Ons Erfdeel. Jaargang 11

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een nederlands boek in het buitenland
a day at the beach
james brockway ● st. austell, cornwall ● u.k.

english version of heere heeresma's novella: een dagje naar het strand
genesis, placing and critical reception in the british press

Heere Heeresma (photo Petra Hopman, Amsterdam).

I translated Heere Heeresma's novella of 1962 - Een dagje naar het Strand - during December 1965 and January 1966. The work was not commissioned. I did it for pleasure. I'd met Heeresma at a party in Amsterdam shortly before leaving Holland. His work was being published by the firm (Contact/Amsterdam-Antwerp) for whom I had worked for several years and I had received three of his titles, including this novella, from them on publication. This had not, however, moved me to translate any of his work in those days. There were too many other things to be done and, moreover, I wanted time to ‘let him sink in’. This his work seemed clearly to demand.

During the summer of 1965, when I was back in England, Heeresma sent me the proof of his story, Hoe Die Twee Elkaar Ontmoetten, which I read immediately on openning the envelope, standing in the garage, after having collected my post. Again my reaction was: ‘Wait. This needs time. Put it off.’ Later the whole book arrived, Juweeltjes van Waterverf, from his publisher. I still waited. This was partly because I was immersed at the time in the translation of stories by another Dutch author (Wolkers) and one talented Dutchman is enough for one poor Englishman to have to deal with at a time. But it was also because I felt that Heeresma's writing took one into a new, strange and highly idiosyncratic world - Heeresma country. It was, I suspect, a deliberate putting off of an experience one wanted very much to have. I wanted to come to it prepared, ready. A translator's mind is always being invaded by thoughts from other men's minds. Fortunately, not all these thoughts are intense, and they wash away in time, sometimes almost at once, so that one can carry on without a break with something else. It is not the same with works of art. They demand a total surrender - and they stick.

Eventually the right moment came. I decided to start with the novella, Een Dagje... Of all Heeresma's writing this seemed to me to stand the best chance of being placed here, although there was a snag - a big one: its length. The market for the novella in Britain is practically non-existent. However...

At first it was my intention to write a synopsis of the book and translate one or two chapters of it only. But, since it was only about 100 short pages in all, that seemed unnecessary and unwise; besides: no sooner had I started than I wanted to do every word of it. Not because I felt an affinity with the book and the mind that had created it. Quite the

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Typoscript ‘Een dagje naar het strand’, Heere Heeresma.

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contrary. I liked the book and admired the author's achievement, but the writer's personality was utterly different from my own, and that exerted an extraordinarily powerful attraction: a challenge I now wanted very much to take up. As the translation proceeded, I enjoyed the work more and more. Perhaps it was like an actor feeling he is getting the hang of a rôle, gradually becoming the person his job it is to portray. But I think an even more potent factor was that the more closely one studies Heeresma's work, the more one's admiration and enjoyment grow. Some may judge translation to be a tiresome occupation. Mostly it is. But when it's a matter of translating highly intelligent writing, translation can be sheer joy. There was another factor too: Heeresma's curious blend of involvement and detachment, a very subtle irony. This is related to the critic's task, which I have taken upon myself too: total involvement when reading the work; detachment when reviewing it.

When the translation was finished, I went through it, referring problems to Heere, who replied swiftly and succinctly; cryptically at times. I re-wrote the first chapter seven times in all - because after finishing the translation I had become, under Heeresma's influence, a different writer from the one I was at the start. I had learnt a lot. And even if I failed to place the translation, I wouldn't mind. Naturally, placing and recognition were the practical goal, especially for the Dutch author. But the translation itself had been the really rewarding experience for me.

I decided to send it off to a contact of mine at a London publishing house, some of whose books I had introduced in Holland, in the press and in translation. The reply came a month or so later: ‘Well, your manuscript A Day at the Beach has had a thorough reading and the general opinion is that it is a very good study of a dipsomaniac, that it is compelling and that in parts the description is extremely evocative. We regret, however, that we do not feel that we can add this to our list...’

I then decided to approach a well-known London literary agent, sending this letter but not the translation - merely suggesting this agent should consider the book for placing. The reply was prompt: ‘I am very much afraid I would not be successful in placing this for you... it is not easy to place Dutch authors; in addition, it is difficult to place short stories and short novels.’

This confirmed a) what I already knew, and b) what I feared: the length - not a novel, not a short story, but in between - was an objection to the conventionally-minded British publisher. However, there are those who are not so conventional, who were aware of the lack of an opening for the novella in Britain and anxious to remedy the situation. Two days after the agent's letter, the April 1966 issue of the London Magazine, Britain's premier literary and arts monthly, arrived. In it, Alan Ross, the poet, author and publisher, who had taken over the editorship from John Lehmann five years before and modernized the magazine, announced his plan to issue a new series of paperbacks. ‘One of the purposes of the series,’ he wrote, ‘will be to provide an outlet, among other things, for stories that fall between magazine and novel length, for which at present there is absolutely no market, though many of the best writers in the past have preferred it.’ The aim was: ‘Original books at accessible prices’, and since it was not the mass market Ross had in mind: ‘we shall be able to print experimental works...’

I immediately sent the Heeresma translation to Ross, whose magazine had published my translations of Wolkers. Maria Dermoût, Remco Campert, Lodeizen and others in the past, asking: Wasn't this the sort of work he had in mind? Ross replied some weeks

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Typoscript James Brockway ‘A day at the beach’.

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later: It was. He very much liked the ‘style and texture’ of Heeresma's writing and also said something complimentary (thank goodness!) about the translation. If we could come to an arrangement, he'd gladly print the novella in the new series. The Prins Bernhard Fund proved ready to help with financing the translation and the matter was settled.

I then asked Ross to let me read through the whole translation again, since print is a stern master and now I knew the book was definitely to appear, I wanted it to be as right as I could get it. I went through every sentence again, comparing it with the Dutch text and asking myself, if I'd been literal enough. Only the very naïve, of course, imagine a good translation must necessarily be an exact translation. But I wanted to make sure that, if I had deviated slightly, there was a good reason for doing so. Then everything went back to Ross again.

And so Heeresma's novella appeared in English, in a small, neat, wellprinted, tobaccocoloured pocket edition, on May 30th 1967, as No. 10 of the new series: London Magazine Editions.

There was a drawback to appearing in a paperback edition: these were new books in paperbacks; but literary editors usually give scant or no attention in their review columns to paperbacks, since these are usually reprints of books already reviewed. There are already far too many books to review as it is. There was a considerable chance, therefore, that A Day at the Beach would be overlooked.

But it was not. True, there would have been even more reviews if it had appeared as a hardback, yet it was treated along with the hardbacks and achieved reviews in many of the most authoritative and influential London journals, and the majority of these were so unexpectedly enthusiastic that the publisher wrote to express his pleasure.

In The Sunday Times, (June 11), largest and most influential of the ‘quality’ Sunday papers), novelist Kay Dick, reviewing it as an original novel with three British works, gave it the most space, writing: ‘A Day at the Beach is short novel by an extremely able Dutch writer, Heere Heeresma. With admirable precision and a fine edge of humour, it conveys the drama of a man who deliberately chooses to waste himself.’ After giving an account of the story, which revealed that the reviewer had really grasped the point and underlying significance of the book, she ended with: ‘Short though it is, it contains more wisdom, and art, than many novels self-consciously worked out at full length.’

In the Sunday Telegraph (May 28), Rivers Scott, though less perceptive (he laid the emphasis on the portrait of a drunk) was equally enthusiastic: ‘It is extremely short, a mere 117 small pages, but within its limits a tour de force of such intensity that its horror is almost unbearable.’

The reviewer was reminded of a worldbeater like Edward Albee: ‘Not since the stage version of “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf” will the reader have been left feeling quite so vicariously plastered’ (i.e. ‘dronken’), and he was kind enough to the translator to give him a share of the credit for ‘this feeling of almost physical involvement’. In Queen (June 7), a luxury monthly, much read by the modern ‘with-it’ smart set, Campbell Black (academic philosopher, attached to the University of Sussex, besides a reviewer) went even further. After referring to the American critic, Leslie Fiedler's article on the decline of the novel, he wrote: ‘I do not think that the extinction of the modern novel is such a real possibility. Every so often a work appears which, to some extent, reaffirms one's faith in the art of fiction. Heere Heeresma's A Day at the Beach strikes me as one of these.’

Describing the situation in the novel, he wrote: ‘Such a situation could, in the hands of a lesser writer, have developed into dreadful melodrama, but because the author's main focal point is the drunk, Bernard, and not the child, he has written a novel which is essentially tragic.’ He ended: ‘This novel is a considerable achievement and is certain to make the author's name better known in this country’.

In the conservative weekly, The Spectator (June 10), David Holloway felt that the novel ‘not only recommends itself as a work of genuine merit from a writer never before published in Britain’, but saw this Dutch contribution to the new London Magazine Editions as ‘a further recommendation’ for that series. Particularly pleasant in his review was his detection of what I, too, regard as one of Heeresma's most attractive attributes as a writer, a ‘wry detachment’, while he also noted a ‘vivid pictorial sense’ and said the book would make ‘a magnificent film’ - a view I myself hold and was happy to see confirmed by another.

The Observer, (June 11), a Sunday paper second only in importance to the Sunday Times, had only a few lines to spare for the book, a mere notice in the ‘Novels in Brief’ column. I am not sure if this notice

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was very kindly intended, yet it paid Heeresma the great compliment of comparing him with Malcolm Lowry. ‘After Lowry, there's not much left to learn about alcoholics, but a Dutch setting is undoubtedly more depressing than a Mexican one and the treatment here is altogether terser.’ So this was praise, anyway, although the review was not very perceptive - Heeresma is concerned with far more than describing an alcoholic. The final sentence of the review: ‘A pretty nasty day is had by all’ is not, of course, criticism at all - though this may be attributed to shortage of space, which, I find, tends to make reviewers superficial and rather cross. As in most cases there was no mention that the book was a translation.

In the Catholic Herald, (Aug. 4), the novella was reviewed two months after publication by the well-known novelist, Gabriel Fielding. Even though a paperback, it was given pride of place in his review of four novels and also received the most praise. ‘Two of these four novels,’ wrote Fielding, ‘are concerned with states of mind: A Day at the Beach and At the Jerusalem... Both are written by comparatively young men and both are good in the sense that their penetration into a chosen consciousness is exact and convincing. A Day at the Beach... does indeed stand out as something special.’ Mentioning Heeresma's hero, Bernard, and his crippled daughter, Fielding went on: ‘the pain is as luminous as the pleasure and both are informed by a wit so singular that it is the other “normal” people who appear pitiable.’ This Kay Dick had detected too, and it was particularly gratifying, since Heeresma's wit is, indeed, unusual, while Fielding's second point about the ‘normal’ people is one I had hoped readers would notice. Fielding saw the hero as crippled in ‘his capacity to love’ (well observed too) and ended: ‘For this quality of destitute affection the book should be read’. The next book in his review, a British work, he found: ‘a good deal less original’.

In the weekly, New Society, (June 29), one that has joined the famous Spectator and New Statesman in recent years and lays the blas on sociological problems of topical interest, Christopher Salversen, contributed a solo review of Heeresma's novella. (Salversen, by the way, had given a most enthusiastic review to the English versions of novels by the late Herman Teirlinck and Gerard Walschap, translated respectively by myself and colleague, Alex Brotherton, in the very influential pages of the New Statesman three summers before.) He was not completely won over by Heeresma's novella, not, at least, as the other reviewers had been. He felt that its ‘cinematic’ style was perhaps ‘the source of its finally being rather unsatisfying. It relies too much on the pathos of visible things’. He felt the pathos of character was ‘not worked out. Atmosphere comes too obviously first: a frequent though not inherent limitation of the shortstory form.’ (Incidentally, he called the book ‘a long short-story’, and the fact that other reviewers referred to it as a novel, a short novel, and a novella, serves to emphasize our lack of familiarity and ease with fiction of this length in England.)

But Salversen was obviously interested in the novella, and found many good things in it: ‘It somehow avoids sentimental gloom while it effectively contrasts the child's innocence with her “uncle” Bernard's despairing

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self-awareness; and it has things to say about the difficulties of actually asserting private freedom in society.’ (Careful and sensitive criticism, this.) The critic was even reminded of James Joyce: ‘the beach maintains a sort of Joycean quality’ and he liked Bernard's ‘neatly sententious view of himself.’ This was a very welcome review, for, although not enthusiastic like others, Salversen was patently intrigued and had obviously given the novella careful thought. One felt it had left him rather perplexed - and is this not one of Heeresma's fascinating characteristics?

In the London Magazine for July (edited and published by the publisher of the novella) the book had the misfortune to be reviewed together with the English translation of Jan Wolkers' Een roos van vlees, which the reviewer, novelist David Pryce-Jones (son of a former editor of the Times Literary Supplement) dismissed in very strong terms: ‘here is the novel of vogue at its most meretricious, a moan for attention’. Heeresma's book was, on the other hand, praised, but mentioned only very briefly: ‘The tale is short, taut and free from self-pity’.

In the Times Literary Supplement, (July 6), the anonymous reviewer gave the novella the only poor review it received. He began by placing it in a pigeon hole (always the sign of a bad critic): ‘This is a modest contribution to that fashionable class of novels which celebrate the Experiences of a Second-Rate Sensitive Layabout’ - obviously the wrong pigeon hole too, while the summary of the plot also revealed how superficially the book had been read. The dénouement was foreseeable. Maybe: but the dénouement is not at all what matters here. The translation (he was one of the only two reviewers to mention it) was ‘efficient’, but Heeresma's omission of inverted commas to indicate speech (very effective in this particular case: he was dealing with a dipsomaniac, among other things) caused irritation. Not to any other reviewer, however:

I have left the most gratifying and charming review till last. This was in Smith's Trade Review, (July 1st), a journal distributed among booksellers. The anonymous reviewer found Heeresma's wry detachment ‘wonderful’. The novella was ‘absolutely readable and good... possessed of genuine merit’. He recommended booksellers to stock it, and ended: ‘I shall certainly re-read it on holiday, and I can't give it higher praise than that. For me reading matter on holiday (after 11 months of pressurized reading of hundreds of books, most of which I couldn't care less about, is a carefully arranged and selected matter. A Day at the Beach, by Heere Heeresma, goes somewhere near the top of a very small pile.’ That, surely, must be very pleasant for Heeresma to hear. Also for everyone anxious to see more interest taken in Britain in Dutch writing. Read again. On holiday. For sheer pleasure!

Summing up: although in the past British reviewers have often seemed too ready to dismiss or ignore work from the Low Countries; although Heeresma was totally unknown in Britain and had received no prior publicity but for a brief mention in an article of mine in the Scotsman, Edinburgh, of November 12, 1966; although his book was of an unfamiliar and unpopular length, a modest work, appearing in a new series which is not yet fully established; although it appeared as a paperback and therefore risked being ignored in the papers; and although it was ‘only a translation’ - it received serious reviews in many leading British journals, seven out of ten being enthusiastic, five highly enthusiastic, and only one amounting to a (mild) dismissal (because the book was modish). It was approached mainly as an original work, only three of the ten reviews mentioned showing that it was a translation, and only two of these mentioning the translation in the review.

This result is most gratifying. For Heeresma in the first place, but also for myself, convinced as I am that the only sure way to recognition for Dutch writing in Britain is via careful selection of suitable books, finding the right outlet, and by translations which British readers and reviewers can read as though they were original works in English. The translation must become invisible. So, too, the translator. I was very glad, too, to see that the trust the Prins Bernhard Fund had put in me at the outset was rewarded by an enthusiastic response from the English critics.

Heere Heeresma, b. March 9, 1932, Amsterdam.

Publications:

As may be required (short stories) 1962.
A day at the beach (novella) 1962.
The Fish (an allegory) 1963.
Little gems in watercolour (short stories) 1965.
The bitching-up of the Swieps family (scenario of full-length feature film directed by Erik Terpstra) 1967.
All through the floor (television play) 1967.
The Roadman (novel-scenario) 1968.
Hip, Hip, Hip for the Anti-Christ (novel-scenario) 1968.
South 2 (autobiographical prose) 1968.