Spektator. Jaargang 3

[p. 30]

Felix J. Douma
G.K. van het Reve's English prose style

The first edition of G.K. van het Reve's The Acrobat and Other Stories (G.A. van Oorschot, Amsterdam/London 1956) is still available in the bookstores. I recently bought a copy, partly out of curiosity to see if it would be possible to account for the fact that Van het Reve's work in English has not caught on, while his publications in the Dutch language have secured him a position of eminence in post-war Dutch literature.

Any argument to the effect that Van het Reve's appeal is typically Dutch, and therefore too quaint for the broad range of an English literary public, will not do as an explanation here. It is true that contemporary Dutch writers are hardly known abroad. This fact would seem to lend plausibility to the contention that contemporary Dutch literature is in some sense isolated or peculiar. But it is also a fact that contemporary Dutch writers and their public have access and are alive to a wide spectrum of writing in languages other than Dutch. The scarcity of translations out of the Dutch does constitute a kind of barrier around Dutch literature, but no one would maintain that this barrier works both ways. The isolation of Dutch literature is a one-way mirror thing - only of hindrance to those outside its circle.

Still, it seems to me that an explanation can be given. My contention is that the unenthusiastic reception of The Acrobat and Other Stories may be attributed to something much more prosaic than differences between cultures and sensibilities - namely, Van het Reve's lack of fluency in English. To put it bluntly, the prose in all four of the stories contained in The Acrobat and Other Stories reads like a bad translation; and the effect of this is strong enough to swamp the stories' considerable merits.

By the observation that Van het Reve's English prose reads like a bad translation, I mean that it suffers from a number of writing errors chronic to bad translations, ranging from outright mistakes to more subtle inelegancies: spelling and punctuation errors, mistakes in grammar, wrong or misleading word usage, use of strained expressions, unusual word order, awkward sentence structure, apparently non-functional logical paradoxes and ambiguities, disturbing sound effects.

Actually, the above might serve as an elementary list of things to avoid in any kind of writing, and I imagine something like it does appear in

[p. 31]

handbooks on how to write a good business letter. In the business of literary criticism one can usually go on to talk about more interesting things, but The Acrobat and Other Stories is an unusual book. In order to illustrate the points I want to make, I will limit myself to commentary on the text of the book's title story, ‘The Acrobat’ (p. 49-95).

I do not propose to dwell on spelling and punctuation errors (misprints, if you like), except to point them out and to suggest that when they are present in profusion, they do have the effect of alienating the reader. For example, the name of the acrobat in the story is spelled three different ways: ‘Raimar’ (the most-used version), ‘Raimer’ (p. 51, 1.25), and ‘Raimair’ (p. 56, 1.24). Further spelling and punctuation errors, which could easily have been eliminated by a careful proofreading, are listed in the notes¹.

Under the heading of grammatical errors I have noted a couple of comma splices. I am aware that the comma splice is considered to be less of a horror these days than it was a few years ago. Still, the term ‘comma splice’ seems the most appropriate way to render the ugliness of the following sentence: ‘They finally got out, however, and stood painting in the heat while Raimar's father paid the driver, and then they began to walk across the bridge.’ (p. 67-68)². I have also noted a number of cases in which prepositions or articles are either used improperly or conspicuously lacking. For example, in the sentence: ‘He had not relaxed his hold to the trapeze bar...etc’ (p. 77, 1.1), the ‘to’ should be an ‘of’, or (possibly) an ‘on’. And in the sentence: ‘He paid no attention what Philip was doing . etc’ (p. 53, 11.26-27), the preposition ‘to’ should be inserted - i.e. to make it read: ‘He paid no attention to what Philip was doing...etc’ Further cases are listed in the notes³.

Consider the following sentence: ‘The wooden bed was covered with pink varnish, and some plywood toadstools that were painted in false colors were still nailed to the wall.’ (p. 55, 11. 10-13). In the first place, there is no such thing as ‘pink varnish’. Varnish is a resinous solution which, when applied to various surfaces, gives a hard, shiny, transparent finish with at most a light brown tinge. Secondly, the above use of ‘false’ is baffling. ‘False’ is usually used in the sense of ‘opposite to true’ or ‘fake’, as in ‘false eyelashes’. There is an expression ‘flying (or: under) false colours’, but it means ‘flag one has no right to’, figuratively ‘improperly so called’, or ‘pseudo-’; and this could hardly be the intention here.

Also, consider the following sentence: ‘Green, the dominant color, was used in the motives of the wallpaper.’ (p. 59, 11. 19-20). It is, of course, the word ‘motives’ which is odd here - it should presumably have

1 ‘To some along’ (p. 54, 1.16) should read ‘to come along’; ‘doesn't’ (p. 56, 1. 4) should read ‘doesn't’; ‘to large’ (p. 58, 1. 10) should read ‘too large’; ‘She has asked him’ (p. 61, 1. 9) should red ‘She had asked him’; ‘peddle boat’ (p. 79, 1. 28) should presumably read ‘paddle boat’; ‘advertized’ (p. 84, 1. 1) should read ‘advertised’; ‘dwarfs’ (p. 72, 1. 3 and following) should read ‘dwarves’; ‘icecream’ (p. 83, 1. 21 and following) should read ‘ice cream’; ‘out-loud’ (p. 87, 11, 19-20) should read ‘out loud’; the comma (,) on p. 59, 1. 11 should be deleted. Finally, there are several incorrect divisions into syllables: ‘learn-ed’ (p. 60, 11. 26-27); ‘ask-ed’ (p. 62, 11. 20-21); ‘handwrit-ing’ (p. 65, 11. 5-6); ‘troubl-ed’ (p. 69, 11. 20-21); ‘the-re’ (p. 92, 1.2).

2 Another ugly sentence: ‘Extending from the top of one pole to that of the other, was a steel bar that was bent at an equal distance from each end in such a way that the center formed a U-shaped crank, and from the two corners of the crank hung a trapeze.’ (p. 74-75).

3 ‘Wood like that in the chairs’ (p. 59, 1. 28) should read ‘wood like that of the chairs’; ‘he found himself believing the story to an extent that he almost felt uneasy’ (p. 61, 1. 17) should read ‘he found himself believing the story to the extent that he almost felt uneasy’; ‘He took a look into the hall of the post office’ (p. 64, 1. 31) should read ‘He took a look in the hall...etc’ or ‘He looked into the hall...etc.’; in the sentence ‘They ought not to come out into the bright daylight at all, let alone to dance in it.’ (p. 70, 11. 7-8), the second ‘to’ should be deleted; in the sentence ‘The boys hurriedly loaded the packs over their shoulders...etc.’ (p. 92, 11. 11-12), the ‘over’ suggests that the packs wound up somewhere else, which is absurd. It should be ‘on their shoulders’; ‘Philip motioned her to go away’ (p. 93, 1.26) should read ‘Philip motioned to her...etc.’

[p. 32]

read ‘motif’ or ‘motifs’, thoug ‘pattern(s)’ would have been a good deal less pretentious - it is, after all, only wallpaper.

In the sentence: ‘There wasn't any baggage control...etc.’, (p. 63, 1. 28) where the context makes it quite clear that what is meant is that baggage was not inspected, the word ‘control’ is misleading. ‘Iron thread’ (p. 69, 1. 32) also looks like a literal translation out of the Dutch, and should de ‘steel wire’, or simply ‘wire’. And so on⁴. Words with a heavy non-functional effect are also, in a sense, misleading. Scattered occurrences of ancient or rare verb forms, such as ‘lain’ (p. 56, 1. 30) and ‘swang’ (p. 78, 1. 26) tend to alienate the reader⁵.

Under the heading ‘strained expressions’ I have listed a number of cases in which Van het Reve's English, though perhaps not officially incorrect, seems unnecessarily involved, obtuse, awkward, or in some other way less than fluent. ‘He pointed to a visiting card he had given Raimar, which had lain on the dressing table ever since. She took it up.’ (p. 56, 11. 29-31). It is the diffuse effect of ‘She took it up’ which I want to draw attention to here. ‘To take up’ has special uses, such as ‘She took up waterskiing’, in the sense that she started doing it regularly. Its use here, in place of the more normal formulations ‘She picked it up’, or ‘She took it in her hand’ is disturbing.

A similar observation can be made about the sentence ‘He sat down in one of the armchairs and stretched himself out.’ (p. 58, 11. 26-28). Here, the ‘out’ is in any case superfluous, and one could also delete the ‘himself’ without damage to the apparently intended message in the sentence. The way it is, the reader has to resist the impression that there is something Daliesque going on.

The following two sentences illustrate a similar point: ‘Raimar sat down at a table in the bedroom and began to fish out some unused stamps from a bowl of warm water.’ (p. 49, 11. 30-32); ‘He pulled out the sheets of stamps from his trousers pocket, and waved them back and forth in order to be sure they were dry.’ (p. 63, 11. 3-5). Both ‘fish out...from’ and ‘pull out...from’ are awkward and obtrusive ways of saying ‘fish...out of’ and ‘pull...out of’.

So much for ‘strained expressions’. Some further examples are listed in the notes.⁶ Actually, what I have been calling ‘strained expressions’ are, in terms of their effect on the reader, very similar to cases where the word order is unusual or puzzling. And infelicities of style listed under both of these headings could also serve as examples of awkward, unwieldy sentence structure. My categories are not mutually exclusive, but provide only the most elementary sort of peg on which to hang examples from the text.

Proceeding, then, with the ‘word order’ peg, consider the following sentences: ‘She had brushed it loose, into shape, and then again loose in

4 In the sentence ‘Raimar's father sat up next to the driver...etc.’, (p. 67, 1. 11) the ‘up’ should be deleted. The use of ‘sit up’ in this context is disturbing, because to sit up is usually an action. A similar observation can be made on the sentence ‘She leaned too far backward in her effort to loop up, lost her balance, and came down in the sand, sitting up.’ (p. 82, 11. 2-4). In the sentence ‘The two poles, set at thirty feet from each other and supported by numerous cables, towered much more than a hundred feet above them.’ (p. 74, 11.26-28), the use of ‘much more than’ is strange. In contexts like this, the idea is usually rendered by ‘well over’.

5 In this connection, too, the expression ‘waste land’ (p. 68, 1. 7) seems a rather exaggerated way to denote a patch of vacant, undeveloped, or fallow land. On the other hand, the word ‘brownies’ ( p. 70, 1. 3) seems altogether too cute for its context, especially since ‘brownie’ can refer to a junior kind of Girl Scout as well as a delicious variety of chocolate cake. The word ‘hybrids’ (p. 72, 1. 1) has only neutral and positive connotations in English (‘hybrid corn,’ etc.) Something with a negative connotation (e.g. ‘mongrels’, ‘half-bloods’, ‘bastards’) seems to be called for here.

6 Further examples of ‘strained expressions’: ‘Philip had the impression he disliked the programme but did not dare to turn on an other station.’ (p. 49, 11. 25-27) The expressions ‘turn on an other’ is awkward; ‘switch to another’ would be much less strange. ‘He would have liked to clap his hands and make little jumps round the table.’ (p. 61, 11. 29-31) The expression ‘make little jumps’ is strange. ‘Dance’ or ‘skip’ or ‘hop’ might have been used here. ‘Potatoes ought always to be stored deep down in the ground.’ (p. 70, 11. 9-10) The expression ‘deep down’ is odd. Either the ‘deep’ or the ‘down’ could be deleted with little loss to the sense of the sentence. If they are both to be kept, ‘down deep’ would be less disconcerting. ‘Trying themselves out’ (p. 72. 1. 18) seems like an odd circumlocution for ‘rutting’, ‘humping’, or the like. In the sentences: ‘His parents brought out some vague mumblings, and dit not advance to meet him.’ (p. 70, 11. 23-25), and ‘Now and then he brought out a soft curse.’ (p. 93, 11. 7-8), ‘brought out’ clashes with its context. ‘Bringing out’ (Mrs. Murphy's charred remains, the Annotated Edition, etc.) is something rather pompous, almost ceremonial, and as such will hardly do to describe the emission of vague mumblings or curses.

[p. 33]

order to try once more to bring it into the form she wished, but each time with so little success that she finally burst into tears.’ (p. 49, 11. 9-13), and on the next page: ‘All this seemed to him like a bad dream in which he was again back at school with lessons which required his adding up a series of figures.’ (p. 50, 11. 27-29). In both of these, ‘again’ obtrudes owing to its unusual position in the sentence. The more normal order would be ‘loose again’ and ‘back at school again’. It is, of course, an author's prerogative to juggle with word order to obtain the desired effect - but nothing indicates that something like a burlesque of the ‘German professor talking’ was intended here⁷.

It will be clear by this time that the following examples of awkward, unwieldly sentences are only representative. ‘Suddenly Philip heard the engine give off a loud bang and the tempo of the motor die down into a grating sigh.’ (p. 81, 11. 9-10). If the ‘die’ here is not a misprint for ‘died’, this sentence snaps in the middel - the ‘heard...etc.’ construction is simply not strong enough to carry what comes after ‘and’. ‘He took a little box out of his knapsack, filled a hypodermic with the contents of a capsule, and injected it into his leg.’ (p. 56, 11. 6-8). The trouble with this sentence is, most of all, its vagueness. Precisely what did he inject into his leg? The grammar of the sentence points to three candidates (the hypodermic, the contents, the capsule), all of them unlikely.⁸

This imprecision of Van het Reve's English gives rise to logical difficulties. Here I mean ambiguities as well as sentences or expressions which, strictly speaking, do not make sense. ‘All knowledge is vanity,’ says Philip to himself (p. 57, 1.5), but this is boggling, if only because the knowledge that all knowledge is vanity is knowledge too. In this context, ‘learning’ might have been more appropriate. Another example: ‘He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and at intervals he emptied his flask.’ (p. 93, 11. 1-3). Here the suggestion is that he emptied his flask time after time, but the sequel makes it quite clear that the flask was emptied little by little: ‘He got up once to buy some sodawater and sausages at a stand, but he came back again. When the flask was finally empty...etc.’ (p. 93, 11. 3-5). It may also be worth pointing out the ambiguity in this last quotation: the English does not make clear whether he actually bought the sodawater and sausages or not. Another example of an apparently unintended ambiguity is the following: ‘“I might to there some day and give her a big kick,” he thougt.’ (p. 84, 11. 5-6). It is not entirely clear whether he is thinking of kicking her or giving her a thrill of some kind.

The sentence: ‘He was annoyed that the letter was neither similar nor different from the one he had written before.’ (p. 53, 11. 14-16), is absolutely incomprehensible in its context, even if the officially required ‘to’ is inserted after ‘similar’.⁹

Finally, it seems worth noting that Van het Reve's English text

7 ‘It was instead packed away in his suitcase...etc.’ (p. 52, 1. 2) ‘Instead’ would have been less obtrusive at the beginning of the sentence (‘Instead, it was packed away...etc.’) or after ‘suitcase’. ‘But if I don't sleep here, it will be only enough for three days.’ (p. 56, 1. 2) Less obtrusive: ‘...will only be enough...etc.’ ‘They can persuade him to believe anything, and then they put any amount in his hands they like.’ (p. 59, 11. 2-4) ‘They like’ really should follow ‘amount’. ‘But if it's a question of smashing everything up, they'll keep at it for hours.’ (p. 77, 11. 27-28) The ‘up’ could either be inserted after ‘smashing’ or left out entirely.

8 Another sentence which I find profoundly ugly: ‘She held a short raincoat over her arm, although the possibility of rain was most unlikely.’ (p. 66, 11. 27-28) Besides the fact that ‘...the possibility of rain was most unlikely’ sounds like the worst kind of scientese, it contains a conceptual boggle: you simply cannot say that the possibility of X is likely or unlikely, notwithstanding the fact that we do sometimes speak about likely or unlikely possibilities.

9 ‘She had upset a large flask of perfume, and the room began to be filled with a heavy odor like that of a florist's shop.’ (p. 49, 11. 13-16) ‘Began to be filled’ is logically odd; strictly speaking, a room cannot ‘begin to be filled’. It can of course be filled up gradually or fill up by degrees. ‘Antonio turned to the man at the engine and gave him some mumbled instructions.’ (p. 78, 11. 23-24) One really does not know what to make of this ‘giving of mumbled instructions’ - ‘gave’ and ‘mumbled’ overlap.

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contains some jangling sound effects which amplify the estrangement resulting from other peculiarities noted. ‘Well, it does pay very well.’ (p. 57, 1. 28), ‘There's a wonderful open field there.’ (p. 92, 11. 2-3), etc.. Those who are inclined to regard this matter of sound effects as a mere personal quibble are invited to repeat ‘seized the trapeze’ (p. 76, 1.17) three times in quick succession.

So much for the evidence. I have by no means covered it all. There are numerous cases (some of them occurring in sentences quoted above to illustrate other points) in which the use of ‘that’ or ‘which’ is grating or ponderous; and quite aside from the cases in which a word is obviously at odds with its context, there are many at which one simply raises one's eyebrows.

I have concentrated my attention on ‘The Acrobat’, that is, a text of about twelve thousands words. Harangues similar to this one could be written about each of the stories in the collection, but they would get progressively less interesting, because they would contain a lot of repetitions. The number and kind of missteps I have singled out for comment in ‘The Acrobat’ constitute, it seems to me, a sufficient explanation of the unenthusiastic reception of the book. It does read like a bad translation.

But a bad translation is not your run-of-the mill bad English. We seldom talk of bad translations if there is not a good or at least worthwhile original hovering in the background. And this positive feature, namely the strong suggestion that there is something good behind it or disguised in it, is also present in Van het Reve's work in English. The determined reader of The Acrobat and Other Stories, that is, one who is prepared to adopt an archaeological approach to the text and spend some time digging on the site, will find the remains of four rather good stories. Unfortunately, very few readers are as determined as all that.