Dutch/Example 15
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Intermediate level: cycle 4
Voorbeeld 15 ~ Example 15
Dichtkunst ~ Poetry
• Vondel, Tollens, Van Duyse |
Vondel (1587-1679)
editJoost van den Vondel is to Dutch literature what Shakespeare is to the English one: the Grand Old Master, who wrote magnificent dramatic plays, but whose language is not always easy to understand. The orthography of the 17th century has some remarkable similarities with English, e.g. the use of -ck- (ick) instead of -k- (ik) or the use of -gh- (ooghen) instead of -g- (ogen) for the guttural spirant. In English it still occurs in word like laugh, though or nigh although it has either gone mute or been replaced by [f]. Of course there are also more case endings in his language than there are today
In 1632 Van den Vondel had to witness the death of his little son Constantijn and he wrote a famous poem about it. At the end of his 91 year long life he had outlived all but one grandson.
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- Little Constantine, the blessed babe
- Little cherubs, down from on high
- laughs at the vanities down here
- with a friendly eye
- Mother, he says, why do you weep
- why do you cry on my body?
- Up here I live, up here I float
- Little angel of the realm of heaven
- And I shine there and I drink there
- what the giver of all good
- pours for the souls that swarm there
- frolicking for sheer abundance
- Learn to travel then with thoughtfulness
- to palaces, out of the mud
- of this world that is so troubled
- Eternity goes before the moment.
Tollens (1780-1856)
editTollens's parents came from Gent, but he grew up in Holland and joined a paint company founded there by Johannes Jodocus Tollens in 1748. As a poet he was much admired in his day, including in Flanders as we shall seen below. He wrote mostly about the beauty and virtue of ordinary family life and about loyalty and love for God an country. In the 1880's a new generation of poets -to which e.g. Gorter belonged- would find fault with the very conservative state that Dutch literature had fallen into. Although Tollens was long dead by then, he became one of the prime targets of their scorn. So much so that it took to our own days for the poet to become judged by his own merits again, rather then through the eyes of the Tachtigers as they were called.
Tollens wrote many rather lengthy poems, but in this short one he revisits the same issue as Vondel did two centuries before and his version shows remarkable parallels with Vondel's poem.
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- The crawling little caterpillar exhausted from its crawling
- Worried to resignation in the narrow cell
- broke open its little vault in a flutter
- clapping its wings flew out of its wilted peel
- See, there is sways, there it floats
- escaped from unwieldy stress and pressure
- Higher it flies, higher it lives
- Tired of playing in lower air
- Wetnurse, dry the wet cheeks
- do not stare at the dead pupa
- do not be trapped in its little web
- the little butterfly cannot be caught again
- Heaven's angels took it up.
Prudens Van Duyse (1804-1859)
editPrudence Van Duyse was an important figure is the Vlaamse Beweging, the movement in Flanders that resisted the pressure to squeeze out the Dutch language and its Flemish dialects in favor of everything French. He wrote much of better days that Flanders had seen, particularly its heighday in 1304 when it thwarted the French king's attempts to gain greater control over Flanders in a pitched battle against French nobility. For Tollens however, Van Duyse had nothing but praise, that he expressed in a pretty lengthy poem of which we show one stanza here.
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- Painter of domestic life
- Bard of Dutch fame
- Privileged Batavian, fortune was given to you
- May the freshness of spring of the mind adorn your old age as with flowers
- That you, sitting besides your people
- honor God in the chain of his creatures
- and from up close behold his gloss with praying heart
- that reflects itself in ocean and drop of water
- Hail to you! Where you were once cradles
- Lives, as in the land of Flanders, your song.
Appendix
edit- ↑ The Batavii were a tribe that the Roman found living in the region between the great rivers. During the French revolution the Republic of the Netherlands toppled the old regime and the House of Orange went into exile, the Republic was renamed the Batavian Republic. So, Batavian is a nickname for Dutchman