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De Nieuwe Taalgids. Jaargang 70 (1977)

De Nieuwe Taalgids. Jaargang 70

(1977)– [tijdschrift] Nieuwe Taalgids, De–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Vestdijk's terug tot Ina Damman and Else Böhler, Duitsch dienstmeisje

Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971) was one of the most prolific Dutch writers of the twentieth century.* Including volumes of criticism and other non-fiction, he produced almost one hundred books. In an amusing quatrain in Wordplay-Swordplay, a book they wrote together, A Roland Hoist described Vestdijk as a man ‘die sneller schrijft dan God kan lezen!’.1 Since he has written dozens of novels, it would be most unusual if he did not return to certain favorite themes and explore them anew. Among the great German novelists, both Mann and Hesse have done this, and even the master dramatist Ibsen liked to present the same material from different points of view, as he did, with such outstanding success, in A Doll's House and Ghosts. J. van Ham, in referring to this habit of Vestdijk's, remarks that every time the novelist reworks one of his favorite themes, the results are even more intense and complex.2

It seems to me that in two of his best novels, Terug tot Ina Damman and Else Böhler, Duitsch dienstmeisje, Vestdijk approaches some of his favorite and most important themes from two different points of view, and that, indeed, the results in the second novel are even more intense, more complex, and more tragic. In his well-known essay on Vestdijk, De duivelskunstenaar, Menno ter Braak found that ‘Else Böhler, Duitsch Dienstmeisje, lijkt, wat sfeer en kompositie betreft, veel op Meneer Visser, maar het is ook een soort afrekening met Ina Damman, het jeugd-dool, op een ander niveau.’3

Vestdijk's first published novel, Terug tot Ina Damman, is actually the third part of the Anton Wachter series. Written in May and June of 1934, it was published in the fall of that year, and thus became the first part of Vestdijk's huge unpublished manuscript Kind tussen vier vrouwen, to appear in print.4 J.F. Otten observed prophetically in the Critisch bulletin, ‘Met zijn eersten roman heeft Vestdijk ons een nieuw bewijs gegeven van zijn onmiskenbaar talent. “Terug tot Ina Damman” is een zeer belangrijk werkstuk, een meesterlijke prestatie, die de aanvang kan zijn van een ontplooiing waarvan alle mogelijkheden in kiem aanwezig zijn.’5

Terug tot Ina Damman is based on the events of Vestdijk's own life. Lahrin-

gen is Vestdijk's native Harlingen and Weulnerdam is Leeuwarden. Vestdijk's father was a gym teacher in the Harlingen high school, and the experiences of Vestdijk's early life in that school have been recreated in the novel. Ina Damman herself, Jan Breedevoort, Jelle Mol, and other important characters in the novel have been modeled after real people. In his account of Simon Vestdijk in Lahringen, Nol Gregoor has given a detailed view of the toponomy of Lahringen and has carefully established the ‘true identity’ of many of the characters in Terug tot Ina Damman and in the other novels of the Anton Wachter series, and has even gone so far as to track them down for personal interviews.

Vestdijk himself confessed the importance of the events of the novel and, especially, of the real Ina Damman.6 ‘Herinner ik mij goed, dan zijn de vier vrouwen - mijn moeder, Ina Damman, Marie van den Bogaard en Janke, het dienstmeisje, - min of meer symbolisch opgevat: kinderliefde, ideële liefde, zinnelijke verliefdheid, zuiver lichamelijke sexualiteit. Een afdalende reeks dus...’7

Even Gregoor, in spite of his own careful work of reconstruction, however, warns against taking Terug tot Ina Damman as a literal recounting of Vestdijk's life. Like many other novelists, Vestdijk often combines the characteristics of two real people into one fictional character. Like other literary artists, too, he tends to exaggerate particular characteristics in the people in his novel. Thus, Ina is always ‘koel’. Vestdijk is aware of this literary habit, and calls it his Breughel quality.8 There may well be a certain truth, moreover, in the claim of the ‘real’ Jan Breedevoort that Vestdijk ‘moest ... ook veel gebeurtenissen voor waar hebben genomen, die uitsluitend in zijn verbeelding hadden plaatsgevonden.’9 As Gregoor points out, ‘Vestdijk heeft geen autobiografie geschreven; de Anton Wachterromans blijven een trefplaats, een ontmoeting tussen de jonge Simon Vestdijk en de romanschrijver, met het literair resultaat als voornaamste kriterium.’10

The significance of Terug tot Ina Damman in Vestdijk's life and work is thus quite clear. It is the best and most important of the Anton Wachter novels, and it contains some of Vestdijk's favorite themes, which recur in such outstanding novels as Else Böhler, Duitsch dienstmeisje, De koperen tuin, and Het glinsterend pantser. Terug tot Ina Damman is a novel of youth, of adolescent conflicts with the peer group, of the changing relationship to parents, of unrequited love and awakening sexuality. There is also criticism; of school and society.

Clearly, for Vestdijk, ‘the child is father of the man’. The critical importance of childhood experience is evident from the title, which evokes the longing for a lost love of youth and the poignant desire to recapture it, if indeed, one ever possessed it. This is a theme that returns with great effectiveness in other novels by Vestdijk, particularly in De koperen tuin. The love for the unattainable, even the unapproachable, ultimately emerges as a moving force in the final pages of

the novel. ‘Hij wist, dat hij van Ina Damman hield, - en niet naar haar toe zou gaan, omdàt hij van haar hield. Maar al zijn verlangen, zoo lang in hem opgesloten, richtte zich, hoe hij zich ook keeren wilde, op de wèrkelijke Ina Damman, niet op haar vluchtig spiegelbeeld in de droom! Over een half uur zou hij alleen zijn. Hij zou het bruine “Note Book” uit de kast halen, en in Duitsche letters onderaan schrijven: 20 Juni. Terug.’11 (pp. 270-271)

At the beginning of Ina Damman, Anton Wachter, the hero, is a momma's boy, who is only beginning to grow away from his mother. The other boys at school tease him by calling him ‘vent’ (p. 10), and of course, they delight in doing this because they know it annoys him. When Piet Idzerda beats him up in a fight, Anton's mother, in her overprotective way, writes a letter to Idzerda's father. In his abject humiliation over this letter, which makes him a laughingstock among the boys in school, Anton asks himself: ‘Waarom had zijn moeder dat briefje moeten schrijven?! Voordat hij die middag naar zijn kamertje klom, trof haar een blik, die op niets zozeer leek als op de verterende haatblik waarmee Piet Idzerda hem op het sportveld had aangekeken.’ (p. 64)

He thinks of his dead father sometimes, and it is at this point in the novel that his mother recognizes that he is beginning to resemble his father more and more (p. 67). His separation from his mother now continues not only in external things, but inwardly, too. He even sees his mother's faults, from her timorousness to her mistakes in Dutch, which he corrects in the presence of a visitor. He keeps secrets from her, for ‘... nu hij haar eenmaal iets verzwegen had, verzweeg hij haar alles ...’ (p. 70).

His critical self-examination, in a characteristically adolescent way, turns to his own personal appearance, and he sees himself as having a terrible face, with a weak chin (p. 72). Everyone laughs at him, and it is all his mother's fault (p. 77). At one point in the novel, he hates both his mother and the maid (p. 196 f.). Anton's attempts to redefine his relationship to his mother in the light of his love for Ina Damman reveal Vestdijk's skill in the use of depth psychology and his subtle sense of ambivalence.

When his mother meets Ina during the ice-skating scene (a topos which returns in De koperen tuin) and gives him ten cents to buy chocolate, he innocently returns with a single bar. It is his mother who gives half of the chocolate bar to Ina. Yet he had had the feeling, there on the ice, that the three of them were beginning to form a little family. Vestdijk is not unaware of the psychological dictum that same men seek out women who resemble their mothers, and as Anton watched his mother and Ina shake hands

zag hij ineens, vreemd en scherp, half overtuiging, half vizioen, dat ze op elkaar leken, hij zou niet hebben kunnen zeggen in welk opzicht; het waren de jukbeenderen misschien wel. Maar tegelijkertijd wist hij, dat dat niet de minste beteekenis
had, omdat hij immers zoo gemakkelijk gelijkenissen zag die er niet waren, en op datzelfde oogenblik had zijn moeder hem al een dubbeltje in zijn hand gestopt om die chocola te koopen. Onder het wegrijden besloot hij, dat ze toch eigenlijk niets op elkaar leken. Ina's kalmte stak ook al te zeer af bij de nerveuze beweeglijkheid van zijn moeder, die gewoonlijk al haar zelfbeheersching verloor, als ze voelde vriendelijk te moeten zijn tegenover iemand die zich beter beheerschte (pp. 139-140).

This whole scene and the incidents of the day on the ice are narrated as they are recalled through Anton's memory, and then it seems to Anton that Ina is cooler than ever (p. 138).

Behind this picture of adolescent love, with Anton Wachter longing for Ina to look at him in school and looking forward all day to walking her to the station after school is over, is the emerging sexuality of adolescence. It emerges in Anton as he studies, the article on prostitution in the encyclopedia (p. 199) and resorts to newspaper articles and daydreams to satisfy his interest in sex (p. 189), we hear of it when Gerrit Bolhuis boasts of his conquests (p. 153), and it is embedded in Anton's early childhood sexual experience with Janke the maid. As Anton himself realizes, ‘Welbeschouwd was hij nooit van zijn leven dichter bij die dingen geweest dan toen, als jongetje van acht jaar...’ (p. 83). It is really a symbolic gesture when, on their return from the school trip, which plays such an important role in the development of the hero, Gerrit Bolhuis has Anton thrown out of the compartment where he and Ina are sitting (p. 163). Anton's failure to conquer Ina is then quite evident, and is summed up by one of the boys who represents that other world, of which Anton, like Tonio Kröger in Mann's novelle, can never be a part. ‘“Wachter kán niet scharrele”, zei Jelle Mol lapidair, juist toen de trein, na veel wissels overrateld te hebben, in Weulnerdam stilstond met een schok, die niet alleen twee dagen afsloot, maar ook bij voorbaat alles onderstreepte wat Jelle Mol nog meer over dezen Anton Wachter in het midden te brengen had.’ He goes home from the station alone (p. 164).

Just as his torment at the hands of the boys who called him ‘vent’ yielded to his love for Ina Damman, so the defeat of his love for Ina now yields to his love affair with Marie van den Bogaard. The change in his life is marked by his fight with Gabriëls, whom he beats up for attempting to disrupt Meneer Greve's class. At last, he has conquered that other world, and he becomes a hero. But his love for Marie van den Bogaard, who witnessed the fight, is also a love born of that other world, and it does not bring the same satisfaction as his love for Ina Damman.

Zijn voornemen om haar ‘zijn liefde te verklaren’ had hij van dag tot dag uitgesteld; het was bovendien niet eens noodig: hij wist immers tòch wel, dat ze verliefd op hem was, dat ze iets van hem verwachtte. Maar dit gaf hem ook zijn eerste vage benauwdheid, die verwachting van Marie van den Bogaard, vooral bij het afscheid, als ze hem zoo uitnoodigend aanlachen kon, dat hij moeite had om niet te zeggen: ‘Wat zie je er lief uit,’ of iets dergelijks. Een onbehaaglijke dwang was het, die zich niet gemakkelijk rijmen liet met een verliefdheid die nu eenmaal vaststond (pp. 252-253).

The psychosexual aspects of Anton's relationship to Marie are emphasized when Jan Breedevoort tells him that Horsting has been after Marie (pp. 242 ff.). Horsting, of course, is the teacher who always drops his chalk in front of the girls in the first row, so that they hastily have to put both feet on the floor before he stoops down to pick up the chalk, and it is Horsting who tells Anton that his ‘affair’ with Ina is bad for him at his age and bad ‘voor je gezondheid in de eerste plaats!’ (p. 125). For Anton, this reply raises the specter of another one of those mysteries about sex that he does not seem to understand. In a sudden retreat into childhood, he tells Horsting that he will discuss it with his mother (p. 126)!

What Vestdijk does in this novel, above all, is to define that ethereal, longing, first love of youth, which is never consummated, but which haunts a man all his life and defines his attitude toward the other sex. The definition of love comes on the tenth page of the novel: ‘Hij wist nu tenminste wat verliefdheid te beteekenen had: een grappig gevoel was het, ergens tusschen je maag en je keel, in elk geval geen eeuwige trouw ...’ That the idea of being in love is not something that is important only to Anton is clear from the narrator's information that ‘“Verliefd” was een begrip, dat men elkaar als een balletje toewierp ...’ (p. 238)

In defining this love, Vestdijk associates it with a leitmotif, a technique he borrowed from Thomas Mann. Anton is often aware of Ina's rather prominent cheekbones (p. 131). They are mentioned again when she looks at him ‘... alsof ze iets van hem verwachtte. Hij zag alleen de jukbeenderen onder de hoed ...’ (p. 183) The hat itself is another leitmotif, which always signals the presence of his beloved. Anton would have recognized Ina's white cap anywhere (p. 104), and when he realizes that he could easily summon up her image, her little white cap is part of it: ‘de donkere vlechten, het witte mutsje van de volgende ochtend, het rokje, blauwgestreept of grijs.’ (p. 115)

Vestdijk was devoted to the piano since childhood, and he has written books on music. This love of music and his use of it in the novel is another characteristic that Vestdijk shares with Thomas Mann. It is a striking feature of De koperen tuin. In Terug tot Ina Damman, it enters into the novel several times (pp. 114 f., 118). Toward the end of the novel, the Haydn Minuet in D-Minor ‘... die Ina Damman's muziek geworden was ...’ (p. 114) reappears in the midst of Anton's reverie and introduces a vision of Ina Damman ‘zoo duidelijk en onontkoombaar als hij haar nooit in werkelijkheid gezien kon hebben’ (p. 259). It is then that he realizes that he had always loved her and always would. In De rimpels van Esther Ornstein, the seventh of the Anton Wachter novels, published in 1959, where Anton compares his unconsummated love for Esther with that for Ina Damman, he identifies Esther with both Tosca and Schubert's Sylvia.12

In the last line of Terug tot Ina Damman, Vestdijk sums up the bittersweet poignancy of this unrequited love. ‘Maar zijn voeten raakten zwaar de aarde, zwaar en knarsend op het kiezel, alsof zij het alleen hadden te bepalen hoe onwankelbaar trouw hij blijven zou aan iets dat hij verloren had, - aan iets dat hij

nooit had bezeten’ (p. 275). Earlier in the novel, Max Mees, Anton's friend, finds a girl in the neighborhood, Dirkje, who is a maid (p. 210). If his mother found out about Dirkje, Ma says, Dirkje would lose her job (p. 238). When Dirkje actually does lose her job on account of him, Max shrugs it off with the words, ‘“Ze is me al lang weer vergeten...”’ (p, 250).

In Else Böhler, Duitsch dienstmeisje, published in 1935, Vestdijk takes up this incident from another point of view and in full detail. Again the hero is a student, but this time he is older, and he is studying law at the University of Leiden. The heroine, Else Böhler, is a maid, but she is a German girl, and she speaks Dutch poorly.

The narrative technique in Else Böhler, however, is entirely different, and fills the novel with tension and suspense. It is told in the first person singular by a Dutchman, who is a condemned man in a German prison cell, and has two weeks in which to write his story. His manuscript is headed by the place and date, Berlin, April 1934. How and why he came to be in this cell, the substance of his narrative, is revealed to us bit by bit in a flashback technique. We learn on the second page of his manuscript, however, that he is going to die, and that it is all on account of Else.

Else Böhler is a maid working in the house across the way, when the narrator-hero first sees her. He is taken with her, and yet, even at the beginning of his love for her, as he watches her walking down a street in his middle-class neighborhood in a city that is obviously The Hague, he realizes that she is only a maid.13

The streets in this neighborhood are named after figures from classical mythology, and help to give the place a certain tone of fashionable respectability. The lovers meet on the Perseusplein. Johan may be seen as Perseus, of course, and Else as Andromeda. The first-person narrator makes these identifications for us, and the Erkelens sisters and other middle-class neighbors are the monsters this latter-day Perseus must overcome to get his Andromeda (pp. 52-8, 176 f.). There is an added irony in the fact that these streets, named after the great constellations of the heavens, should be inhabited by petty people, who are limited by their ossified middle-class ways. It is not without significance too, that in the final tragedy, Perseus destroys his arch-rival in the pursuit of his Andromeda. He cannot turn him to stone, of course, but his name is Steinmann.

Vestdijk came under the influence of James Joyce early in life, and his reading of Ulysses is evident in Meneer Visser's hellevaart, which he wrote a short time later.14 While he has been adept at making:use of myth in other novels, however, Else Böhler is no Greek myth in modern dress, and as Bulhof as already pointed out, Vestdijk makes no effort to carry out a consistent interpretation of the myth.15

Rather than an adaptation of myth to modern life, Else Böhler is a novel that again takes up some of the important themes in Terug tot Ina Damman, but from another point of view, and with greater psychological depth and intensity. It explores the themes of youth, of love for other members of one's family and conflict with them, of entrance into the greater world and conflict with it, and above all, of a tragic and unfulfilled love. In the background are the two important themes of the Thirties, psychoanalysis and Fascism, which prove to have an inverse relationship to each other.

Johan's love for Else is not the timid, worshipful feeling that Anton cherished for Ina. He is hopelessly in love with her, even though he knows her faults.

Natuurlijk zocht ik nu allereerst naar tekenen van verdorvenheid; ik stelde vast, dat het mooie blonde haar misschien wat grof was, en de uitdrukking van de mond, zo en profiel preuts en vroom, ineens sensueel kon schijnen. Zo ver gevorderd was het proces van mijn verslaving reeds, dat ik rustig toegeven kon daar hoofdzakelijk te staan om mijn moeder te bruskeren, - geen reden overigens om het niet te doen, want bruskeren wil men altijd, in zo'n geval, en wie maakt uit of dat oorzaak of gevolg is van een verliefdheid? (p. 73)

He is so terribly afraid of losing her that, in an effort to arm himself against this possible disaster, he even wishes that for one evening, she would fail to appear for their rendezvous (p. 105). One of the things he fears is that she will return to Germany, and she represents an alien culture and an alien faith. Although the language of the novel is Dutch, the lovers are supposed to be conversing in German, and there are passages of German dialogue to prove it. Even the hero's Dutch shows the influence of his knowledge of German. While it would not be appropriate to do so here, it would be interesting to compare Vestdijk's use of German with Mann's use of French in Der Zauberberg.

On the intellectual level, nevertheless, Johan has no illusions, although he tries to rationalize his awareness of her stupidity. ‘Haar domheid verbloemde ik met pasklaar gemaakte theorieën over de betrekkelijke waarde van een intellect, dat zich niet meer weet te verfrissen en te vernieuwen aan het natuurlijke en elementaire, of ik zag het als een normale traagheid van denken, doorschoten van intuitieve flitsen, die mij beschaamden’ (p. 104). It is ironic that the leitmotif for Else is her ‘bolle bikkels’. Thus, Johan lowers himself to her empty-headed pleasures, and she is able to drag him off to see the fireworks.

Unlike Ina, Else appears to return Johan's love, and when she tells him that she has quit her job and is going back to Germany, she even runs after him after he walks away from her (pp. 115 ff). There is talk of marriage and children, but Johan is not willing to accept Else's Catholic religion. She is not idealized as Ina is: ‘Else Böhler, Duits dienstmeisje, brutaal, verlegen, ingetogen, volhardend, en toch zo merkwaardig weinig terugstotend in haar mannenjacht...’ (pp. 118-119). The tender yearning for the beloved, who always maintains a respectable distance from her lover, plays no part in Johan's dark passion for Else. Besides, Else dreams of becoming a singer, and in Steinmann, who would provide her with music lessons, Johan recognizes an important rival (pp. 128-32). In her sly, teasing

way, Else knows how to make the most of his jealousy.

The sound of the word Schützkaffee - its meaning never becomes known - makes him aware of the baser side of her nature, and in a Proustian manner, recalls from his memory a scene from his youth.

Op net woord zelf kwam het niet aan. Klank en opeenvolging der timbres daarentegen riepen onfeilbaar het beeld wakker van een jonge, blonde, half dronken prostituée, die ik in een van mijn eerste studentenjaren in een cabaret tussen kaalhoofdige, bebrilde nachtbrakers had zien zitten, haar armen om twee rimpeligi nekken heengeslagen, wippend op de maat van de muziek, en telkens zonder enige aanleiding uitbarstend in een geil, circusachtig gejoel, waarbij men zich kletsende zwepen voorstellen moest, de perverse geur van paardestallen, en rijen bejaarde aanbidders met hoge hoeden voor een half open kleedkamerdeur (p. 132).

His suspicions about her past grow stronger. The simple world of childhood, so poignantly depicted in Terug tot Ina Damman, seems further away than ever, and now as Johan makes love to Else, he is filled with the most ambiguous feelings, and whispers to himself that she is a ‘“Duitse hoer, Duitse hoer”’. As he gazes upon her ‘Correggio-gezicht’, he notes that she has the ‘“achterwerk van een kreeft...”’ (p. 134). Even as she is leaving and gives him her address in Cologne, he realizes that he is glad to get rid of her, and as the lights of her tram come around the corner, he gazes at her ‘bolle, glanzende ogen’ (p. 137).

Depth psychology plays a much greater role in Else Böhler even than it did in Terug tot Ina Damman, and the psychological relationships are much more complex. Johan himself reveals his awareness of the love-hate relationship in one of his early conversations with his artist-friend Peter. ‘“Iedere liefde wekt automatisch haat op voor 't zelfde object, krachtens een wet van evenwicht misschien, en verijdelt de zelfovergave...”’ (p. 120)

Bound up with his love for Else are his psychological relationships with the other members of his family, his father, his younger brother, Eg, and especially, his mother. ‘Zelden las ik een boek, dat zo doortrokken is van de familiehaat als deze roman van Vestdijk...’ wrote ter Braak.16 The sibling rivalry between Johan and his brother Eg appears early in the novel, and he hits Eg for the first time in his life, when Eg taunts him with the words, ‘“Die Duitse meid! Heil Hitler!!”’ (pp. 88-89). This sibling rivalry is later intensified by combining it with the hostility of the society in which they live toward ‘those German maids’. Thus, Eg puts his friend up to making a remark about Johan's relationship to a German maid to Johan himself, and Johan throws the friend out of the house. Johan has already indulged himself in the pleasant thought that, perhaps, Eg might not really be his father's son (p. 160). Since Vestdijk was an only child, by the way, this sibling rivalry can hardly be interpreted as an autobiographical motif.

The theme of the only son or oldest son and his relationship to his father and to his mother recurs frequently in Vestdijk's work. Johan sympathizes with his father, who confesses his own unhappiness to him, and gives him eight hundred guilders when he leaves home on the trip that is eventually to take him to Ger-

many in pursuit of Else Böhler. ‘“Trouw nooit, jongen...”’ (p. 159) his father warns him.

Johan suspect his mother of having told Eg about his relationship to Else, and the hero's psychological relationship to his mother is much more complex and abnormal than Anton's in Terug tot Ina Damman. Early in the novel, Johan attempts to identify with his father and Meneer Steketee (p. 70), and the tension between himself and his mother comes to the surfase in a violent scene between them, in which he admits that the hates her face. ‘Er bestaat geen gezicht dat ik haat als het hare, dat hardbakken mengsel van madame Hanau en koningin Luise van de schilderij van Goya, met een zoet sausje erover uit de Hollandse keuken...’ (69).

Yet he is also struck by very different memories of his mother. There was the time he saw her in a slip under her kimono (p. 34), and another when ‘Ik herinner me, dat ze een laag uitgesneden blouse droeg, wat gerafeld daar waar de bruinachtige ronding van haar borst begon’ (p. 126).17 There is more than one hint that his psychological relationship to his mother is incestuous (p. 164), and his bohemian friend Peter, who is the raisonneur of the novel, tells him that he still loves Else because he is in love with his own mother, and that he has transferred his hatred for his father to his mother (pp. 150-7). Later on Peter explains to him that he has a mother complex (p. 180), and he interprets Johan's ‘inktvis’ dream as revolving around his parents' bedroom, where there is the forbidden mother, and he is jealous of his father. The resultant guilt feelings have made it impossible for him to have any natural relationship with other women (p. 182).

Vestdijk has a remarkable gift for irony and satire, and it is revealed that Peter's uncle, whose talent he is supposed to have inherited, died making love (pp. 184 f.). Johan is well aware, moreover, that some of the things Peter ‘reveals’ to him are things that he himself has already told Peter.

Peter proposes to cure him of his mother complex and his inhibitions by allowing him to watch, in secret, as Peter makes love to women he has picked up. The lovemaking is to proceed only up to a certain point. Even more than Johan's early stirrings of incestuous love, his mother's psychosexual relationship with Meneer Steketee (pp. 96-98) have made her as clear a sex symbol as Else. In one of his typical ‘shock effects,’ Vestdijk has her appear as one of the women in Peter's bit of intended therapeutic voyeurism (pp. 189-91). Johan realizes that the candy she has brought Peter was bought ‘“Van mijn vaders geld...”’ (p. 192).

It is after this experience that Johan decides to leave for Germany and find Else. He does not appear to be violently upset by what he has seen, but he admits, ‘“Ik ga naar een land ... waar m'n moeder me niet weer te pakken kan krijgen”’ (p. 193). He never mentions the incident to his mother, and ‘... ze weet dus niet, dat ik getuige geweest ben van haar “schande”, en wat de eigenlijke oorzaak is van mijn ondergang. Maar wat is een oorzaak?’ (p. 194). The question, thus, remains of why he really goes to Germany. Is it only to get away from his mother? Or

does he actually want to find Else? The ambivalence of his motivation here emphasizes the psychological connection between these two women. Johan makes his original decision to leave home just before the dinner in his honor (p. 165), and his departure for Germany marks the end of his youth in the same way that Anton's falling in love with Ina means a new relationship with his mother and the end of his boyhood.

With only two days of his original two weeks left to complete his manuscript, the narrator then plunges into his account of his trip to Germany and his tragic fate there. For Vestdijk, less than a third of the novel is left. The pace of the novel accelerates, and the mood intensifies. The German part of the novel becomes a kind of Wagnerian Götterdämmerung, even in a parodistic sense, and the narrator refers to the Wagnerian style of his story (p. 9).

In Terug tot Ina Damman, there had been relatively little social criticism. The feeling of class was evident in the story of Janke, and Anton's fantasy about her ended when he imagined that she had stolen a cigar (p. 216)! The analysis of society was confined almost entirely to the peer group and the teachers in the school, with only occasional vignettes of Janke and girls who were maids, or of boys who came from lower social classes. That Vestdijk could be a keen critic of society was already evident from Meneer Visser's hellevaart. In Else Böhler, however, Vestdijk engages in social criticism on a grand scale.

In the Dutch part of his novel, he portrays the sordid narrowmindedness of the middle-class Dutch citizens who dwell in the streets of the stars. As ter Braak has noted, Vestdijk transforms his people into ‘kleine duivelachtige wezens, lepelaflikkende kobolden van Jeroen Bosch, gorilla's, dwergen en aapmensen...’18 Else, a sex symbol from a lower-class background, appears in this society as a representative of that other part of the Germanic world, as Germania herself, who is both loved and hated. Since she is also Catholic, she serves as a dual image, and stands also for the ‘other’ religion. Her Catholic faith reappears again and again in the novel, especially in her brief love affair with Johan.

In Terug tot Ina Damman, Jelle Mol calls Max Mees a ‘brillejood’, although Max is not a Jew (p. 223). At the beginning of Else Böhler, there is talk among the hypocritical Dutch guests in the Rodenhuis home of Mahler's ‘“Jodenmuziek”’ (p. 97). In Germany, however, Johan hears the most rabid kind of anti-Semitism, and disguised as a Nazi in uniform, he listens to the notorious anti-Semite Rosenberg address the S.A. (pp. 224 ff).

He had left behind him the narrowness and prejudices of his Dutch middle-class neighbors, who had been so hostile to his love for the German servant girl, and plunged into Germany in search of his Andromeda-Germania. His quest becomes another nightmarish ‘hellevaart’. As he pursues his beloved through this alien world, he finds suspicion, fear, hostility, Gestapo agents, and the rank vulgarity of lower-class Germans. Although Else Böhler, like Terug tot Ina Damman, is based on personal experiences in Vestdijk's life,19 political events of the

mid-Thirties also form an important part of the background of the novel. Else Böhler, which was published in the fall of 1935, was written between the end of 1934 and March 1935. The Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe, who had been accused by the Nazis of setting the famous Reichstag fire, was executed in the fall of 1935. Steinmann, the hero's German rival for the affection of Else, is portrayed in the novel as a friend of Ernst Roehm, the Nazi leader who was assassinated amidst rumors of sexual scandals. It was in these years, too, that Anton Mussert and other Nazi sympathizers in the Netherlands were attempting to win converts to their cause. Johan, thus, comes to see the Germans in a new light.

Het is het merkwaardigste volk ter wereld, omdat het een volk is dat niet bestaat. Uit alle legers en huurlegers, uit de vertegenwoordigers van alle rassen samengesteld, tracht het de smartelijke hornogeniteit te acteren van een huisgezin waarvan geen enkel lid op het andere lijkt. Vandaar de petten, die klap- en hakgewoonten, die rinkelende instrumentatie van sabels, bierpullen en ridderorden, waarmee dit ingewikkeld soldatenvolk zijn rasmystiek verdedigt. Het onzuiverste ras, dat Europa bevolkt, een ras waarbij alle maten een centimeter te kort of te lang zijn, waar men feeerieke schoonheid aantreft op romp en benen van een kobold, ontdekt, dat de mens een al te gecompliceerd en geraffineerd wezen is geworden en slaat terug naar de mieren: bruine, oorlogszuchtige bosmieren, die hun omgebogen sprieten boven zich uitdragen in de vorm van hakenkruisen, op bevel van een kriebelig instinct bospaden omzomend of afzettend. In dit entomologisch gewirwar doemen de doodskopgezichten op van voormannen: gedecerebreerd, los in de gewrichten, geleedpotige doodgravers van Europa, dat allang schreeuwde om dit gesleep met houtjes en afval. Ordelijk wordt alles doorgegeven. Maar soms, te midden van de benauwende gelijkvormigheid dezer hygienische chitinepantsers, overstelpt door 8000 mierentotems, de zes armen van de kleine marionet Goebbels en de dubbelzinnige achterlijfssegmenten van Roehm, ontwaart men nog mensengezichten, raadselachtige, vurige, onuitblusbare, of gezichten die vijf andere gezichten in zich omvatten, die nog niet ontzield zijn tot een model. Else Böhlers gezicht was er een van, maar op weg naar haar toe, mocht ik ook de andere niet verwaarlozen (pp. 197-198).

It is a penetrating and disillusioning identification of Else and Nazi Germany, and with his usual psychological subtlety, Vestdijk forms the association between Else's ‘achterwerk van een kreeft’ and Roehm's ‘dubbelzinnige achterlijkssegmenten.’ Steinmann, the impressario of the vulgar revue, seems not only to have won the contest for Else, but to be catering to the sexual depravity of the Nazis. He is the owner of the photography shop that ambiguously promises, ‘“Kinder besondere Preislagen”’ (p. 201), and he even looks like Roehm (p. 206). Johan imagines Else in bed with Steinmann (p. 223), and finally sees her as ‘kolossaal vergroot trotse Germania met zware oogleden op te korte benen, Duits dienstmeisje, hoer, non, beroemde zangeres, filmster, ramenlapster?...’ (p. 224).

Deceit and disillusionment pave the way for the ultimate tragedy. Else was apparently also alienated from her mother, and in any case, the photograph she had shown him was not really of her mother, but of Frau Koch, whom she liked better than her mother (p. 215). Even her love letter turns out to have been a fraud, for she had copied it from Frau Koch's old love letters (p. 219). The only thing she had not copied was the definition of love as ‘... ein kietzeliches Gefühl

in der Nähe des Herzens wo man sich nicht kratzen kann’ (p. 170). This definition, by the way, was identified by Peter as deriving from Saint Teresa of Avila (p 172), and is not much different from the one mentioned in Terug tot Ina Damman.

The Germans, who, he had hoped, would help him to find Else, compared him with van der Lubbe, the Dutchman condemned for setting the Reichstag fire. In this totalitarian state, where an ominous network of agents spies everywhere, Steinmann makes obvious references to Johan's inquiries in a telephone conversation during his visit, and then flatly denies that he knows Else Böhler (pp. 207 f.). His new friends had offered him comradeship and even provided him with a uniform and a gun for the Nazi meeting, but he feels uneasy in the vulgar atmosphere of the hall, and sees his country being mocked in the revue on the stage.

The young man who was annoyed at home because he had to entertain his mother's friends by giving piano concerts for them, but who loved Debussy, Mahler, and Hindemith, as well as Brahms and Schumann (p. 167), now listens to the libelous verses being sung to the tune of the polka. He recognizes, in the costume of a sailor from Volendam, the would-be singing star Else Böhler as the beer-hall comedienne, making fun of his own country.

‘Der Unpolitische,’ as he calls himself in Mann's phrase, is completely disoriented. Else had passed her audition, and won a contract for the whole tour. But as she gazed at him, her eyes like ‘glanzende bikkels ... waren tegelijk vertrouwd en gevaarlijk als van een vreemde’ (p. 224). As he recalled while waiting for the guillotine, ‘Maar tevergeefs trachtte ik een brug te slaan tussen dit nazitoneel en de Andromedastraat, tussen het dienstmeisje van Erkelens met haar mythologisch lachje en deze vreselijke ... pofbroek’ (p. 224). As he sits in his cell, he finds it difficult to write. His fingers tremble, and the paper is stained with blots. He lacks the ability to communicate with others, even his own lawyer. The tormented prisoner cannot bring himself to write the word liefde. He alludes to the Biblical text I Corinthians 13:1, without quoting the words: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,’ both at the beginning and the end of his manuscript (pp. 8, 249), thus forming a frame for it. Yet, the single word that seems to have a galvanic effect on him is Schützkaffee. It is when he hears the word Schützkaffee that, in a fit of jealousy and rage, he shoots Steinmann with his S.A.-man's revolver.

Vestdijk is an artist with words, and in both novels, single words have catalytic effects. In Terug tot Ina Damman, for example, Anton is so sensitized to the word vent that he cannot even bring himself to write it.

Langzaam, zonder er bij na te denken, trok hij een groote V over het papier, gevolgd door een e, maar toen hij merkte wat hij deed, krabbelde hij alles weer haastig uit schuw naar de achterkamer omziend. Zoo min als hij het woord zou kunnen uitspreken kon hij het opschrijven, al dacht hij er ook voortdurend aan, of liever: het woord dacht aan hem, vanuit een verborgen schuilhoek, diep binnenin. Bijna verbaasde het hem, dat een enkel woord van vier letters bij machte was zulke veranderingen te bewerkstelligen, die misselijkheid, dat doove gevoel in zijn beenen,
daar voor cle schooldeur, toen Max Mees hem de hand toestak, en even daarna: alsof hij in zichzelf wegzonk, in een zuigende leegte, zoals je voelde met schommelen, van het hoogste punt naar beneden (p. 21).

Ter Braak felt that vent was a magic word, which revealed Anton to the reader as an exceptional person, with unusual sensitivity.

Als Ina Damman, de jeugdliefde Antons pad kruist, gebeurt er dus eigenlijk niets anders, dan dat het magische woord plaats maakt voor een magisch wezen van vices en bloed, dat nog minstens evenveel woord als vlees is overigens. Ina Damman blijft voor Anton een erotische toverformule; in de eigenlijkste zin is deze liefde dus platonisch, d.w.z. wezenlijk juist door de voor Anton's kameraden on-wezenlijke verbeelding.20

Johan is older than Anton, but Schützkaffee is the magic word with which he conjures up his own special devils. Like Anton, he cannot bring himself to write it, and is unable to get past the Sc (p. 11). It takes all of his lawyer's wiles to coax it out of him (pp. 16-19). Nobody knows what the word means. Else claims she never heard of it, and he admits that perhaps the word existed only in his mind (p. 247). It may very well be a symptom of schizophrenia.

There are other single words that assume a special significance in both novels; e.g., naarstig in Terug tot Ina Damman (pp. 45-47) and varken, which becomes a rhyme word for Marken in Else Böhler's scurrilous song about the Netherlands (pp. 210, 239). This fixation on a single word is evidence of Vestdijk's skillful psychological probing. He enters those hidden recesses of the mind where reality and unreality hang in delicate balance and love and hate maintain a tense equilibrium.

Is love real, or is it only a youthful ideal? Is it a magix force, or does it exist only in the mind of the lover? Anton is entranced by an essentially platonic love, and loses something he really never possessed. Johan pursues a forbidden love, combined with passion and sexuality, and even as he goes to his death, he repeats Else's name over and over again. She told him she loved him, but she caused him to free himself from her (p. 247).

To find the answers to these questions, if indeed, there are answers, to explore the real relationship of lover to beloved, of son to mother and to father, of the child to the school, and of man to society, requires the kind of mastery of psychology that Vestdijk possesses.21 He himself began to suffer from serious mental depressions at the age of sixteen, and in his life experience, the themes he prefers,

and his use of psychology, he invites comparison with Hesse.

If Vestdijk himself attributed some importance to the influence of Proust on the use of association and memory, such as in the effect of the odor of rapeseed on Anton Wachter in Terug tot Ina Damman (pp. 258 ff.)22 or the odor of lavender on Johan Rodenhuis in Else Böhler (p. 126), there can be no question of his skill in combining psychological insight with literary art. Allusion, parallels, and imagery reveal Vestdijk's mastery. At the end of Else Böhler, for example, it is no mere accident that neither Johan nor his mother has found happiness in love. His quest for love has not only ended in failure just like hers, but his attempt to dominate the German maid has been no;more successful than hers to dominate her servants. Johan's fate recalls that of Strindberg's Miss Julie.

It is worth noting that Vestdijk combines psychological theories with politics. Peter equates Fascism with anti-Freudianism (p. 172) and Johan's lawyer mentions that Freud's books have been burned by the Nazis. Johan himself realized that he was now ‘... in het land ... waar de psychoanalyse was verboden, maar dat ik nu toch zelf gedroomd had ...’ (198). Thus, Vestdijk confirms, in his ironic way, the reality of psychoanalysis, and Peter had already observed that psychoanalysis was no mere theoretical doctrine, but a practical thing like brushing one's teeth (pp. 150-7). In these two novels, Vestdijk persuades his reader that the things of the mind, the illusions of youth and of love, are as real as the things of everyday.

 

seymour l. flaxman

Graduate Center of The City University of New York.


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