Sander Bax says that with ‘Writers’ Myths’ he has delivered ‘a’ and not ‘the’ literary history. According to him, it must be studied, written and taught again and again. What he does do is analyze the images and sketch a development from the autonomous, introverted writer to the audience favorite.
Through Peter van Vlerken
Of Writer’s Myths Tilburg professor Sander Bax has written a new history of Dutch literature that is primarily intended for students and teachers of Dutch, but which also aims to be attractive to other readers. It is certainly the case that the book is attractive to a broader group than just experts, but that does not mean that it is easy reading. The book is the result of in-depth and undoubtedly long-term study and it requires concentration to absorb everything it contains. So you have been warned. But if you buy the book then you also have something!
Let go of chronology and jump in time
And it is certainly fun too! The attraction lies in the fact that Bax’s literary history is based on characterizations of writers such as the bohemian (Jacob Slauerhoff) and the dandy (Louis Couperus). This starting point ensures that he can easily let go of chronology and jump in time, because bohemians and dandies are still there in writing. It also makes it easy for him to look beyond the borders of the Dutch language area, because you may not find bohemians and dandies everywhere in the world, but you do in many countries.
Bax’ book covers the period between 1880 and 2020. It makes sense that he starts with the Tachtigers. They broke definitively with the bourgeois pastor-poets and writers of the previous period. Men like Willem Kloos and Lodewijk van Deijssel wanted to be anti-bourgeois, not only in their writing, but also in their appearance. Because what Bax wants to convey very emphatically is that the image you have of writers is not only determined by the content of their books, but also by their public behavior. Something that in later times of an increasingly increasing visual culture is reinforced by their appearances in the media and what the media make of them. For example, WF Hermans, Gerard Reve and Harry Mulisch owed their reputation as ‘the big three’ to what the magazines, radio and television made of them. More recent digitization and social media have added to the image of writers.
Mutual relationships between writers also played and still play a role, such as that of the Tachtig movement. Currents like these were rarely homogeneous. Writers – artists in general – wanted and want above all to have their own voice and they made this clear in their poems and prose, but also by distinguishing themselves in debates and polemics. Most people in the Eighties advocated an independent anti-social literature, while some such as Herman Gorter avoided this by being socially active and widely promoting their socialist views as ‘world improvers’. Although they had distanced themselves from traditional religions, they came to view their work as a kind of religion and presented themselves as ‘priests’ who showed the way to non-believers.
Initially, women in particular found a large readership
Bax links numerous writers to numerous characterizations. Such as Jacob Israël de Haan, writer of the explicitly homoerotic Pipelines to ‘the suffering writer’, Slauerhoff to ‘the damned poet’, Paul van Ostaijen to ‘the avant-garde poet’ and Dirk van Bastelaere to ‘the postmodern poet’. Of course, ‘the best-selling writer’ is also discussed. It is striking that initially it was women (Ina Boudier-Bakker and Willy Corsari) who managed to attract a large readership, which invariably resulted in scornful criticism from male colleagues who wished to stay away from commerce and preferred to be elitist. above ‘the ordinary man’ or ‘the ordinary woman’ who wrote ‘ordinary books’ that did not actually deserve the label ‘literature’.
From Hella Haasse, who was called ‘the grand old lady’ of Dutch literature by Adriaan van Dis, to Connie Palmen, who was hoisted on the shield by Matthijs van Nieuwkerk as ‘the grande lady’ and who made a study of fame that had fallen to her, until Kluun, who took up his own public relations with great sales success, writers have increasingly become part of the popular, commercial media culture. Contrast the autonomous, introverted poet Gerrit Kouwenaar with the public figure of Heleen van Royen, who recently started providing advice on love and sex in the women’s magazine Linda. There seem to be fewer and fewer of his kind, while there seems to be less and less objection to Van Royen’s way of being a writer.
From writer to public figure, that makes him or her a myth, according to Sander Bax. He has made an excellent overview of the course of that development and, as mentioned, is particularly attractive to a broad readership.
Sander Bax, Writer’s Myths. Literature and writing between 1880 and 2020. Amsterdam: Prometheus 2024, 512 pp., ISBN 9789044630787, pb., € 35.00.
Front page image: detail cover image Writer’s Myths. Cover image is from Lara Viana/andriesse~eyck gallery
publisher prometheus.nl
© Brabant Cultural 2024
Tags: Writers images determined books
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