Ons Erfdeel. Jaargang 13

[p. 83]

ruyslinck's ‘bonne nuit tristesse’

ralph baden powell

Geb. 1910 in Londen. Freelance vertaler. Studeerde aan Lancing College. Was leraar en vertaler (Engels), in Engeland, Nederland, Duitsland, Zwitserland en Denemarken. Tot voor kort mederedakteur en docent bij Linguaphone, Londen. Vertaalde werk van H.L.T. de Beaufort, Mulisch, Ruyslinck. Werkt aan de vertaling van de biografie van Oldenbarnevelt door mr. Jan den Tex, in opdracht van Cambridge University Press, met steun van het Prins Bernhard Fonds.

Adres: 69 Chippendale House, Churchill Gardens, London, S.W.I.

Reviews singing a unanimous chorus of praise are a rare tribute to any novel, but it has been paid in the English-language press to Ward Ruyslinck's ‘The Deadbeats’ (De ontaarde slapers). Still more remarkable is such a reception for a first novel, in translation, by a writer unknown to the readers for whom it is intended.

The ‘Times Literary Supplement’, leading specialist in the appreciation of literature, writes:

‘First published work of a now well-established Belgian poet and novelist makes its appearance in this country as a Council of Europe choice and certainly deserves the distinction. ...the book is funny in a gentle, despairing way...’

‘The Scotsman’, ‘The Irish Times’ and ‘The Age’ (Melbourne) devote some considerable space to appreciative résumés of Ruyslinck's story, ‘The Scotsman’ draws attention to the fact that the publisher, Peter Owen, already has the most intelligently selected list of foreign and experimental fiction.

‘...this excellent novel... combines psychological accuracy with a poetic feeling for the weather and edge of town... A most readable and rewarding first novel.’

‘The Irish Times’:

‘Mr. Ruyslinck writes coolly but well of minds reacting to fierce pressure, and then going out of control.’

‘Ward Ruyslinck's The Deadbeats is really short’ a reviewer in ‘The Spectator’ writes, after discussing some long novels, and the strain perhaps accounts for some rather curious remarks:

‘An icy miniature of a Flemish Darby and Joan’ - but we are told that Silvester and Margriet are only in their forties: someone must have told the reviewer that the natives age very early in those parts:

‘living, chiefly sleeping, in a rotten little shack, drawing the dole and presenting a picture still easily recognizable, I should have thought, to Breughel.’

Breughel? His figures are surely more robust and vital; if one is looking for a counterpart among Flemish painters a small, subdued

[p. 84]

Handschrift van Ward Ruyslinck.

canvas by Teniers or Brouwer seems a more apt comparison. He concludes:

‘But the English title seems a pity. Aren't we all sufficiently simultaneous translators to get the message of “De ontaarde slapers”?’ The short and only answer to that one is: no.

One critic - or rather reviewer, for no adverse judgment is given of Ruyslinck's book - writes that he will want to read more of this author's work in English - and soon. Another complains of the price (32s/6d), which is certainly high. But to produce a hardcover

Ward Ruyslinck

[p. 85]

Handschrift van Ralph Baden Powell.

book at all, long or short, involves a large initial outlay, and the price can only be brought down by a long printing run, usually only ventured on for works by established writers. The answer would be a paperback edition, but this would involve another publisher, and the queue for getting into paper covers seems to be a long one.

[p. 86]

Readers to whom I have spoken also echo the reviewers' admiration. I am naturally not well placed, as the translator, to hear unfavourable comment - but I think that the appreciation is genuine, often with a note of surprise that the writer should have made a moving story out of such, on the face of it, unpromising material.

To discover how this was done it is perhaps well to ask the question: what is a novel? ‘Characters and a catastrophe’, a famous author has said. It is easy enough to shoot holes in such a broad generalization, but in this case it will serve. Then we wonder how it was done: such characters, such a situation are not, we suppose, within the author's personal experience. Imagination must then take its place, the power to transmute and arrange things seen, heard of, speculated upon, into a work of creation. Ruyslinck is a poet as well as a novelist, and to psychological insight is added a feeling for atmosphere and place, without any exaggerated naturalisme. In style he is restrained: his descriptions of the grotesque and absurd never descend to facetiousness or levity. This, and the poet's sense of form give the book coherence and outline.

‘The Deadbeats’ is ...one might almost say ‘a fable’, ‘Netherlands Books’ tells us. We may not see at first how these two nearpsychopaths, who have, in the current phrase, opted out of society, resemble the creatures that generally inhabit a fable. Reflection shows, however, that they can indeed be taken as allegorical characters: in each of us there is, even if only potentially, something of the misfit; society, to which most strive to conform, is itself imperfect, and we are all part of it.

‘Like all fables’,

‘Netherlands Books’ continues,

‘it has an implicit moral, and it is not difficult to see what this moral is.’

Omslag van de eerste uitgave van ‘De Ontaarde Slapers’ door Ward Ruyslinck.

Omslag van de Engelse vertaling van ‘De Ontaarde Slapers’.