Bart Westgeest

Kategori: Reviews

  • Potgieters

    I noticed a pattern in a whirl of thoughts and finds the last days. I had just finished a story from an old book that I took from the shelves a couple of days ago. The book from 1886 is the 7th edition of the Prose of E.J. Potgieter (1808 -1875). I read the story ” ‘t Is maar een penelikker” in which he writes down his vision upon the people working in the offices and desks, copying letters, bookkeeping and doing all those tasks connected to the extensive paperwork that accompanies trade. His words paint a black and rather hopeless world of dependency, low wages and no social security. A gray mass of people who just try to survive. He ends with saying that it is good that the government now (1840) thinks about pensions for their employees but also that the Dutch should take an example of how things were in the golden age of the Dutch, the 17th century. There people dared to explore, they went out and discovered the world, (“without needing so much paperwork as nowadays”). So he concludes by saying that we should sent our young and ambitious people abroad to let them learn, exploit, start companies and bring honor and glory to themselves and their country.

    I searched for his name on the internet and read a biography of E.J. Potgieter, an important name in Dutch literature because he was one of the founders and major contributor of “De Gids”, the leading, if not only, Dutch magazine about literature for decennia. The article was negative about his efforts to get some 17th century spirit into the people he wrote for, it said it never worked and it couldn’t work because he wrote too complicated, too intellectual, even using words that did not fit into the time he lived, or in a form that was too hard to appreciate. It was said that he created his own world and that in the end no one got permission to enter it, nothing was good enough.
    The story was written in 1840, the same year where (thanks google) a man named Andries Henrik Potgieter became the leader of a colony in South Africa that he apparently named “Potchefstroom” after himself. I know virtually nothing about South-African history, but I do know it wasn’t a peaceful an uncomplicated one, and being a “voortrekker-leader” like Andries Henrik was probably not something to be favored either. So while one influential Potgieter wrote about creating opportunities abroad another Potgieter was doing so in practice, for whatever reason and with whatever consequences.
    The writer Potgieter liked an intellectual use of language, even referring to 17th century Dutch, the South-African Potgieter spoke Afrikaans, a language that is spoken today by app. 6,5 mill. people in the south of the African continent and that is based upon Dutch dialects with influences that reach back to the 17th century.
    So the story of one Potgieter seems to compliment the story of the other.

    The search revealed a lot of Potgieters in South-Afrika and following one link I found and listened to videos of the South-African Band Glaskas. Great, and for me as a Dutchman it is very special to hear Afrikaans. I can thank the writer E.J. Potgieter for it, because his short story made me curious enough to search for his name.

    This is my favourite:

    Glaskas: Stormstille

  • Natalie Goldberg – Writing Down the Bones

    I can understand why Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” is a bestseller. It is a inspiring book with a mission: To get people to write as a habit in an honest and spontaneous way. She advocates the practice of freewriting – that is to sit down and start filling up that white paper. Don’t think but trust yourself and let your pen do the work. In her opinion the best writing is done this way – messages from the heart – unfiltered by ego or too much intellect.

    The book is divided into 64 short chapters and most are – as Natalie says herself – written in one session. In these many chapters she deals with many aspects and problems one might encounter when creating the habit of writing as a act in itself. It was interesting to read her approach to deal with the feelings connected to it – the voices inside of us. To beat one’s worst criticizer – oneself – is the key to good writing.

    This approach of training writing skills by continual practice for the sake of practice might not be for everyone, but maybe it should be. I think that every writer or would-be writer at least should try it.

  • Welcome to the Internet

    I read in the The Writer’s Handbook 2008 the article The Globalisation of Poetry by Chris Hamilton-Emery about the world of poetry but found it confusing as a lot of articles can be these days when dealing with the new situation after the internet got as popular as it is now. The writer seemed to have a very chaotic view of it all, apparently feeling that a lot is lost and going down (tradition, unions, order) and that there on the other hand now are overwhelming possibilities that one should get involved in and deal with in order to get the most out of it. I didn’t read much about a natural flow of wanting to get things out and interact or a simple joy for the possibilities and an eagerness to learn.
    On the other hand I don’t know the classical, pre-internet structure of building an audience, publishing or getting published, so I don’t miss it and it therefore doesn’t bother me if it would disappear or diminish.
    Personally I don’t think that much has changed, there are more possibilities but that is not per definition entirely positive. It is up to the individual to make the best out of the situation. In the end one just has to write good and interesting stuff and try to get it out somehow. Who knows what can happen from there. Just like in the old days.

  • Charles Lamb – Old Familiar Faces

    I am slowly going through a book published in Sneek (of all places) in 1887 called: “A Casket of Jewels – selected from poets of the nineteenth century” by E. J. Irving. It contains a small selection of Poems by 42 English and American Poets. As I know virtually nothing of  English or American literature (or any other literature actually) I am reading through it poet by poet to see which are the ones that somehow draw my attention. Today I liked reading this poem by Charles Lamb (1775 -1834):

    THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.

    I have had playmates, I have had companions,
    In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
    Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I loved a love once, fairest among women;
    Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
    Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
    Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

    Ghostlike I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
    Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,
    Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

    Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
    Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
    So might we talk of the old familiar faces,—

    How some they have died, and some they have left me,
    And some are taken from me; all are departed;
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    Source: gutenberg.org

    The main reason why I initially got interested in this poem was the fact that it seemed to be honest and timeless. Always keen on finding answers on why, what, how, what for etc. I want to write I was pleased to see that a poem like this could make it into this casket of jewels. Nothing seems to be made up in this poem and it is actually so bare in it’s cry of sorrow that I felt that it was almost inviting an extra strophe in with some more details about place and setting of the writer.
    The line “Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces” sounds adorable self critical to me and with a hint of nature in the next strophe: “Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse” the poem has all my interest.

    I knew nothing about the dramatic background of Charles Lamb, so after looking up the poem on the internet I spent the next our reading the details about his life around 1796. A remarkable story indeed, shining another light on the poem.

  • C.G. Rossetti – Dreamland

    I read a handful of poems yesterday and liked two by C. G. Rossetti (1830-94). Easy to spot that she had something to do with the pre-raphaelite movement. In the poem Dreamland the same themes are apparent as in some of the paintings by this movement.

    DREAM-LAND.

    Where sunless rivers weep
    Their waves into the deep,
    She sleeps a charmèd sleep:
    Awake her not.
    Led by a single star,
    She came from very far
    To seek where shadows are
    Her pleasant lot.

    She left the rosy morn,
    She left the fields of corn,
    For twilight cold and lorn
    And water springs.
    Through sleep, as through a veil,
    She sees the sky look pale,
    And hears the nightingale
    That sadly sings.

    Rest, rest, a perfect rest
    Shed over brow and breast;
    Her face is toward the west,
    The purple land.
    She cannot see the grain
    Ripening on hill and plain;
    She cannot feel the rain
    Upon her hand.

    Rest, rest, forevermore
    Upon a mossy shore;
    Rest, rest at the heart’s core
    Till time shall cease:
    Sleep that no pain shall wake,
    Night that no morn shall break,
    Till joy shall overtake
    Her perfect peace.

    Source: gutenberg.org

    I liked the image of the “waves into the deep” in the first couplet. It made me think that using nature to describe things is one thing, but using it right another. There is a world of difference between a painting of a landscape made by someone with an superficial eye or by someone with passion and devotion. Using nature in poems must be like that too. Yes, it has been done ever since people where able to write, and every symbol has been used numerous times (a rose, anyone?) but that doesn’t mean that it can be effective when used rightly.
    The dead body let by a star and the contrast of the body “willingly” floating to the dark side, a side that is considered not a good place to be anyway, away from the rosy morn – fields of corn etc. is intriguing.

  • Nick Hornby – Fever Pitch

    I profoundly disagree with those who equate ‘literary’ with ‘serious’ – unless ‘serious’ encompasses ‘po-faced’, ‘dull’, ‘indigestible’. Anyone who does anything that seems easy or light or which actually entertains people always tends to get overlooked – apart from by the reading public, the only people who really matter. I reserve the right to write the kinds of books I feel like writing’

    Nick Hornby on his style of writing. (source)

    I saw the movie “Fever Pitch” (UK 1997 – USA version 2005) some time ago that made a strong impression on me as the subject was recognizable and treated in a popular but yet well elaborated way. Nothing posh or literary indeed but an everyday life story with a lot in it.

    The original story is about a passionate fan of the English soccer club Arsenal who is an English teacher and gets acquainted with a female teacher at the same school. A relationship evolves that is very much influenced by the man’s relation to the soccer club. In fact it is often unclear in a clever play of words if he talks about the relation to the woman or to the club. It has a climax that touched me because of the recognizable emotions and situation.

    The thought-evoking theme in the story is whether or not it is acceptable to be passionate and to behave like a “12 year old kid who refuses to grow up” as I remember it being put in the movie. Or about the tension between the freedom of the by nature egocentric individual and the commitment to a loved one. And yes – it is about soccer.

    I was a pleasure to see the English version with good acting and well working conversations in a plain language and with music by such knows bands as The Pretenders, the Smiths and Lisa Stanfield.

    An inspiration for a writer.

    Links:

    The site of the book on the publisher’s site (Penguin)

    Info about the English movie (www.imdb.com)

    Info about the US movie (www.imdb.com)

    The book on Amazon.com

    An interesting BBC/British Council Site using the book as an entrance for English lessons. With a.o. an extract, Characterisation and “after reading questions”.