Spektator. Jaargang 4

[p. 570]

Vondel's Gijsbreght van Aemstel as Emblematic and Figural Drama
Myra Scholz-Heerspink

Summary

For a seventeenth century audience, accustomed as it was to both the emblem book genre and to figural, or typological, exegesis, much of the imagery in Vondel's Gijsbreght must have held implicit meaning which both increased the dramatic tension and augmented the matn themes. Many of the visual images in the play appear to be verbal reconstructions of specific emblem engravings. Just as emblem books offer insight into the sources and function of some of the visual imagery, the tradition of figural exegesis elucidates the function of allusions - made with striking fiequency - to other historical events and persons. Taken together, the emblematic and figural approaches to the tragedy give definite contours to the themes of Providence and patriotism and place the play against the backdrop of a consistent view of nature and history.

Concluding a summary account of Gijsbreght van Aemstel, Johan Huizinga generalizes briefly about the world-view of Vondel and his contemporaries as follows:

Heroisch-visionair kan man Vondel's blik noemen, maar tegelijk is hij door en door gezond realistisch, in dien eigentijken zin van het woord realisme, het overtuigd zijn van de wezenlijkheid en van het belang der dingen elk voor zich, zoals het eens de grondslag geweest was van Sint Thomas' denken en zoals eigenlijk bijna al onze zeventîende-eeuwers het van nature in zich droegen, niet geplaagd door twijfelingen aangaande zijn of bestaan¹.

Although this characterization seems appropriate for the whole of seventeenth-century Dutch culture, dominated as it was by genre painting, the specific application of the term ‘realistic’ to Vondel is somewhat startling. Vondel's dramas, with their lengthy monologues, dearth of action, and ‘flat’ characters seem te be - and have in fact been called - anything but realistic². Given the difficulties inherent in the terms, it is undoubtedly futile to try to label Vondel's work once and for all as either realistic or unrealistic. What is open to study, however, is the extent to which Vondel made use of conventional seventeenth-century modes of perceiving and tnterpreting reality. Two poetic devices recurring in his dramas, the emblem and figura, are specifically literary applications of more general formalizations of reality current in the seventeenth century³.

In view of Marto Praz's cataloguing of well over six hundred different emblematists, the popular appeal of emblem books in Vondel's day can hardly be overestimated⁴. Dramatists of the time were writing for audiences well acquainted with emblems and thoroughly immersed in the world-view which nutured the emblem-book genre. The reception of emblem books in the Netherlands can be gauged not only by the great number published there but also by the fact that most of the ‘greats’ of seventeenth-century Dutch literature - Heinsius, Hooft, Vondel, Cats - at some time in their lives wrote texts for emblem books themselves.

With this background in mind, it is only reasonable to expect a certain atnount of emblematic material in Vondel's dramas. W.A.P. Smit has gone so far as to call the emblematic aspect the ‘key’ to the interpretation of Vondel's tragedies⁵. Promising as Smit's thesis seems, he fails to take at all seriously the characteristics

1 Johann Huizinga. Nederland's Beschaving in de Zeventiende Eeuw.Haarlem 1963. p. 105-106.

2 See M.C.A. van der Heijden's pronouncement about Gijsbreght: ‘inderdaad, in de Gijsbreght is niets dat voor ons ook maar enige realiteit heeft [...]‘ In: De Wereld is een Speeltoneel Utrecht/Antwerpen 1968. p. 201.

3 Both conventions are probably better known fron the painting of the century than from literature. As a general introduction and also very specific interpretation of emblems in painting see W. Gs Hellinga. Rembrandt Fecit 1642. Amsterdam 1956. for the function of typology in historical painting see H. van de Waal.

4 Mario Praz. Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery. Rome 1964.

5 W.A.P. Smit. The Emblematic Aspect of Vondel's Tragedies as the Key to their Interpretation. In: Modern Language Review, Vol. LII, 1957, p. 554.

[p. 571]

peculiar to the highly formalized emblem genre. Instead he uses the term ‘emblematic’ in a very broad sense, probably as a synonym for allegorical or symbolical. Used in this sense, the term is applicable only to the macrostructure of the play. About Vondel's translation of Elecira Smit states:

[...] it is very interesting to see how in his dedication [..1] he stresses an emblematic interpretation. In his opionion the basic idea is, and I quote his own words, ‘that the postponed punishinent of God at last righteously overtakes rogues and criminals; which truth must be considered to be the salt of, and a vital, condition for, all religion’. Therefore he reads the tragedy as an illustration, an emblem of the truth mentioned⁶.

In other words, if a play has a ‘basic idea’, if it can be distilled into some didactic generalization, it is, according to Smit, emblematic. As a result, his emblematic approach to the tragedies consists simply of a search for the underlying idea or moral of each play. By concentrating solely on the epigrammatic aspect of emblems, Smit minimizes to the point of totally ignoring the pictorial part of the emblem genre. He compares the details of emblem engravings with the minutiae in Vondel's dramas and brushes both aside as fundamentally unimportant in comparison with the lesson (of the emblem) or the idea (of the play):

Zoals bij dit laatste [het emblema] veelal de uiterste zorg aan de plaat werd besteed, tot in de détails van de achtergronden toe, terwijlzij in laatste instantie toch geen ander doel had dan aandacht te vragen voor de diepere zin die in het bijschrift weid bloot gelegd - zo besteedt ook Vondel de grootste zorg aan de uitbeelding van de geschiedenis die hij op het toneel brengt, eveneens tot in de détails toe, terwijl in laatste instantie dit alles toch slechts ‘spiegel’ wil zijn van de dee die er door aan de dag kan treden⁷.

Smit's failure to do justice to both of the media involved in emblems causes him to misrepresent the worldview assumed by the emblematists. Just as for medieval man creation was a kind of primary language, a ‘book’ of intact revelation, so for the emblematist the picture was in a sense the primary element of his work. Only the meaning and purpose inherent in reality made the moralizing of the epigram possible. Principles for ordering the microcosm of human life were drawn from the order perceivable in the macrocosm⁸. Simple confidence in the medieval world-view had, to be sure, been severely shaken by the seventeenth century. Part of the appeal of emblem books, as Albrecht Schöne points out, could be explained by the way in which they more or less restored the old sense of order and orientation in the universe⁹. As affirmations or reaffirmations of a meaningful universe, the engravings of the emblems must be taken as seriously as the epigrams.

In spite of the fundamental priority of the picture in the embiem genre as a whole, individual emblematists varied in the relative emphasis they placed on the pictorial and literary parts of their emblems. The English poet George Wither, for instance, refers to the engravings in his emblem collection as ‘trifling objects’ which, by appealing to childish curiosity might lure one into reading the text, which, he implies, is the serious, valuable part of his book¹⁰. Roemer Visscher, on the other hand, states in the preface to his Sinnepoppen that he had first executed the drawings and that only later, at the request of his friends, had he reluctantly added the text. As a result he begs the reader to focus his attention on the pictures:

Dus vriendt wie ghy zijt, houdt my dit ten besten, u biddende dat ghy meer wilt achten op de kluchtigheydt van de Poppen, dan op de simpelheyd van de glosen die soo sober zijn alsse

6 Ibid,, p. 556

7 W.A.P. Smit. Van Pascha tot Noah. I. Zwolle 1956. p. 22

8 See the first emblem in Vondel's emblem book De Gulden Winckel. in: Werken I. Amsterdam 1927. p.276.

9 Albrecht Schö. Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock. Mü 1964. p.47-48.

10 George Wither. A collection of Emblemes Ancient and Moderne. London 1635.

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immermeer wesen moghen: want mijn meeninghe is noyt gheweest u verstant te quellen met veel lesen, dan u oogen wilde ick wel vermaken met aenschouwen van dit lodderlijck voorgeven...¹¹

Ernst Friedrich von Monroy has pointed out that the near autonomy Visscher claims for his engravings climaxes the peculiar contribution of the Dutch to the emblem book genre. The familiar everyday objects which appear in Sinnepoppen are drawn with such faithfulness to detail that Monroy considers Visscher's work, with its profound respect for ‘das Eigenleben der Dinge’, a clear link between emblematic art and Dutch genre painting¹². And with the phrase ‘Eigenleben der Dinge’ we are back to where we began with Huizinga's characterization of seventeenth-century ‘realism’ as ‘het overtuigd zijn van de wezenlijkheid en van het belang der dingen elk voor zich...’

Gijsbreght, as all of Vondel's dramas, is rich in visual imagery; considering the pictorial nature of emblems we would expect to find incorporated into this imagery whatever emblematic material Vondel used. At the end ofthe fourth act, for example, the chorus celebrates marital love by means of several images, most of which are thoroughly comprehensible in the context. The comparison of love to fire or to a strong cement needs little commentary. But the following image is not immediately evident to the modern reader:

Door deze liefde treurt
De tortelduif, gescheurt
Van haer beminde tortel.
Zy jammert op de dorre ranck
Van eenen boom, verdrooght van wortel,
Haer leven langk¹³.

Vondel's audience, however, must have had no difficulty recognizing the emblem which pictured both a turtledove on a withered branch and a grieving widow¹⁴. By means of this image the chorus effects a transition from the theme of marital love to that of widowhood; tension is created by an emblematic suggestion of what the chorus states explicitly in a later line: ‘Zij [Badeloch] rekent Gijsbreght nu al dood’ (578, 1. 1278). Further tension is discernible if the teaching of this particular emblem, that of hope in God, is taken into account. At this point in the play the destruction of Amsterdam is inevitable and Badeloch's fear of widowhood appears well founded. In view of the overall theme of the play, that Providence works through unlikely, even apparently chaotic events, Vondel very likely expected his audience to remember not only the familiar emblem engraving but also the lesson of the accompanying epigram.

Another emblematic image appears in the last act of the play, where Badeloch refuses to leave her husband and argues vehemently with Gijsbreght and Broer Peter. In his attempts to persuade Badeloch to leave, Broer Peter is called upon to reassure her that God in his Providence is still in control. This representative of the Church (significantly named Peter) seems to be stating the profound religious truth which is thematic in the play:

d'Onsterfelijcke God heeft alles in zijn hand...
Mevrouw, betrouw op hem, hy kan ons wel bescharmen,
En voert zijn eigendom door water, vier en vlam...

(592, 11. 1684, 1686-7)

11 Roemer visscher. Sinnepoppen.'s Gravenhage 1949. De ‘Voor-reden‘, p. v.

12 Monroy, Embleme und Emblembücher in den Niederlanden 1560-1630. Utrecht 1964. p. 60.

13 Vondel. Gijsbreght van Aemstel, in: Werken III. Amsterdam 1927. p. 578. All further references to this play will be made within the text of the paper in the following form: (578, 11. 1269-1274).

14 Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne. Emblemata; Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart 1967. col 861....Pater Maximilianus points out that all of the images in this rei can be accounted for by emblematic or symbolical conventions. See his article ‘Waer werd oprechter trouw [...]’ in: Vondelstudies. Terheijden 1968, pp. 341-366. Our discussion limits itself to the last image because it is the one drawn in greatest detail, it is least self-explanatory to the modern reader, and because of its transitional, portending function in the play.

[p. 573]

As Badeloch, however, counters Broer Peter's ready formulas with desperate questions, the monk's responses become less and less convincing. His reaction to the destruction of Amsterdam sounds almost like a verbalized shrug of the shoulders: ‘'t Is zijn gehengenis; wie durft zich daer in mengen?’ (592, 1. 1689) What began as a kind of capsule theodicy finally deteriorates to a shallow sort of comfort: ‘De weerhaen van de kans zeer lichtelijck kan keeren’. (594, 1. 1717) The progression from ‘God’ to ‘gehengenis’ to ‘kans’ is not at all in keeping with the play's theme of an all-pervading Providence. The epigram accompanying Jacob Cats' emblem of the weathervane casts further unfavorable light on the line of Broer Peter's argument. Just as the weathervane is restless and unstable until it finds ‘den rechten hemelwind’, so man, according to Cats, finds no rest except in God¹⁵. In other words, the weathervane illustrates the human counterpart to Providence, the response of obedience to and trust in divine control. The emblem as such is well suited to the play. But Broer Peter, by uniting the image of the weathervane with thc concept of impersonal, unpredictable chance, severs it from the implications of both a purposeful Providence and a personal faith. Once again, in a play which on the surface seems to contain little dramatic tension, Vondel creates tension by means of an emblem. In this case Vondel relies on his audience to recognize the discrepancy between the familiar teaching of an emblem and the use which a given character makes of it. Rafaël's intervention at the end of the play vindicates Badeloch's position over Gijsbreght's and Broer Peter's and thereby also discredits the latter's argumentum emblematicum¹⁶.

The theme of Providence is related to the more general problem of appearance and reality which occurs in various contexts throughout the play. The deceptive disappearance of the enemy at the opening of the play leads Gijsbreght to an incorrect interpretation of the divine plan for Amsterdam. The reality of enemy tactics proves, much more cruel and that of the role of Providence much more complex than Gijsbreght had anticipated. Badeloch's dreams Gijsbreght brushes aside as having no foundation in reality: ‘De droomen zijn bedrogh. Ghy vreest uit misverstand’ (560, 1. 759); ‘t Is louter ydelheid, die zich het brein verbeeld’. (562, 1. 824) But he soon learns that these dreams did indeed portend the reality of impending disaster.

The images associated with Vosmeer, the perpetrator of the great deception of the Zeepaerd, also disclose a tension between his apparent and his real identity. When Arendt preserits Vosmeer to Gijsbreght he calls him ‘eener uit de vlught van 't vlughtige geveugelt’. (539, 1. 300) The very name of the captive, however, should alert the reader or observer of the play to the inaccuracy of this metaphor. In fact, the allusion to a fox in conjunction with Arendt (eagle) conjures up an emblem which prefigures exactly Vosmeer's role in the destruction of Amsterdam. The emblem is found in one of Vondel's own emblem books, Warande der Dieren; although the texts obviously form a collection of fables, pictures accompany each of them, with the result that each fable takes the form of an emblem¹⁷. The picture entitled ‘Den Arend en de Vos‘ shows a fox setting fire to a tree and the fire engulfing an eagle's nest. The accompanying poem relates how the fox is avenging the theft of his young by the eagle; the moral is addressed to those in high places, warning them that injury done to the least of their subordinates will nevertheless be avenged¹⁸. This emblem brings the discrepancy between appearance and reality in the play into bold relief: harmless as he seems to Arendt, Vosmeer has gained the foethold he needs to reduce Amsterdam to ashes.

15 Ibid., cols. 1216-1217.

16 For the descriptions of various rhetorical uses of emblems in drama see the chapter ‘Argumenta emblematica and ihre Verwendungsweisen’ in Schöne, Emblematik und Drama [...], p. 63-86.

17 Monroy points out that one of the genres absorbed into emblem books was the moralistic animal fables of the ancient. Embleme und Emblembücher [...], p. 48.

18 Vondel, Warande der Dieren in: Werken I, p. 556-567.

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This emblem is echoed later in the play when Badeloch responds to her daughter's plea for protection:

De klockhen deckt vergeefs het zidderende kiecken
Voor den doortrapten vos met schaduw van haer wiecken:
Hy grijptze beide, en stroit de pluimen in den wind,
En koelt zijn' lust, en ruckt de moeder van het kind.

(593, II 1696-1700)

Both the image of the fox and its combination with the adjective "‘oortrapt’, which twice before has been applied to Vosmeer, establish continuity with the earlier emblematic imagery. In addition, Badeloch verbalizes another familiar emblem engraving, that of a hen protecting her brood. Vondel's use of a fox in this context appears very deliberate in view of the fact that all the embiems portray predatory birds as the threat to the hen's brood. Just as the other emblems we discussed alerted the audience to a reality which belied the appearance of a given situation, Badeloch ‘unwittingly’ opens up the thematic metaphysical dimension of the play by means of these emblems. Although Badeloch insists that the hen is as helpless a victim as her young, the texts of the emblems she alludes to teach only one thing, namely security. The hen mirrors the absolute protection God grants to his own¹⁹. These emblems, then, anticipate the outcome of the play - the safe escape of Gijsbreght with his family and Rafaël's revelation of the secure control of Providence.

Rafaël's speech, by laying bare the great aim of Providence, resolves the tension between appearance and reality which built up during the course of the play. Within his speech is an allusion to an emblem which in a sense crystallizes that solution. Rafaël's predicts:

Al leit de stad verwoest, en wil daer van niet yzen:
Zy zal met grooter glans uit asch en stof verrijzen,
Want d'opperste beleit zijn zaecken wonderbaer.

(597-8, 11. 1829-31)

The phoenix emblem is unmistakable here, especially in view of Vondel's explicit mentioning of it in his dedicatory preface to Gijsbreght. There he states that his purpose in writing the play is:

...den schoonen brand van Troje t'Amsterdam in het gezicht zijner ingezetenen, te stichten, na het voorbeeld des goddelijcke Mantuaens, die een vier ontstack, dat geuriger en heerlijcker blaeckt dan de hemelsche vlam die den fenix verteert...²⁰

Amsterdam's present disaster is definitely real, but in the broad context of divine goals in history it is also a necessary prelude to rebirth and greatness.

Emblem books, we have seen, provided Vondel with a rich source of images which lent themselves unusually well to the religious theme of the play. Gijsbreght, however, is also an occasional work, written with a definite secular purpose. Commissioned for the opening of the Schouwburgh, this play was intended as a monument ment to municipal and national pride: ‘eenigh werk, dat deze stad en burgerije moght behaegen’²¹. Vondel reworked the historical facts surrounding the real Gijsbreght and infused into them a spirit which is best expressed by Broer Peter at the end of the play: ‘De liefde tot zijn land is yeder aengeboren’. (600, 1. 1894)

19 Henkel/Schöne, op. cit., cols. 850-852

20 Vondel, Werken III, p. 521.

21 Ibid., p. 520.

[p. 575]

Just as Vergil wrote the Aeneid as a distincly national epic which would both cater to and cultivate Roman pride, Vondel imitates Vergil in great detail in what he portrays as the Dutch equivalent to the story of Troy. The Dutch emblematists also evidence patriotic feeling, thus paradoxically uniting the universal claims of the emblem genre - its concern for truths independent of time and place - with a strong attachment to a particular time and a particular place. Roemer Visscher, for example, not only selects many peculiarly Dutch objects for his pictures, but refers specifically to Holland in a great number of his texts as well. Vondel's repeated use of Dutch images, some of them recognizable emblems, contributes to the patriotic theme of Gijsbreght

In the third act Badeloch voices her despair in terms of an extended metaphor:

Hoe veel geluckiger zijn arme en slechte dorpen,
En hutten laegh gebouwt, min stormen onderworpen
Dan eenigh heeren huis dat door't geboomte steeckt,
En daer het bulderen des winds zijn kracht op breeckt;...
Wat stormen zijn my niet gewaeit al over 't hoofd?
Wat toren is zoo hoogh, van waer ick deze baeren
En zee kan over zien van al mijn wedervacren?’

(563-4, II. 861-4, 868-70)

Followed as it is by Broer Peter's aphoristic response (‘Geduld, mevrouw, geduld. God proeft zijn uitverkorenen’. 564, 1. 873), this passage almost begs to be read as an emblem. The images Badeloch presents teach a general truth about the relationship between God and human suffering. Although no emblem corresponds exactly to the imagery in these lines, an audience accustomed to emblematic art would very likely have recognized not only the emblematic structure of the passage but also the allusion to two common emblems, combined and slightly varied here. First, the comparison of people in high places with buildings most exposed to storms is reminiscent of the emblem which would be applicable to all tragedy in the Aristotelian tradition²². In addition, the contrast between the high and the lowly and between their respective lots in adversity recalls the emblem in which a storm has broken a large oak tree but has left a small pliable reed unhar- med. The epigram of the latter emblem teaches the merit of humble piety and the peril of godless pride²³. This obviously is not the same lesson which Broer Peter draws from the images; but in the context of the entire play it is the more fundamental one. The significance of Christmas, which runs like a leitmotiv throughout the play, is most succinctly stated by the chorus in terms that correspond exactly to this emblem: ‘de hemel heeft het kleen verkoren...’ (559, 1. 737) The deviation Vondel's images display from the standard emblems is far from random. By contrasting cities with villages instead of large trees with small reeds, he re-daws the emblem as a townscape, thus adapting it to his bourgeois audience and to the play's thematic celebration of Amsterdam. The addition of sea imagery then suggests a distinctly Dutch setting. The final result of these embiem combinations and variations is that these images, like all emblems, teach general truths, but at the same the specific choice of these images coincides with the patriotic focus of the play.

An image of epic-simile proportions in the fourth act is also based on a peculiarly Dutch emblem. Arendt compares Gijsbreght's attempt to withstand the enemy at the dam with the way in which a sluice temporarily holds back devastating flood waters. (576, 11. 1210-20) In Sinnepoppen Roemer Visscher calls the sluice a fit

22 Henkel/Schöne, op. cit., col. 1213.

23 Schöne, Emblematik und Drama [...], p. 75.

[p. 576]

ting emblem fora prince who exercises piety by promotingthe common weal and purging his land of lawless rabble²⁴. Vondel's use of the sluice image here, then, underlines both the patriotic purpose of the play and the portrayal of Gijsbreght as an exemplary ruler.

Almost all of the emblematic material discussed so far testifies to the ultimate correctness of Smit's attempt to link the ‘emblematic aspect’ of a drama with its theme. But by ignoring the pictorial nature of emblems he short-circuits his own project; he overlooks the existence of specific emblematic images and the unique ways an author could use them to augment themes. In the case of Gijsbreght, however, it seems unlikely that even an exhaustive study of emblems in connection with general theme would account for the play in its entirety. How, for instance, does the detailed imitation of the story of Troy fit into a emblematic scheme? It must be possible to discern overall structural principles as well as the individ ual building blocks of ernblematic images. Once again Smit offers a key to the problem hut fails to apply it effectively to Vondel's plays.

Smit locates one of the emblematic influences on Vondel in his Mennonite background. The Mennonites were particularly adept at searching out parallels between the Old and New Testaments, especially Old Testament prototypes of Christ. Smit concludes from this: ‘As a Mennonite, Vondel was accustomed to read his Bible, and especially the Old Testament, as a kind of Holy Emblembook’²⁵. Here, as previously, Smit uses the term ‘emblematic’ very loosely, without taking into account the distinghuished characteristics of the emblem book genre. Typological exegesis of the Bible antedates emblem books by at least ten centuries, and any classification of the two phenomena together could only be made under the broadest possible heading, perhaps that of ‘allegorical interpretations’. Taken as complementary to the emblematic approach, however, a typological study of Gijsbreght uncovers structure related to a specific view of history.

Historical drama is obviously not bound to being a staged reproduction of a chronicle. The actual Gijsbreght van Aemstel served simply as raw material which Vondel reworked for his own dramatic purpose. As a result Vondel's hero probably bears more resemblance to Vergil's Aeneas than to the original Gijsbreght, and the destruction of Amsterdam is more reminiscent of the burning of Troy than of the actual historical event. These deliberate modifications of the story to effect an imitation of Vergil's epic are far-reaching;parallels abound in both plot and characters. Rather then enumerate all of the similarities here - scholars have done this in detail - we shall investigate other historical parallels in the play in an attempt to discover the function of what upon closer examination turns out to be a multiplicity of historical levels²⁶.

In addition to the primary setting in medieval Amsterdam and the obvious allusions to ancient Troy, Smit points out the importance of a third level, that of Bethlehem at the birth of Christ²⁷. Early in the play the chorus provides a contrast with the dramatic action and a foreshadowing of later plot developments by celebrating Christmas as God's affirmation of the lowly and inconspicuous as means for achieving his grand designs. The eventual disasters, in particular the brutal murders of Gozewijn and the Klaerissen, are then set parallel to the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem. In addition to these rather general similarities, Vondel expands this level of the play by attributing to Gijsbreght some distinctly Christ- like qualities. In his first speech of the play Gijsbreght expresses his willingness to sacrifice his own life, if such an act would insure the safety of his family and sub

24 Visscher, op. cit., p. 19.

25 Smit, ‘The Emblematic Aspect [...]’, p. 556.

26 Smit himself covers many of the parallels with the Aeneid in Van Pascha tot Noah 1, p. 188, 189, and also refers the reader to a more exhaustive work on the subject: Alfred Hermann. Joost van den Vondels ‘Gijsbreght van Aemstel’ in seinem Verhältnis zum zweiten Buch von Vergils ‘Aeneis’. Leipzig 1928. (Diss.)

27 Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah, p. 202.

[p. 577]

jects (532, 1-72-80); now that the enemy has retreated he is also willing to forgive them and forget their misguided attempt to kili him. (534, 1. 155) Willebrord apeaks of the enemy's machinations in terms clearly reminiscent of the eucharist: ‘'t Was byster hoeze brulden,/ En deelde bloed voor wijn, uw vleesch voor voedzei uit...’ (535, 11. 190-191) And Rafaël prefaces his instructions to Gijsbreght with a familiar but significant figure of speech: ‘0 Gijsbreght, zet getroost uw schouders onder 't kruis,/ U opgeleit van God’. (597, 11. 1823-4) Not only do the events in medieval Amsterdam reflect those in ancient Bethlehem; Gijsbreght himself reflects, or is a type of, the Christ who was born there.

Erich Auerbach's studies of typological or figural exegesis and its relevance to medieval literature shed light on the function of types, figurae, in Vondel's work as well. Auerbach describes figural exegesis as follows:

Die Figuradeutung stellt einen Zusammenhang zwischen zwei Geschehnissen oder Personen her, in dem eines von ihnen nicht nur sich selbst, sondern auch das andere bedeutet, das andere hingegen das eine einschliesst oder erfüllt.
Beide Pole der Figur sind zeitlich getrennt, liegen aber beide, als wirkliche Vorgänge oder Gestalten, innerhaib der Zeit²⁸

The trait which distinguishes this kind of interpretation from other allegorical methods is the starting point of the historical reality of both the type and its fulfillment. Originally applied in patristic writings only to the Old Testament, figural exegesis came to include both prefigurations and postfigurations of the life and death of Christ. Implicit in this approach is a view of history which does not focus on the ‘horizontal’ progression of cause and effect, but rather links persons and events vertically with the plan of Providence for all of history²⁹.

The thematic thread of Providence in Gijsbreght, which was discussed in connection with emblems, is thus strengthened by the figural dimension of the play. Not only is there a divine plan for Amsterdam; all of history is in the control of one whose single great intrusion in time at the incarnation scattered foreshadowings and reverberations of itself throughout the expanse of human history.

This view of the whole accounts for some elements in the play which seem to display a naïve disregard for historical reality. Vondel resorts to the intrusion of Rafaël, a deus ex machina of the boldest sort, to resolve the climactic tension when Gijsbreght must choose between flight and certain death. For Vondel, however, this intrusion did not abrogate the reality of the historical event; it simply offered a glimpse behind it into the greater reality of a Providential plan. Significantly enough, after Rafaël put the events in Amsterdam in perspective of the city's future glory, Broer Peter broadens the historical context even further by enumerating all of Raíaël's roles in Biblical history. When Gijsbreght recognizes himself as belonging to a series of men specifically protected by Rafaël - when he recognizes, that is, the figural ties between Tobias, Lot, Moses, Daniel's three friends and himself- he bows to the wisdom of Providence: ‘Wy volgen op uw licht. Wy zien: 't is Gods besluit’. (599, 1. 1872)

Another seeming naïveté regarding history appears in the anachronisms which make Amsterdam more like the flourishing seventeenth-century metropolis than like the medieval town it was in Gijsbreght's time. Auerbach points out that historical naïveté is characteristic of the typological world-view, in which a timeless, wise God is the ultimate ground for real but repetitive events³⁰.

To portray Gijsbreght simultaneously as a type of Christ, a type of Aeneas, and a type of Hugo de Groot³¹ is neither contradictory nor absurd in terms of a figural

28 Auerbach. ‘Figura’, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie. Bern/München 1967. p. 77.

29 Auerbach. Mimesis. Bern/ München, 1946. p. 75.

30 Auerbach. Typologische Motive in der mittelalterlichen Dichtung. Krefeld 1953. p. 21.

31 See the dedicatory preface to Gijsbreght, Werken III, p. 521.

[p. 578]

view of history. Already in the Middle Ages Vergil and Aeneas both had been included in the host of Biblical figurae³². Troy, Bethlehem, and the two Amsterdams (medieval and seventeenth-century) can be justifiably interwoven because of their similar ‘vertical’ ties to Providence in times of human suffering. But the figurae of the play are not limited to these four historical levels. An awareness of types opens up all historical epochs as sources for relevant analogies. The events preceding the play, for instance, are portrayed in a figural as well as a causal relationship to the action of the play itself. The chorus which concludes the first act foreshadows the destruction of Amsterdam by personifying the city and describing the plundering as analogous to the violence done to Machtelt, who was also the cause of the destruction. In this chorus alone the present history of Amsterdam gains depth by means of its figural ties to Helen ofTroy and Machtelt van Velzen.

Since the Reyen by their very nature tend to put the play in a broader perspective, it is not surprising to find them employing figural imagery. But the characters themselves also resort to figural analogies, usually to defend or explain a given action. Depending on the insight and motives of the speaker, the figurae can be either valid or false. Gozewijn, for instance, interprets Klaeris van Velzen's determination to stay with him to the end as a re-enactment of her patron saint's heroism. By likening Klaeris to Clara of Cologne, Gozewijn imputes saintliness to Klaeris' motives. At the same time he discloses an additional historical parallel: the predicament of Amsterdam has a precedent in Cologne as well as in Troy and Bethlehem. Broer Peter also employs a figural analogy when he prays that God protect Gijsbreght's family in the way that he protected Noah's household. The parallel seems to be occasioned by the fact that in both cases the families took refuge in ships. But the allusion also implies that Gijsbreght is as much a man of God as Noah was and therefore deserves to be protected. By this point in the play, then, Gijsbreght is defined by a multiplicity of figurae: Noah, Christ, Aeneas, and Hugo de Groot.

The villains of the play also know how to exploit figurae for rhetorical purposes. Diedrick argues that his soldiers should be allowed to commit the sacrilege of entering Willebrod's monastery by appealing to the precedent of David, who in an emergency ate the holy show-bread in the tabernacle. Willibrord replies with a counter example, also from the Old Testament:

De stoute Usia werd rechtvaerdelijck berooft
Van zijn gezondheid, doen hy't heilighdom ontwijde.

(554, 11. 576-7)

The context of the play leaves no doubt as to which of these figurae is valid and which is not. Diedrick, the malevolent usurper, was not justified in considering himself a type of David, a pious man chosen by God to rule. Another instance of false figura arises out of misunderstanding rather than evil motives. The illusion of peace at the opening of the play is strengthened by another of Willibrord's Old Testament parallels:

'k Geloof, Gods engel zelf die heeftze weghgedreven,
Als 't heir des Assyriers, die zijn vermeetle stem
Hiskia hooren liet, tot voor Jeruzalem:
Het welck in eenen nacht zoo wonderlijck verkeerde,
Doen een die 't al regeert, dat stoffen hem verleerde.

(535, 11. 178-182)

32 Auerbach, ‘Figura’, p. 84.

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The ensuing events soon prove this image to be painfully inaccurate.

Although the examples cited do not exhaust the figural imagery of Gijsbreght, they should suffice to show that Vondel conceived this drama against the background of all of history. Relevant figurae for Gijsbreght, ranging from ancient and mythological persons to Vondel's contemporaries, force the reader or observer of the play to scan the totality of human history -and beyond it.

Auerbach describes the ultimate aim of typological exegesis as follows:

‘ die Erfüllung durch Christi Fleischwerdung und Sühneopfer ist ja noch nicht die volle Erfüllung; diese steht jederzeit noch aus, bis zur Erfüllung des Gottesreichs. am Ende der Zeitenv’³³.

Gijsbreght himself brings this dimension to mind when, near the end of the play, he uses an eschatological metaphor: ‘Op, mannen, wapen, wapen. Het is de jongste dagh, en met dit huis gedaen’. (596, 11. 1770-1) Although the occasion for the play is a patriotic celebration, even loyalty to the fatherland is simply a prefiguration of man's ultimate citizenship in ‘'t hemelsch vaderland’. (587, 1. 1543) Figural exegesis, then, proceeds from the realities of history to the ahistorical reaLity of the wisdom and ordinances of God, whose kingdom will come. This view of history, according to Auerbach, assumes the following:

dass das irdische Leben durchaus wirklich sei, von der Wirklichkeit jenes Fleisches. in das der logos einging, aber in all seiner Wirklichkeit doch nur umbra und figura des Eigentlichen, Zukünftigen, Entgültigen und Wahren, welches, die Figur enthüllend und bewahrend, die wahre Wirklichkeit enthalten werde. Auf diese Art wird jedes irdische Geschehen...im unmittelbaren vertikalen Zusammenhang mit einer göttlichen Ordnung betiachtet, in der es enthalten ist und die selbst eines künftigen Tages geschehende Wirklichkeit sein wird...³⁴

Thus figural imagery is to history what emblematic imagery is to nature: both begin with real entities, place them within a broader context of created order and historical purpose, and point beyond both of these to the Creator himself, the author and finisher of human history. Due, then, to an underlying world-view, articulated by means of conventional poetic divices, Gijsbreght van Aemstel can indeed be called ‘realistic’ in a very specific sense of the term.

The implications of emblems and figurae for the rest of Vondel's dramas can only be hinted at here. The difficulty Smit has in locating a single basic idea in Gijsbreght and ijn deciding where to place the play in terms of his own categories (‘symbolically emblematic’ dramas as opposed to the later ‘exemplary emblematic’ dramas) indicate that his preoccupation with emblematic macrostructure left the emblematic and typological microstructure of the play unaccounted for³⁵. Given Vondel's view of reality, one could pursue his treatment of Providence by determining the varying constellations of emblems and flgurae in each of his plays.

33 Auerbach, Typologische Motive [...], p. 14.

34 Auerbach, ‘Figura’, p. 89.

35 Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah, p. 219: ‘De parallellen, motieven en ideeën verhinderen door hun veelheid elkaar om ieder afzonderlijk tot hun recht te komen’.

[p. 581]

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