the first decades of the 20th century in the Netherlands – he asks the female owner, as if this were the most normal thing in the world, if he could perhaps take a bath at her house as he is quite dirty. She promptly shuts the door, wanting nothing to do with this unsightly vagrant. Undeterred he approaches a second villa that comes into view only after he follows the curve in a rather long driveway. In a point of view shot that shows us what the character is looking at as represented by the camera, the director gives us a panoramic perspective of a large house designed in the austere architecture and international style of modernism, with a concrete, bunker-like exterior, and a visual emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines provided by a flat roof, solid wooden doors, and large windows. The back of the house, as we see later, appears less impenetrable; large patio doors and windows, providing an unobstructed view of the expansive backyard and the woods beyond, break up the concrete walls. However, they also allow anyone an unobstructed view of its occupants, thereby exposing their vulnerability and defencelessness in spite of the pillbox exterior.

Figure 2. Front of the house. Still from movie. Reproduced from https://grotesqueground.wordpress.com/tag/symbolism/.



Figure 3. Back of the house. Still from movie. Reproduced from https://extremelongshot.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/vlcsnap-00081.jpg.

While it may be another example of Van Warmerdam’s humorous and playful ways, it is interesting that the vagrant Borgman has no luck gaining entry into the first house designed in the Amsterdam School style, while ultimately succeeding in finagling his way, albeit through a back door, into a house designed in the modernist style of an international movement that defies the expressive ornamentation associated with the Dutch movement of the Amsterdam School. We do know that this house was purpose built, because, as Van Warmerdam explains in interviews, he could not find anything suitable for the kind of story he was trying to tell (see Driessen 2013). The starkness and austerity suggested by the concrete or stucco exterior along with the straight lines and the right angles of the house that he designed has none of the intimacy and gezelligheid (‘coziness’) that many of us typically associate with the Dutch domestic sphere. However, the style of this house seems to be an apt reflection of the stark and cold lives of its occupants: a middle-class television producer named Richard, his artist wife Marina, their three surly teenage children, and an au pair from Denmark. The atmosphere is tense from the beginning, dominated by the husband’s unrepentant racism, which comes to the surface, for example, when they are in the process of hiring a gardener. It also comes out in his fretting about office politics, as well as in the power struggles at home, combined with the wife’s feelings of guilt and need for love. Characters rarely smile in Van Warmerdam’s films; their facial expressions are either blank or reserved, no matter how amusing or bizarre the situation is. This leaves the viewer mystified. Critics often take note of Van Warmerdam’s poker-faced characters and his “deadpan approach” as a director that turn his films, “with their often awkward and/or horrific content, into a mixture of discomfort and dry comedy” (Verstraten, 2014, 16). Absurdity rules. The film shows a world estranged in a manner typically associated with the grotesque; there is a conflict, a clash, or a mixture of the heterogeneous, a

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conflation of disparities at every level, the kind of which Wolfgang Kayser writes in his seminal book The Grotesque in Art and Literature (1981). In Borgman, gardeners are dressed in business suits; an innocent couple – the old gardener and his wife – is killed; their heads are encased in buckets of concrete and lowered to the bottom of a lake, upside down with their legs swaying in the water like aquatic plants; a young girl – one of the three children – kills off a man who is pleading for help by dropping a concrete paving block on his head. Van Warmerdam’s film shows not only a world estranged and a lack of harmony in the world as it is presented to us, but also in the viewer’s response to this world, as it is no longer recognizable.

Doors and windows

The link between the evil and chaos that lurk in the forest and the controlled, but uncomfortable domestic atmosphere that reigns within the modernist villa are doors and windows. Doors and windows have many symbolic meanings. They are liminal places in the sense that they are thresholds. However, as thresholds they are not so much places as they are media (Patterson 2011). While doors, like gates or portals, readily admit passage, windows are mainly for visual permeation. They mediate between the inside and the outside, blurring the boundary, bringing the outside in and the inside out. Put differently, windows are “the interface between the ecosystem of the house and the natural ecosystems outside” (Patterson 2011, 5).

A window and a door are opened at the beginning of the film, thereby letting in the intruder and his conspirators. As Borgman approaches the villa, he stops to survey the property, and as his eyes glance upwards a point of view shot shows a woman opening an upstairs window. It is a classic motif in horror tales such as F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1924), based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), in which Lucy stands in front of an open window thereby luring in the vampire Count. Spying the woman at the upstairs window provides Borgman with the boldness to ring the doorbell. The husband Richard answers the door but refuses to let him in, even beating him up after the stranger taunts him by suggesting that he is on intimate terms with Richard’s wife Marina. While this is an outright lie, Marina nevertheless feels sorry for the man and nurses him back to health, even letting him stay in the gardener’s cottage. Bit by bit, Borgman slips into the main house and inserts himself into the household. While the three children and the Danish au pair immediately fall under his spell, the husband Richard seems oblivious to his presence. Marina instantly comes under the mind control of the vagrant as well, “as is affirmed in the scenes in which he sits, naked and squatting over her, recalling Henry Fuseli’s 1781 oil painting The Nightmare” (Verstraten 2014, 18; see also Callagher 2014). “Just as in the painting, it seems as if the demon



is capable of injecting her with nightmares” (Verstraten 2014, 18), the subject of which is invariably her husband Richard’s aggressiveness, such as she had just witnessed in relation to the stranger at the door, as well as the increasingly violent behavior directed against her.

Figure 4. Borgman squatting over Marina. Still from movie. Reproduced from The Globe and Mail, October 4, 2013.

Figure 5. Henry Fuseli: The Nightmare (1781). Detroit Institute of Arts. Reproduced from Wikipedia.

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As a result of these nightmares, Marina becomes more and more suspicious of Richard, eventually telling Borgman that her husband has to die. In the end not only will the husband die of poisoning, but also Marina herself, after Borgman offers her a glass of wine. It appears that the huge hole that the gang of conspirators – hired in the meantime as the couple’s gardeners – had dug in the middle of the garden was destined to become the homeowners’ watery grave. Meanwhile their children as well as the nanny have joined the gang after being drugged, rendering them instantly docile, and undergoing a small operation, which results in a scar on their back that marks their belonging (Verstraten 2014). Just before the end of the movie, the window blinds are drawn and the back door is locked, thus signalling the end of the movie, while Borgman and his accomplices return to the woods, accompanied by their new recruits.

Van Warmerdam is meticulous in terms of the blocking or prompting of the intended movements of the characters; all movements appear closely choreographed. He is equally painstaking when it comes to their positioning or framing within a scene, and for that reason the mise-en-scène is more telling than the psychological motivation of the characters. “The majority of shots [in the film] are static, and when the camera does move it is to follow a character or observe a situation, hardly ever to accentuate a mood” (Verstraten 2014, 10). Most shots, in fact, are both static and long-held, resulting in a fairly slow-paced, almost languorous film. Characters are often seen standing in front of windows, either looking in or inside looking out. Considering the window as a bridge mediating between the perceiving subject and the outside world, this enables them to see without necessarily participating. Persons standing at a window usually appear passive, because they are not really participating; their perspective is that of a spectator (Zocco 2013, 5). In the horror genre, moreover, windows are “typically a means of entrapment” (Caldwell 2008, n.p.), and this applies to Van Warmerdam’s film as well, specifically in relation to Marina. A window often frames her character, for example, effectively containing or imprisoning her. The rectangle, which traditionally frames a window, is not a naturally occurring shape, that is, it is not an organic shape but “the shape of utility” (Patterson 2011, 8) and of man’s domination over nature. Marina, who is burdened by feelings of guilt and who has been subliminally led to believe that her husband is violent towards her, feels imprisoned and controlled by him. By extension, therefore, the whole house becomes her prison.

One could draw an analogy between a window and a film frame in the sense that the many static or still images of characters framed by doors and windows ultimately make up the complete ‘moving’ or ‘motion’ picture of Borgman. Van Warmerdam, who was a painter prior to becoming a director, also produced numerous concept paintings and drawings during the pre-production of



Borgman, and these provide a fascinating look and an interesting insight into the artistic process of making this film. All of the images were created so that Van Warmerdam could provide a visual example to his art direction team. These concept images lend to the film a very painterly quality and also “helped him begin to create the dark, unnerving spirit of the film before the filmmaking process began” (Sharf 2014, n.p.). Looking at these concept paintings side by side, one again receives an impression similar to that of a ‘moving’ picture.

Figure 6. Alex van Warmerdam. Concept painting for Borgman. Reproduced from Sharf (2014).


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The rectangle that traditionally frames windows and doors is also the shape that frames most paintings. Like windows and doors, a painting is a kind of threshold; it can give us access to another world beyond (Patterson 2011, 10). Interestingly, Marina, like the director Alex van Warmerdam, is a painter. In one scene, we see her working on a painting in her home studio, liberally – and passionately – running rags dipped in paint over a huge white canvas, thereby creating a wild visual composition of abstract shapes, forms, colours, and lines. It is her creative way of going beyond the frame of the canvas and transcending her own boundaries; creating art appears to be her only escape from a way of life that is otherwise quite constricting.

Patio doors are a cross between a window and a door. They provide convenient access while creating unimpeded views that flood interior spaces with natural light. There are two of them at the back of the villa, and these are in turn flanked by large floor to ceiling windows, virtually creating a glass wall that is made possible today by the use of modern construction materials such as concrete and steel. A glass wall erodes the boundary between interior and exterior, the private and the public (see Patterson 2011, 13-14). The patio doors in Borgman are wide open throughout the film, allowing easy access from the civilized but constricting and claustrophobic domestic space into the natural and organic but dangerous world of nature beyond, as well as the other way around.

The space between the two worlds is the extensive garden and lawn, which is ripped up by Borgman. The large hole they dig with a piece of heavy equipment is destined to become Richard and Marina’s grave: both die of drinking red wine poisoned by Borgman and their bodies are unceremoniously tossed into the hole. Interestingly, the little cottage that becomes a temporary abode for Borgman and his minions sits at the edge of the lawn and the woods beyond. The structure is quaint and cozy, with intimate spaces and small paned windows, which are in direct contrast to the open concept main house with its large



expanses of windows. It is also painted in dark colours and obscured by surrounding trees and shrubs, so that it blends into the natural environment.

What we have, therefore, are three types of dwellings: the underground hideouts of the intruders in the woods, where they are virtually one with nature, the ultramodern villa and the expansive lawn on which it sits, and the quaint little cottage that is situated on the threshold between the two. Having found their new recruits – the three children and the au pair – and disposed of those who are in their way, we see the gang at the end of the movie following the path that runs along the cottage and returning to their hideouts in the woods.

Calvinism

In interviews related to his work, Van Warmerdam often responds to questions about growing up in a Catholic enclave within an area that is largely Calvinist (Driessen 2013; Nas 1999, 34; Schuhmacher 2013; Verstraten 2014, 6, 21). He speaks of Calvinism and Catholicism not in a religious sense but rather as a worldview, a way of looking at the world. According to the director, the “Calvinist form of Christianity in which Dutch culture is embedded, […] is a particularly modest and restrained tradition” (Verstraten 2014, 6). This restraint informs his style of filmmaking throughout. “Scheppen is schrappen” (‘creating is deleting’) (Driessen 2013), as one critic writes in relation to Van Warmerdam’s filmic technique, which sees everything pared down to its essence: the shots are static, the characters appear emotionless and poker-faced, almost like marionettes (see Driessen 2013), they do not gesticulate much, there are no flashbacks, psycho-logical motivation is negated, mise-en-scène is paramount, movements are choreographed, the humour is deadpan, and real violence remains off screen. Moreover, as the family does not receive many visitors and their home is isolated, the number of characters is kept to a minimum, giving the movie a stage-like quality as if it were a play. Sobriety and restraint also characterize the secluded and austere modernist villa with its right angles and horizontal lines, its square windows and large expanses of glass. However, the occult and often macabre content of this supernatural home invasion story and psychological thriller is at variance with the Calvinist tradition of restraint and sobriety and more in line with the imaginative spirit that is usually associated with Catholicism (see Callagher 2014; Schuhmacher 2013; Verstraten 2014, 6).

While it is awfully tempting to ascribe a particular meaning to all of this, Van Warmerdam reminds the viewer that he has a fear of unilateral meaning. He is more interested in the problem than in the solution. This, too, runs counter to the hermeneutics of Calvinism, whose goal it is precisely to suppress the possible ambiguity of images or texts, preferring to reduce things to only one, preferably very rational meaning (Verstraten 2014, 6). Broadly speaking, while the Pro-

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testant imagination is viewed as dialectic, thinking in terms of either/or and stressing the unlikeness of things, the Catholic imagination is analogic, seeing things in terms of likeness and unity, welcoming paradox. Van Warmerdam embraces paradox as well. Instead of unilateral meanings, his films evoke “accidental” meanings, thereby guaranteeing indeterminacy (Verstraten 2014, 6). In other words, he encourages the viewer to look for meaning not in the obvious places, such as, for example, in seeing the movie Borgman merely as a critique of modern suburbia, class warfare, or the egoism and arrogance that often go hand in hand with an excess of wealth and prosperity in the western world, but in places that he might not even have thought of. This is in the final analysis also the reason for his refusal to abide by generic conventions, as these would limit the directions he could possibly take. Van Warmerdam’s world is familiar and strange at the same time. All we can do is watch the film with an eye that acknowledges the banality, the tragedy, and the absurdity of everyday life, but while doing so our eyes remain glued to the screen and we cannot help but laugh (see De Voogd 2013).

Homo Ludens

In interviews, Van Warmerdam always comes back to the playful element in his work, as if he had taken a page out of the 1938 book Homo Ludens by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga. Van Warmerdam may not have built an entire theoretical edifice on the importance of play in the generation of culture and society, as Huizinga did, but he does foreground the element of play in all of his films. Borgman is no exception, as critics and bloggers have pointed out (De Voogd 2013; Driessen 2013; Schuhmacher 2013; Verstraten 2014, 16), since the ludic approach imbues the entire film, from the manner in which he plays with genre conventions or religious and moral themes, to the way he presents us with a world that is completely upside down. Moreover, Borgman himself explains to Marina that “he wants to play”, and he later reminds her that he is “playing the gardener”, thereby calmly carrying out the elaborate and absurdist schemes that are the foundation of all the black comedy in the film.

This playful and absurdist element is brought out most clearly, one could argue, in the very scene that some critics dismiss as “onbegrijpelijk” (‘incomprehensible’), “gevaarlijk” (‘dangerous’) (De Voogd 2013, n.p.), as “super-fluous” and “out of sync” (Callagher 2014, n.p.), or “more pretentious than illu-minating” (Rooney 2013, n.p.), namely the enigmatic playlet that is performed by Borgman’s associates (Ludwig, Pascal, Brenda, and Ilonka) for an audience con-sisting of the titular hero, the two homeowners, their three children, and the au pair. It is staged on the lawn between the house and the forest towards the end of the movie, shortly before the married couple dies from poisoning. The audience



is symmetrically arranged, with the back of the house with its large expanses of glass clearly visible behind them, and the wooded area acting as a backdrop. Marina, flanked by Borgman and by her husband, is sitting in the second row, and the children and the nanny are sitting in the front row; while the second row underscores the love triangle and the tension between the two leads who are about to be picked off, the poker-faced new recruits are seated in the first row.

Figure 9. Watching the playlet. Still from movie. Reproduced from http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Borgman-Blu-ray/95421/.

The playlet itself is a dance routine of sorts performed to the sound of a rather haunting melody along with percussive sounds consisting of regular beats or ticks reminiscent of a metronome. The music is by the director’s brother Vincent van Warmerdam. The performers are the team that clean up after Borgman’s crimes, and consist of the two chilly female disciples Ilonka, a ballerina, and Brenda (played by the director’s wife), dressed in what appears to be a dirndl and apron, as well as Ludwig (played by the director) and Pascal, both dressed in ballerina skirts and tights, sneakers, and a suit jacket.

The dance is vaguely pantomimic and consists of three very short but distinct segments: in the first part, the two male ‘dancers’, each carrying a stick with a string or strip of cloth, spin the ballerina around as if she were a spinning-top; in the second segment, we see them probing and prodding with the same sticks what appears to be a human being (Ilonka, we presume) covered by a cloth tarp; in the third segment we see Brenda wearing a dirndl and moving a stick with a long strip of cloth attached to it in a twisting or spiralling pattern. The performance ends with Ilonka walking across the stage with the two male dancers, as if they were dogs on a leash, each carrying and hiding behind a black canvas or storyboard. While the German words “ICH BIN” are written in white capital

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lettering on the first storyboard, we read “WIR SIND” on the second one. The short play ends with the performers taking a bow.

Figure 10. Scene from the playlet. Still from movie. Reproduced from http://basementrejects.com/review/borgman-2013/.

One could be tempted to interpret the cryptic words on the storyboards as an introductory lesson in the conjugation system of German irregular verbs, specifically the verb ‘to be’. However, as they also happen to be the first person singular and the first person plural of this verb, along with the multiplication effect that is implied, one is reminded of the pseudo-biblical motto that briefly appears on the screen at the beginning of the movie: “And they descended on earth in order to increase their ranks.” The words on the storyboard therefore seem to be a veiled reference to the conspirators’ recruitment policy that the viewer might almost have forgotten. The fact that the text is in German may well be another directorial trick, and an attempt to explain it can only land the critic in hot water. What is clear, it seems to me, is that the allusion to the ancient children’s game of “tollen” or “tolspelen” (‘spinning the top’) refers to the manner in which Borgman and his gang toy with the homeowners; while the former are the ‘spinners’, the latter are the ‘spinning tops’. Moreover, the dancer in the first segment reappears, it seems, as a corpse covered by a tarp in the second one, while the third segment shows a ‘spinner’ without a ‘spinning top’. The more sinister aspects of this game are softened only by the absurdity of the performance, and, in equal measure, by the gallows humor of the performers or perpetrators.



In the final analysis, the stage and the performance are a ‘play within the film’, a kind of synopsis of the movie’s plot. It is also a mise en abyme, a kind of self-reflection or introspection that the movie’s leads may or may not have understood as a veiled reference perhaps to their own fate. The surreal dramatic piece, finally, is another kind of window, one that gives us, the viewer, some insight into Van Warmerdam as a directorial trickster. His ludic approach to filmmaking makes him toy with us as much as he toys with his characters. Through the economy of its style, the paring down to the essentials, the symmetry, choreography, and framing in terms of the positioning of his characters, the playlet re-enacts on a symbolic level what the characters have gone through in the film, and, by extension, what the viewer has gone through while watching it. Finally, the staging of the performance itself on the lawn that separates the man-made world – with its straight lines and right angles – from the elemental or natural world beyond reinforces the notion that the primordial can erupt at any time.

Conclusion

While the filmmaker allows the viewer plenty of interpretive leeway, he refuses to be fixed. What my reading makes clear, though, is that there are two opposing worlds in the film: the ancient and timeless world of the forest in which evil creatures reside, and the man-made contemporary world inhabited by people who are not really all that agreeable or pleasant. The separation between the two worlds is fluid. The symbolic function of doors and windows as portals and passageways suggests that one domain readily infiltrates another, resulting in a strange but playful mix of civilization and the primordial, the rational and the irrational, order and chaos, comedy and drama, and, finally, of Calvinism and Catholicism. What this all means is up to the interpreter. However, this much is certain: the opening of a window or a door has consequences, and we better be prepared for who or what we are potentially letting into our lives.

References

Buffinga, John O. 2014. Heterolingualism in Paul Verhoeven’s Zwartboek (2006). Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies / Revue canadienne d’études néerlandaises 35.1: 23-37.

Caldwell, Sarah C. 2008. Symbolism in Horror. Stormblog, July 8, 2008. http://coverageink.blogspot.ca/2008/07/symbolism-in-horror.html. Accessed May 17, 2016.

Callagher, Paul. 2014. DM interviews Alex van Warmerdam, director of the surreal thriller ‘Borgman’. Dangerous minds, May 6, 2014.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/dm_interviews_alex_van_warmerdam_director_of_the_surreal_thriller_borgman. Accessed May 17, 2016.

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Driessen, Kees. 2013. Interview met Alex van Warmerdam, de God van Nederland. August 20, 2013. https://www.vn.nl/interview-met-alex-van-warmerdam-de-god-van-nederland/. Accessed May 16, 2016.

De Voogd, Barend. 2013. Borgman. Schokkend Nieuws. Filmmagazine over horror, science fiction, fantasy & cult 103. August 28, 2013. http://www.schokkendnieuws.nl/recensies/3220-borgman. Accessed May 16, 2016.

De Voogd, Barend. Borgman – Alex van Warmerdam. August 28, 2013. http://www.nu.nl/filmrecensies/3561121/borgman---alex-van-warmerdam.html. Accessed

May 16, 2016. Fuseli, Henry. 1781. The Nightmare. Painting. Detroit Institute of Arts. Huizinga, Johan. 1949. Homo Ludens. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kayser, Wolfgang. 1981. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Columbia University Press. Murnau, F. W., dir. 1922. Nosferatu. Film. Nas, Loes. 1999. De wondere wereld van Alex van Warmerdam: absurdisme in de eigentijdse

Nederlandse film. Literator 20.1 (April 1999): 31-50. doi: 10.4102/lit.v20i1.445. http://www.literator.org.za/index.php/literator/article/view/445.

Patterson, Duncan P. R. 2011. “There’s Glass between Us”: A critical examination of ‘the window’ in art and literature from Ancient Greece to the present day. FORUM Ejournal 10 (June 2011): 1-21. http://research.ncl.ac.uk/forum/v10i1/1_Window.pdf. Accessed May 16, 2016.

Rooney, David. 2013. Borgman: Cannes Review. The Hollywood Reporter, May 19, 2013. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/borgman-cannes-review-525208. Accessed May 16, 2016.

Schumacher, Erik. 2013. Alex van Warmerdam over Borgman. Cineville, August 27, 2013. http://cineville.nl/magazine/alex-van-warmerdam-over-borgman. Accessed May 16, 2016.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable. Sharf, Zack. 2014. Exclusive: Director Alex van Warmerdam’s gorgeous ‘Borgman’ concept art

paintings. IndieWire, June 20, 2014. http://www.indiewire.com/article/exclusive-director-alex-van-warmerdams-borgman-concept-art-paintings-20140620. Accessed May 16, 2016.

Van Nieuwkerk. Matthijs. 2006. Alex van Warmerdam over Zwartboek. TV interview, Nederlands Film Festival (29 september 2006). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7MYbZ3q84. Accessed May 16, 2016.

Van Warmerdam, Alex, dir. 2013. Borgman. Film. Verstraten, Peter. 2014. Middle-of-the road absurdism: The cinema of Dutch director Alex van

Warmerdam. Senses of Cinema 70 (March 2014). http://sensesofcinema.com/2014/feature-articles/middle-of-the-road-absurdism-the-cinema-of-dutch-director-alex-van-warmerdam/. Accessed May 16, 2016.

Zocco, Gianna. 2013. The art of watching. The literary motif of the window and its potential for metafiction in contemporary literature. TRANS. Revue de littérature générale et comparée 16: 1-12. doi: 10.4000/trans.833. https://trans.revues.org/833.

About the author

John O. Buffinga was born in Groningen, the Netherlands. He received his Bachelor of Arts in French and German and his Master of Arts in German from Western University in London, Ontario, and his PhD in German from the University of British Columbia. He is an Associate Professor of German and Co-Head of the Department



of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. His main areas of teaching, research, and publication are German literature of the first half of the 20th century – especially Rilke, Expressionism, and literature of the Weimar period – and the history of German cinema, with a focus on New German Cinema and post-unification German cinema. His interest in film also includes the cinema of the Netherlands, specifically the work of the Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven. Author’s affiliation: Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada. Author’s contact: [email protected].

Borgman d’Alex van Warmerdam (2013) comme étude de contrastes visuels

Cet article se concentre sur le décor du film Borgman (2013) du cinéaste néerlandais Alex van Warmerdam: la forêt luxuriante dont Borgman et sa bande sortent au début, et où ils rentrent à la fin, contrastée avec la villa de haute bourgeoisie, sorte de boîte ultra-moderne, qui se trouve dans une clairière à l’orée de la forêt où se déroule la partie centrale du film. Ce curieux sandwich visuel semble confronter le spectateur aux deux mondes opposés, la forêt primordiale et la civilisation moderne, mais je prétends que les deux sont en fait entrelacés; le mal de la forêt, ou son irrationnel, peut éclater à tout moment, même dans la façade soigneusement maintenue de la civilisation moderne où les gens vivent dans l’illusion d’être en sûreté. Les symboles centraux qui unissent les deux mondes, ce sont les portes ouvertes et les grandes fenêtres. Le cinéaste permet au spectateur une grande marge interprétative et refuse d’être fixé, mais ce que ma lecture rend claire, c’est que la séparation entre les deux mondes n’est point étanche. La fonction symbolique des portes et des fenêtres comme portails et couloirs suggère qu’un domaine pénètre facilement dans l’autre, créant un mélange étrange mais enjoué – la civilisation et le primordial, le rationnel et l’irrationnel, l’ordre et le chaos, la comédie et le drame, et enfin le calvinisme et le catholicisme. Ce que tout cela signifie, c’est au spectateur de décider, mais une chose est certaine: ouvrir une porte ou une fenêtre, cela a des conséquences, et nous ferions bien de nous préparer pour tous ceux que (ou tout ce que) nous risquons de laisser entrer dans notre vie.

Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) als een studie in visueel contrast

Dit artikel behandelt de setting in de film Borgman (2013) van de Nederlandse cineast Alex van Warmerdam: het welige bos waaruit

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Borgman en zijn bende tevoorschijnkomen aan het begin van de film en waarnaar ze aan het einde terugkeren, en daar tegenover de ultra-moderne rechthoekige welvarende villa op een open plek aan de rand van een bos die een hoofdrol speelt in het centrale deel van de film. In eerste instantie lijkt het alsof deze curieuze omkadering de kijker vooral confronteert met twee tegengestelde werelden, die van het oerbos tegenover de moderne beschaving. Ik betoog echter dat de twee in feite in elkaar overlopen: het kwaad of het irrationele van het bos kan op elk moment te voorschijn komen, zelfs in de zorgvuldig onderhouden façade van de moderne bescha-ving waarin mensen leven in een illusie van veiligheid. De centrale symbolen die de twee werelden met elkaar verbinden zijn open deuren en grote ramen. De filmmaker geeft de kijker meer dan genoeg vrijheid, maar weigert tegelijkertijd zelf in een hokje gestopt te worden. Mijn interpretatie laat zien dat de scheiding tussen de twee werelden vloeibaar is. De symbolische functie van deuren en ramen als toegang en doorgang sugge-reert dat het ene domein het andere gemakkelijk infiltreert, met als resul-taat een bevreemdende maar speelse mix van het beschaafde en het primi-tieve, het rationele en het irrationele, orde en chaos, komedie en drama, en tenslotte Calvinisme and Catholicisme. Wat het allemaal heeft te bete-kenen moet de kijker zelf maar uitmaken. Zoveel is echter duidelijk: het openen van ramen of deuren heeft consequenties, en we moeten maar beter voorbereid zijn op wat of wie we mogelijk in ons leven toelaten.


Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada

Mary Eggermont-Molenaar

Nadat prof. dr. R. P. Cleveringa op 26 november 1940 een rede hield waarin hij publiekelijk protesteerde tegen de maatregel van de Duitse bezetters om Joodse medewerkers aan de Leidse universiteit op non-actief te zetten, werd hij opgepakt en bracht hij 11 maanden in gevangenschap door. Na de oorlog werd zijn optreden herdacht door het houden van een jaarlijkse Cleveringa-lezing. Al spoedig werden deze lezingen in vele plaatsen binnen en buiten Nederland gehouden. Dit artikel geeft een beeld over de geschiedenis van de Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada die in 1986 een aanvang namen.

Trefwoorden: Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa; Nederland in the Tweede Wereld-oorlog; Leiden; Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada; CAANS.

Inleiding

Op 26 november 1940 hield de Leidse jurist prof. dr. R.P. Cleveringa (1894-1980) een rede waarin hij protesteerde tegen de maatregel van de Duitse bezetter om zijn Joodse promotor en collega, prof. dr. E. M. Meijers, en andere Joodse mede-werkers aan de universiteit, te ontslaan.1 Zijn actie leverde Cleveringa bijna negen maanden gevangenisstraf op in het Scheveningse ‘Oranjehotel’. Na de oorlog ontstond de gewoonte Cleveringa’s rede jaarlijks te herdenken, in Leiden en in andere steden in Nederland en later ook in het buitenland.

In november 2015 werd in Calgary voor de dertigste maal een Cleveringa-lezing gehouden. Meestal wordt deze gehouden door een Leidse hoogleraar, die voor de gelegenheid naar Calgary komt of in de buurt is, of door een Leidse alumnus die daar woont. Sinds vier jaar gebeurt dit ook in Montreal en sinds twee jaar eveneens in Vancouver. In dit artikel wordt uitgelegd wie Cleveringa was,

1 Met dank aan Henk Jan de Jonge voor het lezen van de eerste versie van dit artikel. Dit artikel is een bewerkte versie van een lezing voorgedragen op de CAANS-ACAEN jaarvergadering in Ottawa op 31 mei 2015.

22 MARY EGGERMONT-MOLENAAR: CLEVERINGA-LEZINGEN IN CANADA


waar zijn rede over ging en hoe de Cleveringa-lezingen ook in Canada ingang vonden.

Prof. dr. R.P. Cleveringa

Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa werd op 2 april 1894 in Appingedam geboren, waar later een plein naar hem is genoemd.2 Toen hij vier jaar oud was verhuisden zijn ouders naar Heerenveen, waar zijn vader rechter werd en waar Rudolph bevriend raakte met Eelco van Kleffens (1894-1983), de latere minister van buitenlandse zaken. In Heerenveen volgde hij drie jaar HBS, gevolgd door twee jaar HBS in Leeuwarden, welk diploma hij aanvulde met het staatsexamen gymnasium. In 1913 ging hij in Leiden rechten studeren. Hier promoveerde hij in 1919 bij professor mr. dr. E.M. Meijers (1880-1954) op een proefschrift getiteld De zakelijke werking der ontbindende voorwaarde.

Na zijn promotie werd Cleveringa juridisch adviseur bij het Bureau voor de IJzer- en Staaldistributie en daarna, tot 1926, bedrijfsjurist bij de Koninklijke Ne-derlandse Stoomvaart Maatschappij (KNSM). In 1926 werd hij benoemd als rechter bij de rechtbank te Alkmaar, in welk jaar hij ook het standaardwerk Het nieuwe zeerecht publiceerde (Cleveringa 1927). In herziene uitgaven wordt dit boek nog steeds gepubliceerd (laatste herdruk 1966). In 1927 werd Cleveringa benoemd tot hoogleraar handels- en burgerlijk procesrecht bij de Rijksuniver-siteit Leiden. Deze functie bekleedde hij – met uitzondering van de vijf oorlogs-jaren – tot in 1958.

Cleveringa in de oorlog

Ten tijde van het binnenvallen van de Duitsers was Cleveringa decaan van de juridische faculteit. Al vanaf 10 mei 1940 hield hij een dagboek bij. Op 14 mei verscheurde hij het, maar diezelfde dag begon hij opnieuw. Van Holk en Schöffer, die dit dagboek in 1983 hebben uitgegeven, introduceren Cleveringa als een afstandelijke, politiek wereldvreemde intellectueel. Maar dit veranderde.

Op 29 september 1940 schrijft Cleveringa in zijn dagboek, dat bijna alle hoogleraren de petitie tegen de zogenaamde ariërverklaring hadden getekend. Deze verklaring had zijn Amsterdamse collega Paul Scholten (1875-1946) opgesteld. Als hoogleraar gold Scholten

als een van de meest principiële figuren. Op zijn initiatief kwam er een niet officieel college van overleg tot stand tussen de verschillende universiteiten

2 Veel van dit artikel over Cleveringa en zijn rede is gebaseerd op De Jong (1972, IV, 730-746) en Van Holk & Schöffer (1983).

MARY EGGERMONT-MOLENAAR: CLEVERINGA-LEZINGEN IN CANADA 23


en hogescholen, en het was Scholten die aandrong op het zenden van een adres aan de Rijkscommissaris (oktober 1940), waarin werd verzocht af te zien van discriminerende maatregelen tegen joodse ambtenaren.3

Van de 73 Leidse hoogleraren weigerden aanvankelijk achttien de ariërverklaring te tekenen, onder wie Cleveringa (Idenburg 1978, 140). Niet tekenen leek echter geen zin te hebben; daarom werd er, ook door Cleveringa, toch maar getekend.4 De rest van zijn leven zou hij hier spijt van hebben. Al gauw, al in de week van 18 tot 23 november, werden de gevolgen van de ariërverklaring duidelijk. Er gingen geruchten over ontslagen van Joodse ambtenaren, op 23 november bleken die waar te zijn.

Cleveringa had met zijn collega B.M. Telders (1903-1945) afgesproken, dat, mocht Meijers inderdaad worden ontslagen, Cleveringa de studenten zou toespreken, dat wil zeggen, een publiek protest zou uitspreken.

“Laat mij het doen,” zei Telders, “ik ben ongetrouwd” (De Jong 1972, 738). Cleveringa weigerde: hij was decaan van de faculteit en zag het daarom als zíjn taak. In zijn dagboek schrijft Cleveringa verder: “Wij hebben dit met een ‘zegt het voort’ onder alle studenten gebracht.” Uit zijn notities blijkt verder hoe hij ook als vader, echtgenoot en christen achter zijn besluit stond en de gevolgen daarvan goed inschatte.

Ik moet dit wel doen, als ik mijn plicht wil doen als decaan, maar mijn papieren zullen bij de Duitsers wel niet stijgen. Het is zeer wel mogelijk dat mijn vrijheid over enige dagen een voorlopig einde neemt. Als echtgenoot en vader: Het drukt me wegens Hiltje [zijn vrouw] en de kinderen, maar, ik moet voor de kinderen zorgen en dit houdt in, dat ik hun geen naam mag nalaten die bezoedeld is. Als Christen, ik moet klaarblijkelijk ook mijn kruis opnemen […]. Ik vraag me soms wanhopig af, waarom ik dit allemaal te verwerken krijg. (De Jong 1972, 739)

Zijn vrouw Hiltje had tegen hem gezegd: “Ze nemen je vast, maar als je denkt dat dit je plicht is [...].” En dat dacht hij. Op dinsdag 26 november 1940 ging hij eerst naar zijn promotor en vaderlijke vriend Meijers, die inmiddels zijn ontslagbrief, een “onooglijk gestencild briefje”, had ontvangen. Cleveringa wandelde daarna naar de academie aan het Leidse Rapenburg. Onderweg hoorde hij dat de Technische Hogeschool in Delft was gesloten wegens staking van de studenten.

3 Zie: https://rechtstheologie.wordpress.com/over-paul-scholten/ en Peletier (1979). Scholten is na de oorlog tijdens een reis naar Canada aan boord van de M.S. Delftdijk gestorven. Hij is in Hamilton, Ontario, begraven. Zijn dochter Bodine, die hij daar had willen bezoeken, stierf in 2005 op 93-jarige leeftijd. 4 Meer hierover in De Jong (1972 IV, 737).



Omdat in de academie de gewone collegezalen te klein waren, besloot Cleveringa zijn toespraak in het Groot Auditorium te houden. Hij begon met: “Ik treed hier vandaag voor u op een uur waarop gij gewoon waart een ander voor u te zien: … Meijers.”5

Toen Cleveringa was uitgesproken kreeg hij een langdurig applaus; terwijl hij de zaal uitliep werd het Wilhelmus ingezet. Al de volgende morgen werd hij gearresteerd. Er stond een man, in burgerkleding, met een dik nijdig postuur en een paar Mussolini-kaken in de hal van zijn huis, die hem vroeg of hij Cleveringa was en hem vervolgens mededeelde: “Im Namen der Sicherheitspolizei nehme ich Sie fest” (Van Holk & Schöffer 1983, 27).

In Den Haag, in het gebouw van het Ministerie van Koloniën, kreeg hij een ruwe bulderspeech over zich heen. Daarna schijnt hij zijn ondervragers enigszins uit het lood te hebben geslagen door hun een college te geven over de rechten en plichten van een bezetter. Cleveringa, die ergens in zijn dagboek schrijft, dat hij het liefste thuis was – “ik ken geen heerlijker gevoelens dan wanneer Hiltje en ik zonder anderen samen zijn in de vrije beslotenheid van ons beider woning” – verdween voor bijna negen maanden naar het ‘Oranjehotel’ in Scheveningen. In 1944 werd hij opnieuw gevangen genomen,6 maar dat was meer een geval van op een verkeerd tijdstip op de verkeerde plaats (nota bene zijn eigen huis) bivakkeren.

Cleveringa’s dagboeken, een over de periode in Scheveningen (van 27 november 1940 tot 7 augustus 1941) en een over die in Vught (van 4 januari tot 22 juli 1944), zijn te vinden in Van Holk & Schöffer (1983).

Cleveringa na de oorlog

Cleveringa overleefde de oorlog en werd promotor van 33 studenten. De bekendste onder hen was Winston Churchill, die hij op 10 mei 1946 met het eredoctoraat bekleedde. Op 8 april 1953 ontving Cleveringa de Medal of Freedom voor zijn verzetswerk. Hoewel een hoogleraar indertijd doorgaans aanbleef tot zijn 70ste, ging hij in 1958 vroegtijdig met emeritaat. Hij werd rechter-plaatsvervanger in Den Haag en lid van de Raad van State tot 1963, waarna hij staatsraad in buitengewone dienst werd. Cleveringa overleed in 1980 op 86-jarige leeftijd. Zijn collega Telders zat overigens vanaf december 1940 gevangen, eerst

5 De hele toespraak is online te lezen via http://www.wetenschapsagenda.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3-m=2&c=137.htm. 6 Hij werd dit maal als gijzelaar opgesloten in Vught. In augustus 1944 werd hij lid van het College van vertrouwensmannen, dat vanaf de bevrijding tot de terugkomst van de regering in Nederland als haar vertegenwoordiger zou moeten optreden.



in de gevangenis te Schevingen, daarna in het concentratiekamp Buchen-wald en ten slotte in Bergen-Belsen. Daar is hij in februari 1945 overleden (Schöffer 1989).

In 2004 werd Cleveringa door de lezers van het Leids universiteitsblad Mare gekozen tot “de grootste universitaire Leidenaar”, vóór Christiaan Huygens en vóór Johan Rudolph Thorbecke.

Afbeelding 1: Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa (1894-1980). Buste door Eja Siepman van den Berg (1981). Academiegebouw Leiden. Foto: Vysotsky. Bron: Wikipedia.

Barge en Van Holk

Op 26 november 2014 onthulde rector magnificus prof. dr. Carel Stolker gevel-stenen aan de huizen van L.J. van Holk (1893-1982), hoogleraar in de wijsgerige ethiek, en van J.A.J. Barge (1884-1952), hoogleraar anatomie en embryologie. Ook zij hielden op 26 november 1940 protestredes voor hun studenten. Jan Barendsen schrijft over hen:

Barge’s protest – een vernietigende analyse van de Duitse zgn. Rassen-theorie – heeft eerst later en op beperktere schaal bekendheid verkregen. Vrijwel onbekend echter zijn gebleven de bewoordingen waarmee Van Holk



de daad van de Duitsers heeft gehekeld. Zijn protest stond niet op schrift en geschiedde geïmproviseerd, maar een van zijn studenten – Mien van Benthem Jutting, die later bij Van Holk is gepromoveerd – heeft na afloop zijn woorden genoteerd.7 Haar handgeschreven verslag werd bij de bovengenoemde plechtigheid [26 nov. 2014] door dr. W.B. Drees (evenals Van Holk hoogleraar in de godsdienstwijsbegeerte) voorgelezen. (Barendsen 2015, 14-15)

De gedenksteen voor Cleveringa kwam in de tuin van zijn voormalige huis aan de Rijnsburgerweg te staan. Op 26 november 2015 werd in Leiden een postzegel gepresenteerd, ontworpen door de Leidse ontwerper Frans Hemelop; hiermee, en met de lezenaar ter herinnering aan de protestredes die bij de ingang van het Academiegebouw werd geplaatst, worden alle drie de protestredenaars nog eens geëerd.

Afbeelding 2. Postzegel ter herdenking van de drie protestredenaars. Bron: unity.nu.

7 Bedoeld is Wilhelmina Catharina Sabine (Mien) van Benthem Jutting (1920-2010). Zij heeft als toehoorster van Van Holks toespraak verslag gedaan, en de tekst gepubliceerd in Mare, Leids universitair weekblad, november 1982. Van Holk sprak in een kleinere zaal van de academie. De tekst van Van Holks toespraak staat ook in Idenburg (1978, 143-144). Voor soortgelijke protesten in Utrecht, de Universiteit van Amsterdam en Wageningen, zie Idenburg (1978, 146).



Cleveringa-lezingen

Al vanaf kort na de oorlog organiseren het Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) en de Stichting Pro Civitate op 26 november universitaire herdenkingen. “De formule was even origineel als eenvoudig: een student uit Leiden deed verslag van wat er in Leiden zoal gebeurde en een hoogleraar of docent hield een voordracht over zijn vakgebied” (Schuyt & Sluiter 2010, 17). Evenwel, tegen het eind van de jaren zestig werd door studenten getwijfeld aan het nut van herdenken en de jaarlijkse Cleveringa-rede in Leiden. “Een hevige en vaak emotionele discussie over het voortbestaan van een traditie” volgde. De traditie werd daarna gered door de instelling van de Cleveringa-leerstoel in 1970. De bekleder van deze stoel houdt op 26 november een inaugurale rede, zodat op deze manier de traditie van de Cleveringa-rede in Leiden in stand kon blijven (Schuyt & Sluiter 2010, 17, 24, 25).

Cleveringa in Calgary, Montreal en Vancouver

Cleveringa zal in Leiden denkelijk en hopelijk nooit worden vergeten, maar ook buiten de Leidse dreven zal dat niet spoedig het geval zijn. Volgens Schuyt & Sluiter (2010, 16) vonden al in 1948 op veertien plaatsen in Nederland herdenkingsredes over Cleveringa’s optreden plaats. Wat het buitenland betreft, Jan Barendsen, neef van een van Cleveringa’s schoonzoons, die jarenlang op verschillende plaatsen de herdenkingen organiseerde, liet me weten al in 1956 in Genève zo’n herdenking te hebben bijgewoond. Het blad voor Leidse alumni Leidraad van najaar 2015 laat zien dat er in dat jaar op veertien plaatsen in Nederland en op 22 plaatsen in het buitenland, van Bern tot Brussel, van Tokyo tot Washington, Cleveringa-lezingen worden gehouden. Op veel plaatsen zal ook het plezier van de ontmoeting tussen alumni, al dan niet Leids, bijdragen tot de populariteit van de Cleveringa-lezingen.

Het verschijnsel ‘Cleveringa in Canada’, zoals het zich ontwikkelde in Calgary, had zijn oorsprong eigenlijk al in november 1979. Wij verhuisden in dat jaar van Leiden naar Nijmegen en werden in november van datzelfde jaar voor de Cleveringa-lezing uitgenodigd door Jan Barendsen, voorzitter van het 26 novembercomité aldaar. Het was een inspirerende avond, en dat waren ook de volgende Cleveringa-bijeenkomsten daar. Cleveringa’s optreden werd belicht, er werd gesproken over solidariteit en standvastigheid, en dan volgde een lezing, zeg maar ook al recht van het Rapenburg.

In 1986 emigreerde ik met mijn gezin naar Calgary. Voordat we ver-trokken, raadde Barendsen me aan bij het kantoor van het Leids Universiteits Fonds langs te gaan met de vraag of er ook Cleveringa-lezingen in Canada werden gehouden. “Nee,” zei men, “maar als jij het wilt organiseren ....” Zo kwam ik in 1986 in Calgary aan met een lijst namen van Leidse alumni. Nadat de verhuisdozen



waren uitgepakt belde ik de familie Quartero, de eerste op de lijst, en werd meteen hartelijk uitgenodigd. Tijdens dit bezoek kreeg ik meer namen en daarna ook telefoontjes.

“Mijn man heeft in Delft gestudeerd, is Joods en wat jammer dat wij niet mogen komen.”

“Mijn huisarts heeft in Amsterdam gestudeerd, wat jammer, hij hoorde hiervan en …”

Ik besloot dat alle Nederlandse en Vlaamse alumni, ook die van hogescholen, mochten komen en vroeg niet naar een bul. Er zijn ten slotte allerlei redenen waarom mensen soms hun studie niet kunnen afmaken, maar iets horen over Cleveringa’s optreden, iets horen over opkomen voor je medemens, is ook van belang voor uitvallers of niet-Leidse alumni.

De inrichting van de avond organiseerde ik naar Nijmeegs model: borrel, diner en dan de sprekers. Wat de toehoorders betrof, veel Nederlandse, en later ook Vlaamse, alumni, ontmoetten elkaar op die avond voor de eerste keer. Het enige dat men niet leuk vond was, dat zo’n herdenking maar eenmaal per jaar werd gehouden.

Daar kwam gauw een eind aan, in zekere zin. Niet heel lang daarna vroeg de toenmalige CAANS-presidente Hermina Joldersma wat ze moest doen met een verzoek van Vestdijkbiograaf Hans Visser.8 Ik belde hem op. Hij zei dat hij in Banff een scheikundig congres kwam bijwonen en van de gelegenheid gebruik wilde maken om in Calgary een lezing te houden over Simon Vestdijk.

Bij gebrek aan internet in 1987 belde ik alle alumni/toehoorders op en stelde hen van Vissers aanstaande lezing op de hoogte. Iedereen kwam. Vooraf at ik met Visser op de universiteit. Toen er weer een gegadigde kwam om een CAANS-lezing te houden, nodigde ik alle toehoorders uit om ook bij die gelegenheid te komen borrelen en eten; op eigen kosten, dat wel. Zo worden behalve de Cleveringa- ook de CAANS-lezingen altijd voorafgegaan door borrel en diner.

Calgary

In principe stuurt het LUF ieder jaar een hoogleraar. Die mag je niet zelf uitkiezen, maar je mag wel een voorkeur uitspreken. In het begin vroeg ik niemand aan, maar nodigde ik oud-Leidenaren die aan de Universiteit van Calgary of hier in de buurt in de olie werkten uit om de Cleveringa-lezing te houden. Toen dit veld was afgegraasd, begon het LUF op mijn verzoek ook professoren of docenten naar Calgary te sturen, die dan een wetenschappelijke lezing hielden.

8 CAANS staat voor Canadian Association for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies (http://caans-acaen.ca/).



Voordat de lezing begint, worden in principe enige woorden gewijd aan Cleveringa en zijn optreden, en houdt een student-spreker gedurende een kwartier een voordracht over een hem of haar moverend onderwerp uit de studentenwereld. Dit laatste is niet ieder jaar gelukt, maar hier kan ik, behalve het thema ‘studeren in Leiden’ of waar dan ook, toch wel een aantal onderwerpen noemen waarover studenten spraken: het genot van de O.V.-jaarkaart, een jaarclub in een lekke boot, de M.F.L.S., creatief budgetteren (ouders en grootouders in de zaal werden aangemoedigd hun (klein)kroost hogere toelagen te geven), studeren als kind van een gastarbeider, en man/vrouw-verhoudingen in Canada.

Een heel leuke ‘student-spreker’ was Max Polak, rechter te Montreal. Die moest eens in november voor zaken in Calgary zijn. Hij vulde zijn gegevens en die van zijn vrouw Céline in voor de deelnemerslijst, en voegde hieraan toe, dat hij ooit bij professor Cleveringa examen had gedaan en was gezakt. Hij vervolgde met “Wil je nog meer weten?” Ja, ik wilde weten of hij ondanks zijn leeftijd, toen 78, de student-spreker wilde zijn. En zo gebeurde. Polak legde de Calgarianen uit, dat hij zich indertijd als student had voorgenomen, net als prof. dr. E.M. Meijers, voor zijn 21ste zijn bul te halen. Dat voornemen moet Cleveringa ter ore zijn gekomen, zei Polak spijtig. Want die begon hem over het jutrecht te examineren, een onderwerp dat geen rechtenstudent de moeite waard vond om te bekijken. Polak was dus gezakt en Cleveringa had hem fijntjes gevraagd terug te komen “als u 21 bent”.

Na Polaks succesvolle optreden spraken meer oud-studenten over hun studententijd of over wat hun alma mater in Delft of Utrecht tijdens de bezetting had gedaan. Vaak vroegen de aanwezigen de hoogleraar- of docent-spreker uit Leiden, of hij of zij niet eens terug wilde komen. Ik zei dan tegen die spreker: “Dat kan in het kader van een CAANS-reis, maar dan moet u, of je, meer steden aandoen.” En zo kwam het dat de CAANS-chapters in Vancouver, Toronto en Montreal kennis maakten met Ludo Jongen, Piet van Sterkenburg en Gerard Termorshuizen, en in 2016 zal Peter van Zonneveld een tour maken. Van Sterkenburg vond die CAANS-rondreis zo leuk, dat hij Cees Fasseur als een volgende gegadigde suggereerde.

Tot voor een paar jaar was Calgary de enige plaats waar de Cleveringa-herdenking plaats vond. Daar kwam in 2011 verandering in, toen de criminologe Jo-Anne Wemmers in Montreal kwam wonen en werken. Al gauw deden we samen, wat wilde zeggen dat we allebei een voorkeur voor dezelfde spreker kenbaar maakten bij het LUF. Ik was eens bij het LUF in Leiden en men vroeg toen hoe het kwam dat we allebei een voorkeur voor dezelfde persoon hadden aangegeven. Maar men zag het voordeel van de uitzending van één spreker naar twee steden wel in.



In 2014 ging het weer anders. Om te beginnen werd in dat jaar voor het eerst ook een Cleveringa-herdenking gehouden in Vancouver. Organisatrice daar was (en is) Annette Dorrepaal, Leidse alumna, die ook altijd het aanzoeken van CAANS-sprekers op zich neemt. Het LUF besloot dat jaar echter nog beter te gaan kijken welke Leidenaar, professor of wetenschappelijke medewerker, waar in de buurt is. Dat lukte het LUF wonderwel, en daarom hadden Calgary, Montreal en Vancouver dat jaar ieder een andere spreker. De dertigste Cleveringa-lezing in Calgary werd gehouden door de rector-magnificus van de Universiteit Leiden, Prof. Dr. Carel Stolker die ook Vancouver en Montreal aandeed.

Cleveringa’s optreden in november 1940, en dat van zijn collega’s Van Holk en Barge verdienen tot in lengte van dagen te worden gememoreerd. Universiteiten als die van Amsterdam, Delft, Utrecht en misschien nog andere zouden aan deze herdenkingen een voorbeeld kunnen nemen.

Appendix

Hieronder volgt een overzicht (1986-2015) van de eerste dertig Cleveringa-sprekers in Calgary. De cursieve namen zijn die van sprekers die later ook de CAANS-ronde door Canada hebben gemaakt.

1986 Henk ter Keurs 1987 Leen Paul 1988 Jos Eggermont 1989 Bap Quartero 1990 Marcel Kramer 1991 Hans Vogel 1992 Haijo Westra 1993 Rob Kroes 1994 Max Coppes 1995 Henk ter Keurs

1996 Karel Birkman 1997 Henk Stam 1998 Maarten Egeler 1999 Anton Colijn 2000 Hans Franken 2001 Wilt Idema 2002 Wim van den Doel 2003 Piet van Sterkenburg 2004 Gerald & Liz Oetelaar 2005 Ludo Jongen

2006 Arthur Verhoogt 2007 Gerard Termorshuizen 2008 Henk Jan de Jonge 2009 Jeroen Stil 2010 Kees Schuyt 2011 Chris Heesakkers 2012 Marlen Dane 2013 Peter van Zonneveld 2014 Thomas Bäck 2015 Carel Stolker

Referenties

Barendsen, Jan. 2015. Van Holk, een moedig Remonstrant. AdRem, Remonstrants maandblad, November, 14-15.

Cleveringa, Rudolph Pabus. 1927. Het nieuwe zeerecht. Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink. De Jong, Loe. 1972. Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Deel IV, mei ’40-

maart ’41. Den Haag: Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie/Staatsuitgeverij. Idenburg, Petrus Johannes. 1978. De Leidse universiteit, 1928-1946. Leiden/Den Haag:

Universitaire Pers.



Peletier, W.M. 1979. Scholten, Paulus (1875-1946). In Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland. Den Haag: ING. resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1880-2000/lemmata/bwn1/scholten (laatst gewijzigd 12-11-2013).

Schöffer, Ivo. 1989. Telders, Benjamin Marius (1903-1945). In Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland. Den Haag: ING. resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1880-2000/lemmata/bwn3/ telders (laatst gewijzigd 12-11-2013).

Schuyt, Kees & Ineke Sluiter, red. 2010. Cleveringa’s koffer: Recht, vrijheid en verantwoordelijk-heid. Leiden: University Press.

Van Holk, L.E. & Ivo Schöffer. 1983. Gedenkschriften van Prof. Mr. R. P. Cleveringa betreffende zijn gevangenschap in 1940-1941 en 1944. Leiden: Brill / Universitaire Pers.

Over de auteur

Mary Eggermont-Molenaar (1945- ) werd geboren in Haarlem en woonde vervol-gens in Hoorn, Leiden, Los Angeles, Nijmegen en sinds 1986 in de Canadese stad Calgary. Aan haar opleiding Nederlands Recht had ze daar niet veel. Ze werd ver-taalster, auteur van tot nu toe zeven boeken, CAANS speakers’ convenor en redactrice van de CAANS Newsletter. In 2015 organiseerde ze namens het Leids Universiteits Fonds voor de 30e maal de Cleveringa-herdenking.

Naast artikelen in Rechter Tie-Nieuwsbrief en Euskara, het jaarblad van de Academie voor de Baskische taal, publiceerde ze ongeveer zestig artikelen in juridische en anthropologische tijdschriften. Auteur’s contact: [email protected].

Cleveringa lectures in Canada

On November 26, 1940, Leiden University professor R.P. Cleveringa delivered a speech in which he protested the resignation, forced by the German occupiers, of professor E.M. Meijers and other Jewish professors. The next day he was arrested and imprisoned for eleven months. After the war Leiden University started to commemorate his courage with an annual Cleveringa lecture on November 26. Soon this lecture was also held in many places in and outside the Netherlands. This article describes the history of the Cleveringa lectures in Canada, which started in 1986.

Les conférences Cleveringa au Canada

Le 26 novembre 1940, R.P. Cleveringa, professeur à l’Université de Leyde, prononça un discours où il protesta contre la démission, forcée par l’occupant allemand, du professeur E.M. Meijers et d’autres professeurs juifs. Le lendemain, il fut arrêté et emprisonné pendant onze mois. Après la guerre, l’Université de Leyde commença à commémorer son courage en



instituant une conférence en son nom, donnée chaque année le 26 novembre. Bientôt, cette coutume fut imitée dans maints endroits, aux Pays-Bas et au-delà. Le présent article décrit l’histoire des conférences Cleveringa au Canada, qui ont commencé en 1986.


Review Christopher Joby

The multilingualism of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) [Amsterdam studies in the Dutch Golden Age] Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. 350p.

ISBN 9789089647030

Reviewed by Ton Broos

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REVIEW: TON BROOS: CHRISTOPHER JOBY:THE MULTILINGUALISM OF CONSTANTIJN HUYGENS


One superstar at the firmament of the Golden Age in the Low Countries is without any doubt Constantijn Huygens. His early upbringing in a wealthy family, his talents, ambitions and connections made him into one of the most influential people of the 17th century. His skills ranged from secretary to the Prince of Orange, Frederick Henry, to correspondent and friends with European heavy-weights like Descartes, Barlaeus, Rubens, and John Donne, besides being a composer and player of the lute, architect, scientist, playwright and poet. In this study we learn about Huygens’ talent for languages and the result is impressive. The author starts first with an introduction to multilingualism in general and to that of Huygens in particular, and he succeeds in giving a framework of the United Provinces in general and of Huygens as its representative.

Huygens had ability in and used eight languages: Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, English, Spanish and German. Even today, speaking more than one language is not surprising for most of the inhabitants of the Low Countries, but Huygens shows his versatility in several. Of course we should keep in mind that the borders of the various countries were not fixed in the 17th century, and that the languages, and dialects, were equally fluid. Still, Huygens was definitely a genius, who learned Dutch as a first language, French and Latin before his tenth birthday, Greek at early teenage years and Italian and English during his later teens. At Leiden University and subsequently at diplomatic missions he could practice his skills, and later added Spanish and a certain competence in German. All this can be gleaned from his poems and international correspondence, which according to the author of this study could amount to as many as 70,000 letters during his lifetime. He lived to be 91.

All aspects of Huygens’ multilingualism are discussed in different chapters, first in general terms, and then in terms of his language acquisition, his “multidimensionality”, Huygens’ use of it in music, science, and architecture, and last but not least his translation skills. The next chapter deals with code switching. This term remains elusive, and the author seems to be unconvinced by other scholars who describe it as “alternate use of two languages or linguistic varieties” (Huygens uses more than two) or relating to spoken languages, which is of course not applicable to Huygens. His switching applies to written language, for which there is the term “macaronics”. Then we have to deal with “intrasentential” and “intersentential” writing. It looks convincing, but the author retained my attention much longer when presenting examples of Huygens’ usage of euphemisms, critical terms, neologisms, medical terms, puns and rhymes. I wished he had given the reader more extensive quotes, and complete poems, reflecting the Huygens we would like to have for dinner with international friends. Now we have to do with a small selection in the appendix. Of course all Huygens’ texts can be found on the websites, but it would make for a more enjoyable study, which is now an

REVIEW: TON BROOS: CHRISTOPHER JOBY: THE MULTILINGUALISM OF CONSTANTIJN HUYGENS (1596-1687) 35


enormous exercise in minutely detailed word searching. It affects the writing style occasionally, as on p. 230 where I counted six sentences starting with “In”.

The final chapter deals with the Huygens family. Daughter Susanna had deliberately (!) received less education than her four brothers, of whom Christiaan is the well-known scientist (pendulum clock), Constantijn Jr. the secretary to William III, and Lodewijck the language champion. Philips, the least well known, wrote to his brother Christiaen this funny multilingual sentence: “Ses iam dico vos esse praestentissimos verrkyckeratorum Slypatores” (‘But now I say that you are the most excellent of lens grinders of telescopes’).

Similar pleasures can be found in some of the footnotes in this study. They are full of little tidbits, like the fact that there were at least 12 Dutch Calvinist churches in England, or that half of all aliens in England were Dutch, or that there was very little teaching of English in schools in the Netherlands. Also, there were about 3,000 Scots soldiers in Dutch service in 1603. Huygens had about 10,000 books in his library, he wore spectacles for much of his life, Rubens corresponded in Spanish, French, Dutch and Italian, and a Richard Dafforne taught Dutch in London at the time. These details are the currants in the porridge and do make the reader smile, because one feels sometimes overwhelmed by an overload of minutiae.

There is not much to criticize about this study. However, I cannot resist to point out a few minor tweaks. On p. 88 in a footnote about a poem in French, the author translates the Dutch “het zijn paradoxen, ik meen het niet” as “they are paradoxes, I don’t think”. I believe the latter part means: “I am not serious.” The author interprets the name of Jacob Cats’ summer home Sorghvliet as the compound of ‘care’ and ‘stream’ or ‘refuge’. I interpret it (also) as ‘worry’ and ‘avoid’ or ‘flee’, which is appropriate for an out-of-town residence. A Huygens wordplay on his friend Utricia Ogle and her beautiful voice reads: “’T is geen’ Ogel, nae die gorgel: / ’T scheelt een’ letter; ’t is een Orgel.” The author translates: “It is no Ogel, after that gargle. / It lacks a letter; it is an Orgel” (p. 140). I agree that orgel means ‘organ’ and Huygens likens her voice to the musical instrument, but ‘gorgel’ is not the noun from the verb ‘gorgelen’ meaning to ‘gargle’ but is the common word for ‘throat’.

As a service to the student it would have been interesting if we were provided with the transcription of the letter from Huygens to Anna Maria van Schurman (also a remarkable polyglot wunderkind!) on p. 240, which is now an exercise in staring at ink stains. The page from the Olla Podrida poem is likewise just a curiosum and the colour quality of the illustrations is below par in this expensive work.

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Overall, however, the scholarly world of the Dutch Golden Age will be delighted with this study which is a wonderful addition to the extensive literature by and about Constantijn Huygens.

About the reviewer

Ton Broos studied Dutch Language and Literature at the universities of Amsterdam and Nijmegen. He taught Dutch at Sheffield University (UK) and was until recently Director of Dutch Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA. He has published on Jacob Campo Weyerman’s Biographies of Painters (Rodopi, 1990) and other 18th century Dutch literary subjects. Other publications include Anne Frank’s literary interests, and translations of the medieval plays Elckerlyc (Medieval Institute Publications, 2007) and Mariken van Nieumegen (Medieval Institute Publications, in press). Author’s affiliation: University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, USA. Author’s contact: [email protected].

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