Abstract
Martinus Nijhoff (1894–1953) is generally, if not unanimously, considered to be one of the great figures in 20th-century Dutch poetry. Apart from one or two isolated voices his position has not been disputed since his first book appeared in 1916 and as yet there is no sign of a decline in the near future. Interest in his work has not diminished with his death — as is often the case with famous poets — and even young poets of later generations, fighting for recognition of their own revolutionary efforts, have very seldom chosen Nijhoff as a target or a repoussoir.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
It is a somewhat confusing circumstance that some of these French poets, in deference to their brilliant elders, continued to call themselves “symbolists,” however much the structure and character of their work differed from that of their predecessors. Cf. Marcel Raymond, De Baudelaire au surréalisme, p. 73.
Ibid., p. 60.
R.P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries, p. 298. Cf. G. Gossaert, “Nijhoff’s ontdekking,” in Martinus Nijhoff, p. 46.
“Het vers van Nijhoff is door zijn niet diepe maar donkere toon en door de ingehouden kracht van zijn toch klare, ja sonore accenten, de onmiskenbare uiting van een sterk en onontleenbaar grondgevoel. Angst en ontzetting zijn het gevoel waaruit deze verzen geworden zijn.” “M. Nijhoff: De wandelaar” in Albert Verwey, Proza IV, p. 145.
P.N. van Eyck, Verzameld werk, IV, p. 46.
Nijhoff, or aspects of his work, have been called classical by D.A.M. Binnendijk, M. Gilliams, C. Debrot, H. Marsman, D. Coster; baroque by J. Greshoff and S. Vestdijk; romantic by D. Coster and S. Vestdijk; romantic realist by Ed. Hoornik; parnassien by G. Kamphuis; symbolist by A. van Duinkerken, J.A. Rispens, G. Kamphuis, K. Fens, J. de Poortere; aestheticist by P.N. van Eyck, J. A. Rispens, S. Vestdijk; decadent by J. A. Rispens, G. Stuiveling, M. Gilliams, G. Kamphuis, C. Bittremieux, J. de Poortere; expressionist by G. Stuiveling; realist by S. Vestdijk, Th. de Vries, C. Debrot, Ed. Hoornik, P. Rodenko; cubist by R. Houwink; surrealist by S. van den Bremt; magic realist by J.A. Rispens, W. Paap, R.P. Meijer; representative of the Neue Sachlichkeit by J.A. Rispens, S. Vestdijk, J. Slauerhoff, Ed. Hoornik. Inter alia! To mention just a few more labels: manimisi by K. Meeuwesse, G. Knuvelder, S. Vestdijk, G. Kamphuis; existentialist by G. Stuiveling; new animisi by A. Donker. Nijhoff himself pointed to affinities between himself and surrealist painting in Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 1166, and baroque poetry in Verzameld werk 2, p. 135.
René Wellek, “The Concept of Romanticism in Literary History,” in Concepts of Criticism, pp. 128–198. For Wellek’s controversy with Lovejoy cf. “Romanticism Re-examined,” ibid., pp. 199’221.
A.G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France, 1885’1895, pp. 316–317.
René Wellek, Discriminations, pp. 116–120.
Anna Balakian, The Symbolist Movement, p. 3, p. 158.
Ibid., p. 138.
Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle; Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik; Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-garde.
Hans Robert Jauss, “Literarische Tradition und gegenwärtiges Bewusstsein der Modernität,” in Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, pp. 11–66.
Ch. Baudelaire, Œuvres, p. 884. It should be noted that Baudelaire himself did not use the word “modernité” to condemn the preceding generation. His definition reads: “La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable.” Baudelaire himself used the word “nouveau” where later authors say “modern.”
Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, p. 259.
Ch. Baudelaire, Œuvres, p. 201.
Translation Robert Lowell, in The Flowers of Evil, selected and edited by Marthiel and Jackson TMathews, p. 185.
Arthur Rimbaud, Œuvres complètes, pp. 253–258. The translations are from Rimbaud, Complete Works, Selected Letters, translated by Wallace Fowlie, pp. 305–311.
“Il faut se faire voyant;” “je travaille à me rendre voyant”
“un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens;” “Car JE est un autre … j’assiste à l’éclosion de ma pensée: je la regarde, je l’écoute.”
Voltaire, Candide, passim.
As Herbert Read says of Romantic poetry in The True Voice of Feeling, p. 10.
Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik, p. 39: “das architectonisch strengste Buch der europäischen Lyrik.”
Anna Balakian, The Symbolist Movement, p. 31.
Ibid., Chapter 4 is entitled “Verlaine, not Rimbaud.”
Martinus Nijhoff, Verzameld werk 2, I, p. 290: “Baudelaire was, in 75 jaar, beurtelings parnassien, symbolist, fantaisist en religieus…. Doet men hun [Baudelaire en Rimbaud] een dieper onrecht aan, door een dusdanig kameleonesk voortleven? Ik geloof van niet, juist van niet. Men kan een dichter niet hoger eren dan door hem als tijd-en geslachtgenoot te blijven waarderen.”
Ibid., p. 240: ”… dat dikwijls tot een te verfijnde strofenbouw … zijn toevlucht moet nemen … met een zekere opzettelijkheid.” Pieter Cornelis Boutens (1870–1942) was one of the most accomplished and influential poets of the 1890 generation. His extremely complicated, difficult and subtle lyrical poetry was experienced by several younger poets as too far removed from real life. Nevertheless many of them found it hard to wrestle themselves free from his towering poetic personality.
Ibid., p. 220: “bijna abstract en onpersoonlijk.”
Wallace Fowlie, in T.S. Eliot, The Man and his Work, p. 299.
Ibid., p. 304.
Dirk Dijkhuis, “Nijhoff en Eliot/Eliot en Nijhoff,” in Merlyn 2, no. 6, (1963–1964), 1–24.
About 1950, Nijhoff told J. Kamerbeek Jr.: “Shortly after the First World War we discovered that Eliot was an important poet.” More than half of the poems which constitute Nijhoff’s Vormen (1924), however, had already been published, when Nijhoff discovered Eliot. Consequently there would be hardly any possibility of direct influence, even less so as the striking parallels are to be found in Nijhoff’s earlier poetry.
W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems, p. 152.
Nijhoff’s friend and fellow poet, A. Roland Holst, whose work has been influenced — evidently and self-admittedly — by Yeats, had been acquainted with the Irish poet’s work since 1910.
Nijhoff, “Moderne dichters,” in Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 625: “Er was iets in de hard-heid van het beeld, in de rapiditeit van het ritme van deze enkele nüchtere regels … waar-van ik de durf kon beseffen, en waaruit ik onmiddellijk opmaakte, hier voor iemand te staan die in dezelfde tijd leefde, voor eindelijk iemand waarmee ik rekening te houden had.”
T.S. Eliot, “Dante,” in The Sacred Wood, p. 169.
Nijhoff, Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 629.
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in Collected Poems 1909–1935, p. 14.
“De dingen zijn niet meer dan hunne naam./ Ik ben niet meer dan een ontdaan gelaat.” (“De eenzame,” in Verzameld werk 1, p. 15).
T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1935, p. 33.
Verzameld werk 1, p. 30.
T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1935, pp. 24–26.
Verzameld werk 1, p. 19.
Ibid., p. 9: “Mijn eenzaam leven wandelt in de Straten.”
Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 1167: “Zij hadden… hun versvorm zelf als ruiten ingeslagen.”
Rimbaud, Œuvres complètes, p. 257 (Letter to Paul Demeny of May 15, 1871): “… la forme si vantée en lui [Baudelaire] est mesquine. Les inventions d’inconnu réclament des formes nouvelles.”
Verzameld werk 1, p. 18.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 11.
Ibid., p. 27.
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 30.
Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, p. 152.
Verzameld werk 1, p. 108.
There is some reason for comparison with Albert Samain’s Au jardin de l’infante as well. The other sections, “Kleine liederen,” (“Short songs”) and “Dagboekbladen,” (“Pages from a diary”), are less coherent. The volume is concluded with a short dramatic poem, “Kerstnacht,” (“Christmas”), based on “La messe de minuit” of Aloysius Bertrand (Gaspard de la nuit, p. 79–80).
Verzameld werk 1, p. 119.
Cf. Nijhoff’s remarks on the composition of a volume of poetry in his review of J.W. F. Werumeus Buning’s In memoriam (dated October 11, 1924, the year in which Vormen was published!), and his article on Paul van Ostaijen (December 1929) in Verzameld werk 2,I, p. 203, and II, p. 630 resp.
T.S. Eliot, “Baudelaire,” in Selected Essays, pp. 385–386.
This survey of Nijhoff’s poetics is a combination or compilation of separate remarks in a number of reviews and essays. All of them are to be found in Verzameld werk 2 in this sequence: pp. 297, 285, 328, 491, 944, 937, 1172, 223, 327, 1170–1171, 99, 1172, 346, 97–99, 501, 339, 659, 666, 98, 297, 686, 195, 194, 298, 299. Most of these statements were written during the years when the poems of Vormen originated.
Verzameld werk 2, I, pp. 296–297: “[De ‘esprit moderne’] bestaat niet in de aard der scholen, niet in haar snelle rusteloze wisseling, niet in de verschillende tendensen, niet in een schaduwige grootste gemene deler van al deze veelvouden. Hij bestaat in de behoefte tot programma zelf.”
Ibid., p. 629: “dat er geremd wordt inplaats van uitgevierd.”
Ibid., p. 317: “Als vleermuizen hingen ze aan de Duitse dakgoten en riepen door loudspeakers dat ze gevallen engelen waren.”
Ibid., p. 490: “Men Staat altijd weer verbaasd als men het werk herleest van grote novateurs, zo uiteenlopend als Keats of Baudelaire, hoe nieuw en eigenzinnig nun gevoel is, en hoe ingetogen, in vergelijking met hun apartheid, hoe kuis de middelen waren waarmee ze te werk gingen. De werkelijke vormvernieuwers van poëzie hebben zieh in hun jeugd ermee vergenoegd “nieuwe wijn in oude zakken” te gieten, en zijn eerst op rijper leeftijd er toe overgegaan, van-uit een bestendigde innerlijkheid, vormen toe te passen, welke hun eerder noodzakelijk dan gezocht, eerder vanzelfsprekend dan nieuw voorkwamen.”
Ch. Baudelaire, Œuvres, p. 771: “Et jamais les prosodies et les rhétoriques n’ont empêché l’originalité de se produire distinctement. Le contraire, à savoir qu’elles ont aidé Péclosion de l’originalité, serait infiniment plus vrai.”
Ibid., p. 772: “… un grand peintre est forcément un bon peintre, parce que l’imagination universelle renferme l’intelligence de tous les moyens et le désir de les acquérir.”
Verzameld werk 2, I, pp. 327–328.
Ibid., II, p. 1065: “haar [de ziel] bij mij omlaag te houden in het lichaam.”
Verzameld werk 1, p. 200.
Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 1209: “De werkelijkheid te verwerken, en haar werkelijkheid te laten.” The pun is hard to translate.
Ibid., p. 1067: “het leven eensklaps onwaarschijnlijke proporties in de klaarlichte werkelijkheid te voelen aannemen.”
Ibid., pp. 1208–1209: “het gemeengoed der taal, met haar diep verstrengelde wortels, met haar kuise onvermurwbare syntaxis….”
Once again, this passage combines a number of separate statements by the poet, to be found in Verzameld werk 2, II (that is to say after 1931), pp. 1209, 701, 957, 1149, 704–705, 731, 1166–1167, 1162–1163, 731, 1016.
“Lean Columbus of phenomena,” cf. Jean Cocteau, Poésie 1916–1923, p. 25.
Cf. Anna Balakian, The Symbolist Movement, p. 163.
Verzameld werk 2, II, pp. 1166–1167.
Verzameld werk 1, p. 191.
Ibid., pp. 192–194, “Het veer.”
Ibid., p. 194.
Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 626: “Onze enige taalrijkdom bestaat uit zelfstandige naam-woorden, de directe voorwerpsbenoemingen.”
Verzameld werk 1, pp. 214–223.
Ibid., p. 256: “een zo oude traditie dat zij onbewust is geworden.”
Cf. a prose statement to the same effect: “The world is a hell, a desert, for one who dares to face the facts.” (“De wereld is een hei, een woestijn, voor wie zijn ogen dürft opendoen.” Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 1162.)
De wereld is een hei, een woestijn, voor wie zijn ogen dürft opendoen.” Verzameld werk 2, II Ibid., pp. 1165 and 1166: “met hun stilte, hun onemotionele helderheid, hun duidelijke voorwerpen, even banaal als geheimzinnig….”
Cf. “zandstenen trappen af langs slangen koper,” “een droge distel.”
J.L. Kugel, The Techniques of Strangeness in Symbolist Poetry, pp. 38, 62.
Verzameld werk 2, II, p. 1166: “hij moest omtrek blijven, heldere doorschenen oppervlakte.”
Nevertheless, matters have been needlessly complicated because none of the poem’s critics has drawn the obvious conclusions from the fact that “Awater” is a first person story. Its protagonist, a poet, “has been looking for a traveling companion” since his brother died. He has noticed a clerk, Awater, who might qualify as such and decides to follow him on his course through the city after working-hours “to see if they are compatible.” In the second laisse the reader is told what Awater is doing at the office and even that he is worrying about his mother’s recent death. Although Nijhoff presents the scene as “factual”: “Awaters hoofd voelt zwaar” (“Awater’s head weighs heavily”), it is evidently impossible to take the clerk’s musings for real. The office scene, as well as the interpretation of Awater’s subsequent acts are all projections of the protagonist. Consequently there is also no reason to connect the only scene where one hears Awater himself (singing the sonnet in a restaurant) with his supposed musings on his deceased mother. Moreover, the word “aanbedene” (“the adored one”) in the song can hardly be considered a suitable term to refer to one’s mother. When in the next to last laisse Awater stays at a meeting of the Salvation Army, whereas the protagonist walks on “so fast / as if I saw the train I wanted to catch,” the only legitimate inference is that “I” has come to the conclusion that he and Awater are incompatible. Nijhoff remarks elsewhere: “[Awater] had to remain outline … no matter which individual, a neighbor, a fellow-man representing the multitude, who had approached me along the thinnest thread of contact” (hij moest omtrek blijven … onverschillig welk individu, een naaste, een de menigte voorstellende, langs de dunste draad van contact mij genaderd evenmens.-Verzameld werk 2, II, pp. 1166,1168). It is in the light of the “I as protagonist — point of view” only that the poet’s comment makes sense. In spite of this, “Awater” remains a difficult enough poem.
Verzameld werk 1, pp. 225–240.
Stéphane Mallarmé, “Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe,” in Œuvres complètes, p. 70: “donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu.”
Verzameld werk 1, p. 256: “sprekend en vibrerend.”
The fact that the poet himself felt that there was no further development possible in this direction is borne out by the circumstance that his subsequent works show no interesting aspects from this point of view: a slight though charming dramatic poem “Een idylle,” (“An Idyll”), three biblical plays, a number of translations and a few occasional poems.
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1976 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sötemann, A.L. (1976). “Non-Spectacular” Modernism: Martinus Nijhoff’s Poetry in its European Context. In: Bulhof, F. (eds) Nijhoff, Van Ostaijen, “De Stijl”. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1397-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1397-0_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-1857-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-1397-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive