Chapter Five
The entanglements of feelings, and the freedom in Lodeizen's poetry to move from level to level has been interpreted by some critics as a lack of inner consistency as a result of too much free associating. Kopland, for instance, writes that Lodeizen's poetry is interchangeable, that part of one poem can be placed in another one, without much difficulty. Much of Lodeizen's work is based on the single theme of dream and reality and his poetry is indeed a continuous stream of metaphors based on the same foundation and most of his verses are more or less in the same tone. Much of this derives from the fact that Lodeizen's work is autobiographic and reflect an egocentric point of view. Some readers may be irritated by this.
Then there is the problem that much of his work lacks clear reference points. The meaning of the poem voor Jim, for instance, is elusive:
de sterren en het ongeneeslijke
moment van de twee balken.
Orion ontdekt en in zijn hand
o noodlot in zijn hand het zwaard. |
the stars and the incurable
moment of the two beams.
Orion discovers and in his hand
oh fate in his hand the sword. |
The Jim mentioned in the title is James Merrill, but the rest of the poem is less clear. Does ontdekt mean discovers or discovered? It could be both in Dutch. Who is this Orion, the mighty hunter or the avenger? Is he the benefactor or the victim of the dual Artemis? Is the author looking at the sky and discovers the constellation Orion with girdle, sword, club, and lion's skin?
However, most of the difficulties in Lodeizen's poetry do not lie in such mythological obscurities, but more in such "daily activity" metaphors as, for instance, used in a poem called Namiddag in de huiskamer. Licht groene pendule op de schoorsteenmantel, tikkend. (Late Afternoon in the living room. Light green pendulum-clock on the mantle piece, ticking). First the pendulum clock speaks about the "sweet hour" of the afternoon with fireplace and "powerless content". Then the child speaks:
| Het Kind:
o de witte
doorgedragen
krijtrots stofferend
deze laatste twee uren terwijl
mijn hand als een wagentje
achter mijn ogen aanloopt
die nog niet
dood zijn -. |
The Child:
oh the white
threadbare
white-cliff upholstering
these last two hours while
my hand like a little wagon
walks behind my eyes
which are not yet
dead -. |
One can only guess at the autobiographic nature of the free-flow associations that form the framework for this verse, which for the rest will have to be appreciated on the basis of word sound and possible points of reference in one's own childhood experiences.
On the other hand there are very accessible poems, such as Langzaam (Slowly) of which the first verse reads:
winter, jij bent een slechtaard
in de huizen verstop je je
als een kind zie ik je alle scholen
binnen hollen met je lichaam
in een tas o winter jij bent
een slechte meester |
winter, you are a bad one
you hide in the houses
as a child I see you running
into all schools with your body
in a brief case oh winter you are
a bad teacher |
Here scenes are shown almost in motion-picture fashion:
dag slechte winter, scharenslijper,
met geschramde knieën hol je
over de speelplaats als knikkers
uit de wolken van een hemel naar het blauwe
hemd waar het witte krijtje rijdt van
een slechte meester. |
bye bad winter, scissor grinder,
with grazed knees you run
over the school-yard like marbles
from the clouds of a sky to the blue
shirt where the white chalk of
a bad teacher rides. |
Even this poem about winter among school children there is an atmosphere of the perishable and what action there is dies quickly in a, once again, negative assessment of the environment. The reader is asked to ruminate upon the pieces and to moralise about the fait accompli of Lodeizen's life; the identity drowned in oceans of misunderstandings, illness, and death.
An important concept in literature is that "change is meaningless, since all is change". In Lodeizen's work "change is meaningless" because there is no future, and as a result the author withdraws into farthest selfhood which are then expressed in all those encapsulated statements:
de hemel wachtte
als een goddelijke ziekte
met een goud bootje
vol verlangen, langzaam
langzaam zwemmend
naar de reddende rand
van de oever. paleizen
schilderen de horizon
in laat licht |
heaven waited
like a glorious illness
with a little golden boat
full of desires, slowly
slowly swimming
toward the saving edge
of the bank. palaces
paint the horizon
in late light. |
Water, the river, the little boat are all there again, always the fascination with water and the narcissistic pre occupations; death, heaven, and palaces. As the poem is written in the past tense, the subject of the poem is already dead, and the verse can be read as an epitaph, and the author has escaped already.
In those last years, even more so then earlier, love is attended to as loss and separation:
In de bedding
van je heupen wil ik slapen
door de hemel van je ogen bedekt...
... ik woon
in een ander huis; soms
komen we elkander tegen
ik slaap altijd zonder jou
en wij zijn altijd samen. |
In the bedding
of your hips I will sleep
covered by the sky of your eyes...
... I live
in another house; sometimes
we meet one another
I always sleep without you
and we are always together. |
Lost love is expressed in terms of a river bed and the hemel, which means both heaven and sky in Dutch, and the confinement of man-made habitat. The melancholy of loss and the long journey into the unknown land is strong in these later poems and it is not surprising that a whole generation of Dutch adolescents was attracted to Lodeizen's work.
The poems of his last year are few, but contain perhaps the two most powerful ones: Het Water (The Stream) and Voor Vader (For Father).
Het Water
in de rose hemel
en in de geweldige stilte
hoorde hij een stem
een gevoelige stem van
geel riet die hem toeriep
in the rose hemel
hem toeriep
en in de geweldige stilte
er stond een man
aan de overzijde van het water
die hem toewuifde
in de rose hemel
een man tussen het gele riet
hij wachtte heel lang
en antwoordde niet
op de gevoelige stem
van geel riet die hem toeriep
in de rose hemel
en in de geweldige stilte hij antwoordde niet
en wachtte. |
The Stream
in the red sky
and in the tremendous silence
he heard a voice
a tender voice of
yellow reed which called him
in the red sky
called him
and in the tremendous silence
a man stood
on the other side of the water
and waved at him
in the red sky
a man in the yellow reed
he waited long
and did not answer
the tender voice
of yellow reed which called him
in the red sky
and in the tremendous silence he did not answer
and waited. |
The elements red sky, tremendous silence, tender voice, yellow reed are tightly woven together, and whatever activity there is in the form of waiting and calling is dreamlike .
The enormous conflict in Lodeizen's life which "as a river separates my two countries" has become the "tremendous silence" in which the final call is made. The utter simplicity of language and the tension of the last two lines create a feeling of enormous enlarge ment in which the precise meaning of language seems no longer important.
The poem forms a fitting contrast to the one with which this essay opened. The long, agonising journey along the river banks is almost finished. Only the waiting remains.
Voor Vader
o vader wij zijn samen geweest
in de langzame trein zonder bloemen
die de nacht als een handschoen aan-
en uittrekt wij zijn samen geweest
vader terwijl het donker ons dichtsloeg.
waar ben je nu op een klein ritje
in de vrolijke bries van een groene auto
of legde de hand haar handschoen
niet op een tafel waar schemering en
zachte genezing zeker zijn in de toekomst.
mijn lippen mijn tedere lippen dicht.
16 Juli 1950. |
For Father
oh father we've been together
in the slow train without flowers
which the night slips on
and off like a glove we've been together
father while darkness closed in upon us
where are you now on a little trip
in the joyful breeze of a green car
or did the day not leave her glove
on a table where twilight and
soft cure are certain in the future.
my lips my tender lips closed.
16 July 1950. |
In these last poems, Lodeizen allows us to "drink from the deep spring of death" as James Merrill wrote in a dedication to him in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace. and like Merrill we may find the moments that Lodeizen's poetry is "but a mouth pressed lightly and humbly against the angel's hand."
Upon his return in New York, Merrill finds in the mountain of mail awaiting him, a volume of poetry written by Lodeizen. He opens it to a frontispiece photograph of the author:
"As if I had fallen into a sudden chasm, I stumbled weeping into the next room, where my grandmother, asking no questions, held me in her arms for the moments it took to pass. Hans's immediate posthumous fame, his place today as the inventor, for Dutch poetry, of an offhand, 'modern' way of seeing and putting what he saw on the page, sprang from those manners that so charmed his friends, manners at one time of a piece with his live, physical being. No longer. Between these ounces of paper and leather and print he had become . . . and the person I'd known and loved lay all the difference in the world. It was of course myself I grieved for. I had glimpsed, through the joy of homecoming, the degree to which I was consenting to the transformation my friend had already - taking his leave with a little bow - undergone. Hungry for experience and cured of my writer's block, wouldn't I, too, turn, word by word, page by page, into books on a shelf? "
From: James Merrill's memoir, A Different Person. |
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