De donkere kamer van Damokles
by
by
Surface All the Way Through
After reading the first 20 pages or so of Hermans's Darkroom of Damocles, I began to suspect a problem with the English translation. The text is spare to the point of aridity with hardly any description of people or places. Similarly, there is no psychological commentary; motives, reflections, emotions are unstated. Dialogue is presented more like a punching match than a conversation. Sentences are terse; paragraphs are short. Transitions are unexpected and somewhat discontinuous, as if in response to interview questions which have been omitted. The cadence of the writing is unremitting: this happened; then this happened; then this happened - with sometimes disconcerting non-sequiturs. No digressions, no speculation, no deviation from the determined trajectory of the story. The book often reads in English almost like one written by an aspiring teen-ager, or a policeman in his notebook, rather than an experienced author.
But Ina Rilke is one the most experienced and honoured translators of Dutch literature. To the extent any translation can express the core of the original, Rilke's can't be improved upon. In the colophon the mystery is solved. Although published in English in 2007, the book was originally published in Dutch a half-century earlier. Darkroom, in other words, is an example of a very specific, very Dutch mid-twentieth century genre of somewhat advanced, even experimental, popular literature. As far as I am aware, nothing like it exists in contemporary English-language literature. I don't know if this genre has a name inside or outside The Netherlands, but it is certainly a type with a particular character and sophistication. And a type of which Hermans's Darkroom provides a leading example.
The effect of Hermans's style is one of an abrupt but comprehensible dream-like movement from scene to scene. The writing is clearly meant to jolt, to cause an eddy in the flow of the reader's concentration. Hermans supplies little backstory or historical context. He keeps the reader in precisely the same position of ignorance as that of the young protagonist who is never adequately informed of the circumstances of his father's death or his mother's involvement in it. The repetitions appear like practice re-tellings to get the story down pat. What parts of this tale are true? What is being left out? It is as if he is insisting to the reader, "This is the situation, you don't need to know more now, deal with it."
On the other hand Holland, arguably the primary subject, is portrayed insistently as a 'twee' country. There is a certain intimacy adopted immediately between Dutch characters. There is no need to explain things because "we all know the score." Coincidence is almost a rule of this compulsive intimacy. The action shifts from city to city in Holland as if they were part of the same local neighbourhood. People keep running into each other, or their friends or acquaintances. Delivering a basket of cherries from a greengrocer in Amsterdam to a prison in The Hague is apparently no trouble at all. Zipping down to to Utrecht or out to Lunteren, or up from Leiden on the spur of the moment in the middle of the war is a snap. Complex messages are breathlessly communicated to virtual strangers with an expectation of complete discretion and immediate compliance. There are occasional German-sympathisers but they are easily identified and deftly ostracised. Surprisingly, this all works quite well once the stance and rhythm of the piece is accepted. The story then becomes quite irresistible.
Perhaps the best way to characterise Hermans's rather cinematic technique is that it shares much with several films by Alfred Hitchcock, North by Northwest in particular. There is a nostalgic realism of place as in Hitchcock: the blue intercity trams, disappearing as Hermans wrote; references to places like the Ypenberg airfield, now lying under the junction of the A4 and A12 highways; the still extant 19th century burgelijke houses on the canals in Leiden as well as one or two somewhat louche but long-standing hotels in Amsterdam. The protagonist (and therefore the reader) lurches from confusion to confusion; the situation is muddled; nothing he does yields clarification but only enmeshes him more deeply in a greater mystery. The constant theme of his (and his country's) situation is ambiguity. Is he a dupe, a fool, a patriotic hero, a Walter Mitty wannabe? Hermans, like Hitchcock, isn't telling without some work by the reader. The growing suspense isn't about who-done-it? but what-does-this-all-mean? And fortunately, also like Hitchcock, Hermans ultimately delivers.
After reading the first 20 pages or so of Hermans's Darkroom of Damocles, I began to suspect a problem with the English translation. The text is spare to the point of aridity with hardly any description of people or places. Similarly, there is no psychological commentary; motives, reflections, emotions are unstated. Dialogue is presented more like a punching match than a conversation. Sentences are terse; paragraphs are short. Transitions are unexpected and somewhat discontinuous, as if in response to interview questions which have been omitted. The cadence of the writing is unremitting: this happened; then this happened; then this happened - with sometimes disconcerting non-sequiturs. No digressions, no speculation, no deviation from the determined trajectory of the story. The book often reads in English almost like one written by an aspiring teen-ager, or a policeman in his notebook, rather than an experienced author.
But Ina Rilke is one the most experienced and honoured translators of Dutch literature. To the extent any translation can express the core of the original, Rilke's can't be improved upon. In the colophon the mystery is solved. Although published in English in 2007, the book was originally published in Dutch a half-century earlier. Darkroom, in other words, is an example of a very specific, very Dutch mid-twentieth century genre of somewhat advanced, even experimental, popular literature. As far as I am aware, nothing like it exists in contemporary English-language literature. I don't know if this genre has a name inside or outside The Netherlands, but it is certainly a type with a particular character and sophistication. And a type of which Hermans's Darkroom provides a leading example.
The effect of Hermans's style is one of an abrupt but comprehensible dream-like movement from scene to scene. The writing is clearly meant to jolt, to cause an eddy in the flow of the reader's concentration. Hermans supplies little backstory or historical context. He keeps the reader in precisely the same position of ignorance as that of the young protagonist who is never adequately informed of the circumstances of his father's death or his mother's involvement in it. The repetitions appear like practice re-tellings to get the story down pat. What parts of this tale are true? What is being left out? It is as if he is insisting to the reader, "This is the situation, you don't need to know more now, deal with it."
On the other hand Holland, arguably the primary subject, is portrayed insistently as a 'twee' country. There is a certain intimacy adopted immediately between Dutch characters. There is no need to explain things because "we all know the score." Coincidence is almost a rule of this compulsive intimacy. The action shifts from city to city in Holland as if they were part of the same local neighbourhood. People keep running into each other, or their friends or acquaintances. Delivering a basket of cherries from a greengrocer in Amsterdam to a prison in The Hague is apparently no trouble at all. Zipping down to to Utrecht or out to Lunteren, or up from Leiden on the spur of the moment in the middle of the war is a snap. Complex messages are breathlessly communicated to virtual strangers with an expectation of complete discretion and immediate compliance. There are occasional German-sympathisers but they are easily identified and deftly ostracised. Surprisingly, this all works quite well once the stance and rhythm of the piece is accepted. The story then becomes quite irresistible.
Perhaps the best way to characterise Hermans's rather cinematic technique is that it shares much with several films by Alfred Hitchcock, North by Northwest in particular. There is a nostalgic realism of place as in Hitchcock: the blue intercity trams, disappearing as Hermans wrote; references to places like the Ypenberg airfield, now lying under the junction of the A4 and A12 highways; the still extant 19th century burgelijke houses on the canals in Leiden as well as one or two somewhat louche but long-standing hotels in Amsterdam. The protagonist (and therefore the reader) lurches from confusion to confusion; the situation is muddled; nothing he does yields clarification but only enmeshes him more deeply in a greater mystery. The constant theme of his (and his country's) situation is ambiguity. Is he a dupe, a fool, a patriotic hero, a Walter Mitty wannabe? Hermans, like Hitchcock, isn't telling without some work by the reader. The growing suspense isn't about who-done-it? but what-does-this-all-mean? And fortunately, also like Hitchcock, Hermans ultimately delivers.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ December 14, 2016
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