De Nieuwe Gids. Jaargang 47

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Hooft, Vondel, Boutens, in English translations by Dr. J.A. Russell.

English translations of Dutch poetry are far from frequent, and practically nothing at all of the kind has been attempted in recent years. A little volume I have beside me, ‘Flowers of Poetry and Patriotism’, chiefly from Staring, Heye, Bogaers and Tollens, is dated 1833, while Sir John Bowring's ‘Batavian Anthology’ goes back to 1824. Longfellow rendered good service to Holland in his ‘Poets and Poetry of Europe’ (1855), and we are fortunate to have a complete English rendering of Vondel's ‘Lucifer’. But, unfortunately, it is not always the best work that has been given to us in this way; a version of Tollen's ‘Day of General Prayer’ and three separate translations of his ‘Nova Zembla’ seems a disproportionate service when we have nothing at all from such a fine winnowing as Van Elring's ‘Bloemlezing’ from Willem Bilderdijk. In this new volume¹⁾ Professor Grierson does something to remedy contemporary neglect of Dutch poetry by giving us a collection of twelve poems translated from three wellknown and reputable writers - Hooft, Vondel and Dr. P.C. Boutens. With the writers selected there can, of course, be no cavil (whatever we may think of the inclusion of this or that poem) since two are the greatest Dutch poets of the seventeenth century and the other the most important so far of the twentieth; our regret is simply that such a monstrous gap is left between - three hundred unrepresented years. That, however, is not the fault of Professor Grierson, for it is precisely on Dutch seven-

1) ‘The Flute, with other translations’. (The Samson Press, Warlingham, Surrey, England.)

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teenth century literature that he has best exercised his scholarly powers; his ‘First Half of the Seventeenth Century’ in ‘Periods of European Literature’ certainly gives what is the finest and most complete account in English of ‘The Age of Vondel’ - here there can be no charge, as was made against Gosse's studies of Dutch literature, of ‘vague generalisations’, for so thorough was the author's examination of his material that one or two of the poems now given were translated for this work in 1906. If anything, however, this knowledge of Professor Grierson's equipment for his task increases regret that he has not given us more.

Hooft is well represented by the five poems entitled ‘The Net’, ‘Aubade’ (a fragment), ‘Remembered Kisses’, ‘Sonnet’ and ‘Montaigne’, the first three especially being the typical Renaissance verse of a courtly dallier. The sonnet, addressed to a newly-born child, contains more serious reflections on life, and its lines are probably the best given here under Hooft; ‘Montaigne’ is the most difficult transcription and is rather equal, as:

‘If in his hand he take what has gained men's esteem,
He will not trust his eyes, or deem as others deem.
But tries.’

The examples from Vondel happen to be four of his best-known poems: the much-discussed lines addressed to Gustavus Adolphus, the equally well-known elegy on Oldenbarnevelt, and two further elegies, ‘On the Passing of my Little Daughter’ (1633) and ‘Passing of Maria van den Vondel’ (1668). When Vondel in 1632 exhorted Gustavus Adolphus to spare Cologne, ‘that Imperial city of my birth’, he might have anticipated ‘When the Assault was intended to the City’, but the result here is scarcely Miltonic; in fact, of the poems in this section, only the feeling lines on the eath of the poet's daughter are not stilted in manner.

The finest pieces in the book are undoubtedly left for Dr. Boutens who is a welcome discovery when it is remembered that Holland has still such a great sonneteer as Willem Kloos and such a fine lyrist as Hélène Swarth. He is well represented by the three poems ‘The House of Dreams’ (from ‘Vergeten

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Liejdes’), ‘Love's Hour’ and ‘The Morning Nightingale’ (both from ‘Stemmen’). ‘The House of Dreams’, superficially, reads not unlike Tennyson, though in the last lines the poet might have been addressing Charles Lamb:

‘You too know that house, of shimmering dreams
Built, twixt death and life!’

Sheer, Shelleyan beauty entered Dutch poetry most belatedly; scarcely before the Perk-Kloos revival in the ‘eighties’: but Dr. Boutens will ensure that it does not escape from it. It is of our most perfect lyrists that we think in:

‘The sun draws nigh the summit of his stair;

And in an ocean of light-saturate air

The cornfield smoulders under glowing gold.’

Again, it is the spirit of pure joy that pervades ‘The Morning Nightingale’:

‘Joy, only joy shall be my song's refrain.’

And ecstatic joyousness becomes the very creed of the poet's emotions, supplies ‘life's meaning and goal’: a tense Nietzschean dictum restated in perfect poetic faith.

The few other poems included are not likely to prove so interesting to the Dutch reader, but the book - printed by hand and limited to 120 copies - is decidedly something of an event in Anglo-Dutch literary relations.