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Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde. Jaargang 73 (1955)

Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde. Jaargang 73

(1955)– [tijdschrift] Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Constantijn Huygens and the rationalist revolution

Recently a strong attempt has been made to rehabilitate in scholarly opinion a seventeenth-century man of letters. Professor Bachrach's article in Neophilologus1) and his forthcoming dissertation present Constantijn Huygens in a new manner, in an effort to re-establish, as it were, the Huygens of the seventeenth century, to make a real Huygens replace the monumental image that most men have of him. In one sense, only the precisionist or the truculent scholar might make claim that Huygens has been neglected: Dr. Worp's great editions of his poems and correspondence testify to the serious attention Huygens has been accorded. The many books and articles on Huygens (notably Jorissen's unfinished biography)2) indicate that as a literary figure he has had an attraction for Dutch scholars and men of letters all through the nineteenth century and into our own.

But in another sense, Huygens has been neglected; in spite of the research into his life and works, a real Constantijn Huygens has not yet been recovered, a Constantijn Huygens essentially and primarily a human being. We know certain segments of the man - the poet, the diplomat, the musician, the amateur - but the segments so far have not been effectively joined into a credible whole. For one thing, there are too many segments, or so it appears: how can a musician, a poet, a patron, a scientific virtuoso, a polyglot, a diplomat, a writer on political theory and organ music, all be one man? At this distance such a fusion seems impossible, and for all the research, Huygens the man still eludes our understanding. It is a pity, for Huygens the man, the human being, was an incredibly rich person; indeed, it was as human being, rather than as poet, diplomat, and all the rest, that Huygens excelled.

Huygens has become for scholars, then a convenient symbol, a shortcut especially designed to help curious moderns recreate something

of seventeenth-century culture. Ever in search of master-keys to cultural history, Huizinga was certainly thinking so of Huygens when he wrote:

‘Dit toonbeeld van levenskunst, die tegelijk geestig, en ernstig, speelsch en sterk was, de groote Constantijn, was secretaris van twee prinsen van Oranje, hij was diplomaat, veeltalig man van de wereld, hoogbeschaafd kenner van klassieken en modernen, fijn musicus, diep godsdienstig mensch, alles tezamen en nog veel meer... Waarlijk, wie onze zeventiende eeuw wil verstaan, moet naast zijn Vondel... zijn Huygens altijd bij de hand hebben’.3)

Even in this passage, written by a man almost supernaturally sensitive to the nuances of life both past and present, we find the prevailing attitude to Huygens, an attitude, however affectionate, that is basically derogatory. From this point of view, we condescend to Huygens as the intelligent scholar's guide to Dutch Golden Age-ness, a cozy monument expressly put for our comprehension of that complex period. The man himself was, though, something other and something more than this - ‘en nog veel meer.’ There is much truth, of course, in the prevailing concept of Huygens, and the truth in it I do not deny: gifted with neither a first-rate mind, such as Grotius', nor a first-rate sensibility, such as Hooft's, Huygens was very far from a consistently first-rate artist. No artist is consistently first-rate, unless he has been particularly favored both in his editors and the ravages of time, and of Huygens' work such volume has survived as to make his first-rate work seem relatively sparse. I doubt that anyone would care to defend him as one of Holland's greatest poets, but my task is to relate to a real, sensitive man alive the parts of his life and achievement here under scrutiny.

For all its litigious start, this paper attempts in fact very little. (‘Papers’ on Huygens are apt to disappoint, for the man embraced so much: his ninety-two years were crowded and productive, his mind constantly alert and critical. In a foreigner it is double presumption

to push among scholars thoroughly at home in the language Huygens loved). Necessarily, too, Constantijn Huygens the integral whole will not spring into being at once Our final picture must emerge from studies of the man and his work in relationship to their time: we will then perhaps come upon that personality, so significantly and individually endowed. Through an examination of one poem, far from beautiful and written late in life, seen against its intellectual background, I propose to comment on the remarkable vividness of Huygens' life.

In December, 1681, Christiaen Huygens wrote from Paris to his eighty-five year-old father:

‘Il y avoit desia quelque temps que l'on parloit d'une Cométe... elle parut d'une grandeure surprenante, avec la queue fort longue et bien marquée. Je n'ay jamais vu de Cométe de cette force, et vous pourrez me dire si celle de l'an 1618 luy ressembloit’.4)

This was the ‘Great Comet’ of 1680/81, which first appeared in mid-November, 1680, and remained visible until February, 1681. The comet has since become famous as a major impetus to late seventeenth-century rationalist thought5); our concern with it lies in Huygens' reaction and his place in that rationalist movement.

No one should be surprised that Christiaen Huygens, one of the century's greatest scientists, should have taken interest in the comet6). It is remarkable, though, that his father, old and retired to his Hofwijck, had concern for such phenomena. The son's tone is of a man perfectly convinced that his father will as a matter of course observe the comet's progress and be ready to offer such comparisons as he might between the Great Comet and that of 1618. When the 1618 ‘Hemelsche Trompet Morgenwecker’ flashed across the sky to astound uneasy Europeans, Constantijn Huygens was just then coming alive to the enormous significance of renaissance scientific discovery7) and could hardly have

failed to note and remember the excitement surrounding the comet. But sixty-two years had passed: it is something of a surprise to us that Huygens should respond to the comet of 1618 just as he did, with Cometen-werck, a long poem on cometary significance. We have indeed had hints of this alertness; Dr. Roldanus has written that as early as 1632, Huygens responded appreciatively to Descartes and joined the battle between the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’ of the seventeenth century8), and we know that his response came some twelve years earlier. He remained loyal to the moderns, apparently, all his life long.

Before turning to Cometen-werck, let us look at the background against which the poem was written. In general, seventeenth-century reaction to comets was by modern standards unenlightened, and as late as 1680 comets were assumed to presage untold disasters. Though scientific opinion largely ignore this attitude, the Journal des Sçavans in its first issue for 1681 remarked, ‘Tout le monde parle de la Comete que est sans doute la plus considerable nouveauté du commencement de cette année. Les Astronomes en observent le cours, & le Peuple luy fait presager mille malheurs’. It went on, ‘Cette erreur... n'est plus qu'une erreure populaire.’9) Dr. Robinson's dissertation indicates beyond doubt the overwhelmingly superstitious response to the comet in Germany, France, Holland, and England - even in colonial America10). No less superstitious than the rest of Europe, Holland had her share of cometary literature, most of it strongly anti-rationalist. So far as I know, this literature has not up to now been noted; a cursory bibliography should serve to orient Huygens' poem.

In 1605 two small books appeared, one by Andreas Libavius, Declamatio de Cometa Anni 1604, the other by the strict Calvinist Gisbert Voetius, Exercitatio de Prognosticis Cometarum (Amstelodamum: z.p., 1605)11). At the outset we find what is to persist through

the century - that the more orthodox religious figures are the last to give up the idea of cometary prognostication12). This is all I have been able to find before the considerable material following the appearance of the brilliant comet of 1618. Both the Hemelsche Trompet Morgenwecker, Ofte Comeet Met een Langebaert, Erschenen Anno 161813), and the Bediedenisse vande Nievwe Comete Ofte Sterre metten Steerte, die int laetste vande maendt November sich eerst aenden Hemel geopenbaert heeft14) reflected the spectacular fright that heavenly phenomenon aroused in human breasts. The latter pamphlet generously interpreted the comet as appearing ‘Allen menschen tot een verwonderinghe der wercken Godes ende waerschowinge der aenstaende straffen die onse sonden dagelicx verdienen,’ and, like Hemelsche Trompet, threatened the ungodly with hideous and imminent punishment of their sins. A still more graphic example in this genre is the Corte beschrijvinghe ende Aff-beeldinghe des seer grooten ende schrickelijcken Comeets, de welcke den 27. November in 't Jaer 1618, ons verschenen is. Mitsgaders veel schoone Exempelen van verscheyden Cometen (Leyde: Jacob Marcus, 1619), which opened with a picture of death amidst armies, burning cities, accompanied by a sad Europa and a man with a measuring rod, the whole dominated by a comet shooting across the sky the top of the cut15).

Only one literary forerunner of Huygens' Cometen-werck dealt with the 1618 comet, Jacob Cat's Aenmerckinghe op de tegenwoordige Staert-Sterre.16) In Cat's poem, Wel-hem, Gheen-aert and Reyn-hart speak in turn about the comet's frightful apparation. Wel-hem represents the popular attitude:

 
'k Heb nochtans wel hoorē Seggē
 
Van die dit uyt willen legghen
 
Datmen noyt comeeten siet
 
Die niet sijn vergif en schiet.
 
Hij beduyt off diere tijden
 
(Soomen seyt) off sware strijden,
 
Of wel swarten hongers noot,
 
Of wel groote Meesters doot....

Gheen-aert took a slightly different but equaly anti-intellectual position, that of the practical man:

 
Die de Sterren, Son, en Maen
 
Willen op haer duym verstaen,
 
Datter een ging in de Sterren
 
Kijcken, gapen, sien, en werren,
 
En ter wijl hij besich was
 
Viel hy in een diepe plas.
 
Seg my, sin 't niet groote sotten,
 
En wel weerdich ons bespotten,
 
Die soo verre, die soo hooch
 
Lopen met haer ydel oogh?

Reyn-hart, the last speaker, emphasized an aspect of Gheen-aert's speech, but made no plea for the empirical study of such wonders:

 
Wie can doch door menschen vonden
 
's Hemels dieptē recht doorgronden
 
Zijn dees saken niet te hooch
 
Voor des menschens duyster oogh.
 
's Hemels teyckens te bedijden,
 
Dunct u dat oock niet te strijden
 
Tegens 'twoort en hooch gebodt
 
Van den alleen wijsen God?

For the modern side, the mathematician Willibrord Snell published a Descriptio Cometae, qui anno 1618 mense Novembri primum effulsit (Lugd. Bat.: Elzevir, 1619), of 156 pages, purely an astronomical and mathematical description of that comet with not the slightest reference to its terrestrial significance. On the other had, in 1624, Pieter Jansz. Twisck published his Comeet-Boecxken. Zijnde een corte Chronijcsche beschrijvinge van alle de grouwelijcke ende schrickelijcke Cometen die haer aen den Hemel vertoont hebben (Hoorn: Zacharias Cornelisz., 1624; republished 1665), a conventional rehearsal of old ideas, of the ‘veranderinghen gheboorten ofte eenighe uytganghen van groote persoonen bysonder oock groote plaghen ofte ghemeene straffinghen als Aerdbevindinghen hoogh-water onvruchtbare Jaren diere tijden Oorlogh verwoestinge bloede-stortinge, pestilenti sterfte van Coninghen ende Groote Potentaten distruccien van steden omsettinghe van Coninghrijcken veranderinge van regieringhe ende ghewelt’ commonly following the appearance of comets. He spent some time on the dread results of the 1618 comet (of which the disturbances caused by the Synod of Dort were for him the worst), and warned his countrymen of dismal fate awaiting them for their sins.

Twelve years later a book of an entirely different cast was published by Huygens' friend Casper Barlaeus, Oratio de Coeli Admirandis (Amstelodami apud Iohannem Blaew, 1636). Barlaeus' mild observation on comets -

 
Denique Cometae futura portendunt, & totum fatorum
 
sequentium ordinem nunciant, cruenti, minaces, sanguinei.
 
Causas horum omnium exposcitis? Nescio. didicimus
 
posteri plurima, quae ignoravere veteres. quae ignoramus
 
nos, supplebit aliquando posteriorim diligentia. Ut
 
coelum sciamus, seculis opus est & aetatibus:17). -

at least opened the door to rational inquiry in Holland. Barlaeus himself, a classicist rather than an astronomer, plainly did not feel qualified to undertake the task he set, though he fully recognized its importance.

Several conventional pamphlets emerged, with another rash in 1664/5, when comets again decorated the European sky. These pamphlets largely reiterated old ideas, as their titles bear out: Het nieuwe droevige Nacht-Licht, Ontsteken door Godts toren, Ende vertoont... in een Comeet ofte Staert-Starre, by Arent Roggeveen (Middelburg: Thomas Berry, 1665); Nieuwe Prognosticatie, Over de Sterre mette Staert, Gesien Binnen Middelburgh den 15. Decembris 1664 ... By een gestelt Door een Liefhebber (z.p., z.n., anno 1664). Another, by Henryk La Been, took advantage of the opportunity to relate the sorrows of Holland inflicted on her by God's anger. He bewails in neat couplets the ‘Sterre met een steert, een vreeselicke Sterre’ and warned both Holand and her principal commercial enemy of God's wrath and punishment:

 
Kijck uyt, vrij Nederland, en Engeland sie toe.
 
De geessel is gereed, Godt heeft hem al in handen,
 
En sal daer mede slaen of u, of onse Lande
 
Of beyde te gelijck18).

More highly educated men than La Been agreed with his general prosposition: the comet of 1664/55 led Johannes Schulerus, described as ‘Phil. Prot. et Pastore Bredae,’ to write a Cometologia, sive De Cometis Disquisitio Philosophica (Hagae-Comitis, Adr. Vlacq, 1665), which was promptly translated into Dutch. This disquisition, honored by a long Latin poem from the pen of J. van Bergen, defended prognostication by comets, since contemporary events so obviously warranted such a reading. The war with England was on Van Bergen's mind as well as La Been's:

 
Aeger adhuc Anglus speruit praesagia, rupto
 
Foedere, nec populi, nec memor ipse sui.

There were more entertaining pamphlets than these: F. Ridderus' Reys-Discours Op het Verschijnen van de Comeet-sterre, die voor d'eerstemael gesien is den 15. December des Jaers 1664 (Rotterdam: Henricus Goddaeus, 1665) is a discussion among a Citizen, a Student, and a Traveler. It is worth observing that the Traveler, not the Student, commanded the largest number of authorities - and all of them supported the old view19). Just at this time an important foreign book was published, designed to have considerable influence upon European cometary theory and thought: in 1665 Louis XIV ordered the astronomer Pierre Petit, friend of both Constantijn and Christiaen Huygens, to write and published his Dissertation sur la Nature des Comètes (Paris: Thomas Jolly, 1665), for the specific purpose of combating superstitious reaction and prognostication potentially dangerous to the state. Petit's book was a genuine effort by a scientist at detached, scientific evaluation; and, although not so correctly as Halley was later to do, Petit sough to establish a periodicity for cometary appearance. Though this little book by no means resulted in complete removal of superstition, it circulated influentially among scientists and intellectuals in Europa and in England.

By 1680/81 considerable general interest had been aroused in comets and cometary appearance - Europe was certainly ready for the Great Comet. For example, in Holland, Stanislaus Lubienietski's Theatrum Cometicum, a large two-volume work, half-modern, half-dependent upon old beliefs, was republished in a beautiful edition at Leiden in 1681. In Dutch material on the Great Comet, the general tenor of opinion had changed from that expressed in 1665. The gradual liberalizing - empiricizing is perhaps the better word, even in so ephemeral a context - of opinion is manifest, for instance, in the pamphlet Comeet-gespreck, Tusschen Mr. Abraham ende Justinus, Aengaende de hedendaeghsch Steert-Sterre... Mitsgaders Of men

uyt de selve yets Voorseggen kan (Dordrecht: Mattheus van Nispen, 1681). This little book, ‘'T samen gestelt door M.V.N.,’ was a labor of love by the printer himself, a versatile man who was also a surveyor and mathematician. It consists of a dialogue between Meester Abraham, a follower of Tycho, and Justinus, an intelligent layman who served to draw out Abraham's educated opinions. Though Abraham was not fully enlightened, he was willing to put the idea of pressage to the test. Tycho could have asked no more!

Of course, not all the works that appeared in 1680/81 were enlightened. A broadside entitled Beschrijvinge van de Hedendaegse Comeet-Gestarnte, Die door de Heer Professor ende Mathematicus is gedaen tot Hamburg (Rotterdam: Pieter van Wynbrugge, 1681), is worth some attention. It is a translation from the German of Johannes Henrich Voigt, encouragingly beginning ‘Dese schrikkelijke Comeet Gestarnte’ and going on to list past comets and their dire results on earth. Its ending is a jeremiad to chill the blood:

‘Ik vrees, ick vrees, het zijn zware straffe dat wy beproeft hebben, maer daer zal zeeckerlijck noch zwaarder volgen, indien wy ons niet bekeeren. Want het is zeeckerlijck dat dit teeken (te weten dees vreesselijcke Comeet-gestarnte, die nu in het Iaer van 1681.) niet te vergeefs gesien word. Daer is immers in onse Eeuwen so een vreeselijck teecken niet gesien, waer mede wy op nieuw gedreygt worden; en derhalven seg ik nogmaels, neemt daer acht op, valt den Heer te voet, terwijl het nog heden is, want het suchten en kermen sal niet helpen als het te laet is. Den Almachtigen Godt, Schepper van Hemel ende Aerde, verhoede met zijn Goddelijcke macht door de verdienste onses Saligmakers Jesum Christum ons voor erger quaet. Amen’.20)

Other anti-rational publications were less ephemeral than this one: Jacobus Koelman's piece (which I have been unable to see myself ),21) Gisbertus Cocq's Cometographia ofte Comeet-beschrijvinge (Utrecht: Willem Clerck, 1682)22), and Johannes van Holst's Een Kort en

Beknopt Verhael van de Tekenen des Hemels (orig. Leeuwarden, 1682, often reprinted), shortly followed by his Aenhangsel, Zynde het gevolg op de Comeet (same place and date, also frequently reprinted). These three men were orthodox clergymen and their view of comets was clearly related to their view of seventeenth-century religious affairs - for example, the comet of 1618 for them expressly foreshadowed the painful schism in the Dutch Church culminating in the Synod of Dort.

A less powerful directive from a less unimpeachable source, but bearing the same message abroad, was a verse broadside by P.D.L. Croix, as the theatrical writer Pieter de la Croix signed himself23). The poem repeated all the old beliefs, playing amusingly upon them at the end:

 
Nu daalt myn Star in 't Graf, myn dagen zyn verstreeken,
 
Zoo voelt een wyze ziel Gods hand eer datze slaat,
 
Daar zorgeloozer Geest verblind het volk verraad.
 
Gelukkig die zich door Gods wekker doet ontwaken,
 
Dat deeze Staartstar laat zo diep in 't herte raaken,
 
Dat hy, door deugd, verdooft de Nastraal van dit licht,
 
En wisselt wee in wel, dit in een loogendicht.

For the first time in the century, the greater part of cometary literature was rationalist. Dirck Mackreel, ‘Leermeester der Mathematische Konsten’, published a careful description of the astronomical observations made on the comet, entirely omitting any reference to its supernatural significance24), just as Snellius had done so many years before. Still more important - and influential outside Holland - was the second edition of a tract by the Utrecht professor Johannes Georgius Graevius, the friend of Spinoza and Locke. His Oratio de Cometis contra Vulgi Opinionem Cometas, first published in 166525), had been

commissioned by the States of Utrecht and was a broadside attack on cometary superstition as ‘een ydele vreese, die het herte, wegens soo gewaende groote sonden, in seer geringe saecken, tegens God begaen, door veele verwerde gissinghen ontstelt.’26) As Graevius' successors were to point out over and over again, comets appear in the heavens of which men have no apprehension whatever, to which no earthly ills have therefore been attributed - why, then, are men so self-centered as to assume that comets appear only in relation to human society? God's space contains worlds only just dreamt of in man's philosophy: all phenomena need not relate to human beings. Graevius cited J.C. Scaliger's edition of Cardanus, Riccioli, Gassendi, and ‘Jacobus Primerosius, medicus Anglus’ to support his enlightened view.

Aside from Graevius' book, promptly translated into Dutch, the most effective attack upon cometary superstition before Bayle was certainly Balthasar Bekker's Ondersoek Van de Betekeninge der Kometen (Leeuwarden: Hero Nauta, 1683)27), a forestudy of his greater attack upon all superstition in the famous Betoverde Wereld. In the Ondersoek, Bekker relied upon Descartes' Principia, upon Hevelius and Bernouilli (whose observations upon comets proved particularly reliable) to support his unorthodox position. All the elements of Bayle's treatise were present in Bekker's smaller book, which ended with a plea to man to attend to his business, not to imagine himself threatened by ephemeral phenomena:

‘Dat sal ons de oogen openen om met d'uiterste verwondering te sien hoe blind dat wy geweest sijn; en wel vreemd doen voorkomen so wy dan bevinden dat een licht ons hier als een fakkel die ons dreigde toe gescheenen een geheele weereld is. En de weerelt daar wy so op woelen die wy als kleine mierkens bekruipen en bespringen (Lucianus

in sijnen Icaromenippus gaf ons daar de schets al af) wy die meenen dat het al om onsent wil geschapen is; dat seg ik dese gansche Aarden kloot... is van daar of als een speldshoofd aangesien of te klein in verr sal zijn om gezien te worden’.28)

Bayle was next, not a Hollander in fact but so much a fighter from Holland that one must consider him among Dutch writers. His gigantic attack upon superstition first appeared in 1682 as Lettre à M.L.A.D.C. Docteur de Sorbonne. Où il est prouvé par plusieurs raisons tirées de la Philosophie, et de la Théologie, que les Comètes ne sont point le presage d'aucun malheur avec plusieurs Reflexions Morales & Politiques, & plusieurs Observations Historiques; & la Réfutation de quelques erreurs populaires; this book suffered considerable enlargement and was published in the same year at Amsterdam under the shorter title by which it is generally known, Pensées diverses sur la Comète29). To this book much of eighteenth-century enlightenment has been - and by the enlightened themselves - attributed, and in its own age the book certainly had enormous impact. Bayle had read all the moderns, philosophers moral and natural, and quoted from them all either to refute their ideas or to support his own. The comet itself was simply the spark to his powder-keg: he undermined by intent the bulwarks of contemporary superstition and irrationality, trying to blow up for good the tenacious city of old-fashioned unsystematic thinking. So successful was he that his followers adulated him as the great philosophical ‘modern’ of the late seventeenth century, the figure triumphantly leading the rationalist army.

This rationalist army was made up of recruits who were in the main young and vigorous, well-equipped to pitch against the top-heavy citadel of their enemies. Bekker, for instance, was in his fifties, in his prime, when the comet came blazing into the sky; Graevius was just fifty, Bayle thirty-five. Constantijn Huygens was an old man, a warrior rusticated to his Sabine plot of ground when the comet came, and he too spoke out for rationalism - spoke out, indeed, quietly a little sooner even than his younger allies. As we have noted, Huygens early

enlisted in the modern army, when it was still only a battalion; all his life he kept up with the advancement of scientific learning and, as his son grew up, came to realize more and more how much the world stood to gain by the moderns' victory. When Huygens was over seventy he undertook correspondence with members of the Académie des Sciences and the Royal Society; to the Royal Society he contributed at least one paper of interest to them. Ephemeral indications of his keen absorption in the natural sciences occur regularly among his poems - odd little verses on the heavens, on scientific instruments, to say nothing of the voluminous declarative science of Daghwerck. In 1656, for example, he wrote a little poem on the heavens called ‘Sterren’, beginning ‘Den Hemel spreeckt Gods eer, en ick verstae die spraeck,’ an indication of his familiarity with God's celestial creation30).

Huygens kept a sharp eye as well as a sharp ear on the heavens, sometimes to his terrestrial advantage. In 1665, busy with the administrative problems of the Stadholder's possessions at Orange, Huygens made good political use of one heavenly ‘token’. Over Orange, a crown appeared in the sky, at which point Huygens as the Prince's agent took occasion to declare a general amnesty and to extract from the people of the principality a new oath of allegiance to their Prince. Then ‘De Heere van Zuylichen heeft op het voorz dit volgende Carmen in 't Latijn gemaeckt’:

 
Dum stat Arausiacae confirmatura Coronae
 
Antequam Populi laeta Corona fidem,
 
Non dubiè Coelo placuit quod utrique Coronae;
 
Tertia de Coelo missa coronat opus.
 
 
 
Constanter31)

But let no man be convinced from this that Huygens believed in such signs: this was merely a witty epigram on his constant service to the House of Orange. In 1681, shortly after the Great Comet appeared, Huygens obliged with the following verses:

 
Op een Comeet vijf sess en komt het hier niet aen.
 
Ons Haegsche Iofferen die 'k met haer staert belaen
 
De vloeren veeghen sie, heb ick lang soo geheten,
 
Maer moest mijn' gissing noch een toontjen hooger gaen,
 
Ick hiet Swart-staerten in quaedaerdighe Cometen.
 
 
 
3 Ian.32)

This little poem was shortly followed by three more on the same subject one rather wearily expressing the rationalist viewpoint:

 
Hoe 't elders gaet of niet en gaet
 
Laet... niet en beven;
 
Beduidt de Staert-sterr niet als quaed,
 
Hij sal gewis lang leven33).

In February he wrote still another Latin epigram34), and on April 20, 1681, finished his long poem, Cometenwerck. This poem touches on many of the points to be raised by Bekker and Bayle, and, like their works, was touched off the author's annoyance at the nonsense he constantly heard about him on the subject of the comet:

 
Men stooft mij 't hoofd soo warm met vragen en hervragen,
 
Dat mij mijn' vraghers lust met vragen te verjagen.
 
Ick vraegh, waer hoort sy thuijs die vreeslicke Comeet,
 
Daer elck soo veel af snapt en elck soo weinigh weet?
 
Sy wandelt om en om: wie dreight sij meer of minder?
 
Een Coningh sterft in 'tOost: daer overtreurt men ginder,
 
In 't Zuyden lachtm' er om: Dat is deswerelds schael,
 
En 't Hemel-teecken goed noch quaed voor altemael,
 
Maer even soet voor een als droevigh voor een' andren35).

When folk cry out that the comet presages change, Huygens' answer is clear:

 
... all offmen dagh voor dagh
 
All om in alles geen' veranderingh en sagh.
 
Is dat Cometen werck, en hoefter niewe lichten,
 
Om ons' onkunde van die waerheit te berichten,
 
Dat geen dingh staende blijft, maer dat de tyd om gaet
 
Als 'tmoije Curieus der kinderen op Straet?

God is not so foolish as to permits us to prognosticate his mysterious will.

 
Elendigh stof en slyck, wat maeckt u soo baldadigh?
 
Vergrijpt men sich soo hoogh, en blijft God noch genadigh?
 
Lydt, weecke Schepselen, alree te swaer gelaen
 
Om last van meerder wicht te derven ondergaen,
 
Lydt dat ick u en mij verleere God te tergen
 
En in 't toekomstige, van Heden af tot Mergen,
 
Waerseggers ydel ampt te roemen uijt een Vier
 
Van onbegrepen Stof en ongewoone Swier.

And ready for opponents about to charge him with insufficient respect for God's greatness, Huygens proclaimed his kind of piety:

 
Wat dan? vrees ick se? neen. Veracht ickse? noch min:
 
De vrees waer Goddeloos, 'tverachten sonder sin:
 
Ick vreesde Goddeloos wat God verbiedt te vreesen:
 
Veel Goddelooser noch socht ick 'er in te lesen
 
Dat daer niet in en staet, waer Gods besluijten gaen,
 
Wie sijn' almachtigheit wil vallen doen, wie staen
 
En klapt soo quanswijs uijt Gods geheimenissen
 
Tot Bullebacken van d'eenvoudigste Gewissen...
 
Verr van verachten, verr; ick eer all' de bewijsen
 
Van d'onbepaelde Macht, ick helps' oneindigh prijsen
 
Oneindigh loven en oneindigh gade slaen
 
Maer sonder hooger als mijn Vlercken op te gaen.
 
Daer staeckt haer self mijn' vlucht, mijn weet-lust en mijn' driften
 
Om all 'twaerachtige van alles uijt te ziften
 
Dat maer waer-achtigh zij....

How different this from the prognosticating pamphlets! Far from denying God's providence, Huygens reaffirmed that providence in the heavens as on earth36). He attempted to cut man down to size: every

change in the heavens was not to symbolize something specific to man, something more precise than the almighty power of God. Man's duty was not to interpret God's will by the arbitrary omens of the sky; indeed, to foresee God's will was a kind of blasphemy against that very will. And more-why does it take a comet to make man look in wonderment at God's heavens, when for Constantijn Huygens those heavens spoke to God's glory every night of his life? Are God's wonders insufficient for most men? The creator provided men with a means to know him: reason. The amateur scientist and the professional scientist's father spoke in Huygens' gentle, reasonable, practical, uncontentious poem, a plea for the appropriateness in man's study of God's works. Huygens himself was an old student of the Book of God's Works; his son's inspired readings in that volume changed the course of natural science. Even in his eighty-sixth year, Constantijn Huygens remained a warrior in the cause of the new truth - ‘de niew-geboren Waerheit, / Niew geboren inde klaerheit / Van des middaghs hoogen dagh,’ as he had expressed it years before in Daghwerck. And a warrior he remained at an age when most men, either through fatigue or through fear, give way to superstition; Huygens still spoke out for the sovereignty of man's God-given right reason. There is a significance in this beyond its inherent curiousness: not only was old Constantijn Huygens still passionately a modern, still upholding the devotion to God he consistently felt and the intellectual progressivism of his era, not only was he still in the van of modern thought after sixty years' dedication to its cause, but he was also as thinking man and sensitive poet still alive to the whole world, still responding - gout and all - to the fulness of the creation in which he was privileged to live. Huygens does indeed provide particular insight into the seventeenth century in Holland, but he provides insight as well into a rarer thing, rare in any age and perhaps the unique production of that one, the rewarding fulness of a man's own individuality.

 

Barnard College, Columbia University.

Rosalie L. Colie


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