Historie en verbeelding in De held en de schare van Henriëtte Roland Holst

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Summary

The hero and the masses. An imagination of Garibaldi and the Italian liberation movement (1920) stands out from Henriëtte Roland Holst's other work in its combination of numerous historical details with novel-like elements and effusive hero-worship. Chapter 1 provides an outline of the origins and development of this book as well as an impression of the writer's life during those years, when she was still active as a communist. She regarded working on The Hero and the Masses as a pleasant change from the theoretical and political-journalistic work which had preoccupied her around 1918. Chapter 1 also serves to explain the framework and the aim of this thesis.

A survey of the reception that The Hero and the Masses was accorded is given in chapter 2. An analysis of the reviews shows that the reader was left in doubt as to Henriëtte Roland Holst's intention, the question being whether the book - gripping as it was, according to most critics - had been intended as a biography or a novel. The subjectivity of Roland Holst's portrayal of Garibaldi was widely wondered at; furthermore, ideological criticism was levelled at The Hero and the Masses, particularly by the communist party newspaper. The reviews paid remarkably little attention to the fact that she had set out to write this book for the communist youth.

The first two problems are at issue in the third chapter: does The Hero and the Masses constitute a biography based on history, a literary re-creation or some intermediate form? The problem of determining the genre is addressed first. It will be shown that the book does not fit in with the ‘vie romancée’, which started to appear at the time. The notion of ‘imagination’ is used in the subtitle of The Hero and the Masses. The preliminary matter in The Hero and the Masses shows that Roland Holst intended to depict Garibaldi's fundamental characteristics. An examination of her usage of ‘imagination’ strongly suggests that she considered this depiction to have been made possible by her artistic ability to grasp the essence of the phenomena.

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The remaining part of chapter 3 is devoted to the question what documents on Garibaldi were consulted by Henriëtte Roland Holst and how the materials thus acquired were incorporated into her book. Her research into the subject was extensive albeit one-sided. She fictionalized the data in The Hero and the Masses, however, particularly by expressing Garibaldi's thoughts abundantly and often without any proper documentary evidence. No matter how seriously she tackled her subject, Roland Holst appears to have given a basically subjective description of Garibaldi: Garibaldi as the hero sacrificing himself to attain the Dream, setting an example to the (young) communist.

As far as the ideological criticism is concerned The Hero and the Masses in fact hardly pursues the historical-materialist method as applied in Roland Holst's biography of Rousseau (1912). This is discussed in chapter 4. Around 1920 the marxist view (as laid down by Plechanov) that ‘great men’ can only exert an influence within the historical pattern determined by social change did not seem to matter to Roland Holst. This chapter also shows to what extent her views on historical materialism changed until about 1920. The Hero and the Masses serves as a kind of hinge for this tilting world-picture.

The fifth chapter deals with Henriëtte Roland Holst's religious-socialist period, concentrating on her Rosa Luxemburg biography (1935). It outlines the relevant contacts with her editor at Brusse's, her friendship with Luxemburg, and Roland Holst's private circumstances and opinions in this period. The procedure in the rest of this chapter is partly analogous to that adopted in chapter 3: Rosa Luxemburg as depicted by Roland Holst is compared with the figure rising from the documents she had referred to. It will be shown that she studied Rosa Luxemburg from a dualistic scheme in the sense that she attributed to her both masculine and feminine qualities, thus dividing her into a rational-aggressive and a romantic-contemplative personality, idealizing the latter. On the basis of our current knowledge about Luxemburg, this scheme would fail, but the documentation accessible to Roland Holst at the time gave rise to this interpretation. The writer was more critical of Luxemburg than she had been with Garibaldi. This attitude is due to her changed philosophy. It is reflected by the sober quality of Rosa Luxemburg, which is related to her distaste of the then popular vie romancée and contrasts strikingly with the effusiveness of The Hero and the Masses.

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Her hero-worship, culminating in The Hero and the Masses, is elaborated in chapter 6. From approximately 1912 tragic heroes feature in her work. Their occurrence can be traced back to biographical circumstances and may have been enhanced by literary sources of inspiration (a.o. writings of Romain Rolland). Roland Holst starts to tone down hero-worship from approximately 1930, while upholding her veneration of greatness.

Using a framework derived from hagiology as a starting-point the likely function of hero-worship for Henriëtte Roland Holst is ascertained: the hero not only provides an example but also helps to aspire to the next stage of human development. Another aspect of her heroes is their ability to counterbalance the absence of her own concrete revolutionary deeds.

In the short final chapter Roland Holst's biographical work is pictured as a laboratory in which the author is able to experiment with heroism. The measuring-instrument is the utopian longing that determined her marxist views as well as her sub-sequent religious-socialist outlook.

Translation: Peter Schaap