De structuur van Max Havelaar

Bijdrage tot het onderzoek naar de interpretatie en evaluatie van de roman

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summary

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Very often literary theorists investigate one or a few aspects of a certain object, especialiy when it concerns proseworks of some considerable size. Frequendy also widely divergent works are used in order to demonstrate or illustrate a particular phenomenon. In this book I have tried to make an eclectic use of the insights and methods developed by structurally orientated literary scholarship, to study a single book: Multatuli's Max Havelaar (1860), by common consent one of the greatest works of Dutch 19th-century literarure, but at the same time a novel which has proved a constant source of many confusions because of its exceptional character.

Without taking the conceptions of a particular scholar as a starting-point and, naturally, without a preconceived normative postulate, it has been my endeavour to attain a comprehensive insight into the fundamental structure of the work, and, eventually, to discover an answer to the question to what extent the results of the analysis furnish reliable material for evaluation.

The basis of my study is the diplomatic edition of the Max Havelaar-manuscript, published in 1949. The first three editions of the novel have been altered in many respects by someone else, without the previous knowledge of the autbor. The fourth and fifth editions (of 1875 and 1881 respectively) have been revised rather drastically by Multatuli himself on the basis of the first edition, the manuscript not being at his disposal. The manuscript-version should therefore be considered as the soundest version of the text.

In the course of my study it has proved necessary to accept rather important restrictions by leaving aside stylistic aspects in the narrower sense of the word, at any rate insofar as they were not found structurally relevant.

The front matter of Max Havelaar (title/subtitle, author's name, dedication and motto) raises curious problems. Max Havelaar is only a fictitious name, but the subtitle: ‘the coffee-auctions of the Netherlands Trading Society’ refers to a real company. In the 19th century the N.T.S. had the monopoly

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for produce which the population of the Dutch East Indies was forced to grow by the Dutch government. Coffee was by far the most important of the government products: about a third of the public revenue derived from this source. It stands to reason therefore that the N.T.S. coffee-auctions could properly be used as a symbol for the way in which Holland drew profit from its colonies. At the time when Multatuli's book was written, moreover, the way in which the auctions were organized was subjected to general and severe criticism, because a relatively small number of brokers made excessive profits.

It may be submitted that consequently in title and subtitle the problem of the relation between fiction and fact is cogently put before the reader.

The dedication to E.H.v.W. - who turns out to be the author's wife - consists of a long French quotation which looks like a poetic programme: the humdrum reality of everday life is opposed to the higher and deeper truth created by ‘Homer's grandchildren’.

The motto is a miniature play; it is inspired by a scene in G.E. Lessing's Nathan der Weise, and at the same time the name of its protagonist, Lothario, points to a connection with Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. This Lothario is accused of murdering a woman, in spite of his protests that he has tried to help her. The woman, little Barbara, appears in court and testifies to the fact that Lothario has been a good friend to her. In spite of this testimony he is found guilty of conceit and condemned to be hanged. In this way the motto presents an ironic confrontation between hypocritical sham-ethics and a genuine ethical sense: the reader is expected to realize that the judge's absurd sentence forms an unpleasant parallel with the normal course of events in the world around us.

The motto invites a consideration of the peculiar situation in which a reader of a fundamentally ironic text finds himself. In this case a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ is essentially wrong. For such a text to have its proper effect, it is necessary for the reader to subject the world created in the literary work to his own standards (i.c. his ethical norms) while he is reading: the result is that the text as a whole becomes a play-object. The fictional world is rocked to its foundations, but it does not collapse; the reader is suspended between the two worlds. Moreover, on reflection he becomes aware that the impossible situation of the playlet bears an uncanny resemblance to the actual world of fact. In other words: the conflict between private ethical norms and the way of the world is actualized.

The front matter of Max Havelaar puts before the reader's eye a problem of

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‘realities’ which will turn out to be one of the fundamental principles of the novel's structure.

Multatuli's work is a ‘double novel’ (cf. F.C. Maatje, Der Doppelroman). The first narrator, Drystubble (Droogstoppel), introduces himself as a coffee-broker who writes a book ‘which resembles a novel’. He is the ironically presented type of a sanctimonious unimaginative business-maniac, according to the literary conventions of Romantic humour. In this case, as before, the situation as a whole is presented ironically, so that the reader has a secret understanding with the invisible author behind Drystubble's back. Afterwards it will appear, however, that the story presented through the medium of a fictitious ‘I’, is not fiction. At the same time Drystubble himself becomes a reality in this sense that he is a specimen of a mentality that is only too well-known; the initial values turn out to have been shifted surprisingiy in the concluding pages of the book.

Through Drystubble the reader makes the acquaintance of Shawlman (‘Sjaalman’), a former school-friend of his, who is living in Amsterdam in reduced circumstances, after his stay in the Dutch East Indies. This Shawlman delivers a heavy bundle of papers on a wide variety of subjects at the broker's house, asking him to make a selection from his writings and have it published. Drystubble discovers that the papers contain important information about coffee and the East Indies, but he does not know how to select and arrange the material. In the meantime a young German by the name of Stern, has come to live with the Drystubble family; he will acquit himself of the task. Through Stern the reader learns about Max Havelaar's fortunes, which gradually turn out to be the central story. It is interrupted a couple of times when Drystubble takes the floor.

The Havelaar story is told from the point of view of a narrator who repeatedly intrudes into the story, but takes no part in the action. This narrator, who knows the Indies thoroughly, should of course not be identified with young Stern; he proves to be wholly ‘reliable’ (i.e. he represents the views of the invisible author). Stern reads instalments of his story, of which he knows the ending, to a number of people who meet once a week.

Consequently the expectations of Drystubble, who does not know how the story ends, are constantly frustrated; in this way the opposition between two temporal points of view is used to advantage.

The two narrators are much given to addressing a ‘dear-reader’-character (a strategy which is in principle a means for inducing the ‘right appreciation’ of the action in the real reader's mind). Drystubble harangues his ‘reader’

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in all seriousness, but the fact that he himself is an ironic character causes the real reader to reject the part assigned to him. Stern's narrator plays with his ‘dear reader’, he provokes him and likes to make ironic remarks, he even abuses him; and, since he himself is reliable, the real reader is cajoled into accepting the role given him by Stern's ‘I’. Now rejecting Drystubble's ‘reader’-character amounts to the same thing as accepting Stern's. In other words: in the two threads of the story diversity of method leads to unity of effect.

It is a noteworthy phenomenon that Stern's ‘I’ does not function as an ‘omniscient author’: it is not suggested that he has an inside knowledge of his characters' thoughts and feelings. The effect of this ‘biographical fiction’ - which as far as I know is unique in an ‘authorial novel’ - is comparable to the result Henry James achieves in say The Ambassadors by ostensibly contracting his point of view to Strether's: the illusion of authenticity is heightened. (The one important ‘breach of decorum’ is that Havelaar himself is presented once or twice from within, but see p. 186.)

Multatuli uses quite a number of devices which indicate, implicitly or openly, that the ‘form’ of his story, the arrangement of his materials, is invented, thereby stressing the fact that the ‘matter’ is real. One of these devices concerns the point of view and constitutes a striking opposition to the convention of biographical fiction. The story of the Javanese boy Saïdjah, which is inserted into the novel, is written almost aggressively from the point of view of an omniscient author. This device serves to stress the fictional nature of the way in which Saïdjah's adventures are told. The comment afterwards makes clear that the story itself is an invention, but that the facts on which it is based are only too true.

A few pages before the book ends the ‘real author’, Multatuli, takes the floor, tearing the web of fiction to pieces, confirming the authenticity of the events he has related, and integrating the two main threads of the story. The changing point of view of the so-called Romantic novel has proved no impediment to the creation of a book with an evidently coherent structure.

One of the most interesting and absolutely unique elements of Max Havelaar's structure is the process of identification. In the third chapter of my book I have pointed out that gradually, within a consistently ironic framework, and in a way that is wholly integrated in the novel, the suspicion is raised, and eventually confirmed, that Max Havelaar, Shawlman and Multatuli are one and the same person, and that these three personae are presented from three different points of view. Max Havelaar is the man whose heroic struggle for

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the rights of the Javanese people ends in disaster, Shawlman is the martyr for the good cause who is starving after his return to Holland, and Multatuli is the public prosecutor who submits his experiences to the nation, and appeals to their sense of justice. At the moment when the reader learns from Stern's story how Havelaar's struggie has ended, he has already got to know the hero's subsequent fortunes, presented from Drystubble's biassed point of view. And consequently the third persona, Multatuli is now free to hurl his indictments into the face of his compatriots. In other words: the reader must come to the conclusion that Max Havelaar is ultimately an extremely complicated autobiography.

When we look at the other characters in the book, we find that they throw light on the protagonist from different angles. The whole complex of the different views of Havelaar and Shawlman is concentrated more and more on these two heroes who are gradually merging. It will be obvious that this concentration of perspectives has a dramatic character, because of the many strongly contrasting elements. Not only are the primary points of view (Drystubble vs. Stern) antithetic, but within each of the threads there are also numerous, mutually opposed views of the hero's personae. Havelaar's view of himself is particularly interesting: in a long dinner-conversation at his house on the day after his arrival in Lebak (a scene which takes up a sixth of the novel) the hero relates his former experiences. This story is afterwards found to contain parallels with his future fortunes in Lebak on no fewer than thirty points. In the course of this table-talk he gives detailed opinions on his former self, which yield (tragic-)ironic. indications as to his ‘present’ and ‘future’ situation. It is not only the concentration of perspectives, however, which plays an important part; it turns out that several characters, such as his subordinate Verbrugge for example, do not possess a single quality, make a single statement, perform or fail to perform a single act, that does not throw some aspect of Havelaar's into sharper relief. In other words, the secondary characters are found to be entirely woven into the web which is Max Havelaar, although this is certainly not apparent at first sight.

The next unique element of the novel's structure is authentication: the form in which the story is presented is eventually found to be fictitious, whereas the events which are narrated are partly exemplary, partly factual in the literal sense of the word. It is important to point out that this phenomenon does not come to light when the novel is compared with reality; the parallelism is substantiated by fictional means only, to a large extent by an ironic manipulation of 19th-century literary conventions (i.a. that of the ‘real’ sources

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of a story), within the framework of the novel. They have been completely integrated into the complex of literary devices. It is impossible in this brief summary to do justice to the multiplicity and complexity of the means used to this end, and to demonstrate the various ways in which the reader's suspicions and expectations are deftly played on.

An instructive example is furnished by the fact that the above-mentioned breach of the biographical fiction (p. 184) turns out to be entirely justified: it is a re-fictionalizing element at a point, about three quarters through the book, where the load of authenticity threatens to become excessive.

The fifth chapter is devoted to cumulation, i.e. the phenomenon that a centripetal effect is created by the repetition of certain elements, a concentration on essentials at the expense of accidentals. These repetitions are consistently arranged, co-ordinated and intensified in a variety of ways. In this process an important part is played by numerous mutually antithetic elements. Moreover, these elements are found on widely divergent levels, varying from simple stylistic features to full-scale scenes, and ‘material’ and ‘formal’ aspects turn out to form extremely complex combinations. The process of cumulation is responsible for powerful internal tensions and for the dynamics of the novel, while all kinds of aspects which at first seemed entirely disparate, invariably converge into one single formidable resultant force. This observation is illustrated and proved by means of a number of telling examples. In Max Havelaar fool's cap, prophetic mantle and goat's foot are provocatively paraded, in order to express and transmit Multatuli's conviction that in the Dutch East Indies the very highest and noblest principles were perverted in order to serve the grossest private interests, and that the man who fights uncompromisingly for truth and justice will perish in a tragic struggle. The reader is made to realise that, in spite of everything, waging this battle to the bitter end is the only form of life worthy of a human being.

A very important aspect of the process of cumulation is its rhythmical tension. In chapter vi it has been argued that on close inspection a novel that flaunts its motley and disorderly appearance in an almost Sternean manner, surprisingly enough reveals clear, harmonious and well-balanced rhythmical patterns, co-ordinating a bewildering variety of literary processes into a tightly-knit whole. The basis of this complex is to be found in intellectual, or cognitive, emotional, moral and aesthetic tensions. These tensions themselves owe their existence to the extraordinary diversity of the elements used, whereas on the other hand the diversity is not conceivable without the binding tensions.

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The time aspect of the structure in particular makes a disorderly impression on the reader, owing to the distorted chronology of both interweaving threads. It is, however, wholly subordinated to the general process of cumulation.

It is impossible to regard the relation between ‘time of narration’ (‘Erzählzeit’) and ‘narrative time’ (‘erzählte Zeit’), which according to Günther Müller constitutes the articulation of a novel's structure, as in any respect relevant to the structure of Max Havelaar. There is however an important rhythmical element, which results from the continual changes in the ‘narrator's present’ and its position in relation to the ‘story's present’ (‘Erzähldistanz’ - F. Stanzel). The opposition between Drystubble's Amsterdam and Stern's Indies is much less fundamental for the novel's structure than the antithesis between the humorously presented business-crank and his ever-so-seriously addressed ‘dear reader’ on the one hand, and Stern's ironic narrator - who at bottom should be taken seriously and considered reliable - together with his ironically treated ‘reader’ on the other.

In the last chapter it is acknowledged that the preceding analysis is unavoidably subjective, in the first place because it is precisely the novel's structure which has been made the object of investigation, and this implies that it is these elements of the literary work which are supposed to be relevant, even fundamental. Secondly it has not proved possible to avoid making a selection of the aspects analyzed and the examples given. If, on the basis of this analysis, evaluative conclusions are drawn, this is merely the logical continuation of a course that has already been plotted. The subjectivity of the foundations cannot be denied, but the aim throughout has been to make the analyses themselves verifiable.

In any case the investigation has yielded results which show that Multatuli's novel can stand up to the evaluative criteria put forward by the majority of responsible theorists. In the first place the structure - broadly definable as the degree of complexity and of integration - is found to be of a very high order. Next there is the aspect of the values on which the rhythmical tensions (mentioned on p. 186) are founded, regarded by several scholars as co-constituent for the value of a literary work. In chapter vii of this book it has been argued that it is the ‘structural’ together with the ‘ideal’ qualities of a literary work which constitute its complex ‘truth’. In Max Havelaar this truth might be briefly described as: ‘the supreme primacy of justice and the tragic impossibility of realising this principle in actual life.’ Thanks to the co-ordination of the above-mentioned qualities it acquires its concrete, unique form in the novel itself. Without resorting to a metaphor, it could

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be said that Max Havelaar is this truth. And this implies that the values which Roman Ingarden terms ‘metaphysical’ are incorporated in the novel. Furthermore it has been shown that Multatuli's book is strikingly original because unique structural devices are fully integrated, and current literary conventions handled in a very personal, and often ironic way.

As regards the criterion of ‘imaginative values’ it has been submitted that a study which does not discuss the texture af a work can by its very nature not provide a sufficient basis for responsible judgment, although it has in this case proved possible to point out a number of relevant aspects.

The exceptional, if not unique circumstance that Max Havelaar eventually transcends the limits of fiction and tries to induce the reader to take practical action, combined with the fact that the book was written over a century ago, enables us to investigate several important aspects of the way in which literature is related to reality. The observations on this problem result in conclusions which recognise the undeniable contribution made by the mimetic theorists, but lay the main stress on structural values, provided that ‘structural’ is interpreted in the above-mentioned wide sense (p. 187).

The same characteristic necessitated a consideration of the importance of historical facts and historically determined circumstances - literary as well as general - before and since the moment the novel was written. Clearly a thorough knowledge of the historical context is by no means a matter of extraneous interest; it is on the contrary most intimately connected with the internal dimensions of the work itself.