Abstract
Most critics lump Ora et Labora (written in 1901) together with Op Hoop van Zegen as Heijermans’ proletarian dramas, automatically looking for the same kinds of conflicts in both plays. Flaxman searches for the sympathy with workers under a laissez-faire economy which he finds in Op Hoop van Zegen. To him, “the Socialism in Pray and Work… is so much more a matter of induction than in the earlier plays, that many of the critics praised the play for its lack of tendenz” (p. 114). He himself wishes that Heijermans had been a little more explicit: “The Socialist solution is only implicit in Pray and Work, so that it never becomes very clear whether the characters in the play are really victims of the social order” (p. 115). De Jong does not show where Op Hoop van Zegen and Ora et Labora really differ, although he does mention several times that they are quite different from each other.1 He assumes that since Heijermans is a socialist he must be saying in this play (as he did in Op Hoop van Zegen) that the social order which tolerates injustices is at fault: “Ook hier is het dus weer: niet een individu draagt de schuld, maar de maatschappij die dergelijke toestanden tolereert” (p. 70).
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References
See especially pp. 64, 65, 69.
Flaxman, p. 109.
P.J. Bouman, “Maatschappelijke toestanden op het Nederlandse platteland, 1795–1940” in Wetenschap en Werkelijkheid (Assen, 1967) pp. 27–52.
Ibidem,p. 42.
Ibidem,pp. 37–43.
Heijermans did not. openly criticize the army and the colonial policies of the Dutch government in this play. That Eelke’s opportunity to join the army should be interpreted as a criticism of these institutions, which take advantage of the poverty of the people, can be inferred from the fact that Heijermans had just written Het Pantser in which he critically focused on the relationship of the army to social and economic change.
This same sentiment is expressed in an interview given just before his death: “[De partij] ambieert to oppervlakkige dingen. Als geen diepe ziel hier drijft… wordt het de dood: ondanks. .achturendag en verder moois… Het socialisme losgemaakt van het heelal wordt een onnozel aards verschijnsel.
The aims of the party are too superficial. If there is not a deep soul pushing… then it will die: notwithstanding the eight hour day and other fancy things… When socialism is separated from the Universe, then it becomes an unimportant earthly phenomenon.] Quoted by Annie Heijermans-Jurgens, Herman Heijer-mans laatste levensjaren (Amsterdam, 1966) pp. 44, 45.
Flaxman, p. 12.
Chekhov was quite unknown in The Netherlands; in a survey of the history of the Dutch theater, B. Hunningher mentions that Uncle Vanja was performed by a Dutch company sometime between 1916 and 1929; The Cherry Orchard was not performed until 1940. See Een eeuw Nederlands toneel (Amsterdam, 1949 ) pp. 169, 206.
Flaxman, p. 112.
Anton Chekhov,The Oxford Chekhov, III (London, 1964) p. 317.
lbidem,p. 318.
1bidem,p. 325. The Cherry Orchard is another example of the type of drama which acquires magnitude by virtue of its relation to a conflict external to the theatre… What The Cherry Orchard involves is the economic and social reorganization of a continent, a vast process of which its action consitutes an infinitesmal fraction… [The landowners] are by nature neither thrifty nor resourceful, but this is in itself no more than a sign of their passing, a detail; it is not its cause.
Anton Chekhov, Plays,trans. Elizaveta Fen (Baltimore, 1964) pp. 347, 375–376. Future references to The Cherry Orchard are taken from this edition and will be cited by pagemumber within the text.
Maurice Valency, The Breaking String: The Plays of Anton Chekhov (Oxford, 1966) pp. 279, 280, 281.
Moderwell, pp. 190–191.
In a letter to his wife, Chekhov wrote: “who’s to play Lopakhin? After all, the part of Lopakhin is the central one.” Quoted in The Oxford Chekhov,p. 327.
Ibidem.
kobert W. Corrigan, “The Drama of Anton Chekhov” in Modern Drama: Essays in Criticism, ed. Travis Bogard and William I, Oliver (Oxford, 1964 ) p. 80.
Ibidem,emphasis mine.
Ibidem,p. 84, emphasis mine.
Ibidem,p. 84–85.
Ibidem,p. 92.
The Cherry Orchard,p. 355.
David Magarshack, Chekhov the Dramatist (New York, 1960) p. 284.
Logan Speirs, Tolstoy and Chekhov (Cambridge, 1971) p. 219.
That Chekhov was very ill while writing The Cherry Orchard is clear from the letters to his wife: “I tell you the holy truth, darling, if my play is not a success you can put the blame entirely on my intestines. It is all so revoltingly nasty! It is ages since I had a normal bowel movement, I don’t even remember when…” Quoted by Valency, pp. 263–264. Valency describes the opening, performance: “The curtain was then raised, and the audience… gave Chekhov an ovation… Chekhov stood up through it all in the glare of the lights, pale, and terribly ill at ease, trying as best he could to smother his fits of coughing” (p. 266). This opening night was on January 17, 1904; in July he died.
Eelke reads about the army in an advertisement which just happens to be printed on the scrap of paper in which the bread with which Douwe treats the family is wrapped.
Heijennans’ life was a long series of financial debacles. He started off in Rotterdam in the rag business and almost went bankrupt. After another failure in the houseware business, he went to Amsterdam to become a writer. His later theatrical business ventures were to be as unsuccessful as his early attempts.
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van Neck Yoder, H. (1978). Ora et Labora and the Cherry Orchard . In: Dramatizations of Social Change: Herman Heijermans’ Plays as Compared with Selected Dramas by Ibsen, Hauptmann and Chekhov. Bibliotheca Neerlandica Extra Muros, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9286-3_4
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