OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse Taalkunde, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Jaargang 3

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[Nummer 1]

Preface

The sudden and unexpected demise of Professor Jan Voorhoeve in Paris in January 1983 came as a shock to friends and colleagues alike. Voorhoeve was the head of the Department of African languages at Leiden University at the time of his death, and also responsible for Creole Studies. A lanky, likable and amiable Dutchman, he had friends all over the world. An academic of no mean ability, his range varied from the oral tradition to poetry, literature and linguistics.

Voorhoeve was born in Djombang, Indonesia, on the 19th June 1923. Unlike many of his countrymen born in the colony, this sensitive, energetic young man did not become an indologist. Luckily for Creole Studies, he discovered Surinam instead, and became a pioneer in this field. Voorhoeve was a man of many parts. He studied the Dutch language and literature at the University of Amsterdam and completed his graduate studies with a thesis on the noble savage. Already in this graduate thesis the emphasis was on Surinam.

In 1953 Jan Voorhoeve defended his Ph.D. thesis on Sranan at the University of Amsterdam. This significant event in his life was to mark the beginning of an academic career which was to last until his sudden death in Paris in 1983. Voorhoeve was passionately involved with Surinamese literature and culture from the fifties onwards. It is difficult to recall the name of any other European academic who was so ardently involved in the cultural and national struggle of a colonised people. Voorhoeve had a hand in the establishment of the movement for cultural identity by young Surinamese students in The Netherlands during the early fifties, called Wi Eegie Sani. He knew all the writers and poets personally, and campaigned actively for their recognition in The Netherlands. He was the first Dutch academic to discover the sensitive and lyrically beautiful poetry of that doyen of Surinamese poets, Trefossa (ps. of Henny de Ziel). In fact, he maintained a life-long friendship with him.

In a sense then, Jan Voorhoeve had a perspicacity far beyond his years. He was anti-colonial when the vast majority of his countrymen in The Netherlands had not yet given a thought to any form of independence in Surinam. In 1956, Voorhoeve went to Surinam as a translator for the Dutch Bible Society and stayed on until 1962. The anecdotes about Jan Voorhoeve are numerous. Many a Surinamese in those days never realised that the man who informed and amused them via the radio was in actual fact a bakra and not a blakaman. From 1962 to 1964 Voorhoeve found himself in the Cameroon, where he played a significant role in a joint international linguistics project.

Jan Voorhoeve was everything but an armchair academic. He loved life and had an irrepressible zest for it. His involvement with Africa was as

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sincere as his love for Surinam was deep. In the quietude of his study, he gave character and form to the cultural and linguistic aspirations of the Surinamese Creole people.

His publications on Sranan Tongo and African languages are numerous and of a varied nature, as will be evident from the Bibliography by Philip Elias included in this memorial issue. In 1962 his Sranan Syntax was published in Amsterdam. In 1963, together with A. Donicie, he wrote a Bibliographie du négro-anglais du Surinam. In that same year, again with Donicie, he published De Saramakaanse Woordenschat. Together with Trefossa, he rescued the Bushnegro prophet Johannes King from anonymity. Unfortunately, he never had time to complete his manuscript on Johannes King. It is hoped that this challenge will now be acccepted by some other scholar as obsessed with Creole Studies as the late Jan Voorhoeve was. ‘The art of reading Creole poetry’ was first published in 1969 and then reprinted in 1971. His noncreole activities find expression in articles such as: ‘Towards a typology of tone systems’ (1968) and ‘Noun classes in Bamileke’ (1968). His inaugural lecture at Leiden as Professor of African languages was entitled: ‘Toontypen: het thema achter de variaties’ (1967).

The list is endless. One publication must, however, be singled out for special mention, for it gave Jan Voorhoeve immense pleasure, namely Creole Drum. This was the first full-length anthology of Creole poetry and prose ever published for any Creole language. Creole Drum was more than a book of black literature for Jan Voorhoeve. The book was a homage to the Creoles and the attempts of all those Creole writers in Surinam to immortalise their own feelings in what was formerly disparagingly referred to as ‘nigger tongue’. It was an anti-colonial anthology because it attempted to correct the historical picture of the Creole in Surinam. And above all, it was a celebration of the coming of age of a former slave people and their culture. Significantly, Creole Drum was presented to the Surinamese people on the eve of independence.

Some scholars will remember Jan Voorhoeve for his work on Creole languages; others will recall his articles on relexification, tone and ‘total down-step’; still others will remember him as a wonderful human being who graced their presence daily over a span of time.

These essays in memory of Jan Voorhoeve were written by various scholars from different parts of the world, who either knew him as a friend, or as a scholar, or who were inspired by his scholarship. The articles are of a varied nature, ranging from serial verbs to the Saramaccan calender and Aphra Behn. The specialist nature of some of the articles may be a handicap to some of our OSO readership. On the other hand, this posthumous homage is a true reflection of the multi-faceted career of this benign and talented Dutchman. Shortly before his death Jan Voorhoeve had become associate editor of this journal.

He would have agreed with us that:

only together can we come to terms
with what nibbles at our souls

which is a translation of the words of one of his favourite Surinamese Creole poets, Michael Slory. The original lines were:

Makandra nomo
un sa brasa den dangra
di tergi wi kra

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In one of his own poems, called Assignment, Jan Voorhoeve wrote^*:

I shall tell you my life in poems
Love is a beginning
which gradually transforms itself
into images
of a life
in which you did not exist.
Thus, life extends
its borders
in order to wipe out
boundaries

No one did more to ‘extend borders’ and ‘wipe out boundaries’ than the late Jan Voorhoeve.

Jan Voorhoeve
FOTO: JORGE LABADIE

* translated from the original Dutch by V.A. February.