Bart Westgeest

Kategori: English

  • Languages

    As you can see from this screenshot from today’s notes I have trouble on concentrating me on one language.

    When I read Dutch I spontaneously write in Dutch, and the same goes for English and Danish.

    I don’t really know what to do with this right now, it is not always practical but it happens.

    To write a blogpost about a Dutch book in Danish is a bit “unusual”, as is to write about a Danish book in Dutch or a Dutch book in English.

    Most native English speakers don’t master Dutch or Danish, but almost all Dutch or Danes speak English more or less fluently.

    Danes don’t speak Dutch as a rule, and Dutch don’t understand Danish well.

    So English is the only language that most people in Europa (and elsewhere) understand.

    I could of course write in Dutch about Dutch books etc, but, how good is my Dutch, or Danish at the moment?

    Google Translate can be a helpful tool, but it is not perfect yet and turns many sentences into nonsense:

    Het is makkelijk te krijgen insanely afgeleid in ons leven vol van informatie en impulsen, maar waar komt het laat ons?

    Når jeg skriver, jeg højtideligt besøge mig.

    I suppose I will continue in English so that everybody can read it, but a quote can be in one of the languages.

    Quotes are often not so easy to translate and regularly serve as an illustration rather than a vital part of the story.

  • Monotony

    Monotony


    Thomas Nydahl quotes regularly on his blog Occident from Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Three days ago the quote was about monotony, stating that an existence should be monotonous in order not to be monotonous. When life is lived the same way every day, then every little thing becomes important, and every little change huge. Therefore one will notice and admire every idea, sound, motion.

    It is insanely easy to get distracted in our life full of information and impulses, but where does it leave us?

    This is linked to the idea that one can gain freedom by limiting oneself. Freedom is something inside of us, hence Pessoa’s quote from the same book:

    Liberty is the possibility of isolation.

    * Original: A liberdade é a possibilidade do isolamento.

    * Source: “A Factless Autobiography”. Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 246 via Wikiquote

    Writing is done in isolation, so:

    When I write, I solemnly visit myself.

    * Original: Quando escrevo, visito-me solenemente.

    * Source: “A Factless Autobiography”. Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 287 via Wikiquote

    These ideas are simple and old… and forgotten?

    I suppose that most people are keen on rushing away from liberty and isolation in order to avoid hearing their own thoughts. It is indeed questionable whether on can function well in our society if one hears its own voice, if one truly feels and thinks. I doubt it will make you rich for example.

    But what about happiness, satisfaction, tranquility?

    For me, one of the most impressive moments in my life, the most intense, was when I became aware of the beauty and the strength of seeing that one, small plant flowering in the middle of the vast Icelandic desert of rocks and dust. In that  breath-taking monotony the experience of seeing this plant became so strong and clear that it had and has a key influence upon my life.

  • Enlightenment

    “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.”

    Immanuel Kant “What is enlightenment?” 1784.

  • Vejle Kunstmuseum

    I recently visited Vejle Kunstmuseum again. My previous visit had been some years ago, when it still was just one building, the old library.
    At that time there wasn’t too much space but I nevertheless liked the atmosphere and thought it had been a nice visit. Sometimes you get more out of a small museum than a big one, as you have to concentrate on the few things that are exhibited. But of course in a small museum it is very important what the current exhibition displays.
    I know Vejle museum has a large amount of high quality prints and drawings which were at that time only visible on demand during the opening hours of the library. When I saw on their homepage that the museum has been extended with 2 other buildings I was hoping that there would be some room now for an permanent exhibition of some of the prints and drawings. Unfortunately there wasn’t really anything visible in the normal museum exhibition, but it is possible to see some fine Rembrandt etchings on request. They are in a separate, locked room and absolutely worth the trouble asking for permission to see them.
    The current special exhibition at the moment (until the 10th of January) is a fairly big exhibition of the museums works and private works of the local artist Albert Bertelsen. I knew he makes very interesting graphical works, both abstract or for example with themes from Færøerne so this was a good opportunity to visit the museum in its new state. And I liked just about everything about the museum and the Bertelsen exhibition. The main exhibition shows local works and other works from different periods, as there for example is a classical room with views upon Vejle or a small room with works by Svavar Gudnason followed by a Cobra inspired room with among others Asger Jorn, Richard Mortensen and Else Alfelts. I didn’t see any foreign (non-Danish) works in the museum as far as I remember.
    Albert Bertelsen was great, just as I had expected. He knows his job, has an excellent technique and a fine sense of humour, composition and mood.

  • Writers and Painters

    I can have trouble taking myself serious when I paint or write, even to an extent that it often makes me stop doing what I want to do. I mirror my own thoughts onto others and think that many people have no idea that something like painting is actually working, it requires a lot of effort, training and planning. I see them happily thinking: “I want that too. Nice to do nothing all day and to paint a little when ever you want.”
    I have the same thoughts about writing. It seems to be useless, something you do when ever you want and most of all, when ever you don’t have anything better to do. But just like with painting, writing also demands a lot of practice, effort, learning (reading) and planning.
    I suppose that we are not so much used to people who take time to practice and think about something. People who are not satisfied with the strong pace of the stream of entertainment and information that bombards us every day. Even in a normal workplace there won’t be much time to plan, train and think about things, as it will be more about producing and making money. So the writer or the painter is operating in a niche of its own. The one being most of the time at or around home, apparently doing nothing but having fun with words and articles, or drawings and paintings.
    Now it is up to me to convince myself that practicing, just thinking or reading and learning are all legal actions.

  • Liefdeleven by Marcellus Emants

    Det er i livet nu engang sådan

    at der i allerhøjeste grad ikke findes lykken

    som vi mener at den burde se ud.

    A thought that came up while reading the book (unfortunately in danish).

    Someone said somewhere that Emants writes rather scientific and perhaps even cold, and Liefdeleven (1916) by Marcellus Emants (1848-1923) reminds me indeed a bit of a scientific study.  Emants is known to write about actual persons and situations, and it is generally thought that Liefdeleven is about his third marriage  (1904) with a German actress (the name of the main character “Christiaan Duyts” – Duyts meaning “German” in dutch- seems to support this).

    I must say that I found it a little hard to get through the first chapters, as it at that point reminded me of a nurse-loves-doctor kind of pocket that comes with the latest ladies magazine.

    But as the story progresses it becomes more naturalistic to an extend that it even gets hard to be confronted by many of the conversations/discussions in this part of the book. It was here that I started to suspect that the book referred to, or at least has pieces of, an actual situation in the life of Marcellus Emants.

    The book is written from a male perspective which gives it a perhaps interesting one-view-only look upon the problems that arise in the book. It doesn’t help that in a key section of the book (The conversation with doctor Diepe – “Diep” means “Depth” in dutch) one reads about the opinion of another male, who is not exactly taking a female point of view.

    After that I got curious to know what would happen next and I did not get disappointed.

    I actually don’t think the book is much about how bad it is to be married, or how hard it can be when you meet the wrong person. I think the book is about the reality of life. Some people are lucky and can keep their dreams alive, can be happily married, have a good job so that they never have to suffer in whatever way. They can continue being happy. But what about war, poverty, disaster, crime, sickness or, to a lesser extend, divorce, loneliness or discrimination? These are all aspects of life, and one can argue whether or not a person should experience at least some of these things to experience what life is really about. People that are being born happy and that die happy are lucky and I wish everybody could experience that. But we are part of nature, and nature is not just one happy story.

    Life is full of lies, dreams, promises. We all live a lie, and many of us will unravel a few of those lies.

    A sidenote:

    I think there is a little bit too big a gap between the description of nature in beautiful,original words, very poetic, and the rest of the story. Christiaan is a painter of landscapes, hence the descriptions, but for me it doesn’t really fit into the story. It’s slightly out of tone. It does make me want to try to create poems out of the descriptions though.