Lyric Address in Dutch Literature, 1250-1800 9789048532186

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Lyric Address in Dutch Literature, 1250-1800

Lyric Address in Dutch Literature, 1250-1800

Edited by Cornelis van der Haven and Jürgen Pieters

Amsterdam University Press

This publication was made possible through financial support of the FWO-funded research community ‘Goliath’.

Unless indicated otherwise, all poems in this book are translated by Myra Scholz. Cover image: Simon Vouet, Parnassus or Apollo and the Muses, c. 1640, Szépművészeti Múzeum / Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Photograph: Dénes Józsa Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 228 4 e-isbn 978 90 4853 218 6 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462982284 nur 621 © Cornelis van der Haven & Jürgen Pieters / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

Table of Contents Lyric Address: By Way of an Introduction

Cornelis van der Haven and Jürgen Pieters

7

1 Staying in Tune with Love

25

2 O Brittle Infirm Creature

45

3 Lyric Address in Sixteenth-Century Song

59

4 An Early Modern Address to the Author

75

5 Parrhesia and Apostrophe

89

Hadewijch, ‘Song 31’ (thirteenth century) Anikó Daróczi

Anonymous (Gruuthuse MS), ‘Song’ (c. 1400) Clara Strijbosch

Aegied Maes (?), ‘Come hear my sad complaint’ (before 1544) Dieuwke van der Poel

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, ‘My love, my love, my love’ (1610) Britt Grootes

Joost van den Vondel, ‘Salutation to the Most Illustrious and Noble Prince Frederick Henry’ (1626) Marrigje Paijmans

6 Lyrical Correspondence

105

7 The Apostrophic Interpellation of a Son

121

8 Guilty Pleasure

137

Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, ‘To My Lord Hooft on the death of Lady Van Zuilichem’ (1637) Marijn van Dijk

Jan Six van Chandelier, ‘My Father’s corpse addressing me’ (1657) Jürgen Pieters

Hubert Korneliszoon Poot, ‘Thwarted attempt of the Poet’ (1716) Christophe Madelein

9 Same-Sex Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century Occasional Poetry

151

10 Nature, Poetry and the Address of Friends

167

Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker, ‘To Miss Agatha Deken’ (1777) Maaike Meijer

Jacobus Bellamy, ‘To my Friends’ (1785) Cornelis van der Haven

Epilogue 179 Lyrical and Theatrical Apostrophe, from Performing Actor to Textual Self Frans-Willem Korsten

List of Poems (Sources)

193

Index of Names

195



Lyric Address: By Way of an Introduction Cornelis van der Haven and Jürgen Pieters

Dear reader, The title of the book whose introduction you have just begun reading can be seen as an example of what in rhetorical theory is usually called pleonasm or tautology. ‘Lyric address’: the two words can actually be taken to refer to one and the same thing. After all, in the specific meaning in which we will be using the latter term in this book, ‘address’ is what in many ways constitutes and defines a lyrical poem. To be sure, not all forms of address are poems, but all poems can be seen as instances of address, special instances even. In other words: poems are all about lyric address and lyric address is what poems are all about. The deeper meaning of that quip is perfectly conveyed by the opening paragraph of the entry on ‘address’ in the fourth edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia for Poetry and Poetics. There, we can read the following: Under the heading of address in poetry come not only the listeners a poem invokes or implies and the inanimate things or dead people to whom it may speak, but the entire communicative context that such a work projects. The contextual embeddedness of address includes its reference to a situation of utterance (called deixis) but also the ways in which that situation participates in artistic convention; the poem’s own history and fate as a text; and social practices governing literary production and circulation. (Waters, 2012a, p. 6)

The category of address, so we take the above definition to suggest, subsumes almost everything that is of importance in the production and reception of poetical texts. Poems evoke the specific communicative situation in which they function, from the perspective of the author as well as that of the reader. When poets write a poem they address their readers, but not necessarily in a direct way. In most cases, the address of the lyric is a matter of implicitness and indirection. As any handbook of poetry will immediately say, we are not supposed to take ‘the poem’s voice’ as the poet’s own voice, even though we are not expected to sever that tie in any absolute way either. Neither are we expected simply to take the ‘you’ to

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which the lyrical ‘I’ addresses itself in the poem for versions of ourselves. More often than not, poems are indirect forms of address, in the sense that the voice that is seen or, rather, heard to utter something in a poem (the something that is the poem) does that uttering by addressing someone or something – not so much the ‘you’ of the actual reader, but an addressee that is part of the communicative situation that the poem installs. As John Stuart Mill famously put it in his ‘Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties’ (1833), when we are reading a poem we do not really ‘hear’ what is being said; rather, we ‘overhear’ that which is being said.1 As a consequence of its basic indirectness, the poem manages to address successive generations of readers, the above entry further suggests. After all, their mode of address also relates to the way in which these texts organize and provoke their readings, even by readers whose reception of the text is chronologically very distant from the moment of the poem’s production. Moreover, the poem’s mode of address is equally related to conventions and mechanisms that govern the social functioning of these texts, including the material means of their mobility and distribution. What the above paragraph finally implies, in our view, is that in the case of poetry (possibly more so than in the cases of epic and dramatic writing), the genre’s theoretical identity and historical development are marked by an impressive amount of overlap. While some things definitely change in the historical development of lyrical writing, the majority of the genre’s basic characteristics (especially those that fall under the category of address in the broad meaning of that term) remain the same. Indeed, the past five decades have seen the publication of a number of important books whose contribution is to be situated on the intersection of the theoretical and the historical analysis of poetry: while the authors of these books try to come up with a general definition of what poetry is (transhistorically, as it were), they do pay attention to historically different varieties within the genre. Among those books are several that have inspired us in the preparation of this volume. In the chronological order of their publication, we would like to mention Käte Hamburger’s Die Logik der Dichtung (first published 1957), Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s Poetic Closure (1968) and On the Margins of Discourse (1974), Michael Riffaterre’s Semiotics of Poetry (1978), W.R. Johnson’s The Idea of Lyric (1982), Chaviva Hošek and Patricia Parker’s Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism (1985), Roland Greene’s PostPetrarchism (1991), William Waters’ Poetry’s Touch: On Lyric Address (2003), Heinz Schlaffer’s Geistersprache (2012) and, last but not least, Jonathan 1

Quoted in Culler, 1981, p. 137 and Culler, 2015, p.186; the reference is to Frye, 1957, pp. 249-250.

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Culler’s Theory of the Lyric (2015). As will become clear in the chapters that make up this volume, it was especially the latter work that served as an important source of inspiration for the authors who contributed to Lyric Address. In our introduction, we will develop a number of ideas that we drew from the books we just mentioned and that have been operative in our discussions with the contributors to the volume. The book is the outcome of a lengthy but pleasurable and collegial collaboration among a mixed group of younger and more experienced scholars of Dutch poetry from what is locally known as the ‘older periods’, from the Middle Ages up to circa 1800, say. The collaboration started off with the joint reading and discussion of Jonathan Culler’s work on the apostrophic nature of lyrical writing. The discussion immediately resulted in plans to assemble a set of close readings of single poems by Dutch authors that we wanted to make accessible to an international audience. The poems were selected by the individual authors, based on their own preferences. Most poems are written by canonical Dutch authors, or they are taken from important anonymous collections of poetry (like the Antwerp Song Book). Although the selection presented here is not meant to be representative for the period, the ten poems bear witness to the diverse character of the lyrical genre in the Low Countries between 1250 and 1800. Like in many other parts of Europe, lyrical poetry was not at all a welldelineated literary category during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. In fact, the reference ‘lyric’ covered many subgenres (like odes, songs, panegyric poems and hymns), which means that ‘lyric’ was quite an unstable reference to different kinds of poetry. More importantly, the lyrical genre had to compete with epic and dramatic forms of poetry and thus the word ‘poetry’ was not at all equated with the lyric mode, as is often taken to be the case today. Early modern poetical treatises, like the Poeticarum institutionum libri tres (1647) by the Amsterdam classical scholar Vossius, considers all poetry other than drama and epic as lyric (see Bloemendal & Rabbie, 2010). Form and content of the lyrical poem are flexible and depend on the demands of the poet to express his/her inspiration most effectively, according to Vossius. Contrasting with the gravity of epic poetry, the style of the lyrical poem should be lofty and lovely at the same time (Spies, 1977-1978, pp. 564-565). One of the characteristics of the Dutch literary tradition with respect to lyric, is the strong connection between poetry and song and a tendency to stress the practical values of poetry, as for entertainment and moral instruction (Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, 1984). In line with this, the social function of poetry was also very important, which may be

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reflected also in the selection for this book, that contains no less than four occasional poems. As the reader will see later on in this book, our readings are accompanied by wonderful translations of the poems by Myra Scholz. The readings are inspired on the one hand by the model of Stephen Burt and David Mikics’ The Art of the Sonnet (like them, we wanted our analyses to convey the pleasures of reading that the poems discussed can bring), but on the other hand also by our sense that the reading strategies that Culler developed in Theory of the Lyric could also be made productive for poems dating from periods that are less central in his book. Most of Culler’s examples date from what one could call the post-Romantic era, the eighteenth century and after. Inspired by Culler’s reflections on the apostrophe, a group of Dutch literary scholars decided in the mid-1990s to publish a manual about reading poetry, but also their examples are limited to mainly modern poetry (van Alphen et al., 1996, pp. 23-35). As Paul Alpers made clear in a stimulating application of Culler’s reflections on the ‘apostrophe’ and other issues of address to early modern poetry, these earlier poems invite us to adapt Culler’s model in the direction of a more ‘persistently social mode of address’ (Alpers, 2013, p. 1, italics in original). Having had the privilege to discuss this volume with professor Culler at the occasion of his visit to Ghent in the Spring of 2016, we hope that he will recognize in this book the same spirit of collegial elaboration that in our view marks the late Paul Alpers’ work.

Lyrical functions of address The idea that poems should be conceived of as linguistic events in their own right – Archibald MacLeish’s famous New Critical dictum that ‘A poem should not mean / But be’ – has become somewhat of a standard in contemporary theories of lyrical writing. However, as Roland Greene writes in the introduction to Post-Petrarchism, his attempt to define the nature of lyric sequences in the wake of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, the very dogma may well have prevented the ‘further investigation of how readers and writers engage the poem as immediate experience’ (1991, p. 8). For Greene, lyric as a genre is defined by what he calls ‘the dialectical play of ritual and fictional phenomena’ (1991, p. 5). Lyrical poems are ritualistic in the sense that they urge readers to reutter the utterance they are reading and in doing so to assume ‘the subjectivity of the scripted speaker’ (1991, p. 5). In order to attain that goal, Greene argues, poems contain ‘directions’ for their own performance and readers (speakers) are expected to perform the poem

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on the basis of those directions. In further stressing that poetry is fiction, Greene runs counter to Käte Hamburger’s conviction that the lyric genre, unlike epic and drama, does not fall under that central literary category, if only because when performing the poems that we read, we become the ‘I’ that is speaking in the text. This is different, Hamburger and others believe, when we read out loud a passage from a novel or a play that contains the same personal pronoun. For Greene, though (in this he follows Barbara Herrnstein Smith), the fictionality of the lyrical text lies elsewhere, in the fact that, like novels and plays, poems are made up of ‘fictive verbal acts’ which they represent.2 One of the ritualistic ‘directions’ that lyrical writings offer their readers for performance is the poem’s mode of address, the most explicitly visible marker of what since 1977 – in an early version, published in Diacritics, of what became the seventh chapter of The Pursuit of Signs (1981) – Jonathan Culler has been calling the poem’s apostrophic character. Culler’s attempts to define the nature of poetry go back even further. Already in his 1975 book, Structuralist Poetics, in the chapter entitled ‘Poetics of the Lyric’ to be more precise, Culler tried to come up with an analytical framework for the detection of core characteristics of lyrical texts. In that chapter, the ‘apostrophe’ is not yet mentioned as one of those defining hallmarks (a specific use of deictics and the expectation of unity and coherence are the two conventions that Culler considers to be distinctive features), but it is clear from several passages in this text that the way in which poems are about a specific use of ‘address’ – lyric address, we would obviously say – is already an issue of special attention to Culler (1975, p. 166). The poem is seen as an utterance that falls outside what Culler calls the ‘ordinary circuit of communication’ (1975, p. 166). Tying in with Culler, van Alphen et al. (1991, pp. 29-30) assert that apostrophic poems construct a ‘timeless present’ that highlights the now of speaking and writing and excludes itself from the time dimension of a story. According to Culler it is not only the poem’s indirectness that makes these texts stand apart from ‘an actual situation of discourse’, Culler writes there, but also its ‘invocational-prophetic mode’ (Culler 1975, p. 166). In Theory of the Lyric, Culler relates this mode explicitly to the poem’s apostrophic quality: it is by apostrophizing someone or something that the author realizes his poetic powers (as we will also see in the contributions to this volume by Grootes and Madelein). While some critics relate the apostrophic quality of poems to the elevated emotive expression of the lyrical ‘I’, Culler considers 2

Greene, 1991, p. 10, quoting Herrnstein Smith from On the Margins of Discourse.

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the apostrophe first and foremost as ‘a mark of poetic vocation’ (Culler, 2015, p. 13). This vocation – by writing apostrophic poems the poet manifests his office as a poet, irrespective of whether or not (s)he writes poems that thematize this office – entails an invocation. The mode of poetry, Culler claims repeatedly, is that of the ‘vocative’: the person or thing that is being addressed in a poem, is expected to respond, even though we are usually not given that response in the soliloquy of the poem. Often, the address is to phenomena that cannot be addressed in the real, ‘empirical’ world. These ‘unhearing entities’, as the Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry and Poetics calls them – ‘abstractions, inanimate objects, animals, infants, or absent or dead people’ (Waters, 2012b, p. 61) – clearly cannot do what they are being told to do in poems; they cannot respond to the poet’s calling in the world outside the poem. But the reader is also expected to respond ‘poetically’, that is, the reader is expected to recognize a poem for what it is and not as something different – not as a regular, normal communicative utterance (see also the complex reciprocal relationship between the speaker and his ‘you’ discussed by Grootes in regard to processes of truth-formation). In his further reflections on the reader’s response to a poem, Culler pays a lot of attention to what in Theory of the Lyric he refers to as ‘voicing’ (Culler, 2015, pp. 31-32). The concept relates to those aspects of the lyrical text that give us the impression that we are indeed overhearing somebody who is speaking as we read, someone who has an own voice and feelings and thoughts that are made present by that voice. It is important for Culler, however, that we do not reduce the poem to the voice of the speaker – ‘voicing’ is not the same thing as ‘voice’, he keeps stressing. If they fail to see that crucial difference, readers will possibly limit their response to the poem to those forms of reading that Culler is adamant to avoid. Such a limited reading will only wonder who the speaker is and in which specific communicative and expressive context the speaker is uttering the words that make up the poem and to which larger narrative complex that context belongs. ‘This model makes the lyric into a mini-novel with a character whose motives are to be analyzed’, Culler fears (2015, p. 111). Thus, the model prevents us from paying attention to those aspects of the text that encourage us to ‘perform’ the lyric poem and to voice the words that the text invites us to repeat. Poems need to be read out loud, Culler believes, not simply because such a delivery enables one to appreciate better the aural matter of the text (the same could, after all, be said of literary prose and dramatic writing) but because that matter is an intrinsic part of the ‘ritualistic’ character of the lyric. With that concept Culler refers to the expectation that readers of poems do not simply receive the text passively (as is wont to happen in

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ordinary communication) but actively perform it and in doing so, as Culler writes, ‘come to occupy, at least temporarily, the position of speaker and audibly or inaudibly voice the language of the poem’ (2015, p. 37).

Music and address Performance is central to the ritual element of the poem, which is composed of sounds and organized in the ‘reader-auditor’s experience’, according to Roland Greene (1991, p. 5). A poem thus has to be ‘experienced’ by way of a performance, the reutterance of the poem which is read as a script of sounds. This script has often been seen in the light of the lyric’s strong relationship with song: the act of singing transforms the auditor into a more active performer of the poem (as song), who ‘sings with’ the poet or the lyrical subject. Greene more explicitly refers in that respect to the early modern tradition of the love sonnet, whereas W.R. Johnson (1982) relates the element of sound and music to the Greek tradition of the lyric as a ‘lyre song’ (μέλος), performed by a singer in front of an audience. Heinz Schlaffer, in turn, points out the musical origins of the lyrical genre in respect to the effect of music (and dance) on the mind and body of both speaker and listener. The idea of the poem as song would extend its scope of comprehension (Reichweite), inviting the listeners to join in and to feel the power of song through the act of (imagined) singing: ‘Wer den Gesang hört, hat an dessen Macht teil […]’ (Schlaffer, 2012, p. 76). In epic poetry, the singer’s address of the muses at the beginning of the poem (invocatio) is a ritual element too, as is the address of the audience to listen to the singer’s story and to bring them in the good mood (captatio benevolentiae). However, the rhetorical function and ‘direction’ of these ‘epic’ addresses is less ambiguous and possibly even more ritualized than in the case of lyrical poetry (see also Paijmans in this volume). Culler considers the reader (or listener) as the ‘beneficiary’ of poetic communication, who should feel addressed by a poem directly or indirectly, temporally occupying the position of the speaker and reuttering his words (Culler, 2001). According to Johnson, the lyrical poem as an invitation to the auditor to ‘sing with’ the initial singer, is typical for the lyric form in classical poetry (Johnson, 1982, p. 4). For Johnson, the presence of the singer in front of an audience is crucial to the lyrical genre in the sense that the singer transforms universal emotions into something more personal and relates these emotions to a more specific context, inviting the listeners to share these feelings. Waters (2003, p. 20) criticizes this metaphoric approach of a personal addressee and

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the strict dividing line drawn here between ‘private words’ and the public communicative framework: according to him, words in lyrics can remain ‘private’ even when ‘nonaddressed bystanders’ are invited to be involved in the communicative process. Even though Culler disagrees with some of Johnson’s premises (especially the idea of the poet who directly addresses his audience) he seems to agree on Johnson’s I-You model in regard to classical poetry and the idea of re­ creating thoughts and feelings through the lyrical device of address (2015, p. 199). In its ‘ritualized’ form, the address of the auditor (you) by the singer (I) indeed creates the opportunity for that audience to get involved in the perspective of the singer and to feel what (s)he feels and to think what (s)he thinks. Thus, this form of address can easily transform the I-You structure in a poem into the perspective of a lyrical ‘we’, as we will see in the chapters by Daróczi, van der Haven and van der Poel for instance.3 The idea of the lyrical poem as song that creates an atmosphere in which singer and listener share the same feelings and thoughts can also be discussed in terms of what Johnson calls ‘musical intimacy’ (1982, p. 5). The idea of a ‘recreation’ of feelings and thoughts through lyrics was adopted by medieval and early modern poets as well. As we will see in the chapters by Strijbosch, van Dijk and van der Poel, music can be an instrument in poetry to get a grip on certain emotions. In combinations with other sound dimensions of the poem, music can strengthen the emotional effect of the message on the explicit or implicit addressee of the poem. Not only the direct address of the audience, also more indirect forms of lyric address support the idea of the poem as something that invites us ‘temporarily [to] occupy the position of the speaker’ and to ‘try on this speech’, as we feel ourselves addressed by the poem and/or engaged in the process of addressing other entities (Culler, 2001). As the chapter by van der Poel will illustrate, music can strengthen this effect on the reader, supporting processes of social bonding. Both in medieval and in early modern poetry, there is a strong connection, not only between the lyrical poem and song, but also between the lyrical poem and the religious hymn or prayer. In both cases, the poem connects the individual perspective of the lyrical ‘I’ with a broader community of speakers, in which the lyrical ‘I’ is instrumental to the identification of the reader both with the object of adoration (God, the beloved one) and with the (religious) community around him or her. As we will see in the chapters by Daróczi and van der Poel, the lyrical ‘I’ in this religious mode of address is what Käte Hamburger calls a ‘pragmatic statement-subject’ that serves the 3

About a ‘collective self’ in poetry, see also Hunter, 2012, pp. 80-81.

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collective address of God (1968, p. 239). While the lyrical form strengthens the suggestion of individuality and intimacy, the I-perspective remains pragmatic, which means that it is a congregational I that ‘pragmatically’ engages the individual prayer in a shared religious sphere and thus mediates between the feelings of the individual and the congregation.

Winking at the reader The apostrophic address of abstractions, impossible addressees or unseen powers tends to ‘embarrass’ the reader, according to Culler, but on the other hand, the reader can also identify with these addressees and be induced to try out that strange speech (Culler, 2001). The idea that nobody actually speaks that way, is the exact point – it is the difference from actual discourse that is at stake in the lyrical poem, and the apostrophe, for Culler, is an important marker of that difference. The difference is also tied up with the ‘indirectness’ of lyric address. This indirectness in the first place concerns what Culler describes as the ‘triadic’ relationship between the lyrical ‘I’ on the one hand and the object of address and the indirectly addressed reader on the other. Even though the apostrophe presumes to address creatures and things, they only seldom are expected to respond (2015, p. 187). This is what Culler calls the ritualistic function of address, as the address of these absent or impossible interlocutors only asks for a response of the reader, who feels connected to the event of address and could temporarily occupy the position of the speaker and thus engage with the act of addressing. The indirectness of address can also be inherent to the ambiguity of the addressee itself, like in an I-You mode of address in which the identity of the ‘you’ remains undetermined, inviting the reader to get involved in the poem as the addressee, either directly or indirectly. According to Ralph Johnson, this I-You mode of address is dominant in both classical and early modern poetry. Around half of the poems written by poets like John Donne and George Herbert are written in the I-You mode, whereas in the other half of their poems we hear the poet either talking to himself or to no one in particular. Whereas Johnson qualifies theses I-You poems as the ‘older rhetorical, pronominal, social form’ (1982, p. 6) that originates in more concrete models of I-You communication (such as between the poet and his audience), Culler believes that the situation of I-You address is much more complicated and ambiguous, as this ‘you’ can only seldom be identified unambiguously with a reader (2015, pp. 193-194). Discussing the examples of Keats and Goethe, Culler speaks of a ‘blurred you’, a you that does not

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apply to most readers, though it certainly ‘gestures toward the reader, but is also plausibly taken as either the poet himself or someone else’ (2015, p. 194). Elsewhere, Culler describes ‘double address’ as a lyric device to ‘wink at the reader’ (2015, p. 206). In love poetry for instance, the beloved one is primarily addressed but always with an eye to how that discourse ‘will be received by others’ (2015, p. 206). Discussing the example of address in Catullus’ poems, Waters points to the poet’s own doubts about the effectiveness of poetic address in relation to real communicative exchange. It is exactly this tension between the addressee’s ‘irreplaceable particularity’ on the one hand and the ‘lyric’s removal from any set interlocutor’ that characterizes the lyric genre as a genre about address (Waters 2003, pp. 4-5; see also Waters, 2012a). Even though the addressee remains undetermined, the verbal ‘direction’ of lyric address can be very specific. Heinz Schlaffer (2012, p. 19) considers invocation (Anrufung) as the dominant mode of lyric address, constituting speech acts that aim at an identifiable goal. According to Bronzwaer (1993, pp. 10-11), such songs had an ‘instructional’ aim, inviting the singer to praise, to bless, to thank, or to pray to someone. These speech acts connect the speaking I with an addressable ‘you’ from whom no answer is expected. For Schlaffer (2012), address is thus a one-directional speech act which is based upon the non-response or even nonexistence of the addressee. In that sense, lyric address is noncommunicative and does not primarily rely on any social function of poetry. The lyrical ‘I’ is like the preacher who leads in prayer, a prayer to a God who will not answer, and a prayer which can only be silently reproduced by the audience, i.e. the congregation of readers of poetry. This model of address is not triangular, as it does not even allow the reader of poetry to feel indirectly addressed through the address of the (undetermined) ‘you’. The direct addressee is inexistent or unable to respond and the reader or audience is only involved in the communication process as the passive witness of one-directional speech acts carried out by the lyrical ‘I’ alone (Schlaffer, 2012, pp. 23-24). The strict dividing line between genres that directly address a living person (like in a letter, or a speech) and indirect address in poetry is criticized by Johnson and more explicitly by Alpers, who discusses several examples of lyrical poems addressed to what Culler calls ‘empirical listeners’, or ‘to beings (like God) who are conceived as real’ (Alpers, 2013, p. 8). Alpers mentions the example of the many early modern occasional poems that are specifically addressed to a living person, but more central to his argument are the many forms of metonymic address in early modern poetry. The apostrophic address of the muses for instance can function very well in a metonymic relation with ‘something represented as contiguous

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to the speaker’, like the ‘real’ muses who surround the poet in his social environment (Alpers, 2013, p. 14). In early modern Europe, poets were highly dependent on the financial aid of patrons and/or political guardians. The invocation of the muses, as one of the most ossified forms of lyric address, could in some cases be read as an address to a prince, or to the aristocrats to which the poem is dedicated. 4 Waters (2003, p. 50) also states that lyric can be ‘deeply communicative’, but he immediately relates this to what he considers as one of the main concerns in lyric, namely the difficulty or impossibility of such a communication. In this book, Maaike Meijer states that apostrophic address should not necessarily be read as moments of poetic self-reflection and introspection, but could also open up to the social world and identify several social roles, both of the speaker and the addressed. Especially in occasional poetry, examples of which are discussed in this volume by Meijer, Paijmans, Pieters and van Dijk, we simply cannot ignore the way in which lyrical poetry had to communicate feelings and thoughts between the poet/speaker and an identifiable addressee, opening up a world of same-sex desire (Meijer), political reflection (Paijmans), deep religious feeling (Pieters) or lyrical correspondence (van Dijk).

Reading lyric In Theory of the Lyric, Culler refers on more than one occasion to Roland Greene’s def inition of the lyric. While he agrees wholeheartedly with Greene’s analysis of the poem’s ritualistic character, he does not seem to follow the latter’s conviction that single lyrical poems are best considered as fictional utterances. On this point, Culler seems to side with the author of Die Logik der Dichtung: for him, as for Käte Hamburger, poems make claims about the actual world rather than create or represent a fictional universe (Culler, 2015, p. 128). Our own focus on medieval and early modern poems makes it hard for us to conceive of lyrical texts as fictional constructs, given the predominance of religious and occasional poems in our selection. These poems do indeed make claims about actual situations in the empirical real, to which they also refer in an open and direct way. Still, for the present book the disagreement between Greene and Culler with respect to the fictionality of the lyric is of lesser importance than their consensus about its ritualistic nature. Their joint emphasis on the ritual character of poetry is clearly related to their attempts to correct current theories that, in their view, fail 4

See Alpers’ discussion of Spenser in Alpers, 2013, p. 19.

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to see the particularity of lyrical writing. In the case of Culler, this becomes clear in his repeated references to the shortcomings of both the Romantic and the New Critical paradigms of reading poetry (Culler, 2015, pp. 84-85) Both models, according to Culler, reduce the poem to a mode of expression, whether it be the poet who is seen to do the talking (the Romantic view) or a fictional persona, whose speech we are then expected to analyse (the New Criticism). Despite their representatives’ attempts not to reduce poems to textual messages, authorial intentions or thematic utterances, New Criticism seems to have installed a reading paradigm, Culler argues, that mistakenly treats poems as dramatic narratives (2015, p. 110). What this model presumes, Culler argues, is a way of reading that encourages us to ‘interpret [the lyric] by asking what is the situation of the speaker and attempt to make explicit what would lead someone to speak thus and feel thus’ (2015, p. 110). The same could be said of the Romantic expressive model. In the chapters that follow, the contributors to Lyric Address have attempted to sidestep the pitfalls that Culler identified in earlier standard reading methods of lyrical poetry and they have done so with a specific view to analyse the fascinating complex of ‘address’. As will become clear throughout the volume, the inspiration of Culler’s work has been central to our undertaking, but we hope that our use of it has not led to a mere repetition or straightforward application of his ideas. We have asked the contributors to pay specific attention to the historical specificity of the poems that they have chosen to analyse and to relate aspects of the apostrophic character of the lyrical texts at hand to the historical and social moments of their production. In doing so, we aim to investigate the continuities with respect to form (apostrophe and other forms of address) on the one hand and on the other hand the changing social and poetic functions of lyric address between the twelfth and the late eighteenth centuries, from the songs of the medieval mystic Hadewijch to the sentimentalist poems of Jacobus Bellamy. The way in which a medieval poet addresses a religious congregation through poetry (see Daróczi and van der Poel) of course will be very different from the way in which seventeenth-century sonnets discuss issues of deep religious feelings by means of the (indirect) address to God (see Pieters and van Dijk). The contributors to this book will pay special attention to these (dis)continuities with respect to the forms and functions of specific instances of lyric address. The social dimensions of the poems that address ‘real’ and ‘existent’ recipients will be at the fore too, as four of the ten contributions will discuss occasional poems. Our selection confirms Paul Alpers’ claim that pre-Romantic forms of address are less about the vocational self-identification of poets than Culler’s largely

Lyric Address: By Way of an Introduc tion

19

post-Romantic corpus seems to suggest.5 However, an investigation of how poems functioned in their specific social contexts should not prevent us from presenting a ‘ritualistic’ reading of the poems discussed. While ‘trying out and on their speech’, as Culler (2001) describes it, we hope to make clear how the poem indeed not only addresses explicitly mentioned objects and creatures in the poem itself, but also us, its readers.

Bibliography Alpers, P., ‘Apostrophe and the Rhetoric of Renaissance Lyric’, Representations, 122 (2013), pp. 1-22. Bronzwaer, W., Lessen in lyriek: nieuwe Nederlandse poëtica (Nijmegen: SUN, 1993). Burt, S. & D., Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Culler, J.D., Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London: Routledge, 1975). Culler, J.D., ‘Apostrophe’, in The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaka, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 135-154. Culler, J.D., ‘Apostrophe Revisited’, unpublished paper, delivered at the MLA convention at New Orleans, Louisiana, December 2001. Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Frye, N., Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). Greene, R., Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Hamburger, K., Die Logik der Dichtung (Stuttgart: Klett, 1968). Herrnstein Smith, B., Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1968). Herrnstein Smith, B., On the Margins of Discourse: Relation of Literature to Language (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1978). Hošek, C. & P. Parker, eds., Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). Hunter, W., ‘Lyric and Its Discontents’, Minnesota Review, 79 (2012), pp. 78-90. Johnson, W.R., The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982). Riffaterre, M., Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,1978).

5

Alpers, 2013, p. 11; see also the chapters in this book by Grootes, Pieters and Madelein.

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Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., ‘Poëzie als gebruiksartikel: gelegenheidsgedichten in de zeventiende eeuw’, in Historische letterkunde: facetten van vakbeoefening, ed. by M. Spies (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1984), pp. 75-92. Schlaffer, H., Geistersprache: Zweck und Mittel der Lyrik (München: Hanser, 2012) Spies, M., ‘Het epos in de 17e eeuw in Nederland: een literatuurhistorisch probleem’, Spektator, 7 (1977-1978), pp. 379-411, 562-594. van Alphen, E.J., L., Duyvendak & M. Meijer, Op poëtische wijze: een handleiding voor het lezen van poëzie (Bussum: Coutinho, 1996). Vossius, G.J., Poeticarum institutionum libri tres (Institutes of Poetics in Three Parts), ed. J. Bloemendal & E. Rabbie (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Waters, W., Poetry’s Touch: On Lyric Address (Ithaca, NY/ London: Cornell University Press, 2003). Waters, W., ‘Address’, in Princeton Encyclopedia for Poetry and Poetics, ed. by R. Greene et al., 4th ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012a), pp. 6-8. Waters, W., ‘Apostrophe’, in Princeton Encyclopedia for Poetry and Poetics, ed. by R. Greene et al., 4th ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012b), pp. 61-62.

Lied 1

Om grote minne in hoghen ghedachte willic wesen al mijn tijt, want si mi met haerre groter crachte mine nature maect soe wijt dat ic mijn wesen al verpachte in de hoghe gheboert van haren geslachte. Alse ic wille nemen vri delijt, soe werpet si mi n hare hachte.

2

Ic waent wel liden sonder scade dat i cin minnen dus ben bevaen, wilt si mi al die nauste pade van haren weghe doen verstaen. Alse ic mi wane rusten in hare ghenaden, verstoermt si mi met nuwen rade. Dits een wonderlec verslaen: soe si meer mint, soe si meer lade.

3

Dit es wonder groot te verstane, der minnen nemen ende hare gheven. Alse si mi gheeft troest te ontfane, so werdet vruchten ende beven. Der minne bidde ic ende mane dat si de edele herten spane dat si in minnen toen dus bleven, in nederen twifel, in hoghen wane.

4

Troest ende meslone in enen persoen: dats wesen van der minnen smake. Al levede die wise Salemoen, hi liete te ontbendene soe hoge sake. Wi ne werdens berecht in gheen sermoen: die sanc verhoget allen toen. Die tijt daer ic altoos na hake, hevet in hem selven noch den loon.

5

Haken, beiden, merren langhe na dien tijt, die selve es minne, doet versmaden vremden ghemanghe ende toent verlies ende grote ghewinne. Fierheit radet mi dat ic hanghe soe vaste in minne, dat ic bevanghe een wesen boven allen sinne. Die toen verhoget alle sanghe.

6

Die toen die alle sanghe verhoghet, dat meyn ic: minne in hare gewout. Ic segs een luttel, en doech ghetoeghet den vremden herten, die sijn cout ende cleine omme minne hebben ghedoghet. Si ne weten niet dat minne vertoeghet hare rike den fieren, die sijn stout ende in die minne werden ghesoeget.

7

Ghewout van minnen, die al verwint, die es te verstane onghehoert, ende bi in dole, verre bekent, ende een vrede die alle vreden stoert, den vrede die men in minnen ghewint, daer men hare wesen al met versint. Die wert ghesoeghet in hare confoert, die hem met minnen in minne dus mint.

8

Die dus in minnen wilt vervaen, hi ne sal ontsien noch cost no scade noch pine. Hi sal met allen staen int alrenauste van minnen rade ende met hoghen dienste sijn onderdaen, in al hare comen, in al hare gaen. Die dit op minnen trouwe dade, hi soude in minnen al minne volstaen.

Song 1

To dwell on great Love with high, noble thoughts is my desire for all my days, for she with irresistible force enlarges my nature in so many ways that I’ve pledged my whole being – such was the cost of joining her bloodline, the high birth I sought. Now when I freely seek Her embrace, She throws me in chains, my joy comes to nought.

2

I trust no lasting harm will be mine from this bondage Love has imposed, if she wants to show me hardships I’ll find when I walk her narrowest roads. Whenever I think she’ll be gracious and kind she grants me no rest, new tasks I’m assigned. Strange are her ways with the power she holds: the more she loves, the more firmly she binds.

3

The giving and taking of Love is beyond comprehension, it can’t be explained. Each time She gives comfort I respond with trembling and fear of some new pain. I pray and plead with Her to be strong and lure noble hearts who all their life long fully in tune with Love will remain, whether filled with hope or about to despond.

4

Comforter, punisher, all in one – the taste of Love is both bitter and sweet. If we could ask wise Solomon even he’d find this matter too deep. None of the sermons we hear can expound this song pitched higher than any known sound. The time I always longingly seek Will surely bring reward of its own.

5

Yearning, waiting, pining away for the time that is Love itself makes me shun companions who now appear strange, and shows how much I’ve lost and I’ve won. Boldness tells me to keep my sights aimed steadfastly on Love, so I may attain a state beyond understanding, a sound that soars far above the highest refrain.

6

The sound that soars above any song heard – by this I mean the power Love shows. I’ll say very little, for some can’t be stirred by any such thoughts; cold hearts that chose not to suffer for Love and preferred not to know how her riches are earned by only bold and fearless souls, lovingly nurtured and formed by Her.

7

The power of Love, Her all-conquering might defies understanding. Nearby when we stray, far off when in view, it is peace that blights every peace – a peace that is gained by living in Love and sheds a clear light on Her nature. Those who abide in Love’s loving care find solace for pain and all their longings for Love satisfied.

8

So he who hopes for Love’s saving grace should spare no effort, no cost, no loss. He must persevere through trials he’ll face in arduous labours for Love’s high cause, a loyal servant through difficult days, faithful whether She goes or stays. By such love and trust a true lover shows In himself Love’s unfailing ways.

1

Staying in Tune with Love Hadewijch, ‘Song 31’ (thirteenth century) Anikó Daróczi

This piece of lyrical poetry was written by a thirteenth-century mystic, the Brabantine beguine Hadewijch. The poem can be sung to the melody of the chanson S’Amours veut que mes chans remaigne by the trouvère Blondel le Nesle; 1 we can, therefore, consider it a song of love mysticism. It belongs to a collection of 45 poems (songs) on divine love (minne) most probably written for a small informal group of like-minded souls, as beguine communities are commonly described (see for instance Fraeters, 2014, p. 52). The beguine movement emerged in the twelfth century in a region that today covers parts of Northern France and the Southern Low Countries, stretching to Cologne in the East. It flourished throughout the thirteenth century in a period marked by the rise of alternative religious movements and practices and stemmed from a combination of Cistercian spirituality and bridal mysticism. Its members were religious women (mulieres religiosae) living an unregulated life. Many of them belonged to the higher social strata and were literate; they were familiar with both the religious tradition and courtly literature, and some could read Latin. According to the Latin Vitae that were written about the most eminent of these women, they were engaged in affective devotional practices, mostly under the leadership of a charismatic teacher.

1 In the earliest manuscript – MS ‘A’ – the songs are, as is often the case with medieval manuscripts containing lyrics – written out continuously, without being broken down into rhythmical units, that is in (rhyming) lines forming stanzas. In the so-called MS C, a late fourteenth-century manuscript, which is called Ritmata Haywigis, the texts are copied in verse form. For a period of time after the rediscovery in 1838 of the manuscripts containing the texts of Hadewijch, her lyrical works were called and published as liederen (songs). After the Hadewijch-scholar Jozef van Mierlo in his critical edition in 1910 had chosen to call them ‘poems in stanzas’, they were for decades mainly referred to as poems (see Hadewijch, 1910). Since the new edition of the texts by Fraeters & Willaert (Hadewijch, 2009), they have been called ‘songs’ again. I will follow this practice.

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Songs of a mystic teacher Hadewijch was such a magistra. Little is known about the historical Hade­ wijch, but some of the members of her community are mentioned by name in her letters: apart from the ‘dear child’ who is her addressee, there are Sara, Emma and Margriet.2 There may have been more friends and disciples, and we know about people whom she influenced and who knew her as a spiritual leader during her life.3 We can be sure in any case that Hadewijch had a small, well-defined immediate circle of intimae. 4 It is now generally agreed among Hadewijch scholars that the audience of her songs consisted of this intimate group of educated women who acknowledged her as a spiritual teacher. Hadewijch describes her acts of verbal expression in the Songs as spreken, zeggen and zingen (speaking, saying and singing),5 which implies the probability of direct oral and situational communication. Even though she was endowed with a great talent to write, she applied her abilities and knowledge exclusively to teaching her immediate audience, who were in need of her leadership and for whom she obviously felt responsible. She addressed them in order to teach them. Her mystical love songs are the expression of a series of experiences that run though her whole life as we know it from her writings – songs, visions and letters in prose and rhyming couplets. Song 31 is a challenging text not only because it voices the essence of the author’s mystical teaching, but also in view of the theme of lyric address which is central to this book. As will become clear, the second-person pronoun is completely absent from it, nor does the author use an obvious apostrophe. Yet, as we shall see, the charismatic mystic leader Hadewijch does address her well-defined audience in a direct yet complex way: direct because the immediate audience listens to a magistra, an exemplary ‘I’ who embodies an exemplary role, and complex because this ‘I’ sometimes withdraws from this role – becoming highly personal – and even lonely. In order to fully understand this mechanism, we will need to take into account the function of her writings in her small community and the characteristics of the sequence to which Song 31 belongs. 2 The names appear in Letter 25, see Hadewijch, 2016, pp. 301-303. 3 See Hadewijch’s List of the Perfect, an appendix attached to her Visions (Visioenen), in Hadewijch, forthcoming. A translation in Fraeters, 2014, pp. 66-69 (App. 3c). 4 On the communicative situation see Daróczi, 2007, on the immediate, limited audience see Fraeters, 2014. 5 On the strongly oral-aural character of Hadewijch’s writings see Daróczi, 2007.

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This song is one of the most enigmatic ones in the sequence, containing auditive and spatial images that are related to the most sophisticated passages of Hadewijch’s prose.6 It could be said that the text is too sophisticated to be sung as a song, but Hadewijch must have been convinced that her select community had a deep understanding of her teaching and that they were able to follow the masterful ways in which she gave voice to paradoxical (mystical) states of mind. The repetitive rhythmic pattern of the stanzas and the popular melody transmit words and word combinations which have intricate meanings. Mystical oppositions and paradoxes are typically centred around a striking musical metaphor. As we shall see below, Hadewijch – being a genuine mystic – shows her audience what can be shown and hides what inevitably has to remain hidden. But what can be revealed, and to whom? What must necessarily remain undisclosed? What can be heard explicitly, and what has to be ‘overheard’ by the chosen few alone?7 And why is her careful way of constructing mystical paradoxes relevant with respect to lyric address? These are some of the questions that I will address in the following close reading of Hadewijch’s text.

A poem about minne For reasons that will be clear in the course of the analysis and which are the result of the double role of the ‘I’ hinted at above and the difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘overhearing’, I will divide the text into two units. Because of the multifaceted meaning of the word minne (Love) in Hadewijch’s writings, I will use the original word wherever the analysis allows for it. Stanzas 1-5 The ‘I’ desires to dedicate all her days (all her time, al mijn tijt, 1: 2) to reflection on great love (hoge minne), for the power of love has enabled her to surpass herself, to enlarge her nature (1: 4). This state of mind could be perceived as freedom, but minne chains up the ‘I’. The ‘I’ now wishes to be born into a higher state of consciousness (stanza 1). The dungeon of minne which holds her captive cannot serve as a shelter for her suffering, when 6 Especially with Vision 13, but regarding the topos of ineffability, with Letters 19, 20, 22 and 28. 7 See Culler’s elaboration on ‘triangulated address’, following John Stuart Mill and Northrop Frye (Culler, 2015, p. 186).

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minne enables her to understand the ‘narrowest roads’ (nauste pade, 2: 4). Instead of being allowed to rest in minne’s grace, the (captive) ‘I’ has to experience its storms, namely being assigned new tasks (verstormt mi met nuwen rade, 2: 6). Undergoing both rest and storm and experiencing that the more minne loves, the greater its demands and constraints, is a bewildering, unfathomable wonder (wonder groot te verstane, 2: 7). The fact that minne can give and take and that consolation can turn into ‘trembling and fear’ (3: 4, vs. Psalm 54/55) is too hard to understand. At this moment the ‘I’ bursts out in prayer: she prays and pleads with minne to keep the ‘noble hearts’ (3: 6) in this wondrous state, that is, exposed to either of the oppositional circumstances expressed by the (spatial) opposition of low versus high (in nederen twifel, in hoghen wane, translated as ‘about to despond’ and ‘filled with hope’ 3: 8). Hadewijch describes this state of mind in stanza 3 as being in minnen toen, ‘to stay in tune with love’ (3: 7) (stanza 3). Stanza 4 changes the way in which these oppositions are envisioned: ‘comforter’ and ‘punisher’ are ‘all in one’, they are united in one person as it were (in enen persoen, 4: 1): what at first seemed mere oppositions now turn into paradox. This coexistence of oppositions seems to be the essence of minne. To suggest its ineffable nature, Hadewijch creates an image which seems to emerge from minnen toen in the previous stanza: a song that surpasses sound, ‘pitched higher than any known sound’ (die sanc verhoghet allen toen, 4: 6). Longing for the ‘time’ of minne itself, the mystic turns away from the things that are outside it, that appear strange to her (5: 3). In spite of seeing losses and pain, the ‘I’ should stay bold to attain ‘a state beyond understanding’ (een wesen boven alle sinne 5: 6), which is the essence of minne. The paradoxical state of keeping a constant eye on minne, clinging to minne as it were, while being imbued with its power (ic hanghe vaste in and ic bevanghe 5: 5-6) is reinforced by the previous stanza’s image of song ‘pitched higher than any known sound’ which now becomes ‘a sound / that soars far above the highest refrain’ (die toen verhoghet alle sanghe, 5: 8).8 In the first five stanzas the first person singular ‘I’ and its inflections dominate. This passive ‘I’ seems to long for peace but is confronted again and again with the cruel, even aggressive minne, referred to as ‘she’. Up to 8 The image of song and tone (especially in this context) has its roots in the medieval cosmology and theory of music (the angels of the Empyrean heaven produce music), see Hadewijch, 2009, commentary to Song 31, p. 246. On the paradoxical states of mind of Hadewijchian ‘jubilus’ and the musical context of jubilus, see Daróczi 2007, chapter 6. On the interpretation of the musical imagery of stanzas 4 and 5, see Daróczi, 2007, pp. 316-318.

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29

stanza 3 there is nothing that we could, on the level of pronouns, consider as an address to an audience: the ‘I’ simply talks about the way in which she experiences love’s torment and any form of ‘you’ or ‘thou’ is absent. In the second half of stanza 3, however, we seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough when the ‘I’ addresses her prayer to minne and other protagonists enter the scene, the ‘noble hearts’ urged by minne to stay in tune with her (minne). In stanza 4, a general ‘we’ appears in which the ‘I’ and the ‘noble hearts’ seem to be united in their inability to grasp the miracle by rational explanation: ‘none of the sermons we hear can expound / this song …’ (4: 5-6). Then the ‘I’ returns to her lonely state. Stanzas 6-8 Hadewijch starts stanza 6 by returning to the musical image on which stanza 5 ended: ‘a sound that soars far above any song heard’ (6: 1) – seemingly in order to start to explain it: this sound is ‘the power Love shows’ (in the original formulated as minne in her power: minne in hare ghewout, 6: 2). But then she rejects any further explanation, pointing out that it would be vain to even try, for ‘some can’t be stirred by any such thoughts’ – these are the strangers, the vremde herten (6: 4) who have not endured enough for minne. They do not share in the experience of ‘bold and fearless souls’ (6: 7) who are nurtured by minne (stanza 6). Hadewijch now introduces a new paradox to convey how that experience, preparing it by first blurring the difference between ‘nearby’ and ‘far off’ (7: 3): The state of being nurtured in the comfort of minne’s embrace is ‘a peace that blights every peace’ (een vrede die alle vreden stoert, 7: 4). This penultimate stanza ends in a mantralike incantation of the word minne: die hem met minnen in minne dus mint (7: 8, those who ‘abide in Love’s loving care […] for Love satisfied’) (stanza 7). Hadewijch finally gives a general summary: whosoever hopes to enjoy minne’s grace (in the original: to be imbued, taken in by minne: die dus in minnen wilt bevaen, 8: 1) should spare no effort. With this statement she gently reaches back to stanzas 1 and 2, where she had introduced the theme of surpassing herself and enlarging her nature while also being captivated by minne, and to stanza 5 with its the image of keeping a constant eye on minne in order to be imbued by her (5: 5-7).9 It is only in stanza 6 that Hadewijch drops the ‘I’, as she refuses to continue talking about the essence of minne – she actually refuses to address 9 On these spatial metaphors of Hadewijch as expressions of mystical incarnation and the role of the female body, see Daróczi, 2007, especially chapters 5 and 7.

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her audience, at least the part of the audience that consists of ‘cold hearts’ (6: 4) as opposed to the ‘bold and fearless souls’ of the same stanza (6: 7). Both groups are subsumed by the third person plural, ‘they’. This seems to be the only moment in the song when the ‘I’ explicitly addresses the song to someone. It is characteristic for Hadewijch that she interrupts herself: her silences are often addressed to those who according to her do not understand what she is talking about. In stanza 8 the pronoun transitions do culminate by the introduction of a third person singular ‘he’, which, as we understand from the repetition of the condition associated with it – being ‘lovingly nurtured’ by minne and abiding in her ‘loving care’ (6: 8 resp. 7: 7) – generally refers to ‘bold and fearless souls’.

Apostrophic voice and mystic address in the Songs As we have seen in the analysis above, the dominant word in Song 31 is minne. It occurs 23 times (987 times in the 45 songs).10 Minne forms the groundwork of Hadewijch’s entire œuvre. First of all, it designates divine love, standing for Christ. But minne also means love that the soul feels for God, and consequently the love connecting the members of the community. It is often rendered by spatial metaphors – a landscape with peaks and abysses, bottomless depths and supreme heights. Related to the transitive verb minnen (to love), minne of course also connects subject and object. Hadewijch sometimes addresses even the members of her group, her friends, as minne. Minne is not only continuously evoked in all its possible forms and functions, but often also in the most intense moments, by means of the clearest form of apostrophe: the lyrical ‘I’ calls out for minne, complains and prays to her, exhorts her. She is Lady Minne to whom the ‘I’ chants her pain and joy, her fears and hopes.11 To understand the position of minne in the Songs, we should look at the last piece of the sequence, Song 45. It can be regarded as a ritualistic, almost liturgical song. Each of the five stanzas contain Latin words taken from the sequence Mariae praeconio, to the melody of which it can be sung. Dutch and Latin form an organic whole in grammatically correct sentences. The rhythm of the stanzas is marked by the passionate exclamation 10 See the introduction to the edition by Frank Willaert & Veerle Fraeters to Hadewijch, 2009, p. 50. 11 This is clearly the model Hadewijch takes from the profane courtly chanson. On the ‘mystique courtoise’, see Newman. More recently, see Hadewijch, 2009 and Fraeters, 2014.

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‘oh’ (ay) in each stanza’s first and fourth lines. In her excellent book on the doxological language of the liturgy, Catherine Pickstock calls this phenomenon a manifestation of a passionate doxology that appears in the intense moments of apostrophic invocation (Pickstock, 1998, p. 198).12 The exclamation ay minne occurs five times and the invocation is repetitive.13 In Hadewijch’s last words in the Songs – after having passionately invoked minne and expressing her hope that she will fully satisfy her whether ‘in hunger or in satiety’ – she consecrates her whole life to her, unde mori, until death.14 Even if we only take into account the moments when Hadewijch emphasizes the invocation of minne with the passionate ay as in Song 45, minne is addressed in 10 of the 45 songs,15 sometimes more than once within a single song. However, Hadewijch also created passionate intensification by using repetition resulting in a litany or incantation. Pickstock calls this phenomenon a ‘liturgical stammer’ closely related to apostrophe (1998, p. 198). I only quote such a moment, from Song 37, which can be sung to the melody of the hymn Jesu dulcis memoria.16 Here, using apostrophic, invocative language, the ‘I’ is taken up in a kind of dialogue with minne, interpreting as it were minne’s reactions to the speech act of the ‘I’:17 Since you, love, are able to do all with love, Grant me, through love, the fruition of what enhances love.18

To which the immediate reaction is interpreted by the ‘I’: ‘Love wills that the beloved demands all love with love’ (Minne wilt dat minne al minnen met minnen mane, 11: 1-2). The speech act of the ‘I’ in the Songs is carried by the dynamic of an ongoing dialogue directed to minne, the source and the desire of the ‘I’ who addresses a ‘thou’ while being aware of ‘thou’’s presence 12 On the doxological mode of speech, see Pickstock, 1998, pp. 192-196 (‘The Apostrophic Voice’). 13 Hadewijch, 1998, pp. 288-291. 14 Hadewijch, 1998, pp. 290-291. In MS ‘A’, the earliest manuscript (see note 2) we have bene mori, which changes the meaning of the last lines: ‘and die a good death’. 15 Songs 14, 18, 25, 35, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45. It may be one of the reasons why the sequence of songs was conceived in this order: the intense invocation of minne is developing into a fortissimo towards the end of the collection. 16 For melody and analysis, see Hadewijch, 2009, pp. 380-381, 407-408. 17 In the following quotations I made use of the translation by van Baest (1998). 18 ‘Sint ghi al, minne, met minne vermoghet, / ghevet mi doer minne dies minne hoeghet: / te ghebrukene doer uwe hoochste doghet’ (10: 1-3).

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(Pickstock, 1998, p. 198). By merely uttering the word minne, Hadewijch creates a mystical space in which she speaks about her own very personal experience (minne) to those (minne) with whom she is connected in minne, and offers her own speech act to minne. Minne is the word that creates and sustains the ritualistic dimension of Hadewijch’s songs. She performs them in a voice that we can identify as the voice that Pickstock calls ‘apostrophic’.19 Like all of her songs, Song 31 is also carried by this apostrophic voice. In this light we can now consider it as a variation or extension of Culler’s ‘triangulated address’, i.e. address ‘by means of address to someone else’. Culler quotes Northrop Frye to explain the phenomenon: the poet, as in a religious ‘I-Thou’ relationship ‘turns his back on his listeners, though he may speak for them and though they may repeat some of his words after him’ (Culler, 2015, p. 186). Whereas in Culler’s interpretation addressing someone else (a personified abstraction among others) is a means to address the audience, Hadewijch here lends as it were the lyrical ‘I’’s voice to the abstraction – minne – and reinforces her address to her audience through that voice. As I pointed out in the introduction to this chapter, Song 31 can be sung to a melody of a French chanson – quite often very popular melodies of strophic lyric poetry served as models or sources of inspiration for Hadewijch’s songs.20 The repetitive rhythmic patterning which Culler considers, along with the triangulated address, ‘as a crucial aspect of the ritualistic dimension of lyric’ (Culler, 2015, p. 186) acts as a vessel for the outpouring of deeply personal and visionary experiences that were the source of Hadewijch’s mystical teaching.21 Hadewijch’s songs can be – and most probably were – performed. If we take this into account, we can state that in all of Hadewijch’s songs – and therefore also in Song 31 – there is an ‘I’ addressing her words to a ‘thou’ in a concrete hic et nunc,22 whether the second person pronoun is present or not. 19 A term used in Pickstock, 1998, pp. 192-198. 20 What we know at the present stage of the Hadewijch-scholarship about the musical material that influenced her when writing/composing the songs is included in the 2009 edition of her Songs in which, thanks to the musicologist Louis-Peter Grijp, almost half of the songs are given the melodies to which they were sung and to which we now can sing them. Hadewijch’s songs are contrafacts of trouvère songs, Latin hymns, and sequences. 21 On the mechanism of the way melody and words become one, see Daróczi, 2007 and 2015. Culler quotes Paul Valéry who says that most of his poems were born ‘from the unexpected presence in my mind of a certain rhythm’, and T.S. Eliot stating that a poem ‘may tend to realize itself first as a particular rhythm before it reaches expression in words’. Pre-existing form – that is rhythms and melodies – have the power to trigger words (Culler, 2015, p. 137). 22 This brings us to a major difference between Hadewijch’s songs of love mysticim and their models, the secular love songs of the trouvѐres: whereas the trouvѐre only asks his public to listen

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The lyrical presides in the majority of the song collection; ‘I’ and its inflections are present in 39 of the 45 songs. The addressed ‘thou’ are those who listen to the lyrical ‘I’’s teachings about minne in a communicative situation that is created by the devotion to minne. In this sense, the ‘default mode’ (Culler, 2015, p. 191) of Hadewijch’s poetry is quite simple – a spiritual teacher inspired by her own mystical experience who speaks/sings to an audience in her role as spiritual leader. The psychological, theological, communicational and therefore poetical/ rhetorical situation is of course much more sophisticated than that. Hadewijch’s use of the lyrical ‘I’ is seen in the Hadewijch scholarship as the presentation of herself as ‘exemplary lover: exemplary in the sense that those she addresses can recognize in her story the stage at which they find themselves’.23 It is also agreed that the exhortations of the ‘I’ are exemplary too: ‘She herself does the things she advises the others to do: she practices what she preaches.’24 But the ‘I’ of the songs is not simply the magistra Hadewijch who in turning to ‘thou’ invites her friends and disciples to identify with her in her quest for minne. The speaker of the songs often seems to withdraw from this mirror-role of the exemplary ‘I’ which I shall from now on call a magisterial ‘I’. At those moments she stands – and speaks/sings – in a discursive space where she cannot really be followed and joined, experiencing a state she can only hint at or suggest, but not fully describe. There is an occasional distinct sense of this hidden, individuated ‘I’: the mystical ‘I’, the driving force of her whole mystical œuvre. As we shall see below, this act of withdrawal belongs to the magisterial performance. Which ‘I’ is actually speaking can only be determined by considering the context. The magisterial ‘I’ is sometimes clearly visible, especially when ‘I’ easily shifts to ‘we’, while the other, individuated, mystical ‘I’ mostly remains alone – but, whether experiencing the presence of minne or its absence, she remains with and in minne.25 to his lament, Hadewijch who writes and sings from the wellspring of her own experience, aims at the emotional involvement of her followers, at an identification with the ‘I’ (Willaert, 1984, p. 304). 23 About Hadewijch’s way of using the pronouns in her Songs, see Willaert, 1984, pp. 305-333. The quotation above is translated into English in Mommaers, 2004, p. 50. On Hadewijch’s ‘I’ as exemplary lover and her voice as the voice of a community, see van Mierlo, 1943 and Schottmann, 1973. 24 Willaert quoted in Mommaers, 2004, p. 50. 25 In three of the six songs from which the ‘I’ is absent (Songs 4, 5 and 20), Hadewijch uses the third person pronoun as a kind of idealized ‘I’ which stands for a state that she herself seeks to achieve.

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‘Thou’ in these songs – referring to the members of the community – is differentiated too. Hadewijch appears to use ‘we’ when she speaks to ‘thou’. This use of ‘we’ conflates with the magisterial ‘I’ – she uses ‘we/us’ in almost half of the songs. It is indeed surprisingly rare in lyrical poetry that the audience is addressed directly (see Culler, 2015, p. 191), but in the case of Hadewijch one of the reasons why ‘thou’ is rarely designated (only in about one fifth of the songs!) is that the ‘I-thou’ community is existentially given and that the bonds are strong and evident. In other words, there is no need to explicitly enunciate ‘thou’, because the community is addressed in and through every speech act of the ‘I’, just as minne is addressed in the apostrophic voice. Again, as in the case of the invocation of minne, the structure of the collection of the Songs is worth considering. They may not have been conceived in the very order in which they are assembled in the surviving manuscripts, but we can almost be sure that the first and the last songs function as the opening and ending of the sequence. Like in Song 45, Song 1 has a mixture of Dutch and Latin. In Song 1 ‘thou’ (ghi) is repeatedly addressed in the emotionally charged second part of each stanza, four lines which are structured by the Latin: ‘Ay vale, vale millies / […] / Si dixero, non satis est’, probably drawn from the sequences of the church. The lines are rendered by Marieke Baest as ‘Ah! Fare you well, fare you well! / […] / If I say it a thousand times it will not be sufficient.’26 Hadewijch addresses ‘thou’ directly in elevated, liturgical language. The quotation below is from stanza 1: – Ay vale vale milies – All of you who in the new season – Si dixero non satis est – Would be glad for the sake of love.27

She repeats the address – also directly – in Dutch, always with another exhortation, while the Latin address remains unchanged. The two speech modes – doxological, liturgical Latin and lyrical Dutch – in which the lyrical ‘I’ addresses ‘thou’, intensify each other. In the opening of the sequence of songs, Hadewijch thus places ‘thou’ as the constant addressee of all of her songs. With this ritualistic, liturgical gesture that is mirrored in the invocation of minne in the last Song, Hadewijch creates the frame of address in her Songs. 26 Hadewijch, 1998, p. 294. 27 ‘– Ay vale, vale millies – / ghi alle die nuwen tide / – si dixero, non satis est – / omme minne wilt wesen blide.’ Hadewijch, 1998, p. 43.

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The jubilating community of the ‘bold and fearless souls’ We have to keep this frame of address in mind when discussing the way in which Hadewijch uses the shifts in personal pronouns to articulate her act of address. In the second part of Song 31, Hadewijch interrupts her singing because some people (‘they’) would not understand her. It seems that the ‘thou’ to whom she addresses her words is referred to by means of the third person plural. This ‘they’ is divided into ‘cold hearts that chose not to suffer for Love’ (6: 4-5) on the one hand and the ‘bold and fearless souls, lovingly nurtured and formed by Her’ (6: 7) on the other. Boldness ( fierheid) in Hadewijch’s mysticism is a virtue, and can be related to self-esteem. It is born from the awareness of having been addressed by and initiated in minne.28 In this sense it is related to the medieval concept of memoria: the soul is conscious of its eternal existence in God. In Song 37, a powerful, hymnal invocation of minne, Hadewijch interprets the will of minne: ‘love wants all love from those gentle and proud /And that their actions are in concord with love, / And that they jubilate with mind [met memorien jubileren] / And rejoice in their fruition of love’.29 In four lines we have here a summary of Song 31: being in concord with minne can be interpreted as being in tune with her, and to jubilate is to experience ‘comforter, punisher, all in one’ – that is ‘the taste of Love’ (4: 1-2), available to the bold souls. In Hadewijch’s vocabulary ‘jubilation’ has a specific meaning which is clearly explained in her writings, especially in her Songs. In Song 5, jubilation is the understanding of ‘how love smites and embraces in one handling’ (5: 3-7).30 According to Song 3, one has to accept ‘pain and joy in one handling’ as equally good: this is how minne teaches one to jubilate ‘and she initiates him into all her wonders’ (8: 5-8).31 This ‘wonder’ in Song 31 is, as we have seen above, the coexistence of both comfort and punishment (4: 1). This is what staying in tune with love means: accepting the paradoxical state of mind, which is masterfully depicted in the first five stanzas. This jubilation is at the same time a shared state of mind or a shared striving of the small circle around Hadewijch. The highly passionate Letter 532 28 Hadewijch, 1998, pp. 39-40. Van Baest translates fierheid as ‘fierceness of love’. 29 Hadewijch, 1998, p. 255. Here too, like in Song 31, I changed the word ‘fierce’ into ‘proud’. See note 1. 30 Hadewijch, 1998, p. 65. 31 Hadewijch, 1998, p. 57. 32 Hadewijch, 2016, pp. 52-55.

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informs us about a conflict within the community. Hadewijch repeatedly exhorts the ‘dear child’, whom she addresses in the first sentence as ‘dearly beloved’ (suete minne), to plunge with her entire soul in God and keep all things ‘which are not Love (minne)’ at bay. Dwelling in the space of minne is the only way to endure the suffering inflicted upon them by those who try to break their companionship. The suffering is even harder to endure because those who are now trying to ‘undermine us here’ have earlier been chosen to ‘jubilate with us in our Beloved’. In this letter, those who ‘jubilate’ are distinguished dramatically from the ‘false brethren’. This letter clearly alludes to a concrete and probably serious conflict and uses especially harsh words to designate those who no longer belong to their community. Hadewijch usually refers to those who are outside the circle of the chosen few as ‘strangers’ (vreemden) as opposed to the ‘friends’ (vrienden), that is, she distinguishes between those who have not experienced minne and those who have or who strive to experience the state of mind that she describes as jubilation. Again, in Song 31, these are the ‘cold hearts’, whereas the friends are the ‘noble hearts’ (3: 5) or ‘bold, fearless souls’ (6: 7). They form the community of those who can jubilate in minne. For our deeper understanding of Song 31, it is important to take into account two aspects of the term ‘jubilation’. First, like vision and prophecy, it is one of the charismatic gifts the mulieres religiosae are generally endowed with: jubilation means rejoicing, showing and feeling great joy. Hadewijch gives jubilation a richer meaning by including the state of suffering and pain in the experience. Secondly, the word has musical connotations (the wordless song of joy, most often a long melisma sung on the second ‘a’ of the ‘Alleluia’), and can be regarded as designating the apophatic practices of mystics. We can see being ‘in tune with Love’, with all its augmentations in the double image of the song and the sound. Jubilation is staying in tune with minne and hearing ‘the song pitched higher than any known sound’ (4: 6) and ‘a sound that soars above any song heard’ (6: 1).

From love song to sermon Hadewijch has transformed (besides popular Latin hymns and sequences) secular French love songs into mystical love songs in her own mother tongue. She establishes, as soon as she starts to speak/sing, a repetitive form which remains stable while the discourse proceeds. There is an important difference between her model, the chanson courtoise and her

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song. The average number of stanzas in the courtly chanson is five. That of Hadewijch’s songs is around nine, with eight stanzas in Song 31. Given the mystical character of songs sung in a mystical community, a certain length was evidently necessary in order to elicit an emotional (and intellectual) response. The constant form has the power to order, to segment, to help recall, to allow to feel – with a bodily knowing – the rhythm of the content too. Singing to a ‘thou’ guided by a tune that singer and audience already know makes the act of address a strong, lively event. Those who attend to or share in the performance ‘know’ where they are in the phrase or larger segment; their unconscious expectations are regulated by breathing and the senses, the most elementary of bodily functions. Melody and rhyme pattern serve as points of orientation, whether the song is performed in the presence of the members of the community or read in private meditation. As if moved by the tension created by the oppositions described in the first two stanzas, the ‘I’ turns to minne herself, uttering a prayer: I pray and plead with Her to be strong and lure noble hearts who all their life long fully in tune with Love will remain. (3: 5-7)

As we have seen, the word minne, due to the apostrophic voice that utters it, has the power to invoke its presence. Here we have an apostrophe hidden behind the performance that the ‘I’ acts out – the ‘I’ is double-acting here. The unheard prayer is: ‘Minne, I pray you to urge all noble hearts to continue living in tune with you.’ The demand directed to her audience might be: ‘Listen to my prayer (and understand that I am praying for us all: for myself and for you).’ It is by the power of the act of praying that the successive oppositional states melt into one – the state of jubilation is reached – and a musical image is being born from the phrase that stands for the paradoxical, jubilating state of mind: being in tune with love. The proof that the prayer has been heard by minne is that the musical image now turns into a more enigmatic one (a song ‘pitched higher than any known sound’, 4:6). Instead of releasing the tension of this enigma, Hadewijch intensifies it with yet another spatial image, suggesting the necessity to break through the limitations of human existence. In my view we are again witnessing – in the hic et nunc of the performance – a communication with the divine dimension. ‘Boldness’ ( fierheid), the virtue which we have discussed above, appears here, only once and only in the Songs, as an allegorical figure who counsels

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the ‘I’.33 This almost visionary figure addresses the ‘I’: ‘Boldness tells me to keep my sight aimed / steadfastly on Love (…)’ (5: 5-6). This might sound as follows: ‘Keep your eyes aimed on Love so you may attain a state beyond understanding.’ The divine exhortation that suggests the annihilation of human perimeters blows up the boundaries of the lines’ logical segments. The words spill over the limitation given by form: the enjambment prepares the inversion of the image of ‘a sound / that soars far above the highest refrain’. This is the end of stanza 5. Actually, it is the end of the song itself, if we take into account the average number of the chanson form (familiar to the audience) and the structure of Song 31 itself. At the end of stanza 5, the highest possible tone is reached with the image of a song at supreme heights, out of reach. But then the ‘I’ continues. Hadewijch first repeats the image, as if wishing to prolongate the tone. This repetition has the role of dividing two speech modes. The author turns her back on the song-form (this can only be demonstrated by referring to the original text, with the way the enjambment is applied: as if form and content lose touch with each other). The moment of change in the logical rhythm and the refusal to elaborate on the enigmatic image standing for ‘love in her sovereignty’ coincide with the moment when Hadewijch demonstratively drops the first person singular. She continues in a speech mode she has announced in stanza 4, after the prayer to minne: the wonder could not even be unravelled by the wise Solomon, for no sermon can expound it: If we could ask wise Solomon even he’d find this matter too deep. None of the sermons we hear can expound this song pitched higher than any known sound. (4: 3-6)

By addressing her audience with ‘I say very little’ (to you, here) in 6: 3, she is exactly doing what the speech mode in a sermon – such as Solomon’s – would allow her or rather would not disallow her: to explain the essence of minne.34 33 Other key concepts (love, reason, longing, gratification, steadfastness etc.) appear regularly as allegorical figures in the songs; see the ‘Introduction’ to Hadewijch, 2009, pp. 53-54. 34 Hadewijch refers to Solomon in Song 1 too, also in the context of the tension between understanding and experience: ‘Yes, Salomon advises us / Against the attempt to sound / The things above our strength, / Or to become involved with /Things that are beyond us /In order to know them by experience, / But we should leave true love / To make us free and bind us /

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The sound that soars above any song heard – by this I mean the power Love shows. I’ll say very little, for some can’t be stirred by any such thoughts […] (6: 1-4)

By dividing Song 31 into these two main parts, Hadewijch creates a lyrical poem or song and a sermon in one. We turn here again to Culler’s explanation of triangulated address. Following John Stuart Mill and Northrop Frye, he distinguishes lyric, which is ‘overheard’, from eloquence, which is ‘heard’. Hadewijch in Song 31 performs a dual utterance that is both overheard (a song – lyric) and heard (sermon – eloquence). In our first approach of the text, we divided it into stanzas 1-5 and stanzas 6-8 (see ‘A poem on minne’ above). The song consists of five stanzas and comes to a highly mystical end, evoking an unfathomable auditive and spatial image in which jubilation is overheard. There are two other moments to be overheard: a prayer and a moment of communication with minne, which the audience can witness while it is performed within the song. The song ends in tension. But ‘overhearing’ the mystic message has the potential to offer access to a higher understanding, to visualize an abstract image (that of sound and refrain/song in stanzas 4 and 5/6) which it would not be possible to grasp by reason. The sermon consists of eight stanzas – the entire Song 31 – with a centre wherein space and sound form a union above comprehension (stanzas 4 and 5 taking also structurally place in the very centre of the 8 stanzas: 3-2-3). The central image of song and sound causes intellectual tension which is gradually released as Hadewijch switches to a register wherein the eloquent discourse is less hard to grasp. Here she puts ‘them’ at ease: the cause of the lack of the capacity to understand what she means is that the experience itself is above comprehension – both understanding and language fall short, as she herself has just demonstrated by having interrupted herself. The song is sung by the mystical, individuated ‘I’ and requires intuitive understanding or overhearing, while the sermon – spoken by the magisterial ‘I’ – is accessible to those who use reason in their quest: those who hear. The latter are given an eloquent sermon on ineffability, much like some of the (treatise-like) letters of Hadewijch on the subject, where the addressee is introduced to mystical paradoxes, abstract – mostly spatial

Ay vale vale milies – Those that towards the decree of high love – Si dixero non satis est – Never cease ascending, step after step. Song 1, stanza 1, in Hadewijch, 1998, p. 47.

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– images, and often inconceivable metaphors.35 Most of these prose texts contain passages in which Hadewijch elaborates on the lack of the capacity of human language to put into words what is beyond language. The motif of ‘not understanding’ occurs in both the ‘song’ and the ‘sermon’ (stanzas 3, 4 and 6) and takes up different forms. I have discussed the modes Hadewijch uses to address different kinds of audiences: those who know minne by experience and would intuitively understand what the lyrical ‘I’ is talking about, and those who are excluded from this level of mystical communication. But we can be aware of another level of communication as well, which runs through the whole text and which becomes audible only as a kind of overtone, or visible as a watermark on a fine sheet of paper. It is the sacred communication between the mystical ‘I’ and minne, manifesting itself not only in the prayer that the ‘I’ performs, but also in the consequences of the veiled way she addresses minne: it is as if she receives the central image depicting the miracle in a vision. Minne addresses the ‘I’ by giving her the paradoxical, immeasurable image of sound raising above all song and song raising above all sound. Finally, after she has re-established and reinforced the existence of the small community being nurtured in the comfort of minne, the incantation can be interpreted as a response addressed by the community itself to minne. Viewing it from this perspective, Song 31 is a liturgical event. The ‘I’ performs a song on minne to the community, prays to minne for the community, minne responds to the chosen few (cf. ‘he who has ears let him hear’, Matthew 11: 15), the ‘I’ gives a sermon on the ineffability of the vision received, and the ceremony ends in a communal ritual addressed to minne.

Bibliography Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Daróczi, A., Ende hier omme swighic sachte (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2002). Daróczi, A., Groet gheruchte van dien wondere. Spreken, zwijgen en zingen bij Hadewijch (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Daróczi, A., ‘The Coherence of Content and Form in Hadewijch: The Importance of a Modal Approach’, in Heroes and Saints. Studies in Honour of Katalin Halácsy, ed. by Z. Simonkay & A. Nagy (Budapest: MondAt, 2015), pp. 163-186.

35 See especially Letters 20, 22, 28. For a detailed analysis of these texts, see the last chapter of Daróczi, 2007.

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Fraeters, V., ‘Visioenen als literaire mystagogie. Stand van zaken en nieuwe inzichten over de functie van Hadewijchs Visioenen’, Ons Geestelijk Erf , 73 (1999), pp. 111-130. Fraeters, V., ‘Prelude: Hadewijch of Brabant and the Beguine Movement’, in A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by E.A. Andersen et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 49-72. Hadewijch, Strophische Gedichten, ed. by J. van Mierlo (Leuven: Keurboekerij, 1910). Hadewijch, Poetry of Hadewijch, transl. Marieke van Baest (Leuven: Peeters, 1998). Hadewijch, Liederen, ed. by V. Fraeters & F. Willaert (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2009). Hadewijch, Visioenen, ed. by V. Fraeters & F. Willaert (Groningen: Historsiche Uitgeverij, forthcoming). Hadewijch, The Complete Letters, ed. by A. Daróczi & P. Mommaers (Leuven: Peeters, 2016). Milhaven, J.G., Hadewijch and Her Sisters: Other Ways of Loving and Knowing (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993). Mommaers, P., Hadewijch. Writer – Beguine – Love Mystic (Leuven: Peeters, 2004). Newman, B., ‘La Mystique Courtoise. Thirteenth-Century Beguines and the Art of Love’, in From Virile Woman to Woman Christ. Studies in Medieval Religious Literature, ed. by Barbara Newman (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 284-292. Pickstock, C., After Writing. On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1998). Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, transl. Paul Rorem (Mahwah, NJ: The Paulist Press, 1987). Schottmann, J., ‘Autor und Hörer in den Strof ischen Gedichten Hadewijchs’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 102 (1973), 20-37. van Mierlo, J., ‘Hadewijchiana’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 17 (1943), 179-144 Willaert, F., De poëtica van Hadewijch in de Strofische Gedichten (Utrecht: HES, 1984).

Lied 1

O cranc, onseker, broosch engien, snee of glas als dijn nature, niet en sech: ‘Dit sal ghescien’, want du ne hebs morghen tijt no ure. Waer vinstu eenighe creature die ghedure jeghen de doot, die commen moet? Al eist so, datti hier ghebuere dijns weinschens cuere, de doot die werpt di onder voet.

refr. O vroilic herte, solazelic bloet, Egidius, di sal men claghen ende rauwe draghen tallen daghen ende dijns ghewaghen. So wie dijns plaghen, hem maeches wanhaghen datti de doot so vrouch bestoet. Maer wat God wille, elc neimt vor goet. 2

Nemmermeer so ne wanic zien dijnre vroilicheit parture Musike ende alle melodien minnestu met herten pure. Nu bestu doot. Elc vroilic truere. O Avonture, du slachts der hebben ende der vloet. Du gheifs hem tzoet, die staen na tzure entu best stuere hem die van aerde minnen tzoet. (refr.)

3

Wie sullen nu dijnre vruechden plien, Egidius, stervelike guere? Menich edel musisien prees dinen vois ende dijn tenuere. Nu bidt vor ons – want du best vuere in schemels duere – dat ons God neme in sijn behoet ende dat hier elc also labuere eer therte scuere, dat wij ontgaen der hellen gloet. (refr.)

Song 1

O brittle, infirm creature, man, like fragile glass or fleeting snow, never say ‘This is my plan’ – what each day brings you cannot know. Are not all living things laid low by the blow of death, which has to come someday? Though all you’ve wished for you may own here below, by death you will be swept away.

refr. O merry soul, beloved by all, Egidius, you will be mourned by friends forlorn forevermore; our hearts are torn with grief. Death bore you off before your time, we say; but God’s own will, not ours, prevails through good and ill.

2

Nevermore will I see a friend so full of mirth as you. Sweet songs you loved, sang cheerfully and with a heart unspoiled and true. Now you are dead. Let joy die too. O Fortune rude, so like the tide with ebb and flood: you give sweet things where sour seems due, and harshly you treat those who love the sweet and good. (refr.)

3

Now who will cheer us in your place, Egidius, brief, fragrant flower? Many fine musicians praised your voice, your tenor’s haunting power. Now that you’ve gone on before through heaven’s door, pray God that he may guard our ways, that each until his final hour may please Him more, and so escape hell’s searing flames. (refr.)

2

O Brittle Infirm Creature Anonymous (Gruuthuse MS), ‘Song’ (c. 1400) Clara Strijbosch

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, a number of texts and melodies were created in Flemish Bruges which were all collected in what subsequently came to be known as the Gruuthuse manuscript. The first-known possessor and patron of this collection, Louis of Gruuthuse, probably had little to do with its creation: the manuscript was added to his library after 1474, quite a few decades after the manuscript’s origin.1 The collection is considered to be the product of a group of Bruges music lovers, perhaps a brotherhood of upwardly mobile artisans who provided musical and theatrical assistance at masses and ceremonies. Its authors or collectors cannot be identified, although some names are revealed in the acrostics that can be spotted in the manuscript.2 Some of them might refer to authors of Gruuthuse texts, for example Jan Moritoen, furrier and councillor, and Jan van Hulst, messenger, illuminator, and organizer of cultural events. Jan van Hulst was also the primary architect of a brotherhood which developed into the first chamber of rhetoric in Flanders. The Gruuthuse manuscript consists of three parts: a book of prayers, a Songbook containing 147 songs including musical notation, and a third part containing allegorical poems.3 ‘O brittle infirm creature’ is the hundredth poem in the Songbook. Like most texts in the Songbook, it is set to music in stroke notation, a musical notation in small vertical strokes without rhythmic specification and without matching text placement (de Loos, 2010, p. 115). It is, therefore, no small feat to decipher the melody, but it is clear that ‘O brittle infirm creature’ was meant to be performed musically. It is a song.

1 Signature, The Hague KB, 79 K 10. On the moment on which Louis of Gruuthuse added the manuscript to his library, see Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, p. 119. 2 On dating, localization, authors and context, see the introduction in Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol.1, pp. 151-218, especially pp. 191-218 on Jan van Hulst and the circle in which the manuscript originated. A useful English introduction to the manuscript is Willaert, 2010. 3 Acrostics in the Gruuthuse manuscript are mentioned and elucidated in Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol.1, pp. 151-155.

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In this song, three different addressees are invoked with an ‘O’ apostrophe within 26 lines. 4 The poem opens with one: ‘O brittle infirm creature’; the refrain, which recurs three times, is addressed at Egidius, invoked as ‘O merry soul’, and finally Fortune is apostrophized: ‘O Fortune rude, / so like the tide with ebb and flood.’ This is followed by the refrain, with the song’s concluding line: ‘God’s own will / not ours, prevails through good and ill.’ Along these three ‘O’ apostrophes, right to the acquiescent last line, the poet develops an entire fourteenth-century cosmos. The first addressee, the ‘brittle infirm creature’, is characterized as an ingenious piece of work, splendid, though transient and frail, as is in the nature of its being (‘als dijn nature’ – 1: 2). The second addressee is introduced as a merry soul who gave happiness to all and then is called by his name: Egidius. The recto of folio 28 has a poem on Egidius that is one of the most popular items in anthologies of Dutch verse.5 This ‘first Egidius poem’ opens with the lines: Egidius, where can I find you now? I miss you so, dear friend of mine. You went and died, left me to go on living.6

Egidius obviously is a friend who is dearly missed after his death. According to the first Egidius-poem (‘Egidius, where can I find you now’) he is ‘elevated in the throne of heaven’. The song ‘O brittle infirm creature’ concisely repeats this information: ‘Now you are dead […] / you’ve gone on before / through heaven’s door.’ (3: 5, 4: 5-6). The third addressee is Avonture (Adventure), the Goddess of Fortune, who blindly deals out fortune and misfortune, luck and misery to humanity. She is as capricious as fate.7 4 The author(s) of the Gruuthuse songs seem to have had a preference for the ‘O’ apostrophe: six of the 147 songs set to music contain one in the f irst line. Apart from ‘O brittle, inf irm creature’, these apostrophes address a beloved woman (songs 62, 66, 110, 128), steadfastness (song 110) and the three legs of the letter M, initial of the name of the beloved (song 82). 5 This first song is known as the Egidius song – ‘O cranc onseker broosch enghien’ is usually denominated ‘the second Egidius song’ (Brinkman, 2008, p. 142 [n. 1]). In this chapter, I will also refer to ‘Egidius waer bestu bleven’ as the first Egidius song (Brinkman & de Loos, vol. 1, pp. 470-471) and to ‘O cranc onseker broosch enghien’ as the second Egidius song (Brinkman & de Loos, vol. 1, pp. 474-477). 6 ‘Egidius, waer bestu bleven? / Mi lanct na di, gheselle mijn. / Du coors die doot, du liets mi tleven.’ 7 An interesting parallel with similar rhyming words is to be found in Roman van Heinric en Margriete van Limborch (van den Bergh, 1846-1847), where a damsel leaving a castle says: ‘Ic

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The power of Fortune ‘O brittle infirm creature’ makes clear that death came early for Egidius and that he was intensely loved.8 The lamented friend had a love of music and was praised by musicians because of his voice and his singing. On account of these qualities, he was probably a person who spread happiness. Never, says the author, will I see the equivalent of such joy (vroilicheit). After Egidius’ death, all merry people became mournful (2: 1-2 and 5). The image that emerges is that of a group of singers or musicians from whose midst Egidius was suddenly taken. Could it have been one of the Bruges brotherhoods in which Jan van Hulst played a prominent role? Despite the shock of his death, the poem’s refrain (repeated twice and ending the poem) insists in its last line that ‘[…] God’s own will, / not ours, prevails through good and ill’ (refr: 9-10). This shrugging acceptance barely lessens the impact of Egidius’ death. Present-day scholars and translators of this poem are inclined to insurgency in their interpretations. Not without a certain degree of drama the Egidius-poems have been characterized as ‘a perplexed sob because of the injustice called life’. A recent Dutch translation of the last line reads ironically: ‘let us trust in God, for what He wills is best’.9 Despite the admonitory last line it was obviously also hard for the medieval poet to accept the event. The unspoken question hovering over the poem is: God, why? But God is not addressed directly. The Gruuthuse author transfers his complaints to an instance acting as daily executor of God’s will: Avonture (Adventure), the Middle Dutch denomination for Goddess Fortuna. 10 Fortune, says the poet, you are like ebb and flood, you give misery to the ones who love happiness and joy to the despondent ones. Fortune as the blind distributor of good or bad luck was a familiar image throughout the Middle Ages that originated in the De consolatione philosophiae by the philosopher Boethius (480-c. 526 AD). Especially in the fourteenth century, the relation between God’s providence and the whims of Fortune was food

ben geheten dAventure/ Ic gheve dat soete ende dat sure’ (‘I am called Adventure, I distribute sweet and sour’) Book 10, ll. 943-944). This extensive courtly adventure romance originated in Brabant around 1318. 8 ‘Death bore / you off before / your time’ (refr.: 7-8). 9 ‘een verbijsterende snik om het onrecht dat leven heet’ (Komrij, 1996, p. 14); ‘maar wat God wil, noem dat maar goed’ (Willem Wilmink in his translation of the second Egidius poem in Gerritsen et al., 2000, pp. 255-257). 10 MNW s.v. Aventure: ‘Fortuna, de Geluksgodin’

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for debate.11 Fortune plays a main role in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose (thirteenth century), which, whether or not by means of a Dutch translation, obviously influenced the Gruuthuse texts.12 Moreover, at the end of the thirteenth century Jean de Meun translated Boethius’ treatise; its success was even surpassed by an anonymous Old French translation, which became known as the Pseudo-de Meun, and which was the source of a Middle Dutch translation in 1466 by the Bruges goldsmith Jacob Vilt (Goris, 2000, pp. 27, 29). In other words, half a century after the birth of the Gruuthuse manuscript, De consolatione was so popular that a member of the Bruges artisan elite devoted himself to the translation of the philosophical work. Louis of Gruuthuse – the Gruuthuse manuscript’s first owner – ordered a copy of De consolatione shortly before his death in 1492, in which Lady Fortune is depicted rotating her wheel.13 In the Middle Dutch cosmography De Natuurkunde van het geheelal (The Physics of the Universe, c. 1465-1470), Fortune is situated on the moon: much like the moon waxes and wanes, so Fortune gives and takes.14 Comparing Fortune to the flow of the tides ties in with this view, with the added charm that Bruges in the era of the Gruuthuse manuscript was an important high-tide harbour (De Smet, 1934, pp. 98-100). Fortune plays an important role in medieval literature, not only in the Roman de la Rose, but also in the works of a whole generation of French poets whose influence certainly ranged to Bruges (Reynaert, 1999, pp. 43-44, 51-56). Around 1375, for instance, the French poet Eustache Deschamps was in Bruges and offered a copy of a work by his teacher Machaut to the Count of Flanders. At the occasion Deschamps is said to have read from the work, choosing a passage on the powers of Fortune.15 The Gruuthuse manuscript bears many traces of the work of Machaut and fellow poets from France (Reynaert, 1999, pp. 41-56).

11 In the fourteenth century especially the image of Fortune in Dante’s Divina Commedia caused much speculation; commentators tried to explain the scope and latitude of Fortune (see Meyer-Landrut, 1989, pp. 78-90). Also Boethius’ De consolatione was widely read and commented on (Goris, 2000, pp. 26-30). 12 On this influence, see Heeroma, 1971 and Glier, 1971, pp. 269-273. This has been demonstrated for the allegorical poems in the third part of the Gruuthuse manuscript. Its influence in the Gruuthuse songs would merit further investigation. 13 Goris, 2000, pp. 39-41; Hs. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS neerl. 1, fol. 58v, illustration in Goris, 2000, p. 40; Kuiper, 2014, p. 49. 14 MS Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 18.2 Aug. 4o, fol. 123r, illustration in Kuiper, 2014, p. 46. 15 Reynaert, 1999, p. 54 and literature mentioned there. The work of Machaut presented on this occasion was the Livre du voir dit.

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The voice of an absent friend An apostrophe to a named friend, like Egidius in ‘O brittle infirm creature’, is not found elsewhere in the Gruuthuse songbook. An image of a circle of friends around the author, which included Egidius, is conjured up; the suggestion has urged researchers to search for biographical details on the author and his friends. Who was Egidius? The most sensational answer to this question came from the man who in 1966 caused a considerable stir in Dutch Studies with his edition of the Gruuthuse songbook that contained an extensive introduction: Klaas Heeroma. Heeroma read the Songbook as a fellow poet blessed with a ‘poetic ear’, and he constructed in his reading of the manuscript a dramatic love triangle between poet Jan Moritoen (whom he believed to have authored the major part of the manuscript), singer Egidius, and the beloved Mergriete, who is said to have retired from the world to become a nun after Egidius’ death (Heeroma, 1966, esp. p. 95). In the Gruuthuse manuscript, there is indeed an eye-catching acrostic containing the name of Jan Moritoen at the end of a love allegory (vol. 3, no. 13); and song 13 in the Songbook is devoted to Mergriete. In spite of these facts, the hypothesis of a love triangle with a heart-breaking ending hardly stands on sound footing. Recently, the Bruges archivist Noël Geirnaert identified Egidius as the broker-singer Gilles Onin, who, despite leaving huge debts at the time of his death, was deeply mourned by his friends.16 The two interpretations do not really elucidate the Egidius poems. Neither does the so-called ‘registral’ interpretation, which tries to explain the attraction of medieval lyric by the refinement of variations on wellknown themes and forms (Reynaert, 1999, pp. 143-144). Undeniably, ‘O brittle infirm creature’ is a virtuoso piece of art. Only four rhyming sounds sustain the ballad throughout its sixty lines, seemingly effortlessly and without any twisting or squirming; the restrictions result in a strong concentration.17 Whether Egidius is Gilles Onin or somebody else does not change the song’s apt composition. The virtuoso form combined with the way in which the general and the individual intertwine provide the attraction of ‘O brittle infirm creature’. By invoking man as a transient 16 Geirnaert, 2010, pp. 176-178; objections against this interpretation in Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol.1, pp. 154-155 (n. 413). 17 W.P. Gerritsen calls the poem a formal masterpiece (Gerritsen et al., 2000, p. 250). For an inspiring analysis of ‘O brittle infirm creature’, see pp. 250-252 and Gerritsen, 1999-2000, pp. 183-187.

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being who will eventually die just like the lost singer-friend, the poem assigns everybody who reads or hears this poem a place in the universe of the fourteenth century. In this universe, music could offer a nodal point between heaven and earth.18 Flanking the two Egidius songs in the manuscript are three Maria songs, the third of which connects Maria to the heavenly nature of music. In this poem (number 101 in the Songbook) the following remarkable lines can be found: Music was there with the Lord in the kingdom of heaven before he breathed into Adam the breath of life.19

Contemporary cosmology and music theory – realms in which Boethius was an equally important source – held that there were two types of music; music produced by and audible to human beings (musica instrumentalis) and an inaudible ‘music of the spheres’ (musica mundana).20 The latter referred to the seven spheres surrounding the immobile earth, with their celestial bodies from the moon right up to the heaven of fixed stars. In their movement, they were considered to bring forth tones, imagined as tone scales or scales of harmonies, usually rising up from the earth to the heaven of the fixed stars.21 For medieval man, the universe was filled with the inaudible music of planets and angels, and in heaven God was praised in a heavenly liturgy of continuous singing.22 Egidius has passed on from the earth and its musica instrumentalis to the sphere filled with heavenly music, music that was already there before the first man was created. The poet is left behind on earth and all

18 For the characterization of music as a nodal point between heaven and earth, see Reynaert, 1999, p. 125. 19 ‘Bi den here so was Muzike / in hemelrike / eer hi Adame tlijf in blies.’ Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, p. 478, l. 22-24. 20 On music of the spheres, see the introductory article in Haar (GMO, 2007-2016) and the literature mentioned there. For an analysis of poem 101 and the relationship between music and the history of salvation in this text, see Reynaert, 1999, pp. 108-109, 113-116. 21 An impressive account of different scales which were designed to illustrate this speculative system can be found in Godwin, 1987, pp. 124-148. Usually, rising scales are devised, but descending ones also occur. 22 On the concurrence of music of the spheres and music of angels in heaven, see Hammerstein, 1962, pp. 116-119.

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he can do is sing a song.23 Egidius was much appreciated for his voice and his tenor (tenuere, 3: 4), which might indicate he was the leading voice in polyphonic music. After his death, Egidius must have joined the heavenly choir harmoniously. In the first Egidius song (‘Egidius, where can I find you now’) the poet asks Egidius to guard a place for him in heaven.24 It is uncertain whether the poet and the others who stayed behind will have the opportunity to take these places – nothing is certain for those who live in the sublunary sphere.25 Pray for us, the poet asks, so that we will live our lives in such a way that we will escape hell fire (3: 7-10). The third stanza finishes with this hell fire, followed by the refrain which ends with the repeated line ‘but God’s own will, / not ours, prevails [...].’ (refr.: 9-10). That concerns not only the design of human beings as transient beings but also human destination in and after earthly life. The only thing people can do is to arrange their life in such a way that they will not go to hell. The whole poem oscillates between heaven and earth; turning points are the interventions of fate and death. This oscillation seems to be reflected in the melody of the song. Because stroke notation has no rhythmical indications and the placement of text is unclear, the melody can be transcribed in several ways. But in any transcription the melody moves between the root tone, the fifth, and the root tone one octave higher.26 The last line of the refrain as well as the last stanza form a descending scale, after a jump from octave to fifth going down step by step to the root tone. It is tempting to see in the course of this melody the stages from earth to heaven and back again, or, less focused on the universe and more on human experience: from the joyful figure of Egidius to the acquiescent ending saying that God’s will must be accepted.27 23 First Egidius song (‘Egidius, where can I find you now’), Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, pp. 471, l: 15 : ‘Ic moet noch zinghen een liedekijn’ (‘I still have to sing a song’). According to medieval music theory, earthly music could only be a faint shadow of cosmic music. From the lines in poem 101 it is clear that music originated in heaven. However, it is hard to identify a source for this idea (Reynaert, 1999, pp. 113-118). 24 First Egidius song (‘Egidius, where can I find you now’), Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, p. 471, l: 12, ‘Verware mijn stede di beneven’ (‘keep my place beside you’). 25 The term sublunary can be taken literally: according to the medieval world view, the unmoving earth was at the centre of the surrounding sphere of the moon. 26 The transcription by Kees Vellekoop in Gerritsen et al., 2000, pp. 337-338 is slightly different from the one by Ike de Loos; both read the melody in the tenor key (see Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, pp. 474-475 and vol. 2, p. 348). 27 Well-known examples of descending and rising tone scales as depiction of a fall into death or the ascent of the soul to heaven can be found in music for key instruments by Johannes Froberger: ‘The Tombeau for Blancrocher (1652) ends with a descending C minor scale, picturing Blancrocher’s fatal fall down a flight of stairs. In the Lamento for Ferdinand IV (1649) […]

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The address to the reader By means of a series of addresses a whole medieval cosmos is conjured up and the audience, even that of six centuries later, is situated in this cosmos. The addressee in the first line, the ‘brittle infirm creature’, refers to every living being. Before it becomes clear that the audience is indeed addressed in this way, a memento mori is superimposed: ‘Never say “This is my plan”, because you do not know what tomorrow brings.’ (1: 3). Then the poet continues, making clear that his words pertain to everybody and that death is inevitable. Where can we find a living creature who is able to withstand death? There is only one certainty: death will come (1: 7). With these lines, the entire outline of human life is sketched: all living creatures are evanescent and at an unknown moment death will attack. Death is described in the martial terms known from dances of death, where it is usually depicted as a violent and aggressive power, trampling creatures without further ado. Like Fortune, Death is an executor of God’s plans and like Fortune, Death does not take into account individual circumstances. In the fifteenth-century play Elckerlijc,28 the main allegorical character (Everyone) changes from ‘every member of mankind’ into a single persona within a few lines. He walks around beautifully adorned, but to his perplexity he finds unyielding Death blocking his path.29 In a similar way, the ‘brittle infirm creature’ from the first line evolves within one stanza to everybody in mankind, all of whom will have to face the menacing perspective of having to deal with death: he comes at a certain moment and nobody can withstand him. By addressing Egidius in the following refrain the illusion is created that Egidius is the protagonist of this poem. But, painfully, Egidius is not here. He is the one who left us behind and went ahead to heaven. Much more than the first Egidius poem (‘Egidius, where can I find you now’), ‘O brittle infirm creature’ is directed at a group. In the first poem, the author asks Egidius to pray for him, while in ‘O brittle infirm creature’ he

Froberger depicts his ascent into heaven by a C major scale ascending to the top of the four-octave keyboard.’ (Schott, in GMO, 2007-2016, ‘Froberger: Works: Suites and Laments’). 28 Brabant, maybe Antwerp, probably about 1490 (Strijbosch & Zellmann, 2013, p. 93). 29 God commands Death, who spares nobody (l. 46 ‘die niemant en spaert’), to go to Elckerlijc and tell him to get prepared for his last trip and to account for his deeds before God. Death takes leave, saying: ‘Ay, elckerlijc, u wert saen benomen/ dat ghi houden waent seer vast’ (ll. 66-67) (‘Ay, Elckerlijc, from you will be taken soon/ what you suppose to hold firmly’). Immediately afterwards, he directly speaks to Elckerlijc, who at this point changes into an individual person: ‘Elckerlijc, where are you going, so beautifully adorned?’ (ll. 70-71).

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asks a prayer for us.30 Us, initially the audience of six centuries ago, comes to involve every person who reads or hears this poem in later times. We are the ones who have to complain and mourn daily; we are subject to the blows of Fortune, we are the ones who need a prayer from heaven. Egidius has transcended the uncertainties of earthly life. We are the brittle, infirm creature, the everybody who has to accept whatever happens. At the very beginning of the poem all of us are grabbed by the neck: ‘O brittle, infirm creature, you should have no illusions. Death comes, and it is fitful Fortune who rolls the dice.’ Thus, reading or listening to this poem we willingly or unwillingly participate in a circle of Bruges music lovers around 1400, while forming part of the long line of creatures travelling the same inevitable road from life to death.

Bibliography Brinkman, H., ‘“Schoon onderworpen droefheid”: Over opmars, resonantie en interpretatie van het Egidiuslied’, in De fiere nachtegaal. Het Nederlandse lied in de middeleeuwen, ed. by F. Willaert & L.P. Grijp (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), pp. 129-147. Brinkman, H. & I. de Loos, eds., Het Gruuthuse-handschrift. Hs. Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek 79 K 10, 2 vols. (Hilversum: Verloren, 2015). de Loos, I., ‘Het Gruuthuse-liedboek en de muziek van zijn tijd’, in Het Gruuthusehandschrift in woord en klank. Nieuwe inzichten, nieuwe vragen, ed. by Frank Willaert (Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 2010), pp. 113-147. De Smet, A., ‘Het waterwegennet ten Noord-Oosten van Brugge in de dertiende eeuw (slot)’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 13:1 (1934), pp. 83-121. Geirnaert, N., ‘Op zoek naar Egidius. Het laatmiddeleeuwse Brugge in het Gruuthuse-handschrift’, in Het Gruuthuse-handschrift in woord en klank. Nieuwe inzichten, nieuwe vragen, ed. by Frank Willaert (Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 2010), pp. 169-179. Gerritsen, W., W. Wilmink, G. Vellekoop, ed. and transl., Lyrische lente: Liederen en gedichten uit het middeleeuwse Europa (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2000).

30 First Egidius song (‘Egidius, where can I find you now’), Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, p. 471, l. 12, ‘Nu bidt vor mi’ (‘now pray for me’); second Egidius song (‘O brittle infirm creature’, Brinkman & de Loos, 2015, vol. 1, p. 476, l: 45, ‘Nu bidt vor ons’ (‘Now pray for us’).

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Gerritsen, W., ‘Prijs voor Meesterschap. Dankwoord door W.P. Gerritsen, uitgesproken bij het ontvangen van de Prijs voor Meesterschap op 5 november 1999 in het Academiegebouw te Leiden’, Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, 1999-2000, pp. 177-193. Glier, I., Artes Amandi. Untersuchungen zu Geschichte, Überlieferung und Typologie der deutschen Minnereden (München: Beck, 1971). Godwin, J., Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987). Goris, M., Boethius in het Nederlands. Studie naar en tekstuitgave van de Gentse Boethius (1485), Boek II (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000). Haar, J., ‘Music of the Spheres’, in Grove Music Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007-2016). Hammerstein, R., Die Musik der Engel. Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelalters (Bern/Munich: Francke, 1962). Heeroma, K. & C.W.H. Lindenburg, eds., Liederen en gedichten uit het GruuthuseHandschrift, (Leiden: Brill, 1966). Heeroma, K., ‘Jan Moritoen als navolger’, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 87 (1971), pp. 124-152. Komrij, G., ed., In Liefde Bloeyende: De Nederlandse poëzie van de 12de tot en met de 20ste eeuw in tien gedichten. Een voorproefje (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1996). Kuiper, W., ‘Luna en Fortuna’, in Kennis in beeld. Denken en doen in de Middeleeuwen, ed. by A. van Leerdam, O.S.H. Lie, M. Meuwese & M. Patijn (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014), pp. 46-53. Meyer-Landrut, E., Fortuna. Die Göttin des Glücks im Wandel der Zeiten (Munich/ Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1989). MNW=Middelnederlandsch woordenboek (Middle Dutch Dictionary), consulted via http://gtb.inl.nl/ (last accessed 7 September 2017). Reynaert, J., Laet ons voort vroylijc maken zanc. Opstellen over de lyriek in het Gruuthuse-handschrift (Gent: Vakgroep Duitse taalkunde, 1999). Schott, H., ‘Froberger, Johann Jacob’, in Grove Music Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007-2016). Strijbosch, C. & U. Zellmann, ed. and transl., Elckerlijc-Jedermann. Mittelniederländisch, Neuhochdeutsch (Münster: Agenda, 2013). van den Bergh, L.Ph.C., ed. Roman van Heinric en Margriete van Limborch, gedicht door Heinric (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1846-1847). Willaert, F., ‘After the Sale: New Light on the Gruuthuse Manuscript’, in Het Gruuthuse-handschrift in woord en klank. Nieuwe inzichten, nieuwe vragen, ed. by Frank Willaert (Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 2010), pp. 13-23.

Een nyeu liedeken 1

Aenmerct doch mijn geclach, Ghi ruyters fraey van sinnen! Ick truere nacht ende dach Ende roepe: ‘O wy, o wach!’ Dwelc ic wel claghen mach. Want, om een die ic eens sach, Therte is doorstraelt van minnen.

2

Mer lacen, hoort hier naer: Al heeftse mi gheleken, Een ander sach ick daer Staen spreken teghen haer. Dat schouwen viel mi swaer Ende ick ghinck van daer … Dat herte, dat docht mi breken.

3

Beroert was al mijn bloet, Ic en const mi niet bedwingen. Dat dede vrou Venus bloet, Die alle herten voet Al metter minnen gloet. Al mijn bloet nam sinen vloet, Tmost ter nosen uutspringen.

4

Den nacht viel mi te lanc, Ic en conde niet langer dueren. Ic was in haer bedwanck, Die minne ginck haren ganc. Die swaer gepeysen stranck, Haer en weet icx geen ondanc, Mocht si mi noch gebueren.

5

Och, mocht eens anders gaen, Wilde den tijt verkeeren: Al ben ick ghevaen, Bedruct met menigen traen Al om dat minnelijck graen, Alle druck soude ic versmaen Ende altijt vruecht vermeeren.

6

Elck die dit liedeken singt: Mint vrolijc tot allen tijden! Die uuter schalen drinct, Mer die vrou Venus schinct, Mijn lijden overdinct: Ist dat ghi int beecxken sprinct, Certeyn, ghi moet wat lijden.

A new song 1

Come hear my sad complaint, You knaves with hearts carefree. I grieve both day and night And moan ‘Oh, woe is me!’ And surely I may grieve, For one I saw that day Has pierced my heart with love.

2

But listen now, alas! Though she was my delight I then saw someone else Stand talking by her side. I could not bear the sight And quickly went away. I thought my heart would break.

3

The churning in my blood I found no way to tame. It’s Lady Venus’ way Of fuelling the flame In hearts aglow with love. To such a flood it rose The blood burst from my nose.

4

The night of endless hours Was more than I could bear. That Lady’s fearful powers. Had caught me in her snare Of anxious, brooding care. Yet never would I blame My lady for this pain.

5

Oh, if there came a day When this sad tide would turn – Though I weep in dismay At all I suffer here For one I hold most dear – I’d laugh at all the pain And always spread good cheer.

6

All you who sing this song While drinking merrily: May you love well and long. But Venus poured for me A cup of grief. Think twice: A leap into that stream Comes at a bitter price!

3

Lyric Address in Sixteenth-Century Song Aegied Maes (?), ‘Come hear my sad complaint’ (before 1544) Dieuwke van der Poel

‘Come hear my sad complaint’ is one of the 221 songs that have come down to us in the Antwerp Songbook, the oldest, largest, printed secular song collection in the Low Countries and as such a major source for our knowledge of late-medieval/early modern song. The single copy that we still have was printed in Antwerp in 1544. It has only texts and no melodies, but musicologists have successfully reconstructed many of the melodies by using other contemporary songbooks that do have musical notation. We know little about the actual authors: the songs are heterogeneous with respect to both origin and (probable) date of creation. Many of the songs bear traces of oral composition and transmission, a substantial number of others were probably written by Rederijkers (Rhetoricians, members of official civic poetry guilds, all male). Characteristic for the Antwerp Songbook is precisely this mixture of old and new, traditional and refined. The book represents the flourishing of popular song in the bustling city of Antwerp in the sixteenth century: with a bit of imagination one can still feel the heartbeat of a blooming metropolis. It is difficult to pinpoint the context for this song more precisely. It might convey the name of the author as the first and second stanza bear the acrostic ‘Aegied Maes’ (1: 1-5, 2: 1-4), although this name is otherwise unknown and the combination of letters might simply be coincidental. That the author was a rhetorician seems indicated by formal features of the song, in particular the rather intricate rhyme scheme with only two rhymes in each stanza (abaaaab), and stock phrases common to rhetorical poetry (e.g. specifically 5: 3 minnelijck graen, literally ‘charming exquisite lady’, here translated as ‘one I hold most dear’). ‘Aenmerct’ is lyrical, in the original meaning of the term, in the sense that it is a musical expression, made to be sung.1 This has a number of important implications. First, the melody, which is in a minor key, intensifies the

1

Preminger, Hardison Jr. & Franke, 2014, pp. 122-131, see also Culler, 2015, pp. 197-198.

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meaning of the words and increases its emotional impact.2 Second, the text is not intended to be read individually and in silence but to be presented orally before an audience. During the performance, the singer would have taken on the role of the I persona, thereby establishing an emotional connection with the people in front of him, while in turn the audience would generate energies on which the singer could further feed. A remarkable element in the interplay between singer and audience is the address to the listeners in the second line as ‘You knaves with hearts carefree’ in which the word ‘knaves’ (ruyters) catches the eye and ear. Historically, knaves were rough soldiers who hired themselves out for an uncertain life as mercenaries in wars and other military conflicts. Throughout the Antwerp Songbook, such knaves appear time and again, sometimes indeed as soldiers but more often as romanticized adventurers, lower-class heroes and embodiments of virility: the images range from spirited lads to lusty rogues and sometimes even downright malevolent rapists. Obviously, this roaming lifestyle captured the sixteenth-century bourgeois imagination, in a way that could be compared to the image of the cowboy in the Western of our time.3 As this song was performed before a mixed audience the address would have had a different effect on the attendant women and men. By addressing ‘knaves’, the singer in a way turns his back on the women and simply ignores them. The men, on the other hand, might get the feeling that the song is directed to them, yet at the same time they are labelled as a particular group of bold and macho men and linked together: the song constitutes a specific group identity during performance. 4 So the performance of the song entails a male bonding act (even more so if the song was performed during a meeting of the male members of a Chamber of Rhetoricians). The subject of the song for ‘knaves’ is not, as one might expect, a battle or a siege, but love: in fact the song is a love complaint. The I persona tells us that he saw his lady, but at that very moment another man was talking to her. The distress of that sight prevents him from being able to sleep, but in spite of his anxious feelings, he still hopes for a better future (stanza 3 and 4). Nevertheless, he warns his listeners to keep his suffering in mind if 2 A recording of the song (sung by Paul Rans) is available at the Dutch Song Database: http:// www.liederenbank.nl/liedpresentatie.php?zoek=94500&lan=nl (last accessed: 26 January 2016), click on ‘audio’ (this recording appeared earlier on the CD Het Antwerps Liedboek 1544 [Globe]). 3 See for the ‘Knaves’ in the Antwerp Songbook: Joldersma & van der Poel, 2009/10, Gerritsen in Vellekoop et al., 1972, vol. 2, p. xxiv and Houtsma, 1981. 4 On song and the formation and maintenance of group identities, see Klusen, 1989, pp. 162ff; Grijp, 2000, pp. 337-380; and Whiteley et al., 2004.

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they ever contemplate falling in love, because love is a sure source of agony. The I persona does not address the lady herself in the song; indeed, there is no indication that he ever spoke with her himself (like the other man did), or even intends to do so: he only complains to the lads and warns them about the dangers of love. The song focuses rather on the power of love than on the lady as a human being. The motifs and expressions in this song are in part similar to what we find in the traditional love complaint of the sixteenth century: a glimpse of the lady is the cause of love (1: 6), love pierces the heart of the lover (1: 7), Venus is an almighty goddess who holds the lover in her snare (3: 3, stanza 4).5 However, these traditional elements are developed in a distinct manner in every song, including this one. What is especially notable here is the emphasis on the physical effects of love, showing that being in love is only for the strong. Love is depicted as a dangerous and violent force that wounds the lover: not only is his heart pierced (1: 7) and broken (2: 7), love affects the blood of the lover so much that it rises and bursts from his nose (stanza 3). The last stanza opens with a second, broader address, ‘All you who sing this song’ (6: 1), and in doing so circles back to the opening stanza: in the beginning the I persona asks the knaves to listen to his love complaint, at the end he issues a warning to all who would dare to follow his lead and fall in love. Through the wording of this address, the already thin line between singer and audience disappears: the listeners become singers who will carry on the tradition of the song. The imagery of the last stanza sounds ominous. Being in love is compared to drinking from lady Venus’ cup (6: 3-4), a wording which has different connotations. On the one hand drinking cool wine is regularly used as a circumlocution for happy, intimate contact between lovers, but on the other there is a strong association with the idea of a poisoned goblet. Equally ambivalent is the image of starting to love as jumping into the stream (6: 6-7): will the new lover just float, or will he be swept away by the strong current, or even drown? Taken together, the address to the knaves and the imagery both lead to the conclusion that it takes ‘a real man’ to love. The essence of love is not to be with the lady, but to talk about her with your mates, to show them that you are strong enough to endure the physical assaults of Venus and to warn them about the dangers of love. The song is not a vehicle for the courting of a lady but a form of sociability among men. A crucial part of the song is the address: during performance it unites the male part of the 5 In the original, stanza 4 is ambiguous: vs. 3 means literally: ‘I was in her power’, but ‘her’ might refer to Venus or to the beloved lady.

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audience and defines it at the same time. Should it be performed before an all-male audience, the song constructs a knave-identity for them, but before a mixed group the women are locked out and at best put into the role of eavesdroppers who get a first-hand account of what male lovers have to endure because of them.

Same tune, other texts, other addressees ‘Come hear my sad complaint’ was no doubt one of the most popular love complaints from the Antwerp Songbook and was well known for a long period. This can be deduced from its transmission record, more particularly of the melody, which is used time and again well into the seventeenth century.6 This brings us to a particular feature of historical song culture: the practice of writing new songs to a pre-existing melody. This principle is called contrafacture, the songs with the same melody are contrafacts. For tracing and comparing Dutch lyrics and melodies, a large-scale database is available, the Dutch Song Database. It shows the remarkable history of the tune of ‘Aenmerct’ with no less than 96 songs.7 The most recent instance of the use of the melody for contrafact purposes is in Joan Luyken’s Duytse Lier in 1732.8 The youngest tune indication referring explicitly to the Antwerp Songbook version is in the Boertigh, Amoureus en Aendachtigh Groot Liedt-boek of 1622 by the popular Amsterdam poet G.A. Bredero: the melody reference of no fewer than three songs in that volume is ‘Aenhoort doch mijn geklag ghy Ruyters fray’.9 6 The same text figures in the Aemstelredams, Amoreus lietboeck of 1589 (no. 2), a songbook which is closely related to the Antwerp Songbook. In terms of the popularity of the melodies ‘Aenmerct’ is probably only outnumbered by the following songs from this same songbook: ‘Den lustelijcken mey is nu in den tijt’ (no. 27), ‘Het daghet in den oosten’ (no. 72) and ‘Rijc god wie sal ic clagen’, (no. 142) and equal to ‘Ic hadde een gestadich minneken’ (no. 98), see van der Poel et al., 2004, vol. 2, pp. 33-36. 7 In fact the Dutch Songs Database offers 105 contrafacts, but this figure should be handled with care, since the last nine hits concern modern editions (1890 or later) or CD recordings. Reprints are counted as separate numbers. 8 As the melody of the song ‘’t Moet alles wijken voor de schooner Gaardelijne’. This is a reprint: the first print of the Duytse Lier dates from 1671. The actual tune indication ‘Gy heilig heetjes’ refers to a song by the famous P.C. Hooft in Emblamata Amatoria (1611), which might indicate that Luyken borrowed this melody from the version by Hooft and that he did not know the version with the ‘Aenmerct’-text. 9 This is the reference of song no. 167, the references for song no. 65 and no. 127 have similar references but with etc. instead of fray. (source: http://www.liederenbank.nl [last accessed 28-1-2016]). Noticeable here is the precise mention of the Ruyters; a more indistinct reference

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The song ‘Come hear my sad complaint’ remained well known for some eighty years, with the melody lingering for almost two centuries.10 Why were so many poets inspired to write a new text to this particular tune? Was it the powerful opening with the call to listen to the song and the address in the second line? Was it the possibility for social bonding and the promotion of a common ideal? Or was it just the haunting melody? Most likely it was a combination of all such factors. No doubt the address was considered an important and attractive element, as is evident from the frequent use of the trope, either in the first line, the second, or even both the first and second line of a song, like in the following examples: You nymphs, who encamp in flowers and herbs and swim in the stream of the river Vecht.11 Rejoice with me / O honoured friends.12 Oh glory of Amsterdam / O pride of all cities!13

In general the particular opening with the call to listen to the song and the address in the second line occurs most often in contrafacts from the sixteenth century, and decreases from 1600 on.14 This indicates that by then to ‘Aenhoort doch mijn geklagh etc.’ occurs at an even earlier date, that is in 1655, in the play Hemelsch Land-Spel, of Goden Kout, Der Amersfoortsche Landdouwen by Everard Meyster, printed in Amsterdam; probably Meyster had the song of Hooft in mind (in Emblamata Amatoria [1611]), because his first sentence ‘Ghy vrolijckheediens. Die in bloemen en in Boomen’ is a variant on the text of Hooft (source: www.liederenbank.nl/liedpresentatie.php?zoek=27583&lan=nl [last accessed 28-1-2016]). 10 Most of the tune references use the synonym ‘Aenhoort’ instead of ‘Aenmerct’, but there can be no doubt that they refer to the tune of the song of which we have the oldest version in the Antwerp Songbook of 1544. 11 ‘Ghy Haylicheydtjens, die in bloemen, en in kruyden, / U leghert, en beswemt de stroomen van de Vecht.’ P.C. Hooft, Emblemata Amatoria (1611), no. 29. There are 27 songs with an address in the first line. 12 ‘Verhuecht u toch met my / Och vriendekens gepresen.’ Veelderhande Liedekens (1566) no. 266 (a book that was reprinted many times); a similar version of the song in Sommighe nieuwe schriftuerelicke Liedekens […] ghemaeckt door F.V.(ander) Str. (aten) (1599) no. 73 and in Sommighe leerachtighe geestelijcke liedekens (1609) no. 50. There are about fifteen songs with an address in the second line like in the Antwerp Songbook (reprints included). 13 ‘O Roem van Amsterdam! / O Trots van alle Steden!’ G.A. Bredero, Boertigh, Amoureus en Aendachtigh Groot Liedt-boek (1622), no. 64. Bredero uses the melody four times in this volume: also in no. 65, 127, 167; there are seven songs with addresses in the first and second line. 14 There are some 33 songs to this melody without any initial address, mainly dating from about 1600 and later.

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the poets were still fond of the melody, but did not have the original lyrics in mind while writing a new version, or just wanted to go their own way.15 The sixteenth-century poets who wrote new texts to the melody of ‘Aenmerct’ borrowed different textual elements and applied the address in their own way. Nearly every contrafact of this century is a religious song, in which we find two groups of addressees: either the singer’s fellow believers or supreme powers, such as God and sometimes Mary. This entails a different communication situation as will be demonstrated by discussing one example from each group.16

The address of fellow believers The first example comes from an important devotional songbook, also printed in Antwerp, but a few years before the Antwerp Songbook: the Devout and Beneficial book (1539).17 Song 83 transposes many elements of the original song into the religious realm, thus defending an opposite view: the song is not a complaint, but an appeal to rejoice because of God’s mercy.18 This is quite evident, for example, in the first stanza. Although there are just minor alterations in each line, the resulting text makes a different appeal to the listeners than the secular versions: the text is turned into a call upon the fellow believers to stop grieving and to remember the love of Christ for mankind. In the secular version the singer addresses his audience always as ‘you’, but DEPB no. 83 uses not only ‘you’, but also the more inclusive ‘us’. As 15 The Dutch Song Database is my main source: I did not consult the original sources myself. Therefore this research is not exhaustive. 16 Secular songs, like the ones from the Antwerp Songbook, preceded the religious ones, as is evident from the use of tune indications of religious songs which refer to the melody of secular examples. This implies the secular version in the Antwerp Songbook is as close as we can get to the original. In the main, there were many reasons for the use of a pre-existing melody, no doubt a simple reason was that it is more difficult to compose a new melody than to write a new text. Apart from that, there were more advantages: due to the well-known melody a lot of people could sing along instantaneously, and according to some people, the religious songs provided young people with an alternative to the many foolish and lewd songs that were omnipresent at the time (as the foreword of the Souterliedekens explicitly states). The earliest occurrence of the melody is in Lieder zu 3 und 4 Stimmen (1535). 17 Devoot ende profitelyck Boecxken, hereafter DEPB, with more than 250 religious songs, printed by Symon Cock. Cock and Jan Roulans (the printer of the Antwerp Songbook) drew upon the same song culture. Both collected songs that were being sung at the time and assembled them into the printed songbooks. 18 Edition DEPB: Scheurleer, 1889.

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a result, the singer is united with the listeners in a reflection on the love of Christ: Give up your sad complaint, You Christians with hearts carefree. Give up grieving both day and night Which God cannot hear Nor his word with patience When Christ looked upon us for the first time He pierced our heart with love.19

The salient handling of the motif of the blood in stanza 3 is likewise transposed to the religious domain, again by changing only a few words. While in the Antwerp Songbook the blood of the I persona is severely affected by the power of love, this song refers to the beneficent sacrifice of Jesus’ blood during the passion. Again the inclusive form ‘our’ is used: All our sorrow with his blood Did he want to tame. That’s of his grace the way Of fuelling the flame In hearts aglow with true love. To such a flood it rose His blood burst from his wounds.20

Similarly, the appeal and the particular imagery in the concluding stanza are changed in a religious direction by simply replacing some words: everyone who sings this song should consider the passion. The motif of the wine is now connected to the blood that Jesus shed for us: All you who sing this song While drinking merrily: What Jesus poured for us May you love well and long. 19 ‘Laet staen toch v gheclach / Ghi kerstenen fray van sinnen / Laet trueren nacht ende dach / Dat God niet hooren en mach / Noch sijn woort met verdrach / Als Cristus ons eerst aensach / Bestraelde hi ons hert met minnen.’ 20 ‘Alle ons leet met sijn bloet / Heeft hi willen bedwinghen / Dat dede sijn gratie soet / Die alle herten voet / Met trouwe vol liefden goet / Alle sijn bloet nam sinen vloet / Het moste ten wonden wt springen.’

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Consider his grief. Think twice: A leap into his realm Comes at a bitter price!21

The song transposes rhyme, wording and imagery from the secular into the sacred realm: a case of ‘continuous borrowing’.22 Like the Antwerp Songbook version, the song can be seen as a ‘script for performance’ and it is intended for a public occasion with a singer in front of an audience addressing the listeners directly.23 Likewise, the social bonding of the group of listeners during performance is intended, while the I persona addresses them directly as ‘You Christians with hearts carefree’, an address which can be seen as more inclusive in two ways: it incorporates both women and men, and it unites the singer with the listeners. The singer preaches the shared belief that Christ took away the suffering of mankind, frequently using pronouns like ‘you’ and ‘us’. This emphasis on a common conviction is stronger than in the secular original: in that instance, the I persona invites the male listeners to take him as an example of a painful experience, but he addresses them only in the first and last stanza with ‘you’ and never uses the pronoun ‘us’.24

21 ‘Elck die dit liedeken sinct / Mint Christum tot allen tiden / Die wter scalen drinct / Die ons heer Iesus schinct / Sijn liden ouerdinct / Eer ghi in sijn rijck sprinct / Certeyn ghi moet wat liden.’ 22 Louis Peter Grijp worked out a taxonomy for the different levels of borrowing that can be distinguished in contrafacts. Borrowing may happen at the level of music, of form (i.e. rhyme scheme), and of text. For the borrowing of the text again three levels can be discriminated. First, in ‘initial borrowing’ the borrowing is limited to the first line(s) or to the first stanza, and the remainder of the text is different. In the case of ‘continuous borrowing’ on the other hand, the text follows the entire original, through all stanzas, for example when a poet turns a secular love song into a religious one, as is the case here. The last category is ‘thematic borrowing’: it occurs when not the words but an idea, or even just a mood, are transferred from the model to its contrafact (Grijp, 1991), for a description in English see Grijp and van der Poel, 2016. 23 Culler (2015, pp. 198-201) says that in Greek lyric the situation in which the speaker addresses the listeners in front of him, is more exceptional than most critics usually think. However, this kind of direct address to the listening audience is exactly the situation we f ind in the sixteenth-century corpus discussed here. 24 Against the background of the entire tradition, this extended transposition is an exceptional case. Other contrafacts in the DEPB address a group of Christians as a community in the second line, but handle various subjects afterwards, no. 82 mentions as addressees: ‘You, hearts filled with love’ (‘Ghi hertekens veruult met minnen’), no. 86 has: ‘Listen, you Christians together / listen to God’s admonition’ (‘Hoort toe kersten gemeyne / Hoort toe na Gods vermaen’), no. 256 mentions ‘Brothers together’ (‘Broeders al ghemeyne’) in the second line; the rhyme scheme of this song deviates from the other versions discussed here, which may point at a different melody.

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The address of supreme beings The well-known tune of ‘Aenmerct’ was used not only with such an appeal to fellow believers, but also in another way. The other group of sixteenth-century contrafact songs has a prominent address as well, but this time the song is directed towards a heavenly power (God or Mary). This seemingly small change in the way of addressing alters the character of the song entirely: it becomes a prayer. Such prayer songs were very much in favour, as is attested by the tradition.25 I take the rhymed version of Psalm 5 in the Souterliedekens (1540) as my example, because this song was probably widely known, as this book had more than 30 reprints, well into the seventeenth century.26 At the time, the making of the Souterliedekens was an ambitious undertaking. The Souterliedekens was the first collection of the psalms in the Dutch vernacular. It was also printed by Symon Cock, only a year after the DEPB, in 1540. The author, Willem van Zuylen van Nyevelt, translated each of the 150 psalms, putting the words to the melody of well-known secular songs. The author had a keen eye for the accompanying music and chose a different melody for each psalm.27 So in the Souterliedekens two pre-existing traditions fused into a new whole: the Latin psalms of the Vulgate and melodies of secular song culture. The preface of the Souterliedekens indicates occasions for singing the psalms: when you are alone, with your family, with God-fearing companions, on a journey, in the fields or at the table, in other words mostly in a small group of kindred souls who will probably be receptive to the content of such songs (van der Poel, in press). The original Latin psalm no. 5 starts like this: Give ear, O Lord, to my words, understand my cry. Hearken to the voice of my prayer, O my King and my God. For to thee will I pray: O Lord, in the morning thou shalt hear my voice. 25 An important example of a widely known prayer song is DEPB no. 85: versions of this song have come down to us in five different songbooks, the youngest dating from 1638: Het Hofken Der geestelycker liedekens (1577), no. 59, also in Henricus Costerius Het oudt Huysken van Bethleem (1590?), no. 82, Het prieel der gheestelicker melodiie [sic] (1617), no. 75, Salomon Theodotus, Het Paradys der Gheestelycke en kerckelycke Lof-Sangen (1638), no. 131. The variants in these songs seem to indicate an oral tradition of the song. 26 Grijp, 2002, p. 172; a recording (sung by Nico van der Meel) is available at Dutch Song Database, www.liederenbank.nl/sound.php?recordid=13557&lan=nl (last accessed 29-1-2016). 27 In the Souterliedekens, both a tune reference and musical notation are given. See Grijp, 2002, p. 171.

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In the morning I will stand before thee, and will see: because thou art not a God that willest iniquity.28

The call to listen to the complaint must have reminded van Zuylen van Nyevelt of ‘Aenmerct’ and probably for that reason the psalm is set to that melody. This is the first stanza of the Souterliedeken:29 Lord, hear my sad complaint, Please receive my words. I call both day and night And moan a great deal.

The first line borrows the wording of ‘Aenmerct’ (cf. ‘Aenmerct doch mijn geclach’, ‘Come hear my sad complaint’). The translation of the Latin words ‘te orabo […] mane’ (‘I pray to you early in the morning’) into ‘Ick roep nacht ende dach’ (‘I call both day and night’) echoes the third line of the secular version once more (‘Ick truere nacht ende dach’, ‘I grieve both day and night’). Souterliedeken no. 5 is mainly a petitionary prayer and as such it is an expression of an encounter with God. The I persona asks the Lord to be heard and to be conducted to the heavenly home. Because of the address, potential listeners seem to overhear the words. However the expressions used are not entirely personal: there is the awareness of belonging to a well-defined group, particularly where the I persona refers to other people, as in stanza 3: Before thy pure eyes They will not dwell: Thou hateth them All the wicked, great and small, Who are certainly lying. Thou wilt destroy them all And send into the abyss.30 28 ‘Verba mea auribus percipe Domine intellege clamorem meum / Intende voci orationis meae rex meus et Deus meus / Quoniam ad te orabo Domine mane exaudies vocem meam / Mane adstabo tibi et videbo quoniam non deus volens iniquitatem tu es’ Source: The Parallel Latin/English Psalter, ed. Glenn Gunhouse, http://medievalist.net/psalmstxt/ps5.htm (last accessed 29-1-2016). 29 ‘Verhort Heer mijn gheclach / Mijn woerden wilt ontfanghen. / Ick roep nacht ende dach / En maeck seer groot ghewach’. van Zuylen van Nyeveldt, 1540, fol. A7v. 30 ‘Al voer u ooghen reyn / En moghen si niet ghedueren: / Ghi haetse alle ghemeyn / Die boose, groot, en cleyn, / Die lieghen hier certeyn. / Ghi wiltse verderven pleyn / En inden afgront stueren.’ See Psalm 5:6-7.

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Similarly, stanzas 4, 6 and 7 mention ‘others’, namely those who are evil and lying. They will be judged by God, as opposed to the just (stanza 8), who are three times referred to as ‘us’, for example in the concluding stanza, 9 (also in 6,7): For thou blesseth Those who live justly, Thy good will Shall protect us like a shield With which thou cherisheth us And joyfully crowneth us, Through thy sublime mercy.31

Hence the group, the I and the addressee are set in yet a different constellation and different communication situation. The prayer song is not directed towards a group of listeners, but the fellow believers are implied in the ‘us’, the group that is opposed to the evil ‘others’. The I persona functions as intercessor for the group he represents; on a different level this persona also offers a position which each user can take on in their individual devotional practices.32 The fellow believers overhear the address to God with whom they cannot identify, but the position of the singer is open for them (Waters, 2003, pp. 14-15). In performing the prayer themselves, each believer will address the Lord personally. Such songs illustrate the many points of intersection between poetry and prayer, such as the address, the internalized monologue and the idea of a speech overheard (Ramazani, 2013, pp. 126-183). However, there are important differences between these ‘discursive cousins’, as Ramazani calls them (p. 131). The act of addressing objects, particularly those that cannot hear, such as the west wind or a rose, is paradigmatic for lyric poetry and can serve as a sign of its fictionality (Culler, 1981, p. 146 and Waters, 2003, pp. 1-17). Contrariwise, the act of addressing the divine, who is assumed to be present, is central to the prayer, where the address is an essential 31 ‘Want ghi ghebenedijt / Die hier rechtvaerdich leven, / Uwen goeden wille altijt / Ons als een schilt bevrijt / Daermede ghi verblijt / Ende croont ons met jolijt / Doer u ghenade verheven’. Cf. Psalm 5:13. 32 The first person singular is predominant in the psalms and invites individuals to identify with the text. Rivkah Zim refers to sixteenth-century English commentators to the psalms who encourage their readers to recognize their own emotions in the psalms and to use them as a vehicle for their own devotion (Zim, 1987, pp. 80-81). On prayers as scripts for performance, see also McNamer, 2010, pp. 58-85.

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part of a ritual which aims precisely at being heard by the heavenly being (Ramazani, 2013, pp. 128-131). In psalms and prayer songs alike, listeners and readers are not intended to feel excluded from the communication, but to use the words as a vehicle for their own devotions. In this chapter, I have explored several functions of the address in a corpus of sixteenth-century songs, understood as texts meant to be sung at social occasions before an audience. The secular song ‘Come hear my sad complaint’ from the Antwerp Songbook is a salient example of the use of the address as an important tool to define a group during and through performance. In a number of religious contrafacts of this song, the address to fellow believers functions likewise as a vehicle for social bonding among the listening group, because the song articulates and reinforces common values. However, in prayer songs written to the same melody, the communication situation is different, as the I persona aims at reaching out, not to potential earthly listeners, but to a supreme being. At the same time, listeners and readers are not intended to feel excluded by this, but to take the prayer song as an example for their own devotional practice. The haunting melody of ‘Aenmerct’ suited all these purposes very well.

Bibliography Bredero, G.A., Boertigh Amoureus en Aendachtigh Groot Liedt-boek (Amsterdam: C.L. vander Plasse, 1622). Costerius, H., Het oudt Huysken van Bethleem (Antwerpen: H. Verdussen, 1590). Culler, J.D., ‘Apostrophe’, in The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaka, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 135-154. Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Dutch Song Database, www.liederenbank.nl (Amsterdam: Meertens Institute). Grijp, L.P., Het Nederlandse lied in de Gouden Eeuw. Het mechanisme van de contrafactuur (Amsterdam: P.J. Meertens-Instituut, 1991). Grijp, L.P., ‘Zangcultuur’, in Volkscultuur. Inleiding in de Nederlandse etnologie, ed. by T. Dekker, H. Roodenburg & G. Rooijakkers (Nijmegen: SUN, 2000), pp. 337-380. Grijp, L.P., ‘Gent, 15 augustus 1566. Groepen mensen lopen luid psalmen zingend door de stad. De honger naar psalmen en schriftuurlijke liederen tijdens de Reformatie’, in Een muziekgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, ed. by Louis Peter Grijp et al. (Amsterdam: Salomé, 2002), pp. 168-173.

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Grijp, L.P. & D.E. van der Poel, ‘Introduction’, in Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture, ed. by D.E. van der Poel, L.P. Grijp & W. van Anrooij (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 1-38. Het Hofken der geestelycker liedekens (Leuven: R. Velpius, 1577). Het Prieel der gheestelicker melodiie (Antwerpen: Verdussen, 1617). Hooft, P.C., Emblemata amatoria (Amsterdam: W.J. Blaeu, 1611). Houtsma, J., ‘Ruyters in het Antwerps Liedboek’, Nieuwe taalgids, 75 (1981), pp. 48-52. Joldersma, H. & D.E. van der Poel, ‘Across the Threshold to Maturity: Gender and Mobility in the Antwerp Songbook’, Itineraria, 8-9 (2009/10), pp. 165-223. Klusen, E., Singen. Materialien zu einer Theorie (Regensburg: Bosse, 1989). Lieder zu 3 und 4 Stimmen (Frankfurt am Main: Chr. Egenolff, 1535). McNamer, S., Affective Meditation and the Invention of the Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia University Press, 2010). Meyster, E., Hemelsch Land-Spel, of Goden Kout, Der Amersfoortsche Landdouwen (Amsterdam: s.a.). The Parallel Latin/English Psalter, ed. Glenn Gunhouse, www.medievalist.net/ psalmxtxt (last accessed 29 January 2016). Preminger, A., O. Bennett Hardison Jr. & F.J. Warnke, The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Ramazani, J., Poetry and its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Scheurleer, D.F., ed. Een devoot ende profitelyck boecxken inhoudende veel ghestelijcke Liedekens ende Leysenen, diemen tot deser tijt toe heeft connen ghevinden in prente oft in ghescrifte. Geestelijk liedboek met melodieën van 1539 (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1889). Sommighe leerachtighe geestelijcke liedekens (Amsterdam: Buys, 1609). Theodotus, S., Het Paradys der Gheestelycke en kerckelycke Lof-Sangen (Antwerpen: H. Aertsens, 1638). van der Poel, D.E., ‘The Power of Song’, in Controversial Poetry 1400-1600, ed. by J. Keßler, U. Kundert & J. Oosterman (Leiden: Brill, in press). van der Poel, D.E., D. Geirnaert, H. Joldersma & J.B. Oosterman, eds., Het Antwerps Liedboek, reconstr. melodies by L.P. Grijp (Tielt: Lannoo, 2004). Vander Straten, F.V., ed. Sommighe nieuwe schriftuerelicke Liedekens […] ghemaect door F.V.(ander) Str.(aten) (Haarlem: G. Rooman, 1599). van Zuylen van Nyevelt, W., Souterliedekens (Antwerpen: Symon Cock, 1540). Vellekoop, K. & H. Wagenaar-Nolthenius, eds., Het Antwerps Liedboek. 87 melodieën op teksten uit ‘Een Schoon Liedekens-Boeck’ van 1544, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1972).

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Veelderhande liedekens gemaect uut den Ouden ende Nieuwen Testamente (Emden: B. van Diest, 1566). Waters, W., Poetry’s Touch: On Lyrical Address (Ithaca/ London: Cornell University Press, 2003). Whiteley, S., A. Benett & S. Hawkins, eds., Music, Space and Place. Popular Music and Cultural Identity (Aldershot etc.: Ashgate, 2004). Zim, R., English Metrical Psalms: Poetry of Praise and Prayer 1535-1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

‘Mijn lief, mijn lief, mijn lief.’ Zo sprak mijn lief mij toe, dewijl mijn lippen op haar lieve lipjes weidden. De woordjes alle drie, wel klaar en wel bescheiden vloeiden mijn oren in, en roerden (’k weet niet hoe) al mijn gedachten om, staag malend, nemmer moe; die ’t oor mistrouwden en de woordjes wederleiden. Dies ik mijn vrouwe bad mij klaarder te verbreiden haar onverwachte reên; en zij verhaald’ het doe. O rijkdom van mijn hart, dat overliep van vreugden! Bedoven viel mijn ziel in haar vol hart van deugden. Maar toen de morgenstar nam voor den dag haar wijk is, met de klare zon, de waarheid droef verrezen. Hemelse goôn, hoe komt de schijn zo na aan ’t wezen, het leven droom, en droom het leven zo gelijk?

My love, my love, my love, my dear love said to me As my lips grazed upon her sweet lips’ loveliness. Small words, but three times spoken with such clarity, They flowed into my ears and gave my thoughts no rest (I know not how), but sent them whirling tirelessly; Doubts grew, until my ears I could no longer trust. So I asked her to say more clearly once again Her unexpected words – and she repeated them. O richness of my heart that overflowed with bliss! My soul plunged deep into the flood of her heart’s grace; But when the morning star gave way before the dawn, The truth rose, sad but clear, together with the sun. Heavenly gods, what truth is there in how things seem, With such a dream so real, and life itself a dream?

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An Early Modern Address to the Author Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, ‘My love, my love, my love’ (1610) Britt Grootes The goal is to be on both sides of the poem / Shuttling between the you and I Ben Lerner

It is a famous case in Dutch literary studies. Of the many sonnets Hooft wrote, this sonnet in which the blissful intimacy between the speaker and his beloved sadly turns out to be a dream, seems to be the one that is most often discussed.1 The sonnet has been interpreted in different ways and it even led to a polemic about the right way to read seventeenth-century poems.2 Despite their differences, all these interpretations make use of the author as a unifying principle. The poem is understood as something that sheds light on the author – either on his life (Hooft wrote this sonnet four months before he married Christina van Erp, to whom he [pseudonymously] addressed his manuscript version of the poem), or on his authorship. In the latter case, the sonnet is regarded as a proof of Hooft’s inventiveness and originality.3 The time has come, I believe, to see the sonnet in a different light – not from the perspective of the author Hooft, but rather the other way around. In this contribution, I want to suggest that the poem demonstrates how the author as a unifying and meaning-giving principle came into being. But in what way is this sonnet about a thwarted lover’s dream, actually a sonnet in which an author constitutes himself as the one who has created the truth of the sonnet? In order to answer that question, I will first look at Foucault’s notion of the author function, and then turn to Jonathan Culler’s apostrophe and Joel Fineman’s conception of the sixteenth- and 1 See, for instance, Strengholt, 1981-1982; Nas, 1993; Roose, 1971; Dambre, 1971-1972; Oversteegen, 1966a; Zwaan, 1966; and Oversteegen, 1966b. 2 See Oversteegen, 1966a, 1966b and Zwaan, 1966. Point of departure of the discussion between Oversteegen and Zwaan was Oversteegen’s plea and attempt to read a seventeenth-century sonnet not as a historical document, presupposing that it can give insight directly into the historical context of the poem (the author Hooft, his personal life, etc.), but as a literary text: a text that, due to the interventions by the poet, can be read differently over and over again. 3 Oversteegen is the most decisive in this respect: according to him, this sonnet testifies to the fact that it was Hooft who turned Dutch into a poetic language, see Oversteegen 1966a.

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seventeenth-century sonnet (see Foucault, 1969; Culler, 1981; and Fineman, 1986). Foucault, first of all, because he pleaded several times – both implicitly and explicitly – to adopt the perspective on the author I am suggesting here. In ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?’ (1969), for example, he explicitly proposed to see the author not as a phenomenon ‘outside and anteceding’ the text; rather, he encouraged others and himself to ask why, since the beginnings of modernity, we tend to see the author in that way (Foucault, 1984, p. 101). According to Foucault, the idea that the author is what antecedes his text, and thus produces a text, was itself produced at a certain moment in history. It is what he famously called the ‘author function’. Then, I will turn to Culler and Fineman, because together they help me to relate Foucault’s ideas regarding the emergence of the modern author to Hooft’s sonnet. The interaction between Culler’s and Fineman’s work on the apostrophe and epideictic poetry respectively, allows us to read Hooft’s sonnet as a paradigm, as it were, of the coming into existence of Foucault’s modern literary author: the one who produces truths with words and antecedes that truth.

Foucault’s author function In ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?’, Foucault states that around the eighteenth century the discourse we now call literary came to be endowed with the author function – implying that it is by this shift that literature could come into existence: There was a time when the texts we call today ‘literary’ (narratives, stories, epics, tragedies, comedies) were accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of the author; their anonymity caused no difficulties since their ancientness, whether real or imagined, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of their status. (…) A [shift] occurred around the eighteenth century: (…) literary discourses came to be accepted only when endowed with the author function. We now ask of each poetic or fictional text: From where does it come, who wrote it, when, under what circumstances, or beginning with what design?4 4 Foucault, 1984, p. 109, the modifications of word order and the translation of several phrases in this quote are mine.

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According to Foucault, the idea of the author as the one who governs the meaning of a text and guarantees its literary status came into existence only in the eighteenth century. However, the grounds on which Foucault makes this statement remain unclear: Foucault does not give any examples that testify to the shift he refers to. Taking up Hooft’s sonnet as such an example, as I will do here, has a double advantage. It does not only shed a new light on the sonnet, it also serves as a corrective to Foucault’s history of the author function – and that in two ways. Hooft’s sonnet offers a correction, first, because the sonnet demonstrates that the shift Foucault refers to, is not merely a transformation outside the text – outside and in relation to the text, as Foucault sees it. In one of the first paragraphs of ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?’, Foucault explains the author function as a classificatory function: if a discourse is endowed with the author function, it has a certain status and a specific function in society. From this it follows that when Foucault is speaking about a shift in the attribution of the author function (to the extent that literary texts become endowed with the author function), he is thinking about a shift in this ‘mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of the discourse within society’ (Foucault, 1984, p. 108). However, what Hooft’s sonnet demonstrates so interestingly, in my view, is that the shift Foucault is speaking of coincides with a change in the discourse itself. Something is happening in the sonnet, which ‘creates’, so to speak, the reader’s need to know who is responsible for the discourse – whose truth determines the truth of the discourse. This leads us to the second way in which Hooft’s sonnet offers a correction to Foucault’s idea of the attribution of the author function to literary texts. For if this transformation in the discourse itself occurs in a sonnet that stems from the beginning of the seventeenth century, we can conclude that the attribution of the author function to literary texts did not take place in the eighteenth century, but no less than 100 years earlier, in the first decades of the seventeenth century.

Fineman’s epideixis But how does the sonnet of Hooft demonstrate the ‘birth’ of the literary author? In what way is this sonnet about a thwarted lover’s dream, actually a sonnet in which the speaker constitutes himself as the one who has created the truth of the sonnet? I would like to throw a glance at Fineman’s book Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye now: it is by means of his analysis of Renaissance

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sonnets that I can start clarifying what this connection between Hooft’s sonnet and the emergence of the author is. What is important is Fineman’s conception of the Renaissance sonnet (including that of the sixteenth and seventeenth century) as exactly such a foregrounding of this discourse in which an author is produced as the one who has produced the discourse. Like Foucault, Fineman urges us not to look at the author to define the truth of a certain discourse, or to explain how a certain discourse has changed over time. Like Foucault, Fineman does not want to confirm the author as the ground from which all meaning springs – indeed, as if the ‘author antecedes and exists outside the discourse’. Fineman uses the development of the Renaissance sonnet – ranging from Dante, to Petrarch, via Sidney to Shakespeare – to make this point: a transformation in this discourse did not occur because poets became more and more personal, but on the contrary, it is exactly a transformation in discourse that made the author more visible, that made the author appear as the one who antecedes the discourse, as if this discourse is produced, and therefore governed, by him (Fineman, 1986, pp. 9-10). In his book of 1986, Fineman argues that with Shakespeare a new variant of authorial subjectivity emerges. However interesting and challenging his analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnets may be, it is his perspective on the Renaissance sonnet that concerns us here. Central to Fineman’s conception of those sonnets is the way in which poetry was being thought of during that period: as something epideictic, as the outcome of a discourse that awarded praise (or blame) to someone or something. ‘As is well known’, Fineman explains in the first paragraph of his book, ‘the poetry of praise is regularly taken to be, from Plato to Aristotle through the Renaissance, the master model of poetry per se’ (Fineman, 1986, p. 1). The Renaissance sonnet is, according to Fineman, a specific instance of epideictic poetry. In order to understand the connection that Fineman sees between the epideictic conception of poetry on the one hand and the constitution of the speaker as the one who has created a poem as if it expresses his truth on the other, it is important to look at Fineman’s explanation of epideixis. Fineman goes back to Aristotle, who, in his Rhetoric, distinguished the epideictic as one of the three types of oratory. Like epideictic oratory, early modern poetry was thought to accord praise to its referential object, and by doing that, to create an ideal of virtue that would encourage its audience to follow. ‘I summarize the tradition of epideictic theory,’ Fineman begins his explanation, ‘by saying that praise, poetical or rhetorical, is what happens when mimesis and metaphor meet.’ (Fineman, 1986, p. 3). What Fineman

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means by this is that epideictic discourse is a certain way of speaking, a certain use of words, by which the referential object is simultaneously imitated and idealized – it is realistically ‘heightened’.5 This aspect of ‘heightening’ is important, since it allows Fineman to relate the epideictic to the one who praises – Fineman assigns a certain subjectivity effect to this ‘heightening’. ‘As early as Aristotle,’ he explains, ‘it is recognized that the rhetorical magnification praise accords its object also rebounds back upon itself, drawing attention to itself and to its own rhetorical procedure.’ (Fineman, 1986, p. 5). Epideictic discourse does not only affect the object that is being praised – he or she is heightened by the discourse –, but also the one who praises, the subject of praise. The praising speaker is affected by his own activity of praise. Fineman clarifies this by referring to Aristotle’s conception of the role the audience was expected to take in an epideictic speech. This audience was not urged to judge, as was the case with the two other types of oratory that Aristotle distinguished, the forensic and the deliberative. What the audience of an epideictic speech had to do was merely to observe. But observe what? According to Fineman, the audience observed what the praising speaker was doing by means of his ornamental speech. It observed how the speaker magnified – ‘heightened’ – his referential object by means of rhetorical devices, that is to say, how the speaker, by choosing his words deliberatively, created a certain truth – a truth in words. Hence, Fineman calls epideictic discourse ‘a showy showing speech’, ‘an objective showing that is essentially showing off’: by praising his object the speaker foregrounds himself – manifests himself as this poetic self, as the one who knows how to create truth (Fineman, 1986, p. 6). As Fineman sees it, the mechanism that sustains epideictic discourse is a reciprocal one: only by the speaking ‘I’ the object of speech, the ‘you’, can appear as this ideal figure, but at the same time it is only by this praiseworthy ‘you’ (by creating this ‘you’ to praise) that the ‘I’ can demonstrate himself as a poetic self, as this producer of truth. Back to the sonnet now: Fineman considers the genre as a specific instance of epideictic discourse because it is exactly this reciprocal mechanism that it incorporates. What Renaissance sonnets do, according to Fineman, is to foreground what is happening if someone accords praise to someone else, if a speaker heightens his referential object by means of rhetorical discourse. As Fineman puts it, aphoristically: ‘The Renaissance sonnet (…) is not only

5 Aristotle speaks in this sense of comparison and amplification. See Hardison, 1962, p. 31 for more on this idea of ‘heightening’.

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a poem of praise, but, characteristically, a poem about praise.’ (Fineman, 1986, p. 4). And he adds: The speaking f irst person of these sonnets will (…) reflect upon his epideixis, and in thus thematizing his own panegyric procedure, the sonneteering poet will himself regularly raise and foreground familiar theoretical questions regarding the way he might adequately imitate his lady or, instead, how he might make “a couplement of proud compare”. How, for example, can words express an excellence beyond expression? How to praise what passes praise?6

From this it follows that the sonnet is at the same time a foregrounding of the constitution of the poetic self: how the speaker, the ‘I’, needs the other, the ‘you’ to manifest himself as the one who makes truth. As such, Fineman offers an original perspective on the familiar topics that govern the Renaissance sonnet: how the ‘I’ longs for his ‘you’, how the ‘I’ desperately needs the ‘you’ – how the ‘I’ cannot live without this ‘you’.

Culler’s apostrophe Fineman’s view on the renaissance sonnet seems to apply well to Dutch sonnets of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. This is certainly the case for the sonnets Hooft wrote. I could summarize many of his sonnets as follows: a speaker speaks about his desire to see his loved one – he wants her to appear as such a praiseworthy object, that is to say, as someone he can praise; it is only then that he can show how he praises her, ‘heightens’ her, and thus, it is only then that the speaker is able to manifest himself as a producer of truth. As he is using the sonnet in its entirety to describe this, the speaker thematizes his process of truth-formation – Hooft’s sonnets function as stages on which the epideictic process can be demonstrated. However, the epideictic mechanism does not seem to apply that much to the sonnet that concerns us here: Hooft’s sonnet that opens with the address of ‘my love’ does not speak about praise, not even implicitly, that is, by explicitly expressing the strong desire for the beloved one. I would like to move on, therefore, to the third and final part of my conceptual framework, that is, to Jonathan Culler’s notion of the apostrophe. This concept will enable me to make clear how Hooft’s sonnet concerns, maybe 6 Fineman, 1986, p. 4.

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not a thematization of the epideictic process, but certainly a thematization of the process of truth-formation in which the speaker manifests himself as the figure from whom this truth originates.7 Of the many texts Culler has written about the apostrophe, the essay ‘Apostrophe’ that appeared in The Pursuit of Signs bears the strongest resemblances to Fineman’s epideictic conception of the sonnet.8 Just as Fineman in his book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, Culler describes in this essay a form of speech in which the creation in words of a ‘you’ is inextricably bound up with the constitution of the one who speaks. The ‘you’ is brought into existence into the reality of the poem, and simultaneously the speaker is foregrounded as the one who has made that reality possible, that is to say, as the author who antecedes this truth-in-words. The only point, one could say, on which they differ is the speech by which this ‘you’ is created. Whereas Fineman talks about a referential speaking – the ‘you’ is created as an object, an object of praise –, Culler focuses on a speech that addresses – the ‘you’ is turned into a presence by addressing it. How an address can have such an effect of truth-formation and of the simultaneous constitution of the speaker, is what Culler demonstrates clearly in his essay from 1981. He starts by explaining what the apostrophe was in classical rhetoric: ‘Quintilian, speaking of oratory, defines apostrophe as a “diversion of our words to address some person other than the judge”.’ (Culler, 1981, p. 135). As Culler sees it, the apostrophe in classical rhetoric is the speech situation in which the speaker turns away from his audience to address someone (or something) in particular: an act that results in the fact that the audience becomes witness of a conversation between the speaker and his addressee. This classical definition allows Culler to explain what is happening if an apostrophe occurs in a poem: it is the reader from whom the speaker turns away and who becomes, thus, the witness of the speech between the speaker and his addressee. Put differently: in case of an apostrophe 7 To move from Fineman to Culler in this way, allows me at the same time to historicize Culler’s ahistoric notion of the apostrophe. In his texts on the apostrophe, his essay in The Pursuit of Signs and his book Theory of the Lyric, Culler elaborates the apostrophe – the apostrophic – as that what always governs lyric poetry. He considers it an aspect that defines what lyric is (and was), without paying attention, that is, to historical differences. By putting Culler’s apostrophe and Fineman’s conception of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sonnet together to work on the sonnet by Hooft, I try to shed some light on the early modern functioning of the notion. 8 The essay in The Pursuit of Signs is an expanded version of the essay that was published in Diacritics (1977; 7.4). In his most recent book, The Theory of the Lyric (2015), Culler took up the apostrophe again and made it one of the parameters that supports his theory.

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in a poem, the reader observes how the speaker, by addressing someone or something, creates a speech situation – a truth in words – in which the addressee is involved as a living presence. Indeed, it is very much like Fineman’s analysis of the manner in which the sonneteering poet reflects upon his epideictic practice. Culler and Fineman describe the same process: how the poet-speaker, by putting the audience, the reader, in the role of observer, manifests himself as the one who knows how to create a truth, a situation in which the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ are both present. As Culler puts it: ‘[T]he vocative of apostrophe is a device which the poetic voice uses to establish with an object a relationship which helps to constitute him’ (Culler, 1981, p. 142). And, more conclusively: ‘[The apostrophizing speaker] makes himself a poet, a visionary.’ (Culler, 1981, p. 142). According to Culler, it is by means of the apostrophe that the speaker manifests himself as the one from whom a discourse, a certain truth originates. To put this in more Foucauldian terms: the speaker manifests himself as the figure who antecedes the discursive truth – he turns himself into the principle that governs the meaning of the discourse. In his text(s) on the apostrophe, Culler is not dealing with the early modern period in particular, or solely with the early modern sonnet. This does not mean, of course, that his analysis does not offer us an interesting perspective on the early seventeenth-century sonnet by Hooft. Seen from Fineman’s epideictic perspective, Culler’s apostrophe becomes useful for the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sonnets. For example, after having read Culler’s text, I was struck by the fact that most of the Dutch sonnets are indeed thematizations of the apostrophic process Culler is describing. The act of address is not just an aspect of these sonnets; rather it is what governs them as a whole. Just as Fineman states that in Renaissance sonnets a speaking ‘I’ reflects upon his praising practice, I could say (clearly supported by Culler) that in many Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sonnets a speaking ‘I’ reflects upon his apostrophic process, thematizing, that is, how he creates a truth in which he and his ‘you’ can both exist, and demonstrating himself as the producer of this truth.

Hooft’s sonnet Now we can finally address Hooft’s sonnet. In what way is this sonnet a thematization of the process of truth formation that we can find in the texts by Culler and Fineman?

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Let us first see what is happening in the sonnet. The sonnet opens with the speaker telling us how his ‘love’ spoke loving words to him, as he was kissing her (ll. 1 and 2). Her words moved him so much, that he could hardly believe what she was saying. See l. 6: ‘(...) my ears I could no longer trust.’ – he could not believe his ears. That’s why he asked her to repeat the sweet words (ll. 7 and 8). And so she did (l. 8: ‘she repeated them’). Then, we arrive at the sextet – and everything seems to work out very well for the speaker. Lines 9 and 10 are literally the poem’s climax: lover and loved one completely dissolve into one another. Yet unfortunately, l. 11 follows immediately with a ‘but’: just as everything was going so well, the sun began to rise – ‘the morning star gave way before the dawn, (...).’ (l. 11). It all happened to be a dream. Both the sonnet and the story it narrates, come to a closure with the speaker’s final sigh: ‘what truth is there in how things seem, / With such a dream so real, and life itself a dream?’ (ll. 13 and 14). The sonnet offers a fine illustration of Culler’s reflection on the apostrophe. The sonnet opens with a twisted apostrophe. The ‘I’ of the sonnet is not the one who addresses but the one who is being addressed. This reversal nicely illustrates the motif of the dream that resembles the real but turns out to be a dream after all. Even though we are dealing with an apostrophe ‘in reverse’, what happens here is exactly what Culler describes: a certain truth (a dream, in this case) is being created in which the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ assemble as each other’s condition of possibility – it no longer matters who is speaking to whom: ‘I’ is ‘you’ and ‘you’ is ‘I’. It makes the sonnet a thematization of the process Culler assigns to the apostrophe: the sonnet is about nothing more than the type of truth-formation and self-constitution that occurs if someone is being addressed.

What truth is there? It is by seeing the sonnet as a thematization of the process of truthformation, that we are led to see more. What becomes clear is that the sonnet problematizes this process of truth-formation in which the speaker constitutes himself as the one who creates and governs the truth. Turn to the sonnet again, and note how each time a truth is created by means of an apostrophe, this truth is being questioned. First apostrophe: ‘My love, my love, my love’ (l. 1). It is indeed the loved one, the ‘you’, who is speaking to the loving ‘I’. And yet, the ‘I’ is speaking: he is telling us, in indirect speech, how his love was speaking to him. The truth that is shaped with this apostrophe

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is a truth in which it no longer matters who is speaking: ‘my love, my love’ could be the discourse of both lover and loved one. But is that really the truth? The truth produced by the first apostrophe is questioned immediately. Did the beloved of the loving ‘I’ really speak those words that imply the truth that she loves him back? Clearly and brightly as it was – ‘three times spoken with such clarity’ –, however truly those three words sounded, the speaking ‘I’ cannot trust them fully yet. Therefore he tests the truth of those words by asking his lover to say them again. As soon as the speaker is convinced (‘we know not how’) that the words of his loved one truly correspond to the truth, he gives himself fully to the truth her words have brought. A second apostrophe sounds, a second truth dawns. The speaker addresses the ‘richness of his heart that overflowed with bliss’, while he is telling how he is literally taken in by his beloved (l. 9). The truth that is created with this apostrophe is that of a reciprocal love. Now that he is sure about the love of his loved one, he can plunge into her heart while he closes her into his heart – two hearts that are overflowing but at the same time flowing into each other. It is interesting in this context to take a look at Culler’s essay again. As I made clear, the reader is central to Culler’s idea of the speaker who constitutes himself as poetic presence: it is by turning the reader into a witness – by turning away from him – that the apostrophizing speaker can demonstrate his truth-making gift. What Culler explains a little later in his essay is that this demonstration to the reader of the speaker’s gift of truth-formation is given extra stress, if the speaker shows a certain awareness of the fact that a truth was created with the words he uttered a moment ago (Culler, 1981, pp. 143-149). It does not matter if the speaker jubilates the truth his words created, or ironizes it instead, if he determines it as truth, or doubts it. What matters is that by showing this awareness, the speaker confirms that he has shaped a truth by means of his words (whatever truth this might be). Culler’s explanation allows us to see the second apostrophe as exactly such a confirmation of a truth. The address to the speaker’s heart in ll. 9 and 10 not only creates a truth – the truth of the reciprocal love –, it also confirms the truth of the previous eight lines. From the perspective of this second apostrophe, the reader becomes convinced of the truth of the preceding speech, in which the words of the beloved are integrated in the words of the lover. Yet this truth is also soon to be tested in ll. 11-12: ‘But when the morning star gave way before the dawn / The truth rose, sad but clear, together with the sun.’ What the speaker did before with the words of his loved one – questioning them on their truth –, the sun now does with the words that

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the speaker exchanged with his beloved. This time the questioning turns out differently. Whereas the questioning of the words of the beloved one (ll. 1-8) led to the determination that the truth those words were ensuing, certainly was true, the rising of the sun (ll. 11-12) sheds a negative light on the truth of the words of ll. 1-10. So, the sonnet comes to a close with the speaker’s final sigh in the last two lines (13-14): ‘Heavenly gods, what truth is there in how things seem, / With such a dream so real, and life itself a dream?’ It is the third apostrophe, a third time that a truth is being shaped. As is the case with the second apostrophe, this truth is described in the apostrophe itself. Now that the speaker understands that the truth of his beloved and her ‘my love’ was not true at all, he can say that it was all a dream – a truth from which he now is separated but in which he found himself a moment ago. Again, this third instance concerns an apostrophe that not only creates a truth but also sheds light on the truth of the preceding speech – in this case the truth that was created by the second apostrophe. Just like the second apostrophe, this apostrophe functions as a mark of awareness that the speaker has created a truth with the preceding words. Yet, contrary to the second apostrophe, this time the truth-formation is not confirmed as truth, as a real truth, but as non-truth (or rather: as a truth that cannot coincide with the truth in which the speaker finds himself now – it was a dream, indeed). This truth of the third apostrophe is repeated in the way the speaker turns to his addressee – how he addresses this addressee. Whereas the speaker in the second apostrophe turned to something in himself, in which two truths, two speeches – that of himself and that of his loved one – were totally integrated, he now turns to a truth outside of him – ‘Heavenly gods’ –, describing a truth in which two truths can exist together but isolated from each other: he asks why in this truth both the truths of ‘is’ and ‘seems’ can occur – ‘With such a dream so real, and life itself a dream?’ But is that really the truth? Is that the only truth? The reader is asking those questions now, not the speaker, nor the sun. For it is the reader now who starts to realize that there is maybe yet another truth. With the question of the speaker, the reader becomes aware that his perspective differs from that of the speaker – he experiences that he partakes in another truth. What the speaker needs to find out – ‘Heavenly gods, what truth is there in how things seem, / With such a dream so real, and life itself a dream?’ – , is for the reader suddenly to know: from the truth in which he finds himself now, the reader sees how the speaker, who is describing a truth in which dream and reality resemble each other so much, is himself taking part in the production of a truth that is created by means of speech.

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One question remains: who is speaking, if it is no longer the speaker who was shaping truths but who is now shaped as a certain truth himself? It is a question who created the sonnet, with all its levels of truth. The separation of the speaker from the reader goes together with the separation of one speaker from another speaker. The reader sees a speaker who, with his words, has been creating truth, and at the same time he sees a speaker who has created all that. At the end of the sonnet a speaker appears as the one who has created this single truth – the sonnet. ‘How can the author appear as the one who exists outside the text and antecede it?’, Foucault urged us to ask. Now we know that we can turn to Hooft’s sonnet for an answer.

Bibliography Culler, J.D., ‘Apostrophe’, Diacritics, 7:4 (1977), pp. 59-69. Culler, J.D., The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press, 1981). Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Dambre, F.A.J., ‘“Mijn lief, mijn lief, mijn lief”: Beschouwingen bij een sonnet van P.C. Hooft’, Studia Germanica Gandensia, 13 (1971-1972), pp. 63-83. Fineman, J., Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1986). Foucault, M., ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur ?’, Bulletin de la Société francaise de la philosophie, 63 (1969), pp. 73-104. Foucault, M., ‘What’s an Author?’, in The Foucault Reader, ed. by Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 101-120. Hardison, O.B., The Enduring Monument: A Study of Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1962). Nas, L., ‘Two Love Sonnets by P.C. Hooft: 23 January & 17 February 1610’, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, 14 (1993), pp. 89-95. Roose, L., ‘De liefdesdroom in de sonnetten van Hooft en Bredero’, Dietsche Warande en Belfort, 116 (1971), pp. 6-31. Oversteegen, J.J., ‘Hooftse wendingen’, Merlyn, 4 (1966a), pp. 259-275. Oversteegen, J.J., ‘Wir Philologen. Een antwoord aan F.L. Zwaan’, Merlyn, 4 (1966b), pp. 494-501. Strengholt, L., ‘Hoofts verzen voor Christina van Erp (1609-1610)’, Spektator, 11 (1981-1982), pp. 3-13. Zwaan, F.L., ‘Onhooftse kronkelingen’, Merlyn, 4 (1966), pp. 489-493.

Begroetenis aen den doorluchtighsten en hooghgeboren Vorst Frederick Henrick HOLLANDSCHE Maeghden, vlecht Orangien met laurieren, En kransset FREDERICK, die in het landbestieren Met moed, en yver treed, en stroockt dees’ teedere eeuw. Alreede ontvonckt het hart van onsen grooten leeuw: Hy beurt verschrickelijck sijn hoofd op uyt de baeren, En schud sijn’ maenen vast, en swaeyt sijn’ grijse hayren, En kropt met hoovaerdy, en trotsheyd sijne borst, En slaet het heusch gesicht naer desen braeven Vorst, En neycht eerbiedelijck tot driemael voor sijn’ voeten. Op op mijn’ Sanggoddin; verestout u me te groeten, In ’t midden van den drang, den princelijcken held, En beuckelaer des lands: die ’t Castiliaens geweld, En de gesteurde maght van Oostenrijck sal stuyten, En onsen tuyn met gaergevlochten’ harten sluyten. Veel helys, veel heyls, o Vorst! die desen last aenvaerd. En veldheer, op uw’ sy den degen gord, en ’t swaerd Tot ons’ verdediging. Wy sien de burgeryen, Meer eendraghts word gespeurt meer liefde, en minder haet. (…) Ick sie ’t verbond gemaeckt. het volck word goedertieren. Ick sie de vredefeest op speeltoonneelen vieren. Ick sie de vredevlam, die drift van wolcken leckt! Ick sie hoe als een kleed de vrede ’t land bedeckt. Ick hoor Vorst FREDERICK van alle tongen roemen, Ick hoor hem VREDERYCK, en Vredevader noemen. Ick smaeck sijn’ goedigheyd. ick voel sijn’ heuschen aerd. Ick rieck den soeten reuck van vrede die hy baert. Bekraghtigh FREDERICK dan ’t geen wy ons verbeelden. Leef met AMELIA in voorspoed en in weelden, Ter tijd toe binnen Delff het heyligh grafgesteent Vwe assche ontfange in vre by ’t vaderlijck gebeent.

Salutation to the Most Illustrious and Noble Prince Frederick Henry 1 5 10 15

You Holland Maids, take oranges and laurel leaves And weave a wreath for Frederick, who now agrees To lead our land and bravely tame this troubled age. Already our great lion’s heart is set ablaze; He rears his terrifying head above the tide And shakes it, tossing his bronze mane from side to side, And with a proud defiance swells his mighty breast, And gazes on our prince with loyalty and trust, And thrice before his feet in deep respect bows down. Awake, awake, my Muse, and boldly join the throng Of eager voices greeting this heroic prince, The strong shield of our land; for he’ll stand firm against The power of Castile and Austria’s fevered pride, And fence our garden in with hearts he’s intertwined. Hail, hail, O Prince! May you be blessed as you accept This task. And Soldier, gird your sword, so we’ll be kept Secure from hostile threat. Already we can see In our great towns new joy among the citizenry. They sense a greater harmony, more love, less hate.

(…) 250 255 260

I see our concord signed, the people kindlier. I see peace dramas played in every theatre. I see high clouds aglow with flames of celebration! I see peace settle like a blanket on our nation. I hear how every tongue sings praise of Frederick’s deeds, I hear them call him Vrederijk and Father Peace. I taste his kindliness, I feel his noble worth. I smell the sweetness of the peace that he brings forth. This vision, Frederick, make it come true, we pray. Live richly with Amelia until the day The holy crypt in Delft will open to receive In lasting peace your bones for the paternal grave.

5

Parrhesia and Apostrophe Joost van den Vondel, ‘Salutation to the Most Illustrious and Noble Prince Frederick Henry’ (1626) Marrigje Paijmans

On 23 April 1625, upon the death of his older half-brother Maurice, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange (1584-1647), became Captain General of the States Army of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (henceforth: Dutch Republic). Later that year, the new Prince was inaugurated stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland (1 June), Overijssel (6 July), Utrecht (9 July) and Gelderland (November) (Poelhekke, 1978, pp. 78-80, 97-100). Until then, he had kept a low profile in matters of domestic politics, which were severely complicated by religious disputes (Israel, 1990, p. 77). However, as Frederick Henry’s military and political power increased, he was all the more pressed to take sides. All the cities that participated in the Dutch Revolt had converted to Calvinism, a branch of Protestantism that featured the doctrine of predestination, but during the early seventeenth century two incompatible interpretations of Calvin’s theology had taken root. The Calvinist orthodox followed the doctrine to the letter, but the Remonstrants had presented a remonstrance to the States of Holland and Friesland in 1610, formulating five points of disagreement with Calvinism. While the orthodox preachers had a large following among the people and the military, especially after stadtholder Maurice sided with them in 1617, the Remonstrants were supported by the higher middle class of merchants and regents, headed by landsadvocaat Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. In 1618, Maurice had Oldenbarnevelt arrested, and during his process the Synod of Dordrecht saw chance to reject the remonstrance (den Tex, 1966, pp. 675-717; van Deursen, 2005, p. 272). Three days after the Synod had ended, on 12 May 1619, Oldenbarnevelt was publicly executed in The Hague, heralding a period of oppression and persecution for the Dutch Remonstrants. When stadtholder Maurice died, the Remonstrants anticipated legal redress. They attempted to gain Frederick Henry’s support, for instance by sending out literary spokesmen to praise him with odes and hymns. Joost van den Vondel was one of them; between 1626 and 1632 he dedicated

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six long panegyrics to Frederick Henry.1 The first in this series was the Salutation to the Most Illustrious and Noble Prince Frederick Henry (1626),2 a 260-lines long poem honouring ‘the Inauguration of his Stadtholdership and Governance of Gelderland, Holland, Zeeland, Overyssel, Utrecht etc.’. There are clear indications that this neatly printed booklet was commissioned by members of the Amsterdam magistrate, who were in favour of the Remonstrants. Firstly, Vondel’s name is not mentioned on the title page, but only at the bottom of the poem. Secondly, the title page shows Amsterdam’s coat of arms instead of the printer’s mark. Thirdly, Vondel’s panegyric of 1628, Amsterdam’s Welcome, was also published ‘anonymously’ and contained the names of three Amsterdam regents,3 suggesting that Vondel and the burgomasters collaborated in publications dedicated to Frederick Henry. Although Vondel, who owned a f irm in silk stockings (Smits-Veldt & Spies, 2012), did not exactly move in regent circles, as a poet he was close to members of the cultural elite, such as Pieter Cornelisz Hooft, who may have recommended Vondel to the burgomasters. The Amsterdam magistrate of 1626 consisted of four pro-Remonstrant burgomasters, 4 who sought the abolition of the anti-Remonstrant edicts that had been enforced by stadtholder Maurice in support of the Calvinist orthodox. They also demanded a greater say in foreign politics, with respect to the war against Spain in particular. The Union of Utrecht (1578) stipulated that foreign politics were to reside under the States-General and the Captain General, which meant that cities could not exert any direct influence. The burgomasters regarded this law as unjust, since Amsterdam yielded the biggest part of the war funds. Vondel’s Salutation can be considered a lyric address to Frederick Henry in the name of the Amsterdam magistrate. However, taking into account the political context, which was oppressive to all pro-Remonstrant expressions, this address has an ethical component as well. To convince Frederick Henry 1 Viz. Salutation (Begroetenis, 1626); William of Nassau’s Birth Clock (Geboortklock van Willem van Nassau, 1626); Conquest of Grol (Verovering van Grol, 1627); Amsterdam’s Welcome (Amsteldams Wellekomst, 1628); Victory Song (Zegesang, 1629); Crown of Cities (Stedekroon, 1632). 2 I have used the original print of 1626. For line numbers, see ed. J.F.M. Sterck (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1929-1937), volume 2: pp. 507-520. The Wereldbibliotheek edition will be abbreviated as wb. 3 Viz. burgomasters Pieter de Vlaming van Oudshoorn and Jacob Dircksz de Graeff, and alderman (schepen) Harmen Gysbertsz van de Pol. See wb 3: 185, ll. 128-130. 4 For burgomasters Pieter de Vlaming van Oudshoorn and Anthony Oetgens van Waveren, see Molhuysen & Blok, 1911-1937, 7: p. 1271 and 9: p. 774. For Jan Cornelisz Geelvinck and Jacob van Neck, see Elias, 1923, pp. 23, 87.

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of the need for a more tolerant and pacifist policy, Vondel appealed to his princely ethos or his sense of duty to do what was best for the state rather than what served his personal interests. In doing so, Vondel seems to have modelled his address on the classical trope of parrhesia or ‘frank speech’. By using parrhesia, a speaker confronts an authority with an inconvenient truth, putting his own life or reputation at stake, thereby showing his own commitment to the truth, as well as the transcendent importance of this truth. In this essay I will investigate how Vondel incorporated parrhesia in his lyric address by demonstrating that his use of it relies on the typical lyrical device of apostrophe. But first I need to discuss the general structure of the Salutation.

A mixture of genres Vondel’s panegyrics for Frederick Henry have been described as ‘an experimental mixture of genres,’ as they contain lyrical, epical and rhetorical elements (Smit, 1975, vol. 1, p. 384). According to Marijke Spies (1977-1978, pp. 569, 576), however, this exact combination of genres was anything but experimental: in Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetices Libri Septem (1561) it is described as a panegyric subgenre in itself, the enkomion. An enkomion, translated by Spies as an ‘epically and rhetorically arranged ode’, is primarily structured like a eulogy, following the pattern of exordium, narratio, argumentatio and peroratio (introduction, narration, argumentation and conclusion), as described in Quintilian’s Institutio oratorio (95 ad) (Lausberg, 1998, § 262, p. 120). However, whereas the alexandrine verse form and the Virgilian style of representation of an enkomion are epical, the occasional subject matter, the songful interludes and the text’s length point to lyric. As I want to argue in what follows, this mixture of genres, whether one sees it as an experiment or as belonging to an existing genre, must be examined in relation to how Vondel addressed his complex political environment, the only adequate expression of which seems to be polyphony (Bachtin, 1973, pp. 3-6). It must have been quite a challenge for him to find a genre that facilitated both praise and critique. The specific mixture of genres in the enkomion allowed for a quick response to current events in the bombastic style worthy of a prince and left some space for political argument. The exordium (ll. 1-28) of the Salutation opens with the Pindaric picture of Frederick Henry returning as a champion to his home town The Hague,

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where he is saluted by Dutch maidens and crowned with a laurel wreath.5 In reality, the occasion for the Salutation was not Frederick Henry’s return from battle, but his taking office in The Hague as the stadtholder of Holland. After this lyrical opening, the exordium proceeds epically with the invocation of the muse (ll. 10-14) and the dedication to Frederick Henry (l. 15). Conventionally, the narratio, involving the protagonist’s conduct in a specific military operation, is the principal component of the enkomion. The siege or battle is rendered in a visualizing style, characterized by vivid descriptions and hyperbolic metaphors. The narratio of the Salutation (ll. 29-220) is atypical in that it involves not one siege, but both Frederick Henry’s entire military career and that of his ancestors. Vondel ingeniously intertwines the Prince’s biography with the history of the Dutch Revolt. He compares Frederick Henry to the Greek hero Achilles, who was raised by a centaur on lion’s marrow that made him valiant. The detail reminds the listener of the Prince’s fatherless youth. William of Orange was murdered in Frederick Henry’s year of birth, 1584, and the little prince took in bellicosity with his mother’s milk: [You have] suckled the Spanish hate from your mother’s breast, Since William lay in his grave. Oh, sorrowful patricide!6

Yet, at the age when Achilles was still playing on Mount Pelion, the Prince was already fighting the Battle of Nieuwpoort (1600). The idea that war was second nature to Frederick Henry is realistic to the extent that the aristocracy traditionally perpetuated and expanded its power through warfare. More specifically, since William of Orange’s leading role in the Dutch Revolt, the princes of Orange had become personifications of the war against Spain. As such, Frederick Henry’s princely status and family history posed a considerable war threat to Dutch pacifists. The Amsterdam regents, who preferred a truce with Spain, looked upon his rising power with great concern. It is therefore of little wonder that Vondel’s narratio also contains passages that express reservations about Frederick Henry’s bellicosity. At a perilous moment in the Battle of Nieuwpoort, for instance, his older half-brother Maurice ordered him to withdraw from the fight:7 5 Pindar’s (522-443 bc) epinikia or odes, celebrating the champions of the Panhellenic Games, were known in the Dutch Republic from Plantin’s edition Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia (Leiden, 1590). 6 ‘[ghy hebt] uyt moeders borst den Spaenschen haet gesogen, / Van zedert Welhem lagh, ô droeve vadermoord!’ (ll. 30-31). Translations my own unless indicated otherwise. 7 About Maurice as Captain-General, see van Deursen, 2005, pp. 176-181.

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It befits me once again to carefully look After you, and not recklessly hazard Our family’s stock and glory to deliver Spain The fame of our House stricken with despair. Depart then, high hope of your great father, Commend me this concern, and this burden, (...). 8

If Frederick Henry were to die, the House of Orange would lose its heir, which meant utter defeat against the Spaniards. Maurice therefore commanded Frederick Henry to retreat and save himself for the future Stadtholderate, upon which the fifteen-year old Prince answers: ‘Me, yield to anyone!’ In this way, the Salutation creates a tension between Frederick Henry’s pugnacity and the importance of his survival for the Republic. By the end of the narratio, words of warning are spoken in the first person to the Prince: If I were to observe the erection of your tent, Your expeditions far and wide, the cities you besieged, I would shortly be worn out. It pleases me now, from afar, To behold the flickering of your rising star.9

The ‘I’ in this passage bears a striking resemblance to the undersigned ‘Your Excellency’s most humble servant, I[oost]. Vander Vondelen’, who followed Frederick Henry’s military campaigns safely from Amsterdam. The mere thought of war wore him out. It is interesting to note how the poet turns to the addressee in direct speech, approaching him, yet at the same time keeping his distance. This distance can be interpreted ideologically, but also in spatial terms. In this play with proximity and distance, Vondel’s lyric address creates a slightly ironic undertone and a critical attitude with regard to Frederick Henry’s busy warfare. According to Quintilian, the end of the narratio should prepare the listener for the speaker’s argument. In that light, the concerns voiced by Maurice and the poet seem to be pointing ahead to the argumentatio 8 ‘Doch ’t past my wederom ernsthaftelijck te letten / Op u, en reuckeloos niet t’effens op te setten / De glori onses stams; den Iber voor altoos / Dien roem te laten dat ons huys leyd hopeloos. / Gae heen dan, groote hoop van uwen grooten vader, / Beveel my dese sorgh, en desen last te gader, (...).’ (ll. 85-90). My translation. 9 ‘Indien ick volgen sou het spannen uwer tent, / Uw’ toghten wijd en sijdt, de steên van u berent, / Haest waer ick afgemat. ’t vernoegt my nu van verre / T’aenschouwen ’t flickeren van uwe opgaende starre.’ (ll. 143-146). My translation.

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(ll. 203-248) (Spies, 1977-1978, p. 570) in which a Spanish peace envoy delivers a fiery sermon against the ‘curse of war’ (l. 236). In this speech, the war god Mars ‘[w]ith his bloody jaws’ is caged like a dog (ll. 246-248). It is a daring metaphor, because in the exordium Vondel had depicted how Frederick Henry himself ‘comes rushing like Mars’.10 The ambiguous role of Mars in the Salutation illustrates how Vondel problematizes the war: as both a showcase for princes and a cause of great distress for the people. Evidently, the peace envoy speaks for the people or, to be more specific, for seafarers and merchants. It is their hopes that he voices when he invites the Dutch to reap the benefits of peace for trade: ‘Go then, trade, stroll along all my king’s shores (...).’11 The vast majority of Amsterdam burgomasters and regents owed their wealth and status to overseas trade. Finally, the peroratio (ll. 249-260) leaves no doubt as to the prevailing view of war in the Salutation. Again, the poet addresses the Prince in the first person. With a ninefold anaphora of ‘I’, Vondel evokes a vision of the Republic in peace with Frederick Henry as its ‘Father Peace’ and ‘Vrederijk’ (l. 254). Vrederijk is a wordplay on ‘Frederick’ that can be translated as both ‘rich in peace’ and ‘realm of peace’, identifying the Prince and the Republic under the banner of peace. The final lines of the poem enhance this linguistic unification historically (ll. 258-260); by mentioning ‘the paternal grave,’ Vondel conjures up William of Orange’s legacy, which binds the fate of the House of Orange and that of the Dutch Revolt together, so that eventually Frederick Henry’s well-being and that of the Republic are one and the same thing. Vondel’s negotiation between the interests of ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Orange’ turn the Salutation into a polyphonic text, resulting in contradictory images of Frederick Henry, as both a war-mongering aristocrat and the ‘Vrederijk’ who can bring peace to the people. As such, Vondel’s panegyric offers an insightful representation of the political quandary Frederick Henry found himself in. However, the Salutation offers more than a representation of the stadtholder; it aims to change political reality by evoking a different prince, one who can and will break the political impasse and then return in his former role of stadtholder. It is in this endeavour that parrhesia and apostrophe are entwined.

10 ‘Aenbrallen komt als Mars’ (ll. 25-27). 11 ‘Gaet handelt wandelt weer langs all’ mijns konings stranden (...).’ (l. 245). ‘My king’ refers to Philip iv.

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Parrhesia for a prince The manner in which Vondel addresses Frederick Henry in the Salutation deserves to be considered as a form of parrhesia, because it involves the courageous attempt to convince an authority of an inconvenient truth. Vondel urges Frederick Henry to do what was best for the Republic, rather than follow in his brother’s footsteps and enjoy the mighty support of the orthodox preachers. The Greek word parrhesia is a compound of ‘all’ (pan) and ‘what is said’ (rhema), indicating that a parrhesiast speaks the entire truth and conceals nothing. Parrhesia originated as the right of Athenian citizens to speak an inconvenient truth in the democratic assembly (c. 508-322 bc).12 This right protected the speaker against the sophists, who tried to conceal inconvenient truths, and thus parrhesia would guarantee that no truth was shunned in the assembly. Nonetheless, to rely on parrhesia required great courage from the parrhesiast, and from the listener too, who had to publicly acknowledge parrhesia as truth (Foucault, 2012, pp. 12-13). I am not claiming that Vondel in his Salutation spoke the actual truth, nor that he expressed his personal convictions, but rather that he used parrhesia as a rhetorical device to defend the interests of his patrons. However, parrhesia can be regarded as an indicator of an ethical process as well. Michel Foucault has examined the tradition of parrhesia extensively for his last lecture series at the College de France, The Courage of Truth (Le courage de la vérité, 1984). According to him, parrhesia, due to its emphatically ethical motive, would evoke an ethical ‘space’ within political discourse, from which politics could be called into question.13 For Foucault, the rise of parrhesiasts in any political discourse characterizes the inability of that discourse to generate truth, in the sense of what is good, beneficial and useful for the state (Foucault, 2012, pp. 35-52). For the state to survive such a crisis, parrhesia opens up another, ethical discourse that temporarily ‘bypasses’ the stagnated political discourse (Paijmans, 2015, p. 89). With Foucault, the fact that Vondel used parrhesia – and not any other rhetorical device – can be interpreted as a signal that politics in the Dutch Republic was not functioning as it should. Vondel’s appeal to Frederick Henry to break the political impasse between the orthodox and the Remonstrants 12 Foucault, 2012, p. 34. A historical account of parrhesia in ancient Greece is given in Colclough, 2005, pp. 16-25. 13 For Foucault’s concept of ‘discourse’, see Foucault, 1972, p. 216. The late Foucault, in contrast to the Foucault of the early 1970s, assumed that multiple discourses were simultaneously operative in society. Cf. Foucault, 1982, pp. 777-795; Foucault, 2012, p. 36.

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in favour of the latter was, effectively, an encouragement for the Prince to exert his military power, thus bypassing politics. Parrhesia can take on different forms, depending on the political discourse in which it is operating. When a parrhesiast addresses a prince, as Vondel does in the Salutation, parrhesia takes the form of paideia or counsel (Jaeger, 1945; van Renswoude, 2011, pp. 51-54; Foucault, 2012, p. 62). The foremost condition for paideia to take effect, is the identification of the prince’s personal ethos with the corporate ethos of the state. According to early modern theories of sovereignty, as developed by, among others, Edmund Plowden (1518-1585) and Jean Bodin (1530-1596), the sovereign and the state were one (Kantorowicz, 1957, pp. 12-23). Therefore, a sovereign was said to have two bodies, a body natural and a body politic that was identical to the abstract ‘body’ of the State: The king has two Capacities, for he has two Bodies, the one whereof is a Body natural, consisting of natural Members as every other Man has, and in this he is subject to Passions and Death as other Men are; the other is a Body politic, and the Members thereof are his Subjects, and he and his Subjects together compose the Corporation (…) and this body is not Subject to Passions as the other is, nor to Death, for as to this Body the King never dies (…).14

The theory of the king’s two bodies guaranteed the continuity between the personal ethos of the sovereign and the corporate ethos of the state. All physical and mental forces that the body natural was exposed to, affecting the prince’s personal ethos, would resonate in the political realm. With respect to parrhesia this meant that, provided the prince governed the state in good conscience, he would acknowledge the parrhesiast’s truth and implement it in his politics. The fact that Frederick Henry was the only real prince in the Dutch Republic made him the most plausible addressee for a parrhesiastic appeal in terms of paideia. Theoretically, however, Frederick Henry had no sovereignty over the Republic, as he owed his princely title only to his sovereignty over the French province of Orange. In the Republic he was merely an army commander in the service of the States and the States-General (Israel, 1990, pp. 300-306). Because Frederick Henry lacked the body politic, his ethos was not identical with that of the state and, theoretically, did not offer Vondel access to political discourse. In practice, however, the Oranges had acquired 14 E. Plowden, Commentaries or Reports (1816), 233a. Cited in Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 13. The English edition is a translation of Les Commentaries, ou Reportes (1571).

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the status of royalty in the Republic.15 With his Salutation Vondel seems to have tapped into this dynastic representation of the Oranges, to evoke Frederick Henry’s body politic as a prerequisite for his parrhesia. I have already demonstrated how Vondel in the peroratio of his Salutation identifies Frederick Henry with the Dutch Republic. In doing so, he provided a condition for parrhesia to take effect. In what follows I will demonstrate which role Vondel’s use of the apostrophe fulfilled in this process of identification.

Apostrophe Poetry has always been considered a powerful vehicle for paideia because of its affective force, which could compel thoughts and emotions in a prince to, eventually, make a difference in politics. This line of thought was fundamental to the genre of mirrors for princes and it was a common view in seventeenth-century Dutch poetics as well.16 Vondel’s Salutation operates in this tradition by addressing Frederick Henry as a prince, although he was not the prince of the Dutch Republic. In order for Frederick Henry to physically identify with the state, Vondel had to evoke his body politic. His method in doing so can be refined when analyzed with Jonathan Culler’s theory of ‘apostrophe’, a rhetorical figure that occurs frequently in the Salutation (Culler, 2002 and Culler, 2015). In the classical sense of the word, to apostrophize is to evoke the image of an addressee. At first sight, Vondel’s use of apostrophe in the Salutation was rather conventional. Following the Virgilian examples, he employed an apostrophe in the invocation: ‘Awake, awake, my Muse’, in the dedication: ‘Hail, hail, O Prince!’ and in exclamations he even addresses things: ‘Oh, tragic parricide!’17 The apostrophe in the dedication evokes an addressee who was worthy of receiving a panegyric, that is a prince. Remarkably, the frequency of apostrophes in the remainder of the text is very high, as if Vondel had to ‘reanimate’ the image of Frederick Henry as a prince time and time again, lest it should slip away. Indeed, the image of Frederick Henry as the prince of a republic was unstable in itself, and on top of that it was frustrated by Vondel’s critical remarks. It seems that the excessive use of 15 The Oranges projected their dynastic status in Orange onto the Dutch Stadtholderate; see Keblusek & Zijlmans, 1997, p. 16. 16 See Foucault, 2009, pp. 131-133 and Skinner, 1978, pp. 125-131. For a Dutch example, see Hooft, 2005, p. 32. 17 ‘Op op mijn’ Sanggoddin’ (l. 10); ‘Veel heyls, veel heyls, o Vorst!’ (l. 15); ‘ô droeve vadermoord!’ (l. 31).

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apostrophes had to compensate for this instability, because the image of Frederick Henry as a prince who identified with the Dutch Republic, was a necessary condition for Vondel’s appeal to the princely ethos. Particularly Culler’s focus on the ‘dramatizing’ force of apostrophe is relevant to Vondel’s aim to call Frederic Henry’s abstract body politic to life. Apostrophe is a dramatizing form of speech in the sense that it evokes its own addressee, who, although imaginary, has a very real effect on the listeners. The mechanics of this process, which Culler considers to be crucial to lyric in general, he designates as ‘triangulated address’: ‘the address to the reader by means of address to something or someone else’ (Culler, 2002, p. 143. See also Culler, 2015, p. 186). The function of apostrophe in this process is to establish and foster the relation of mutual dependence between poet and addressee: ‘the apostrophic postulation of addressees refers one to the transforming and animating activity of the poetic voice’ (Culler, 2002, p. 149). This process can be observed in the Salutation: by addressing Frederick Henry’s body politic, Vondel created the opportunity for himself to speak frankly, like a real parrhesiast, thereby dramatizing the truth effect on both the Prince and his Amsterdam audience. In chapter 9 of this book, Maaike Meijer ponders over Culler’s notion of apostrophe in relation to the subgenre of occasional poetry, to which Vondel’s Salutation also belongs. She suggests that by focusing too strongly on the triangulated address, Culler’s notion of apostrophe does not do full justice to poetry addressed to living persons, in which the addressee and the listener coincide. In his 2015 publication, Culler does account for the rhetorical effects of apostrophe in occasional poetry (pp. 191-211), for instance when he discusses ‘the poet “winking at the reader” while addressing someone else’ (p. 206). Yet, he does not seem to value the social significance of these effects in the way Meijer does. She claims that apostrophes in occasional poetry are often utilized ‘to open up to the social world and to really address real others and convince the readers of something’ (see p. 162, Meijer’s italics). Meijer demonstrates how the lyric address of living women in occassional poems involved a winking at suppressed female voices in the public realm. In this sense the social effect of the wink can be considered a dramatization. Another example of this social effect would be to address a prince in times of war as a peaceloving ruler, dramatizing the suppressed voices of pacifist listeners. The social and political effect of this address would be for the listeners to unite against the war and for the prince to reconsider his policy. Vondel’s Salutation can be interpreted as a direct address to Frederick Henry, but since the text was published and distributed in Amsterdam, it definitely directed winks at Amsterdam listeners as well. The image Vondel

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evoked of Frederick Henry by addressing him as the sovereign who would end the religious disputes, is neither consistent with Frederick Henry’s political status nor with the historical situation in the Dutch Republic, yet dramatizes religious and political convictions that had been suppressed for over seven years. Frederick Henry’s awareness that the address was ‘overheard’, should exert additional pressure on him to live up to the evoked image. In this way, the apostrophe supported and strengthened the parrhesia in Vondel’s Salutation. Culler’s lyrical and Meijer’s social interpretation of apostrophe offer a joint explanation for the different and intertwining ways in which apostrophe functions in Vondel’s enkomion, which is indeed a ‘mixture of genres’. The strongest example of this entanglement in the Salutation can be seen in the peroratio, where Vondel evokes the vision of Frederick Henry as ‘Father Peace’ and the Republic in peace. The evocation is prepared by the ninefold anaphora of ‘I’, in the process of which the image of Vrederijk is literally materialized, as it is perceived through the five senses: ‘I see,’ ‘I hear,’ ‘I taste,’ ‘I feel’ and ‘I smell’ (ll. 249-256). Finally, the passion generated by the anaphora is invested in the image with an apostrophe: ‘This vision, Frederick, make it come true, we pray.’ (l. 257). The visionary ‘I’ has shifted to a communal ‘we’, for the poet to merge with his listeners, the Dutch citizens. It is a topos for the parrhesiast to remind his listeners that he has spoken in the name of and for the benefit of the state. In this case, the topos conceals that Vondel was probably instructed by the Amsterdam burgomasters. The merging of the poet and the listeners results in the elimination of the triangulated address, for the Salutation to end as an outright rhetorical plea to the Prince by his people. However, Vondel would not have arrived at this point without the lyrical and the social effect of apostrophe, because it had to be the will of the people that would enforce Frederick Henry to take on the body politic. It was on their request that the stadtholder of Holland should reinvent himself as a ‘republican prince’ who did what was best for the Republic, even if this implied a bypassing of politics.

Conclusion Of Vondel’s six panegyrics for Frederick Henry, the Salutation was the only one to be included in the princely library in The Hague.18 It seems likely that the Prince laid eyes on the text, although there is no evidence of a 18 The inventory is published by Renting & Renting-Kuijpers, 1993. See also Keblusek, 1997, pp. 165-170.

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response to Vondel or the Amsterdam burgomasters. What we do know is that, in 1627, the Prince and the Amsterdam magistrate reached an agreement on the religious disputes: the Prince would offer the Remonstrants military protection against the orthodox rioters in exchange for war funds (Israel, 1990, pp. 78-82 and Paijmans, 2015, pp. 131-133). This collaboration temporarily resolved the political impasse, to the detriment of the orthodox. Vondel’s polyphonic representation of Frederick Henry in the Salutation was inherent to his status as both a stadtholder and a prince. The mixture of genres in Vondel’s ‘epically and rhetorically structured panegyric’ allowed for this representation: the epical narrative of war events features Frederick Henry as the military leader of the Revolt, the argumentatio voices Amsterdam’s criticism of his war policy, while the lyrical peroratio evokes the body politic of a sovereign. When the Salutation is regarded as an instance of parrhesia, it becomes clear why Vondel put so much effort in the image of the sovereign: for parrhesia to be politically effective the addressee must possess a body politic that provides the truth access to the political realm. By dramatizing a vision of Frederick Henry’s body politic through a powerful apostrophe, Vondel solved the problem that, theoretically, the Prince was not sovereign over the Dutch Republic. The fact that this vision was held by the Dutch citizens, mirrors the social effect of apostrophe, which also exploits Frederick Henry’s awareness that the address was overheard by his citizens. Surely, Vondel’s Salutation is not the first panegyric in which a poet bestows immortality upon a prince, yet all too often these poetic pretentions are interpreted as merely a play of the imagination. What becomes clear from a close analysis of Vondel’s etho-poetic appeal is that, especially in the young Dutch Republic, where politics was reinvented and reformed on a daily base, the imaginary could be dramatized at any time.

Bibliography Bachtin, M., Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. by R.W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor, MI: Arbis, 1973 [1963]). Colclough, M., Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Culler, J.D., The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002 [1981]). Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). den Tex, J., Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3 (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1966).

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Elias, J.E., Geschiedenis van het Amsterdamsche Regentenpatriciaat (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1923). Foucault, M. , The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, transl. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). Foucault, M. , ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry, 8:4 (1982), pp. 777-795. Foucault, M., Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978, transl. G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Foucault, M., The Courage of Truth (The Government of the Self and Others 2): Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-1984, transl. G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Hooft, P.C., Rede over de waardigheid van de poëzie, ed. by J. Jansen (Amersfoort: Florivallis, 2005). Israel, J., Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585-1713 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990). Jaeger, W., Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. G. Highet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945). Kantorowicz, E.H., The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). Keblusek, M., Boeken in de hofstad: Haagse boekcultuur in de Gouden Eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1997). Keblusek, M. & J. Zijlmans, Princely Display: The Court of Frederik Hendrik of Orange and Amalia van Solms (Zwolle: Waanders, 1997). Lausberg, H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden: Brill, 1998). Molhuysen, P.C. & P.J. Blok, eds., Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1911-37). Paijmans, M., Dichter bij de waarheid: Parrhesia en dramatisering in het werk van Joost van den Vondel. PhD diss. University of Amsterdam, 2015. Poelhekke, J.J. , Frederik Hendrik prins van Oranje: een biografisch drieluik (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1978). Pollmann, J. , ‘Vondel’s Religion’, in Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679): Dutch Playwright in the Golden Age, ed. by J. Bloemendal & F.W. Korsten (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 85-100. Renting, A.D. & J.T.C. Renting-Kuijpers, eds., The Seventeenth-century OrangeNassau Library: The Catalogue Compiled by Anthonie Smets in 1686, the 1749 Auction Catalogue, and Other Contemporary Sources (Utrecht: hes, 1993). Scaliger, J.C., Poetices libri septem, ed. by M. Fuhrmann et al., 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1994-2003) Skinner, Q. , The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

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Smit, W.A.P., Kalliope in de Nederlanden: het renaissancistisch-klassicistische epos van 1550 tot 1850, 2 vols. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975). Smits-Veldt, M.B. & M. Spies, ‘Vondel’s Life’, in Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679): Dutch Playwright in the Golden Age, ed. by J. Bloemendal & F.W. Korsten (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 51-84. Spies, M. , ‘Het epos in de 17e eeuw in Nederland: een literatuurhistorisch probleem’, Spektator, 7 (1977-1978), pp. 379-411 and 562-594. van Deursen, A.Th., Maurits van Nassau, 1567-1625: de winnaar die faalde (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2005). van Renswoude, I. , Licence to Speak: The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. PhD diss. Utrecht University, 2011. van den Vondel, J., Begroetenis aen den doorluchtighsten en hooghgeboren Vorst Frederick Henrick, Van Gods genade Prince van Orangie, (…) Op den Intree van zijn Stadhouderschap en Landbestiering over Gelderland, Holland, Zeeland, Overyssel, Utrecht, etc. (Amsterdam: Willem Jansz Blaeu, 1626) van den Vondel, J., De werken van Vondel, ed. by J.F.M. Sterck et al. (Amsterdam: De Maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, 1929-1937).

Aen mijn Heer Hooft op het ooverlyden van Mevrouw Van Sulecom Die als een Baeck in zee van droefheidt wort gehouwen Geknot van stam en tack, en echter leeven moet, Zeijnt uw dit swack behulp voor ’t troosteloos gemoet, Gedompelt in een meer Van Baerelijcke rouwen. Zeght Vastaert dat hij moght pampieren raet vertrouwen Zoo dinnerlycke smart zich schriftlyck uyten kon, Hij staroogh in liefs glans als Aedlaer in de Son, En stel sijn leed te boeck, zoo heeft hij ’t niet t’onthouwen Pampier was ’t waepentuijch waermee ick heb geweert Te willen sterven, eer ’t den Heemel had begeert, Daer ooverwon ick mee, en deed mijn Vijand wycken, Zijn eijgen lesse leer hem matijghen zyn pijn Want quelling op de maat en kan soo fel niet sijn Besweer hem dat hij sing op maetsangh droevelijcken September 1637 Tesselscha Roemers Vischers

To My Lord Hooft on the death of Lady Van Zuilichem One wedded like a beacon to a sea of sadness Bereaved of trunk and branch, yet due to live no less Sends you this frail aid for a soul so comfortless Drowning in a moor of Baerless mournfulness Tell Constantheart to trust this paper’s counsel kind If writing could express the suffering inside Face up love’s glance, as Eagle faces Sun, eyes wide And trust grief to the page, thus spared to bear ’t in mind ’t Was paper armoury with which I have contained Desire to dissolve before Heaven ordained That gained my victory, made my assailant flee May his own lesson teach that measure lessens pain Vexation tamed by verse cannot so fierce remain Implore him sing a song, in metres grievingly Translation: Frans-Willem Korsten & Marijn van Dijk

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Lyrical Correspondence Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, ‘To My Lord Hooft on the death of Lady Van Zuilichem’ (1637) Marijn van Dijk

The death of his wife Suzanna van Baerle on 10 May 1637 muted the lyrical voice of Constantijn Huygens. From 28 April until 28 October, he did not write one single poem. In September 1637, Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher wrote a sonnet that aimed to break the silence caused by the grief that had captured the poet. Yet, she did not address and send her poem to Huygens himself, but to Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, a mutual friend and fellow poet. In the poem, the sender asks the addressee to convey a message to Vastaert (l. 5), a Dutch variant to ‘Constanter’, the Latin name that Constantijn Huygens used for himself.1 The address of this sonnet displays an interesting combination of intimacy and indirectness. The poem was never intended for any audience apart from the intimate friends involved in it. In what follows I want to argue that Tesselschade’s choice for a lyrical form in her intimate communication is related to the vital role of the musical dimension of language in what Tesselschade aims to achieve: that Constanter will use lyric to heal himself.

Grief in measure: images and sound In the first quatrain the addressee, uw (l. 3), is placed between two grievous waters: a sea of sadness and a lake of billowed mourning. The former contains the sender, the latter the receiver, but between their situations a difference can be discerned. The sender is compared to a beacon detained within the sea. A beacon is a fixed object, but it is floating and as such at least partly above the water. In opposition to this, the receiver in the lake is submerged, under water. The suggestion is thus that the ‘frail aid’, swack behulp (l. 3), the sender offers by means of the poem is not to save the receiver from the water, but to save him from drowning in it. 1 From here on I will refer to Constantijn Huygens as Constanter and Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher as Tesselschade.

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In historical reality Tesselschade lost both her eldest daughter Teetgen and her husband Allard Crombalch on the same day in May 1634. The nineyear-old girl died of smallpox and this upset her father so much that the doctor gave him a tranquilizing drink which instantly made him cough up large amounts of blood until he was dead too. Tesselschade was left with their youngest daughter, Maria Tesselschade. This sad history filled the sea in the first line of the sonnet and is depicted in the second with the image of a (family) tree that has both trunk (husband) and branch (daughter) cut off. As the address announces, the real event of the death of Constanter’s wife forms the occasion for the poem.2 Van Baerelijcke (l. 4), written with capitals, obviously refers to Suzanna van Baerle who did not recover from the birth of their fifth child and died within two months after her delivery. In the text, the word Baerelijcke is so heavily loaded with meaning that it seems to enact giving birth itself in the act of reading. Baarlijk means that something shows itself undisguised and is commonly used in relation to dreadful subjects, mourning (rouwen) in this case. A related meaning of baarlijk as a derivative of baar is naked, referring to the human body and thus creating a physical, almost tangible presence of Suzanna in the text. In relation to the metaphor of the lake, bare means wave and creates a billowing motion that comports with the motion of baren, giving birth, with the contractions of the bare female body. The outburst of meaning in van Baerle’s name also involves a sound dimension since yet another meaning of the word baer is clamour. Switching on sound makes audible the howls of the mourner, the moans of the mother, and the roaring of the waves. Yet simultaneously the word produces the dead silence of the body lying motionless on the bier, the lijkbaar. In opposition to Tesselschade’s treatment of van Baerle’s name, a clear example of linguistic virtuosity, she univocally calls Constanter by his own name, Vastaert (l. 5) in Dutch, meaning one who is steadfast in temperament. As it is represented in the poem, Constanter seems to have drifted away from his name, in reality failing to sign any poem with it for months. In calling his name, Tesselschade calls him back into presence, demands him to be Constanter again. Yet the demand is indirect, via the addressee who is instructed to tell Constanter that he should express his inward pain by writing. Putting his pain to paper implies that Constanter has to face his emotions. The word staroogh (l. 7) condenses meaning. The verb means ‘to stare’, 2 Constanter bought the title Heer (Lord) van Zuilichem together with a castle in 1630. Sulecom is a variant of Zuilichem.

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referring to the eagle who is said to be able to look straight into the sun without getting blinded by its light. But the word also combines ‘star’ and ‘eye’, where ‘star’ refers to Sterre, Constanter’s nickname for his wife. This implies that Constanter should look into the rays of his star, but like the eagle, without getting blinded by its light. Writing about Sterre is the most confronting manner of facing his grief, but Tesselschade tells him that she knows from her own experience that this will bring relief to such an extent that one can live with the loss. With her advice to write, Tesselschade specifically means writing lyrics, the practice where the musical dimension of language rules. She uses Constanter’s own lyrics to teach him this, reminding him of a line (l. 13) from his translation of the poem ‘The Triple Fool’ by John Donne, originally: ‘Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce’ (Donne, 2000, p. 96). A literal translation of Constanter’s translation would be: ‘For vexation within measure cannot be so fierce’ (‘Want quelling op de maet en kan soo fell niet zijn’).3 The word ‘measure’ (maat) has both a quantitative and a musical dimension. It appears in all three lines of the final tercet in this twofold meaning, corresponding with the gist of the poem that connects moderation of emotion to musical measure. ‘Matijghen zyn pijn’ (l. 12) in a quantitative manner means to moderate his pain and in a musical manner to set this pain to metre. The borrowed line by Donne teaches that pain becomes moderate once it is chained within a metrical structure. The final line can be read simultaneously in two ways, firstly as an imperative for the addressee. Hooft should implore (besweer) Constanter ‘to sing in mournful measure’. In the other reading ‘him’ (hem) is not Constanter, but the grief, quelling (l. 13), and besweer means getting this grief within one’s power, like a snake charmer bewitching the animal by the sound of the flute. In the former reading, Constanter is the one who is singing, while in the latter the grief itself would be singing, but conducted by Constanter. The word maatzang is significant here, again with respect to the twofold meaning of maat; singing in measure implies that the grief, however mournful of sound, keeps measure because Constanter is in control. Expressing one’s grief in language that is composed according to the musical principle of measure is a way of getting a grip on it, of mastering instead of being overpowered.

3 For Constanter’s full translation, see the online edition of Huygens poems of Leiden University, where the poem is numbered as CH1633:049.

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Lyrical correspondence As a text that was sent from one person to another and concerning the real misfortune of a real friend, Tesselschade’s sonnet has a number of characteristics in common with a personal letter. The address above it can be read as a kind of letterhead. Not only was the poem physically sent to Hooft, its content is also concerned with sending a message. The addressee is called upon to act like a letter in conveying the message of the sender to the receiver. Yet although the sonnet behaves like a letter, it does not show similarities with other literary epistolary genres. Compared to the letter of consolation, the sonnet lacks the typical tropes of consolatio, like ‘all must die’ (see Witstein, 1969). Compared to the genre of the verse epistle neither Horace’s moral philosophy nor Ovid’s sentiments resound in Tesselschade’s lyrics (Maurer, 2011, p. 207). In fact Tesselschade asks Constanter to write so that he can lyrically console himself. Rather than resembling literary epistolary genres, the sonnet relates to intimate letters and verses sent between the persons involved. The text is part of a correspondence carried on years before and after this specific item. As I will argue, this context is essential for its interpretation. I therefore propose to tag the poem as lyrical correspondence. The large amount of surviving correspondence from the circle of literate friends that Tesselschade, Hooft and Constanter shared, betrays a mysterious absence. No direct private writing between Constanter and Tesselschade is known. Their only known correspondence was conducted via others, often via Hooft (see Roemers Visscher, 1976, p. xlii). In relation to Tesselschade’s 1637 sonnet, the most important item of correspondence between this trio concerns the occasion of the 1634 disaster mentioned above, when Tesselschade lost both her daughter and husband. Hooft and Constanter learned the dreadful tiding from different sources and immediately wrote to each other about it, but not yet to Tesselschade. Hooft asked Constanter to offer her some words of consolation, but the latter replied that he did not dare to write to her yet, or rather that he was not able to do so: To this miserable head, struck by such a sudden fate, I do not yet dare to reach out my hand. The fresh wound made dear Tessel too insensitive, myself too sensitive, her to be able to hear, me to be able to speak. 4

4 Huygens, 1911-1913, vol. 1: p. 466 (Letter 924): ‘Aen ’t ellendigh hooft met soo schielicken donderslagh overvallen vervoordere ick mij noch gheen’ hand te steken. De versche wonde

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In this quotation Constanter shows an emotional response similar to the one he will display in 1637 when the sudden loss of his wife struck him. He is overpowered by emotion to such an extent that words fail him. But he is not completely muted, for he does write to Hooft about the subject. Yet he cannot meet with the request to write words of consolation, perhaps more specifically lyrics of consolation. If in this case Constanter specifically lost his lyrical voice as well, it would not be mute for long. Ten days later, he wrote a sonnet about Tesselschade’s catastrophe in which he used a maritime idiom that combines both the meaning of Tesselschade’s name, referring to a disaster at sea that cost her father a fortune, and the profession of her husband, probably a naval officer, with, metaphorically, the tears and bloodshed of the occasion.5 Although this sonnet most deeply concerned Tesselschade, Constanter did not address it to her. In fact, he did not even intend it for her to read, or at least not directly. Apparently he sent the poem to Hooft with the request not to show it to Tesselschade. But as was to be expected, Hooft did show it to her. In a letter to Constanter from 30 June 1634, Hooft writes that he hopes to find a merciful judge in him for his disobedience (Hooft, 1977, Letter 641, p. 536). An answer to the question why Constanter did not direct this sonnet to the one it concerned could be that it does not meet with expectations regarding consolation and propriety. Constanter seems to criticize Tesselschade’s husband for not being strong enough to abide with her and the last lines, presented as his last words and playing with the saying ‘blood is thicker than water’, do not appear without irony. Maybe the inappropriateness of Constanter’s treatment of the subject could only be overcome in a situation where the poem reached Tesselschade explicitly against his will. Yet, Constanter’s occasional poem from 1634 appears fundamental for Tesselschade’s occasional poem from 1637. She adopts both the lyrical form of the sonnet and Constanter’s presentation of herself within a sea of sadness, adding him, struck by a comparable fate, in a lake of billowed mourning. Constanter’s repetition of the word baren in the lines describing her husband’s death, becomes the emotional core of Tesselschade’s lyrics with Van Baerelijcke. Like Constanter, she does not follow conventional tropes of consolation and moreover, she explicitly imitates his manner of reaching her via Hooft. heeft Tesseltjen te ongevoeligh, mij te gevoeligh gemaeckt, haer om te hooren, mij om te konnen spreken’. My translation. 5 For full text and translation of Constanter’s sonnet see Huygens, 1996.

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Reading Tesselschade’s sonnet as part of an intimate correspondence blurs the fundamental distinction that poetic theory usually makes between the lyrical subject and the author. In their attempt to define poetry Ernst van Alphen et al., based on the work of Jonathan Culler, state that poetry does not concern the empirical situation of communication between the sender and the receiver, but what they call the language situation, immanent in the text, between the one who addresses and the addressee (van Alphen et al., 1996, p. 19). In this context, what Culler calls triangulated address: ‘address to the reader by means of address to something or someone else’ (Culler, 2015, p. 186), is pivotal. Culler defines the angles of the triangle as follows: I will use the term addressee for whomever or whatever is designated by the pronouns of address and the term audience for the presumed beneficiaries of lyric communication – most often listeners or readers. (Culler, 2015, p. 187)

This definition motivates my proposal to tag lyric address in Tesselschade’s sonnet differently. In lyrical correspondence the real sender and receiver concur with the immanent addresser and addressee, but the explicit addressee here is Hooft and the explicit audience is Constanter. Thus we have a triangle of the positions Culler described, except for the fact that Hooft is not the real addressee and Constanter not comparable to a general (immanent) audience. Constanter is indirect addressee and direct beneficiary; Hooft is direct addressee and indirect beneficiary, intended to ‘overhear’ the poem addressed to Constanter. We as readers are not Culler’s beneficiaries of lyric communication. We invited ourselves into a private communication that is structured lyrically. Consequently, we should not read the sonnet as a sonnet, enacting a classical lyrical triangle that puts us in the position of the audience. We are readers of the triangle. This reconfiguration of the triangular address may explain the relative neglect of Tesselschade’s work by literary scholars.6 Scholars struggle with the fact that biographical elements keep appearing in analyses of her work as if it is not good enough to speak independently, as poetry. In their edition of Tesselschade’s poems, Olga van Marion and Agnes Sneller did not opt for a chronological presentation in order to ward off the danger of 6 Sneller and van Marion point out that even though Tesselschade is probably the most famous Dutch woman from the seventeenth century, her poetry has hardly received any attention (Roemers Visscher, 1994, p. 9).

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interpreting them from biographical particulars.7 But why is the urge to understand poetry within the realm of literature, provoking the lyrical mode of reading that Culler defines, so vital for the appreciation of poetic skills? Since Tesselschade did not display any ambition to publish her work, she had no reason to be concerned about outsiders not understanding inside references. She communicated with fellow poets in an ingenious manner that scholars can only follow insofar as there are sources left to enlighten them. Criticizing Tesselschade’s lyrical work as too artificial or mannerist, as several scholars have done, is not an adequate way of considering this literature, which is of a different kind.8 Ironically, the issue here might be a problem of address; of scholars unwilling to accept that behind the actual address there is no transcendent lyric address: an address, eventually, to them. Constanter seems to have shared this frustration about what feels like a lack of ambition on Tesselschade’s side. This might explain his paramount appreciation of one line from her 1637 sonnet that according to him surpassed anything she had ever written. In his answer to the letter by Hooft that included Tesselschade’s sonnet, Constanter writes: Tesselschade never surpassed herself so much as with this one line amidst the altogether good ones that you took pains to send me: And trusts grief to the page, thus spared to bear ’t in mind. All men and men’s progeny hereafter must envy her for it.9

At the age of 84, decades after Tesselschade’s death, he repeated this conviction in a poem called ‘Tesselschade’s wise lesson from 1637’ (‘Tesselschades wijs onderwijs in 1637’). Apparently, Constanter did not only appreciate the quality of the line, but also its ability to speak to a general audience, more specifically, a male audience with poetic aspirations. As such, it could set an example, as he emphasizes in parenthesis: ‘(hear, ye men, be taught to speak 7 ‘Daarnaast dreigt het gevaar [bij een chronologische opbouw] dat de teksten te snel vanuit biografische bijzonderheden worden geïnterpreteerd’. (Roemers Visscher, 1994, p. 12). 8 In comparing poetry by Tesselschade and Hooft, Strengholt judges that Hooft’s work exceeds hers because of his immediately recognizable outstanding poetic vigour, while Tesselschade’s work is somewhat artificial-mannerist (my emphasis). (Strengholt, 1988, p. 139). 9 Huygens, 1911-1913, vol. 2: p. 331 (Letter 1758) Aan P.C. Hooft, 2 November 1637: ‘Tesselschade is noijt soo hoogh boven haer self gesteghen als met eenen reghel onder de gesamentlicke goede, die U.E. de moeyte genomen heeft van mij te senden: En stell’ syn leed te boeck, soo hoeft hij ’t niet t’onthouden. Alle mans ende manshoiren hiernaermaels moeten ’t haer benijden’. My translation.

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like this by women!)’.10 If Constanter wanted to promote Tesselschade’s skills, he could have published the entire sonnet, but he didn’t. Instead, he provided the context to the line himself and I take this as an indication that he did not consider the original sonnet fit for publication. As a whole, the sonnet conveys a private message, not intended for a general audience. Understanding Tesselschade’s sonnet as lyrical correspondence might change the appreciation of a form of poetry that was not written for the public, nor written to be published.

The sound of apostrophe Tesselschade’s sonnet not only escapes van Alphen’s definition of poetry, it also works differently in terms of apostrophe, a figure directly concerned with the issue of address. The apostrophe goes back to Quintilian, who defines it as ‘a diversion of our words to address some person other than the judge’ (Quintilian quoted in Culler, 1981 p. 135). The figure differs from other rhetorical figures in that it makes its point by troping not on the meaning of a word but on the circuit or situation of communication itself (Culler, 1981 p. 135). Culler considers the apostrophe as a central figure in the poetics of the lyric, identifying triangulated address as the root-form of presentation for lyric (Culler, 2015 p. 186). Apostrophe traditionally serves to intensify a message. Quintilian writes that occasionally ‘some striking expression of thought is necessary … which can be given point and vehemence when addressed to some person other than the judge’ (Culler, 1981, p. 135). I would say that Tesseschade’s address to Hooft works the other way around, not intensifying but attenuating a message that touches emotions too strong to be addressed directly. And while Culler states that apostrophe is an embarrassing figure, the address here serves to tone down the embarrassment of an overpowering emotional content. But the use of an intermediate addressee also shifts the embarrassment, inflicting upon Hooft the unpleasant job of addressing Constanter. When he included the sonnet in a letter to Constanter dated 19 October 1637, Hooft wrote: The enclosed poem, coming from Alkmaar, I scrupled less to send on, in reliance that amidst the trumpets’ and drums’ joyous songs of victory, it will bring less harm to your ears, and to your mind, amidst the abundance 10 Huygens (online edition), CH1681:014. ‘[…] (hoort, en leert soo spreken, Mans, van Vrouwen)’ (l. 9). My translation.

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of melancholy repellent occupations. That I dare send these verses, you will impute to your own courtesy, which gives the audacity to transgress it, Mylord, to yours etc.11

As a secretary to Frederik Hendrik, Constanter attended the siege of Breda during the summer of 1637, ending in victory on 11 October. Hooft’s formulation, though light-hearted in tone, displays some hesitation in the execution of the charge commissioned by Tesselschade’s sonnet. She wrote the poem in September, but the exact date upon which it reached Hooft is unknown. The victory at Breda might just have been a happy coincidence occurring not long after Hooft’s reception of the poem, but the event can also have served as a nudge to do away with hesitations delaying the act of forwarding. Sound is prominent in Hooft’s formulation; the trumpets and drums of victory must serve as an acoustic shield to protect Constanter’s ears and mind from the sound of the sonnet. Hooft’s words hint at the risk of reading the poem: melancholy. In depending on melancholy-repellent (gepeinsbreekende) occupations to shield Constanter, Hooft reveals himself as an adherent of allopathic therapy, using opposite emotions to drive feelings of melancholy away. Here, Tesselschade’s sonnet promotes the exact opposite approach following the progressive homeopathic therapy advocated by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (see Smits-Veldt, 1994, p. 76). In his letter, Hooft appears as a messenger trying to hush up the sound he is commissioned to convey, only daring to send it with the assurance of an acoustic environment to overrule it. As Hooft formulates the problem in terms of sound, it might be productive to explore the sound of apostrophe. The message to Constanter being sent via Hooft results in a double ‘soundtrack’. On the track of the formal address, it dictates a message loud and clear, which imprints itself with iambic pounding in the messenger’s mind and forestalls misunderstandings in communication. But on the track of the message’s content, sound is hushed up, though so heavily charged with emotion that perhaps if it were not covered by the tone of dictation, the lyrical voice would run the risk of breaking. The outpouring of sound in Baerelijcke is a moment in the sonnet where the dictation almost loses its 11 Hooft, 1977, p. 971 (Letter 898): ‘’T nevensgaende gedicht, overgewaeit van Alkmaer, heb ik te min geschreumt voorts te veirdighen, in toeverlaet, dat het, onder ’t vroolijk zeghegeschal der trompetten en trommen, Uwer Ed. Gestr. ooren te min quetsen zal, en te min haer gemoedt, onder die meenighte van gepeinsbreekende bezigheden. Dat ik ze steuren dar, wijte U Ed. Gestr. haer’ eighe heusheit, die de stoutheid om er op te zondighen geeft, Mijnheere, aen […]’. My translation.

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dominance. And there is another point where the emotional content is so vulnerable that Tesselschade literally fortifies it by means of a sturdy idiom. This is in the first tercet where she testifies to her own wish to die, overcome by paper weaponry. Would Hooft, addressed merely as a messenger, have known about this profound inner struggle of his beloved friend? Learning this would transform the factual tone of dictation into the vulnerable tone of confession, a confession so painful that neither Tesselschade’s own declaration of victory nor the victorious trumpets over Breda can outvoice its mournful tune. Though covering up her own song, Tesselschade’s sonnet aims to make Constanter sing in mournful measure. Two other qualities of the apostrophe described by Culler are relevant with regard to this. Culler relates the apostrophe to ‘the power of poetry to make something happen’. He writes: ‘to apostrophize is to will a state of affairs, to attempt to call it into being’ (Culler, 1981, pp. 139-140). Tesselschade lyrically addresses Hooft with exactly this purpose, but here again the sonnet operates on two tracks, unsett­ ling another characteristic of the apostrophe defined by Culler, its time dimension: ‘Apostrophe resists narrative because its now is not a moment in a temporal sequence but a now of discourse, of writing’ (Culler, 1981, pp. 152-153). The now of apostrophe in Tesselschade’s sonnet coincides with the now in the historical present when Hooft reads the poem and yields to its commission. But this now of the poem is only the first step towards the state of affairs the poem attempts to call into being. Its ultimate power to make something happen manifests itself not in the present of discourse but in the future where it should return Constanter’s lyrical voice. Tesselschade’s lyrical message functions as the herald for the actual poem, the eventual lyric of consolation that Constanter must write.

Language as lyre Tesselschade uses Constanter’s lyric from the past to persuade him into writing future lyric. His translation of ‘The Triple Fool’, dated 7 October 1633, was the last in a series of Donne’s poems he had been translating since 1630. The translations were occasionally read and exchanged within their circle of literate friends and it was Tesselschade’s wish to collect them in a fair copy. Constanter did not manage to find time for this until the beginning of March 1634, when they first circulated in Amsterdam before ending up in Alkmaar with Tesselschade. On 28 May, Hooft wrote her a letter wondering why he has not heard anything since, addressing

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her boldly with: ‘Dear Tessel, are you still alive?’ and inquiring whether Constanter’s work pleases her.12 But this letter was never sent because on her way to post it, Hooft’s wife learned about the death of Tesselschade’s daughter and husband. Constanter’s Donne translations thus reached Tesselschade on the threshold of a fateful turn in her life. This accidental timing might have connected this poetry intrinsically to her ordeal. Donne seems to resound through Constanter’s 1634 sonnet in the use of metaphors not from classical mythology, but from the realm of natural sciences, and in the application of irony in spite of the subject. Irony can also be found in Donne’s ‘The Triple Fool’ that mocks the poet’s habit to express his emotions. The lyrical ‘I’ intends to master his grief by fettering it in verse, but where the musical elements of language, rhyme and metre, were supposed to contain it, music itself becomes responsible for this emotion to burst out even more vehemently when ‘some man’ (l. 13) sets the words to music and starts singing them. Now the poet, who was already one fool for loving and another for writing whining poetry about that, is turned into a triple fool when his failed effort to tame emotion has been turned into public delight. Donne’s ironic mockery of any poetic endeavour, clearly present in Constanter’s translation, is completely absent in Tesselschade’s adoption of the line. This absence could be related to the absence of a public address. Donne’s poet makes a triple fool of himself because he enables strangers to take free reign with his pain. But Tesselschade does not involve any strangers in her lyrical communication. In demanding Constanter to be a singer, she recalls Donne’s singing man, but replaces this other by the poet himself. This lyrical correspondence was carried on between friends who shared not only an involvement in poetry, but also one in music. Hooft was not a performer, but Tesselschade and Constanter were both very talented musicians, and for them, the act of the singer was not the act of someone else (see Rasch, 1992). They knew the emotional power of music from within, and Tesselschade takes this power very seriously, as a matter of life and death. In her presentation the poet will not fail, for unlike Donne she does not distinguish between the lyrical voice and the musical voice, but allows them to coincide in her poetics of lyric. In using Donne’s line stripped of irony, Tesselschade neutralizes Constanter’s offensive irony from his 1634 sonnet as stylistically initiated by Donne. She also responds to his presentation of her husband as inconstant, unable to bear the weight of both his own and his wife’s grief and escaping 12 Hooft, 1977, p. 511 (Letter 628): ‘Tesseltje, leef je nog?’ My translation.

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this burden by the act of dying. Exactly in the line where Tesselschade is telling Constanter to be constant, to not run away from his grief, Allard appears through the addition of a capital to the word for eagle, Aedlaer (l. 7). The Allard/Eagle flies above the syntax of the line, for it makes no sense within the comparison of Constanter and Sterre to the eagle and the sun to literally substitute the bird for Tesselschade’s husband. Yet, in another dimension, Tesselschade presents her husband in contrast to Constanter’s 1634 presentation, devoid of any blame and able to look straight into the fullness of God’s light. By inserting this image without touching the level of syntax, Tesselschade uses the material of language as musical material where different themes can sound simultaneously. Lyric address cannot be understood apart from the sound dimension of language. Tesselschade’s sonnet displays a poetics of the lyric that essentially turns language into a lyre, a musical instrument. Lyric uses language in a manner that foregrounds its sound dimension and has an emotional force similar to music. Sound appears to be structurally meaningful in Tesselschade’s text: the outcry of Baerelijcke, the double soundtrack of her use of apostrophe, and the musical core of the message to Constanter to express emotion in musical measure. From a musical reading of Tesselschade’s sonnet it becomes clear why she preferred a lyrical form in communicating with her friends. Not the part of language restricted to reason could potentially heal Constanter’s muteness, but the musical, emotional force of language that forms the core of the lyric.

Lyrical consolation fulfilled Tesselschade’s complete disinterest in any audience beyond her private friends makes her sonnet a clear example of lyrical correspondence. Her fellow poets who did aspire to literary fame took care to address eternity even in their occasional poetry. Yet their obvious literary ambition might distract scholars from the degree of lyrical correspondence present in their work. Constanter’s sonnet ‘Cupio Dissolvi, On the death of my Star’ (‘Op de dood van Sterre’) (1638) was never primarily read as the fulfilment of Tesseschade’s lyrical command. But just like Tesselschade positioned her 1637 sonnet immediately in the opening quartet in relation to Constanter’s 1634 sonnet, recalling his image of her sea of woe, Constanter opens his 1638 sonnet with obeying Tesselschade’s command to look into the rays of his Star. The lyrical ‘I’ literally strives to do this, but does not manage to see her:

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Do I dream, is ’t night, or did my Star fade out? I wake in bright daylight and do not see my Star.13

Constanter’s 1638 sonnet is not only a lyrical expression of his grief, but also a reply to Tesselschade’s confession of her wish to die. The Latin part of the title already suggests this: Cupio dissolvi, I wish to be dissolved, a locution from the Vulgate translation of Paul’s epistle to Philippians 1:23-4, expressing the Christian desire to leave earthly life and join Christ in eternal life. This phrase played an important role in discussions on the topic of suicide from the Middle Ages to the early Modern period.14 Thus the performative power of this sonnet is to establish Constanter as a singer in control of his own mournful tune, and to act as a lyric of consolation for Tesselschade, allowing her wish to die without feelings of guilt. While Tesselschade advised him to use paper weaponry in order to defy this wish, Constanter uses his lyrical voice to express it, not hushed, like Tesselschade trying to cover her own mournful tune, but out loud. And as apostrophe is allowed to work undisrupted here, Constanter is able to fulfil his desire without the actual act of dying, uniting himself with God, Suzanna and Tesselschade in the discursive event of the poem.

Bibliography Culler, J.D., ‘Apostrophe’, in The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 135-154. Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Donne, J., The Major Works, ed. by John Carey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Hooft, P.C., De briefwisseling van Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, ed. by H.W. Tricht et al. (Culemborg: Tjeenk Willink/Noorduijn, 1977). Huygens, C., De Gedichten van Constantijn Huygens (Leiden: Department of Dutch Language and Literature) www.let.leidenuniv.nl/Dutch/Huygens/HUYG00. html (last accessed 12 September 2017) Huygens, C., Constantijn Huygens, Briefwisseling, ed. by J.A. Worp (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1911-1913).

13 Huygens (online edition), CH1638:009: ‘Of droom ick, en is ’t nacht, of is mijn’ Sterr ver­ dwenen? / Ick waeck, en ’t is hoogh dagh, en sie mijn’ Sterre niet’. (1-2). My translation. 14 See Screech, 2000, p. 42-46. Donne treated the subject in one of his sermons, see Lerner.

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Huygens, C., A Selection of Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), ed. by P. Davidson & A. van der Weel (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996). Lerner, R.B., ‘Donne’s Annihilation’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 44:2 (2014), pp. 407-427. Maurer, M., ‘The Verse Letter’, in The Oxford Handbook of John Donne (Oxford: Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011). Rasch, R., ‘Muziek in de Muiderkring’, De zeventiende eeuw, 8 (1992), pp. 151-158. Roemers Visscher, M.T,. Een onwaerdeerlycke Vrouw. Brieven en verzen van en aan Maria Tesselschade, ed. by J.A. Worp (Utrecht: HES, 1976). Roemers Visscher, M.T., De gedichten van Tesselschade Roemers, ed. by A. Sneller & O. van Marion (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994). Screech, M.A., Montaigne & Melancholy: The Wisdom of the Essays (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). Smits-Veldt, M., Maria Tesselschade: leven met talent en vriendschap (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1994). Strengholt, L., ‘Guarini, Tesselschade en Hooft in een netwerkje’, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 104 (1988), pp. 131-139. van Alphen, E.J., L. Duyvendak & M. Meijer, Op poëtische wijze: een handleiding voor het lezen van poëzie (Bussum: Coutinho, 1996). Witstein, S.F., Funeraire poëzie in de Nederlandse Renaissance: Enkele funeraire gedichten van Heinsius, Hooft, Huygens en Vondel bezien tegen de achtergrond van de theorie betreffende het genre (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1969).

Myn Vaaders lyk my toespreekende Myn lieve Soon, wat klaaght uw droef gesucht, Ontrent dit lykgehucht? Het is vergeefs het doove graf beperrelt, Met schreijen want de dood belacht de werreld. Ghy droopt eens van myn bloed, nu ben ik stof. Ghy oopent eerst uw lof. Laat dooden dan, met dooden rustig vaaren: Gaat heene u, met den leevenden, vergaaren. Treed af, en smeek heur, die u heeft gebaart, Dat sy het treuren spaart, En heuren geest betoom, die deese knokken Omswiert, ontroert, en tracht weer om te lokken. Treed af, en segh, ’t was quellinge vergeef: Want niemand stapt de schreef, Hem voorgehaalt, van ’t lot, voor by, noch keerde, Aan ’s levens draad, na dat de dood dien scheerde. Treed af, en troost die goe bedrukte vrouw. Leer maatigen heur rouw. Ach troost myn weeuw, en neegen jonge weesen. Wees Vaader, Man, en Soon, in liefde en vreesen. Treed af, en troost myn halfgeweesen deel. Leer stichtlik wat verscheel Dat tuschen man, en vaader zy, op aarde, By ’s Heemels, die haar liefde, en trouw aanvaarde. Treed af, sy bidt met my te zyn verselt, Bewys hoe sy vast snelt Onvoelik naa. Dan zal ons aardsch vergaaren, En beider ziel blyde, om den Heemel, vaaren. Treed af van ’t graf, en spiegelt u myn soon. Dit ’s groot, dit ’s jongh, dit ’s schoon. Zoo vreet de dood elks vel, en vleisch, en aaders. Treed af, en houd het deuchdsaam spoor uws Vaaders. Myn lieve soon, wat klaaght uw droef gesucht, Ontrent dit lykgehucht? Het is vergeefs het doove graf beperrelt, Met schreijen, want de dood belacht de werreld.

My Father’s corpse addressing me 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

My dearest son, why heave such mournful sighs Where only dead flesh lies? In vain your tears upon my grave have pearled, For graves feel not; death’s laughter mocks the world. Your lifeblood sprang from mine, now I am dust. Your life is green and fresh. So let the dead go with the quiet dead. Leave this place now, join those who live instead. Go speak to her who gave you birth, implore Her not to grieve and mourn; Rein in her thoughts that hover round these bones, Now stirred to pity, lured from their repose. Go tell her she torments herself in vain. No one steps back again Across the line so firmly drawn by fate, Nor traces back the life-thread death has cut. Go now, console my sad, good-hearted widow. Teach her to temper sorrow. Oh, comfort those nine orphans, still so young. Be kind and just as father, husband, son. Go comfort her who made my self complete. Remind her that her mate On earth cannot compare with Him above, The Father who, I pray, awaits her faith and love. Go now; she prays that she may follow me. Point out that soon she’ll be Here, too. Her earthly part will join my dust And our two souls fly heavenward, in bliss. Go from this grave; use me as mirror now. What’s handsome, young and proud? Death feeds on flesh, drinks every drop of blood. Go, walk the virtuous path your father trod. My dearest son, why heave such mournful sighs Where only dead flesh lies? In vain your tears upon my grave have pearled, For graves feel not; death’s laughter mocks the world.

7

The Apostrophic Interpellation of a Son1 Jan Six van Chandelier, ‘My Father’s corpse addressing me’ (1657) Jürgen Pieters

A minor poet Jan (Joannes) Six van Chandelier (1620-1695) is a minor poet of the midseventeenth century, whose lasting presence in the historiography of Dutch literature is largely due to the publication of a single volume: the 1657-edition of his collected poems, simply entitled Poësy.2 In its own time, the volume appears not to have been very successful, and it was never reprinted (Porteman & Smits-Veldt, 2008, p. 519). To be immediately clear, in describing Six as a minor poet I am not using that label in any derogatory sense of the adjective. Minor poets are not necessarily lesser poets, as John Ashbery has reminded us in the Charles Eliot Norton-lectures that he delivered at Harvard in the academic year 1989-1990.3 Drawing on W.H. Auden, Ashbery pointed out that while we make use of both quantitative and qualitative criteria in our attempts to distinguish major poets from minor ones, the former set of criteria definitely prevails. Major poets (both Auden and Ashbery would be good examples) have a more substantial poetic output, a diverse set of publications spread over the years that make up the author’s poetic career. Also, they write on a wider range of topics. In the larger course of their work, they tend to take their time in developing a personal voice and a concomitant view on the artistic project that their work embodies. That development usually enables critics to distinguish early from later phases in the careers of major poets. On average, minor poets do not have that distinct vision, but what their work is said to lack primarily is the development that underlies the genesis of their singular voice. However, 1 I would like to thank Jonathan Culler, Maaike Meijer and Kornee van der Haven for productive comments on an earlier draft of this text. 2 Poësy van J. Six van Chandelier. Verdeelt in ses boeken, en eenige opschriften. Te Amsterdam. Voor Joost Pluimert, Boekverkooper, op den Dam, in Seneka. 1657. I made use of the critical edition by Anne Jacobs (Six van Chandelier, 1991). 3 Later published in Ashbery, 2000.

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Ashbery quotes Auden as saying, ‘[o]ne cannot say that a major poet writes better poems than a minor; on the contrary, the chances are that, in the course of his lifetime the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor’ (Ashbery, 2000, p. 7). Without wanting to open a discussion on who should be regarded as the true major poets of the Dutch seventeenth century (Vondel, Hooft, Huygens and Cats would be the usual suspects, but with respect to the latter two there might be disagreement among critics), I am quite confident that most scholars working in the field would agree that Six does not belong to that (premier) league. Obviously, he produced a good amount of very fine verse, among which, as I hope to make clear, the poem that will be central to this chapter: it was occasioned by his father’s sudden death in 1639 and is entitled ‘My Father’s corpse addresses me’ (‘Myn Vaaders lyk my toespreekende’). 4 Still, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the literary output of Six – not to be confused with his namesake, the Amsterdam burgomaster Jan Six (1618-1700), who also wrote poetry, both in Dutch and in Neo-Latin5 – does not really stand comparison with that of his more famous peers. The fact remains that he is indeed a single-volume author.6 While that volume is quite substantial – 634 densely printed pages in all – the fairly haphazard way in which it seems to be ordered makes it hard to trace within the book the poet’s artistic development. Even if we assume (as some scholars do) that the poems are to a certain degree printed in the chronological order of their production, there are no signs of any really distinct difference in maturity between the poems of any of the six sections that make up the volume. The majority of the poems – among which the one that I will be addressing later – are ‘occasional’ (‘gelegenheidsgedichten’), written in celebration of a birth or a marriage, or to remember the passing away of a relative or a friend. The collection also contains a sequence of conventional (Petrarchan) love sonnets addressed to ‘Roselle’, and several poems written during the numerous journeys that Six seems to have made throughout 4 The poem occupies pages 164-165 in Poësy; in the edition of Jacobs it is poem 132. In the course of this chapter. I will also be referring to two other poems by Six van Chandelier that are related to the death of the poet’s father. The lines that I quote from these poems have also been kindly translated by Myra Scholz. 5 Six’ namesake is also the author of a play, Medea (1648). 6 In 1648, at the occasion of the Peace of Münster, he also published Vreughde-zangen over den eeuwigen vreede, tusschen Spangien en de Vereenighde Nederlanden: daar by noch andere invallingen van den rijmer, voor en omtrent ‘t sluyten der selver vreede. Amsterdam, Joost Hartgers, 1648. A final publication is his rhyming translation of the Psalms: Davids psalmen, op de gewoonelikke wysen gerymt door Joannes Six van Chandelier (Amsterdam: Jakob Lescalje, 1674).

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Europe. His extensive travelling was either related to the development of his professional career (he was put in charge of the family business after his father died) or to his medical problems (the third section of Poësy is made up of Six’ Spa-dichten, poems that came out of his stay in the health resort of Spa, near Liège, where he was treated, successfully, for a condition of the spleen). Six himself would have accepted the label of minor poet without any problem. One recurrent characteristic of his work, systematically stressed in the pages that are devoted to him in the most recent literary history of the Dutch seventeenth century (Porteman & Smits-Veldt, 2008, pp. 402, 406, 599, 603, 617-618), is his insistent downplaying of his own poetical output. He considered that output the work of a ‘rijmer’, as he called himself, a producer of rhyming verse rather than a real poet. Whenever Six writes about his own literary work – and he does have a fair amount of poems that reflect upon this minor business – he does so in a vein that is commonly described as ironical, overly modest, even self-deprecating at times. While a poet like Constantijn Huygens also deploys on a regular basis the classical topoi of modesty in his work, in the writings of Six, the use of these rhetorical strategies seems somehow more heartfelt and more authentic, less the result of what in Huygens’ case one is tempted to see as false modesty. At least on two occasions, Six compared himself to Vondel, and in both cases the comparison was meant to lead to the conclusion that Vondel should be seen as the craftier poet and definitely as the loftier one. Six knew very well that Vondel was indeed the greater poet (he calls himself a ‘gaggelende gans’, a quacking goose, compared to the swanlike Vondel7), but he was also convinced that the poet’s deep belief in the self-evident value of his office at times prevented Vondel from seeing things as they simply were (Porteman & Smits-Veldt, 2008, p. 599). The disagreement is not just an artistic issue, as Six keeps reminding us that any man-made product (and poems are, in the end, just that) shrinks in importance in comparison to the works of God. As a devout Calvinist, Six just cannot imagine seriously believing in the divine powers of the poet. A second striking motif in the reception of Six’ poetry concerns the scholarly consensus that the author’s poems seem to derive much of their strength from the fact that they were drawn from real life rather than on the basis of the inspirational model of the poet’s literary predecessors. In 7 Cf. Porteman & Smits-Veldt, 2008, pp. 406-407. The goose-reference is to the opening line of ‘Huldekroon aan den heer Geerard Bikker’, poem 173 in Jacob’s edition. The comparison itself, Jacobs adds, derives from Virgil’s ninth Eclogue (35-36).

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one of her early reflections on Six’ work, Riet Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (1980-1981) – still the decisive voice in Six- criticism – labelled the poet’s work as that of a ‘realist’, given its distinct concern with the poet’s ‘own reality and with his experience of the surrounding world’.8 From the beginning, Schenkeveld-van der Dussen has systematically opposed Six’ poetical attempts at the representation of the real from that of most of his contemporaries. The latter do not merely represent the real as it is, but give us an idealized version of the real, guiding their readers to a conception of the real as it ought to be, to borrow Aristotle’s definition of mimesis. Six’ ‘anti-idealist’ realism is neither typ(olog)ical nor universal, Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (1983) argues: in his poems, the real is represented fully, in its entirety, warts and all. His favourite classical poets are Horace and Persius, masters of satire, a genre which seems logically averse to idealization. Unlike that of Huygens, though, the satirical voice of Six van Chandelier is rarely moralistic: the points that his poems make are particular, not general. ‘He does not deal in lessons’, Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (1993) writes, ‘but offers us experiences’ instead’.9 And indeed, Six’ poems do read as accounts of the particular experience of this particular individual at a given moment in time. ‘No other poet of the seventeenth century is as open-hearted in his poems as he is’, Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (2007, p. 14) writes in her most recent publication on Six. Once more, I feel that the contrast with Huygens may be significant: most of Huygens’ poems are also, basically, about Huygens himself, but compared to those by Six, Huygens’ poems read much more as attempts at the portrayal of the ‘self’ that Huygens would like us to believe he is (Pieters, 2014a, p. 25). In this respect, too, the difference between an idealist and an anti-idealist form of poetry may well apply.

Complaint by a convert The poem that will occupy us in this chapter is one of several that Six wrote in remembrance of his father and the untimely moment of his death.10 Before moving on to it, I would like first to have a brief look at another poem that was occasioned by that same traumatic event: ‘Beklagh oover de schierlijke en ongesiende dood mynes Vaaders’ (‘Complaint upon the unexpected and 8 Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, 1981, p. 7: ‘zijn eigen werkelijkheid en de wereld die hij om zich heen ervaart’. 9 Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, 1993, p. 256: ‘Hij deelt geen lessen maar ervaringen uit.’ 10 In Six van Chandelier, 1991 the poems are numbered 4, 94, 132, 136, 139 and 320.

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unforeseen death of my father’.11 If we take that poem as a truthful account of what actually happened – the scholarly consensus about Six’ poetics, as we have seen, in a way encourages us to do that – Jan Six was away from home when his father, Jakob, the owner of a fairly successful business in dried (medicinal) herbs and spices (the Dutch word is drogist) suddenly died in the Winter of 1639.12 His eldest son was travelling through Flanders at the time, most likely on a business trip. ‘Beklagh’ is written sometime after the event; we have no specific idea of how much later exactly.13 In it, Six tells us how one night in that fateful Flemish winter he suddenly had a vision of his dead father lying in a coffin in the front room (‘In ’t voorhuis’, l. 9) of his Amsterdam house in the Kalverstraat. The poet wonders out loud whether he shouldn’t have parted from his fellow travellers after that initial vision and returned home instead, especially since the vision returned, on two subsequent occasions even, in Ypres and Ninove, as the poem tells us, two cities that Six must have visited during his Flemish journey. The third visionary moment is followed by the sorrowful fulfilment of the dreamlike prefiguration. Suddenly, the news must have arrived that Jan’s father had actually died. The not entirely unexpected arrival of death turns the poet, the eldest of Jakob’s ten children (‘eerstelingh van tien’, l. 22), into the one who now has to take care of his mother, Jakob’s widow (‘weeuw’, l. 23), Sarah Juliens, and his nine orphaned brothers and sisters (‘weesen’, l. 23). Also, the poem stresses, he has now become the one who needs to provide comfort, even though he is himself still direly in need of it (‘self mistroostigh, troost te geeven’, l. 24). ‘Beklagh’ not only recounts the circumstances in which the poet learned of his father’s death – an event both unforeseen and not witnessed as the second adjective of the poem’s title (‘onghesien’) suggests – it also makes felt the lasting presence of that fateful event at the time of the poem’s writing. As I said before, we do not know precisely how far in time its writing was distanced from the event, but in the poem, the two moments (the coincidence of the three dreams with the father’s death on the one hand, and the sorrow still felt at the moment of writing about it on the other) are in a way brought together, telescoped as it were. The first instrument of that un-distancing is the poet’s initial address to his tearful eyes (‘aan 11 The poem occupies pages 168-170 in Poësy; in Six van Chandlier, 1991 it is number 136. 12 According to Anne Jacobs’ annotation, he was buried in Amsterdam’s Zuiderkerk on 5 December 1639. 13 Both Jacobs and Schenkeveld-van der Dussen & de Vries (2007, p. 25) are convinced that the poem was written immediately after the event.

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myne oogen’), which are labelled ‘mismoedig’: sad, doleful, lacking the courage that comfort requires. The same eyes that are now crying, the poem suggests, are the eyes that then beheld (‘saaght’), in a dreamlike vision, the father’s corpse. Literally speaking, the comparison does not stand, of course, since dreams are seen with the mind’s eye rather than with the physical eyes that can truly weep. Six does not make this remark in his poem, because doing so would obviously complicate the opening section of the poem that builds upon the identity of the two sets of eyes. However, the distinction between the eye of the mind (the spiritual eye that sees things as they really are and that will be opened in Heaven where we shall truly see) and that of the body (the eye that allows itself to be blinded by emotions) seems to underlie ‘Beklagh’ to a certain extent. Midway through the poem (l. 33-35, to be precise), Six compares himself to a horseman who is thrown out of the saddle by a cannon ball (‘een gootlingschoot’, literally: the shot of a weapon that is made of cast iron). In suggesting that in a way (the way of the comparison, to be precise) the father’s death also kills the son (‘Uyt synen saadel stort mors dood!’, l. 35), the comparison underscores the forceful impact of the sudden coming of that decisive event, which in the previous lines of the poem Six describes as a punishment from God, who is simultaneously addressed in an appeal for mercy (‘Myn God wil mijner u ontfarmen’, l. 30). In comparing himself to a horseman thrown out of the saddle, I take it that Six is evoking (though not literally mentioning) the figure of Paul, who was similarly taken aback and blinded by a sudden message from God on his way to Damascus. For Paul, the moment was one of true conversion, as Six will have known: it enabled him to finally see things in the true light of God’s message. As such, the plea for God’s mercy in this poem is invoked to support Six’ desire to be able to distinguish between dreamlike visions and real ones, so that he will be able to read God’s signs properly. Are then all dreams illusory? It’s clear enough now, that can’t be. Ah, that I someday, undeceived, May find I’m at my Father’s side, With pen in hand to keep alive The many lessons I receive. (l. 49-53)14 14 ‘Zyn droomen dan altyd bedrogh? / Het teegendeel dat bleek genogh. / Och! of se naamaals nooit bedroogen, / Wanneer ik, by myn Vaader, ben, / En lessen opneem, met de pen, / Op dat se my niet meer ontvloogen’, transl. Myra Scholz.

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The suggestion of the poem’s final lines is that the poet will only be able to reach the perspective of that absolute knowledge once he is in heaven – ‘Wanneer ik by myn Vaader ben’, both with his real father and with God, his Father in heaven. Life on earth will always fall short of that divine perspective, Six’ address to his merely human eyes seems to imply. This poem is meant as a lesson in remembrance (lest we forget!) and as a rejoinder for future occasions where signs may be mistaken anew. (One such sign, I would argue, is present in the name of the city of Ninove, ‘Ninef’ as the poem (l. 12) has it. I take its peculiar spelling to point to the Biblical city of ‘Nineve’, the inhabitants of which were spared God’s wrath after a visionary wake-up call by the prophet Jonah.15) My earlier reading of Six’ address to the poet’s eyes as a means of bridging the distance between the death of his father and the writing of this wonderful elegy (that is at the same time a eulogy) has been centrally inspired by Jonathan Culler’s suggestion that the apostrophic nature of the lyrical poem should remind us that poems are not stories. As Culler argues repeatedly in his Theory of the Lyric, to reduce these texts to mere narrations of events is to go against their nature as poems (Culler, 2015, pp. 225-229). In the case of Six, the critical consensus that his poems are, on average, simply taken from real life, and that, conversely, we can get to know the central events of his life by reading his poetry, threatens to downplay the poetical nature of his work. In the case of this specific poem: if we reduce ‘Beklagh’ to the story of how and where Six found out that his father had died, we are missing out on so much that makes this text a very compelling poem. Six’ own recurrent downplaying of the value of his output as a ‘rhymer’ obviously only enhances that threat.

The dead father’s law I want to move on now to the poem that is the central object of attention in this chapter and I want to read it more fully than the previous one in the light of Jonathan Culler’s productive work on the apostrophic nature of lyrical poems. I take it that Jan Six’ ‘Myn vaaders lyk my toespreekende’ is a good case for such a reading, if only because the title already highlights the fact that the entire poem is a form of address, a special form of address even. As the title immediately makes clear, what we have here is not a case of the 15 See Jonah 3: 1-10 and the Gospel of Luke 11: 30-32 (where Jonah is seen as a prefiguration of the coming of Christ).

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living son addressing his dead father (a typical early modern conversation with the dead, say), but the other way round: here, the dead father is given a voice by means of which he then addresses his son, the author of the poem that we are reading. In this poem, ‘apostrophe’ and ‘prosopopeia’ coexist, without the one being reduced to the other. The exact relationship between the two concepts has been a bone of contention among readers of Culler’s work on ‘apostrophe’, and I don’t mean to add to that discussion here.16 My point in stressing their coexistence in this poem is simply this: what Six does, here, is to personify his dead father – to give him the voice of the living, a speaking voice – and he does so by having him address his son, from the very first line of the poem: ‘Myn lieve Soon’, ‘my dear son’. The opening of ‘My father’s corpse’ is very similar to that of the poem that we discussed previously. The opening lines of the two poems take the shape of a question that is grammatically speaking identical and in terms of its contents nearly so. ‘[W]hat is the crying that flows from your tear ducts, other than occasioned by the death of your dear father?’, the poet asks in ‘Beklagh’.17 ‘Why heave such mournful sighs / Where only dead flesh lies?’18, the persona of Six’ father wonders in the opening section of ‘Myn vaaders lyk’ – literally: why are your sad moans complaining about this abode of my corpse?’ (‘lykgehucht’ in the original Dutch text refers to the grave, which we take it the poet is visiting in the dramatic situation that this poem evokes). In both cases, ‘what’ means ‘what for’ or ‘why’ and the questions that follow from it are not just looking for an answer that explains, but for a change of mind (a conversion) that puts an end to the tears in ‘Beklagh’ and to the sorrowful complaints in ‘Myn vaaders lyk’. In both cases, that change of mind can be related to a word that centrally occurs in the two poems at hand: ‘troost’, ‘comfort’ in the sense of ‘consolation’ – the two poems are indeed consolatory poems meant to bring relief at the loss of a loved one, and in their Christian outlook they conceive of consolation as an agent of change, of conversion even. 16 The discussion is summed up nicely in Alpers, 2013, esp. pp. 3-4. Alpers refers to pieces by J. Douglas Kneale and L.M. Findlay who criticized Culler for failing to distinguish between the apostrophe and the more general category of prosopopeia. Alpers’ piece predates Theory of the Lyric, and refers to Culler’s ‘Apostrophe’-chapter in The Pursuit of Signs (1981). Culler (2001) responded to Kneale in his unpublished paper ‘Apostrophe Revisited’. According to Gavin Alexander (2007, p. 107), ‘apostrophe’ and ‘prosopopeia’ were considered to be closely related by several early modern rhetoricians. 17 ‘[W]at geween / Ontvloeit uw kliertjes, niet alleen / Om uwes lieven Vaaders sterven’, transl. Myra Scholz. 18 ‘[W]at klaaght uw droef gesucht, / Ontrent dit lykgehucht’, transl. Myra Scholz.

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In the former poem, the comfort that Six hopes to arrive at is a form of self-comfort, obtained in a dialogue with God. As can be expected from a Calvinist believer, trust in God’s mercy will be the source of that comfort. While the poem does not make clear that Six will actually find comfort, the terms in which it conceives of the consolatory perspective point in that direction: life on earth is a source of inevitable sorrow, but as long as, like Job,19 we keep faith in the providential justice of God’s divine rule, we will be able to bear any tribulation that comes our way and, also, the poem suggests, we will be able to distinguish Divine Truth from mere human visions. ‘My father’s corpse’ conceives of comfort in quite similar terms, but there is a clearer reference in this poem to topics that derive from the classical discourse on comfort that was incorporated in Christian writings on consolation.20 In what is, mathematically at least, the central line of the poem, the persona of Jakob Six urges his son to tell his mother, Jakob’s widow, that she needs to be more moderate in her grief (‘leer maatigen heur rouw’, l. 18). The idea – an instance of what in Greek and Latin consolationes is referred to as metriopatheia, the measured expression of one’s emotions21 – is not just that he tells her that but, more importantly, that he gives the good example himself. This is the father’s urge from the beginning of the poem. Why do you go on crying, he asks: ‘Het is vergeefs het doove graf beperrelt, / Met schreijen want de dood belacht de werreld’ (l. 3-4) – there is no use in wailing and crying, since death will remain deaf to your complaints and even laugh at your behaviour. After the first four lines (which are repeated at the very end of the poem), the persona of Jan’s father brings comfort to his son in true classical fashion, that is, by offering a number of rational arguments that should enable his son to overcome the emotional deadlock of protracted grief. Two interlocking arguments can be made out in the father’s discourse and they are both introduced in lines five and six of the poem: ‘Ghy droopt eens van myn bloed, nu ben ik stof. / Ghy oopent eerst uw lof.’ Death is the way of all flesh, the first of those two lines suggests, and this is the first of the two arguments. First we are born, and then we inevitably return to dust, such is life. The first half of that fifth line also makes clear that the son is born out of the father’s blood and that 19 For a more general analysis of the iconic status of Job in Protestant consolatory discourse see Pieters, 2014b. 20 The incorporation of topoi taken from classical consolationes in the earlier phase of Christian consolatory discourse is the subject of the first three chapters of Rittgers, 2012. 21 For a discussion of the Aristotelian ideal of ‘metriopatheia’ and its importance for consolatory discourse see chapters 14 (‘The Traditions of Moderation and Eradication’) and 25 (‘Christians on Moderation versus Eradication’) of Sorabji, 2000, pp. 194-210 and 385-399.

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image underscores the injunction that is suggested in line six. Now that the father is dead, it is time for the son to assume both his position and his responsibilities, especially since that son now is coming into the prime of his life (‘Gy oopent eerst uw lof’). Here we find the second consolatory argument that the persona of Jakob Six has to offer his son. The son needs to put an end to his grief and in doing so part with his dead father (‘Treed af’, the seven-fold suggestion seems to be that he is literally clinging to his father’s grave?), because he has a task among the living – not only the task of taking over the family business, but also that of comforting his mother, his brothers and his sisters. In order to be able to live up to that important task, Jan needs to put an end to his emphatic mourning: he is urged to leave the dead in peace and return to the living: ‘So let the dead go with the quiet dead. / Leave this place now, join those who live instead’ (l. 7-8).22 The imperatives of those two lines (the imperative clearly is the father’s favourite speech act) open a section of the poem in which a strict division between the living and the dead is proclaimed which it is impossible to cross: ‘No one steps back again / Across the line so firmly drawn by fate, / Nor traces back the life-thread death has cut’ (l. 13-15).23 Again, the lines make clear how the poem’s religious vision is interfused with classical images (the thread of life is being cut by fate, the Greek ‘moira’), but Jakob Six’ injunctions to his son are equally reminiscent of the biblical motif of the griever who longs to be with those from whom death has forced him to be separated – Saint Paul’s ‘Cupio Dissolvi’ from the Epistle to the Philippians (1: 21-24). The motif was made famous in Dutch poetry by the moving sonnet that Constantijn Huygens wrote several months after the death of his wife, Suzanna van Baerle, who passed away on 10 May 1637 – the sonnet is dated 24 January 1638. As I have made clear elsewhere, the motif expresses a desire of the living to be with the dead, but also the awareness that to do so would be to abstain from one’s duties on earth (Pieters, 2014a, p. 46). No matter how hard I long to be with Christ (esse cum Christo), Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, to remain in the flesh on behalf of the letter’s addressees is more important. Put differently, I long to be in heaven, but my place is here with you – Jakob Six’ implicit message will have been clear to his son. This motif is explicitly present 22 ‘Laat dooden dan, met dooden rustig vaaren: / Gaat heene u, met den leevenden, vergaaren’, transl. Myra Scholz. 23 ‘[N]iemand stapt de schreef, / Hem voorgehaalt, van ’t lot, voor by, noch keerde, / Aan ’s leevens draad, na dat de dood dien scheerde’, transl. Myra Scholz.

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in another poem that Six wrote about his dead father: ‘Ontroeringe van geest op het besichtigen van myn vaaders en broeders lyken’. That poem (n 94 in the edition by Jacobs) was written, as the fourth line of the poem indicates – thirteen years after Jakob passed away. The sonnet is gruesomely realistic in its depiction of what Six (imagines having) witnessed when in 1652 the graves of his father and brother were opened: his brother’s skeleton ‘gnawed through’ (‘doorknaaght gheraamt’) and the beard of his father that must have kept growing after he was buried (‘’t hair / Des schimmeligen monds, diep onverrot gebleeven’). According to Anne Jacobs, the poem was occasioned by the reburial of their remains in the family grave in the same Zuiderkerk. What is of interest here, though, are the poem’s final lines, where Six turns from the physical remains of his father and brother to address their souls in heaven, invoking them with a clear reference to the Pauline motif (‘I long to be together with you’): O blessed bodies! What griefs have you escaped, what fears? O souls! How deeply now I long to be with you! Close, coffin, seal their rest, so wrongly washed with tears.24

The motif of ‘Cupio Dissolvi’ – Six plays on it beautifully by complementing the idea of bodily ‘dissolution’ with that of a collective coming together of souls (‘versaam’) – is immediately followed by an expression of the awareness that the call of the rightful death only comes when God decides to place that call. In the poem’s final line the coffin is addressed, with an injunction that returns us to the poem in which Six gave his father the words that the son needed to hear. The resting place of the dead relatives (‘rust’) has been unjustly (‘’t onrecht’) covered with the poet’s torrent of tears. What we have here is, again, a reminder not to weep excessively.

‘Hey, you there, Son’ In conclusion, I want to come back to the difference between ‘My father’s corpse’ and the other two poems that I have discussed in this chapter. What makes ‘My father’s corpse’ stand out in the series of poems that Six wrote on his father’s death (including those that I didn’t discuss here) is the fact that the speaking voice is not that of the poet himself, but that of the dead 24 ‘O saalge lyken! wat al quaads zyt ghy ontkoomen? / O zielen! ik verlangh, dat ik met u versaam. / Sluit, doodkist, sluit hun rust, t’onrecht beweent van stroomen’, transl. Myra Scholz.

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father. Earlier in this chapter, I suggested that by giving his dead father a voice, Six was making use of the classical figure of prosopopeia, in the ‘apostrophic’ variety of the term distinguished as early as Demetrius – the personification of the dead ancestor rests upon the mechanism of address.25 However, one could wonder whether the idea of personification still applies in the Christian framework that envelops Six’ work. Prosopopeia requires the animation of something inanimate and in the scene that Six’ poem portrays we are not supposed to imagine that the father is brought to life by the poet – he is alive, even more so than he ever was. His reminder (in l. 5 of the poem) that he has returned to dust (‘nu ben ik stof’) is not supposed to point to what Jonathan Culler in his book refers to as the ‘scandal’ of the apostrophic power of lyric poetry (the fact that it marks a state of exceptionality), but to the self-evidence of the Calvinist belief in the afterlife. I would even go so far as to say that what we see happening in this poem is not so much the living son giving a voice to his dead father, but the other way around: the father speaking from beyond the grave is offering to his son the power of speech that he (the son) will need in order to arrive at a state of mind that enables him to function properly. The father’s apostrophic address to the son has the force of an interpellation, in the Lacanian-Althusserian meaning of that word. The function of the father’s appeal is to ensure that the son becomes who he has to become: ‘Wees Vaader, Man, en Soon, in liefde en vreesen’ (l. 20). The numerous imperatives that the poem contains – instances of what in the wake of Lacan we could see as ‘the law of the Father’ – support that reading and guide Jan’s son in this trinitarian appeal – he will have to assume the position of father in the new household and business that he will now have to run; he will have to behave like a man and bring comfort to the other members of the family, and he will need to remain a rightful son to his Father in heaven. In the same way that Christ was God’s representative of God on earth, Jan will have to fulfil the promises that Jakob has always held high. It is interesting to note that Althusser’s original scene of interpellation (inspired by Lacan, as we know) also involved a moment of apostrophic turning. In Althusser’s conception of the power of ideology (Althusser 2001, pp. 85-126), the address by the representative of ideology (the policeman in that original scene, who in addressing the individual (‘Hey, you’) makes that individual into a subject) is apostrophic in the original sense of the word – it involves a moment of disruption (it marks a new beginning) as well as a turnus, the 25 See Paxson, 1994, p. 12. The first chapter of Paxson’s book offers a good survey of the history of the concept.

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turn of submissive recognition, of finding out, finally, who we really are meant to be. In the case of this specific poem, the moment of recognition is that of a son who finds out what being a son involves – following in the footsteps of both father and Father. And, yes, I take it that that also involves not aspiring to be more than just a minor poet. The twelfth line of ‘My father’s corpse’ contains an interesting reference to the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Jakob Six urges his son to restrain his widow from trying to lure back her husband into life (‘tracht weer om te lokken’) – an interesting inversion of the original myth that underlies so much of the poetic ideology that Six in his work has been adamant to ironize. It’s not really poetry that warrants the longevity of the living voice – it’s the Father, and the Father only.

Bibliography Alexander, G., ‘Prosopopeia’, in Renaissance Figures of Speech, ed. by S. Adamson, G. Alexander & K. Ettenhuber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Alpers, P., ‘Apostrophe and the Rhetoric of Renaissance Lyric’, Representations, 122 (2013), pp. 1-22. Althusser, L., Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, transl. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001). Ashbery, J., Other Traditions (Cambridge, MA/ London: Harvard University Press, 2000) Culler, J.D., ‘Apostrophe Revisited’, unpublished paper, delivered at the MLA convention at New Orleans, Louisiana, December 2001. Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Pieters, J., Op zoek naar Huygens. Italiaanse leesnotities (Gent: Poëziecentrum/ KANTL, 2014a). Pieters, J., ‘Coornhert en Calvijn over Job. De lijdzaamheid van de vrije mens versus de almacht van de afwezige God’, in ‘Un certain Holandois’. Coornhert en de vragen van zijn tijd, ed. by J. Gruppelaar & J. Pieters (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014b), pp. 55-74. Porteman, K. & M.B. Smits-Veldt, Een nieuw vaderland voor de muzen. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Literatuur 1560-1700 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2008). Paxson, J.J., The Poetics of Personification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Rittgers, R.K., The Reformation of Suffering. Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., ‘Joannes Six van Chandelier: Realist’, Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (1980-1981), pp. 3-15.

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Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., ‘De anti-idealistische poëtica van een christenburger, Joannes Six van Chandelier’, De nieuwe taalgids, 76:1 (1983), pp. 291-316. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., ‘Najaar 1649: Jan Six van Chandelier overnacht in Toulouse. Drie anti-idealistische dichters’, in Nederlandse literatuur, een geschiedenis, ed. by M.A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff, 1993), pp. 255-259. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A. & W.B. de Vries, Zelfbeeld in gedichten. Brieven over de poëzie van Jan Six van Chandelier (1620-1695) (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2007). Six van Chandelier, J., Gedichten. Studie-uitgave met inleiding en commentaar, ed. by A. Jacobs, 2 vols. (Assen/Maastricht: KNAW & Van Gorcum, 1991) Sorabji, R., Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Gestuit voornemen des Dichters ’k Wou korts een heldeveêr van Pallas helmkam plukken, En Mavors yzren schilt beschilderen met bloet: Ik wou op Maroos trant roemruchtige oorlogsstukken Trompetten; maer helaes! ’t was ydele overmoedt. ’k Dacht met een grove bas, nu wars van dartle deunen, Geen minnestoeiery, op ’t spoor van Nazoos luit, Maer lantverwoestingen en oorlogsdaên te dreunen; Doch al myn pogen quam op liefdezangen uit. ô Rozemont, ik haet de vliegende kornetten Dier wilde dolligheit, geroemt voor heldendeugt. Uw oogjes, die myn hart in vlam en kolen zetten, Uw boezem en uw schoot zyn al myn lust en vreugt.

Thwarted attempt of the Poet I tried to pluck from Pallas’ helm not long ago A hero’s plume, and paint the shield of Mars blood-stained; I tried to trumpet, Virgil-style, a grand tableau Of war; but that, alas! was prideful, and in vain. I tried with booming bass, averse to melodies Inspired by Ovid’s lute and lovers’ frolickings, To thunder out the ravages of battle scenes; But all that came of it were songs a lover sings. O Rosemond, those flying banners I detest And all the brutish frenzy widely praised as brave. Your eyes, that spark a blazing fire within my breast, Your bosom and your lap are all the joy I crave.

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Guilty Pleasure Hubert Korneliszoon Poot, ‘Thwarted attempt of the Poet’ (1716) Christophe Madelein

In the short poem, ‘Thwarted Attempt of the Poet’ (‘Gestuit voornemen des Dichters’),1 published in 1716 by Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (1689-1733), the ‘I’ claims that he planned to write an epic poem in the wake of Virgil (Maro), with references to the ancient mythological gods of war Pallas and Mars (Mavors). In the first two lines, Poot explicitly links heroism with violence: whereas the reference to the hero’s feather from Pallas’s helm seems quite innocent, he immediately associates it with blood dripping from Mars’s shield. The poet wanted to follow Virgil’s example and write in a grand style about the fame and glory of war, but despite his attempts, he cannot but stray from his intent. He intended to avoid soft and frivolous melodies associated with lovers frolicking, and to describe the destruction and violence of war in the grand and harsh style of epic poetry. However, he seems to be unable to write anything but love poetry. The reference to Ovid (Naso) at this point is telling: in the f irst poem of his Amores, Ovid explains that he wanted to write epic poetry, expressed by opening the poem with the same word as Virgil’s Aeneid, ‘arma’ (weapons), but this intention is thwarted by Cupid. After Ovid, this shift in intent from epic to love poetry developed into a topos in lyrical (love) poetry. 2 Epic poetry is said to discuss war, violent battle, honour and glory in a grave, sublime tone, while love poetry is more playful, which is also reflected in the metre: according to Ovid, Cupid stole a metric foot from the epic alexandrine hexameter, but changed the epic’s metric scheme into the elegiac couplets of love poetry, which are formed by a hexameter followed by a pentameter. However, unlike Ovid, Poot does not continue to address the divine Cupid, but the earthly object of his love, Rosemond (literally: Rose-mouth). 1 The poem was included in Poot’s first collection of poetry, Mengeldichten (1716). It was later reprinted in the first volume of Gedichten (1722). I have also used the 1977 annotated edition by C.M. Geerars. 2 It occurs, for instance, in Griexe Luyt, a collection of Anacreontic poetry translated by Johan de Vries in 1656 (de Vries, 1656, p. 17). Anacreontic poetry is thematically and stylistically often quite close to the Petrarchan tradition, but it is more explicitly hedonistic.

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He claims to hate the symbols of war, which stand for the brutish frenzy that is taken to be heroic virtue (the Dutch text mentions heldendeugt, a hero’s virtue, here translated as ‘brave’). Poot seems to move further away from his classical example by not just turning from epic war gods to the lyrical god of love, but to his lover herself. In what looks like a modern, even romantic, gesture, he refers to her lovely physical appearance, seemingly opposed to the more cerebral nature of epic poetry. Although this could be construed as a step away from the subject matter of epic poetry, Poot remains formally closer to the classical high genre by writing alexandrines, traditionally associated with the loftiness of the epic. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (1968, p. 75) suggests that in this poem Poot has found his own voice, free from the Ovidian tradition, and that from that moment on he was able to write ‘sincere love poetry’ (‘werkelijke liefdeszangen’). But the imagery Poot uses is highly stereotypical and the lover’s eyes setting his heart on fire was a Petrarchan cliché. The Dutch text mentions ‘flames and coals’ (vlam en kolen, l. 11). The appearance of coals in the metaphor is somewhat unusual, but can already be found in a collection of Anacreontic poetry from 1656, Griexe Luyt, in which the jet-black eyes of the lover (hare gitte oogjes) are likened to coals, suggesting the fire smouldering within.3 The references to her bosom and lap give the final lines a not-so-subtle erotic undertone, but this can hardly be called an authentic, distinctly individual voice. 4

Poot: a poet, a lover H.K. Poot was something of a phenomenon in the early eighteenth-century Dutch literary sphere. He was not a sophisticated aristocrat, but a farmer’s son. Although he did receive some education, he never learned Latin or Greek. His love of literature and the arts was generally acknowledged, but the first literary circles that he participated in were those of the outdated rhetoricians who were active in his original rural environment. However, these circles did introduce him to the seventeenth-century masters of Dutch literature, Vondel,

3 ‘Maeck de appels van ’t gesichje / Yder als een hemels-lichje / Onbemerckelyk verhool / Binnen in een minne-kool’ (de Vries, 1656, p. 34). 4 Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (2009, p. 28) claims that in 1716 Petrarchan poetry was considered to be only interesting for immature youths. This supposedly led Poot’s publisher to urge him to write more serious poetry as well.

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Antonides van der Goes and P.C. Hooft.5 Their influence is clearly visible in Poot’s (early) poetry, as Geerars (1954) has amply demonstrated. His first collection of poetry, Miscellaneous Poems (Mengeldichten), published in 1716, was very successful: his poetry struck a familiar note, while at the same time, it contained imagery taken directly, empirically from nature rather than from examples from literature and art (according to the contemporary reception). Geerars (1954, pp. 43-49) has convincingly shown the numerous traces of Ovidian topoi in Poot’s early erotic love poetry.6 Since Poot could not have read Ovid’s Amores in the original Latin, Geerars refers to translations and adaptations by seventeenth-century Dutch poets, such as Jacob Cats, Antonides van der Goes, Jan Luyken and particularly P.C. Hooft.7 However, he does not mention that the name Rosemond is not new in Dutch love poetry: it appears in pastoral poetry, like in Hooft’s ‘Velddeuntjes’ (‘Songs of the field’) (1611).8 In these short poems, Hooft describes humorous erotic encounters in a pastoral setting.9 In the first of these songs, Rosemond is asleep, and Pan comes closer to playfully pinch her nipples (knippen). At that very moment, when a mulberry falls from the tree onto her breasts, Pan mistakes it for her nipple and, thinking it has come off, cries out. The poem ends there, but the following song refers to Haasje (‘little hare’) running away from one lover, because she has another on her mind, which implies that Pan’s erotic intentions have been thwarted. I do not wish to claim that Poot’s love poem refers directly to Hooft’s verse, but rather to the broader Ovidian and Petrarchan tradition. I argue, however, that in Poot’s poem, contrary to the Ovidian-Petrarchan tradition (and Hooft’s poem), what appears to be a celebration of earthly love is in fact 5 The third, posthumously published volume of Poot’s collected poems, included a biography of the poet, by his admirer Jacob Spex. It is reprinted in Schenkeveld-van der Dussen’s 1995 edition of a selection of Poot’s poetry (Poot, 1995, pp. 7-18). 6 At the end of his book on Poot’s poetry, Geerars (1954, p. 489) offers an Ovidian source for literally every line of ‘Thwarted Attempt of the Poet’, all taken from either Amores I, 1 and II, 1. 7 Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (1968, pp. 9-48) gives Hooft a very prominent place as one of Poot’s main sources of inspiration (and – especially in this early period of his poetry – for imitation). 8 A recent edition can be found in Hooft (2004, pp. 34-36). In 1613, Justus De Harduwijn (anonymously) published De weerliicken liefden tot Roose-mond [the worldly love for Rosemond]. Later, De Harduwijn, a Catholic priest, renounced this Petrarchan love poetry and destroyed most of the copies – the only remaining copy was found in 1913 (Porteman & Smits-Veldt, 2008, pp. 289-290). It is unlikely that Poot had read this collection, but the appearance of the name Rosemond is significant as such. 9 In the poem ‘Remembrance’ (‘Herdenking’), which immediately precedes ‘Thwarted Attempt’, the poet remembers an erotic encounter with Rosemond in a pastoral setting. In line with Ovid, the time of this encounter is compared to a golden age of peace and love.

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portrayed as a reluctant surrendering to mere physicality.10 Although Poot has shared Ovid’s playful surrender to love and eroticism, the final lines of the poem do not so much celebrate this love as admit moral defeat. The poet addresses his lover and claims that he hates the turmoil of war, implying that it is mistaken for heroic virtue. He does not continue by elaborating on what virtue actually is, but instead succumbs to the pleasures of physical love. I claim that by rhyming virtue (deugt) with joy (vreugt) in lines 10 and 12, Poot does not unite both concepts, but rather presents them as alternatives, opposites even: instead of striving for virtue, he has given in to earthly joy – the English rhyme words brave/crave convey the same message. The poem is – unlike Ovid’s parallel poem – the final poem in a series of four love poems for Rosemond, in which the poet’s love initially seems to be unrequited. The series then continues with a shift to a state of anticipation, and culminates in a celebration of physical love. The final poem, ‘Thwarted Attempt’, places the Ovidian (and Petrarchan) undertone of the cycle in a different light, one obscured by the poet’s failed attempt to reject earthly pleasure: the poet has given up his higher calling for earthly love. I hold that the main focus of the poem (and the cycle) is not a celebration of love, but the (possibly religiously inspired) sense of remorse, or even guilt that accompanies the poet’s thwarted ambition. This sense of remorse is expressed in a formal way by the use of the alexandrine, which emphasizes the failed attempt reflected in the content of the poem. As Cupid has not stolen the metric foot, the poem’s form is left intact to express the ambiguous status of the poet. Geerars (1977) argues that Poot originally wanted to publish a volume consisting only of love poetry, Minnezangen, opening with a sonnet, a Petrarchan complaint of unrequited love (‘Klagt’), and closing with an ode to the muse of lyric poetry, Erato (‘Dankoffer aan Erato’). However, in his first publication, Miscellaneous Poems, these love poems are framed by occasional poetry, religious poetry, and poems celebrating poetry itself. The volume opens with a poem called ‘Longing for poetry’ (‘Zucht tot Poëzy’), in which the poet renounces riches and war’s glory in favour of poetry. Next is a poem addressed to his benefactors (‘Aen de Begunstigers myner dichtkunste’), justifying the existence of his occasional poems, and a poem dedicated to his poems (‘Tot myne gedichten’), in which he self-consciously

10 Gur Zak (2010) has argued that this tension between (Ovidian) carnality and (Stoic and Augustinian) virtue was already present in Petrarch’s writing. I am, however, strictly referring to the Petrarchan tradition of love poetry.

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calls himself the first farmer-poet of Dutch literature,11 claiming immortality through poetry. A number of religious poems follow, along with some occasional poetry, before the reader finally reaches the love poems. The volume closes with yet another series of occasional poems – mostly celebrating the birthdays of young women, who are urged to seize the day – a religious poem about King David, and finally five poems that perhaps shed some light on Poot’s use of the word ‘virtue’. ‘Whoever arrives late arrives as well’ (‘Die spade komt komt ook’) is a celebration of patience. ‘Happy life’ (‘Vrolyk Leven’) is an expression of gratitude for the simple things in life and a plea for modesty and moderation. This is followed by a ‘Praise of poetry’ (‘Lof der Dichtkunde’). The next poem, ‘Right Way’ (‘Rechte Wegh’), is riddled with references to ancient mythology, like so many of Poot’s poems,12 but claims that the right way to live is to follow the straight path of virtue. The guide to find this way is revealed to be our conscience: ‘Conscience weighs good and evil. / Heaven gave man this blessing’, and in the end it is the pious man who enjoys his happy fate (Poot, 1716, p. 106).13 The final poem of the volume, ‘Poor riches’ (‘Arme Rykdom’), expresses a warning against decadence. Virtue is depicted as patient, pious, moderate and modest, which is far from the ‘brutish frenzy’ mentioned in ‘Thwarted Attempt’. The poem ‘Praise of poetry’ also combines piety with modesty. In its opening lines, the poet claims that his (female) ‘Singer’ praises holy or saintly poetry, which is by nature beautiful and needs no adornment. This poetry teaches and delights (Poot, 1716, p. 102).14 Once again decadence is rejected, this time in the figure of the Assyrian king Sardanapalus. Although the reference to the glory of Heracles (Alcides) seems to invite the imagery of power and possibly violence, the actual poets whom Poot mentions are 11 ‘Zegt voorts dan hoe ik d’eerste was / Van al de Nederlantsche boeren / Die ’t Zanggodinnendom belas / Dat het zich by den ploeg liet voeren’ (Poot, 1716, p. 10). 12 Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (1993, p. 316) states that Poot strived to be a poeta doctus, like his seventeenth-century examples. At the same time, he was hailed as a poet of authentic feeling and a forerunner of romantic nature poetry. This has led to a double image of Poot: on the one hand, he was the eighteenth-century poet who was trying too hard to come across as a seventeenth-century intellectual, while, on the other hand, the nineteenth-century romantic generation welcomed him as their predecessor (for instance, E.J. Potgieter in his short story De folio-bijbel [1842]). More recent literary historians rightly stress how embedded his work is in eighteenth-century poetics (Leemans & Johannes, 2013, pp. 421-426). 13 ‘Gewis, ’t gemoedt weegt goet en quaet. / De Hemel schonk den mensch dien zegen […] De vromen […] genieten aen het endt hunn’ loon’ (Poot, 1716, p. 106) 14 ‘Myn Zangster vlecht den gouden lof / der heilge poëzy. / Dat’s van natuur een schoone stof / Daer hoeft geen tooisel by […] / Zy sticht en geeft vermaek’ (Poot, 1716, p. 102).

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praised for their serenity, creativity, and peacefulness: Orpheus’s harp calms the violence of the wild woods, Amphion’s lyre built Thebes, Arion’s cithara freed him from pirates and the perils of the sea.15 True poetry seems to be far from the epic glorification of war and turmoil, as might be suggested in the beginning of ‘Thwarted Attempt’. However, it does not seem to sing the song of love either, at least not of earthly love: although all three poets mentioned have a connection to love (Orpheus has his Eurydice, Amphion his Niobe) or earthly pleasure (Arion was a Dionysiac poet) none of these connections are explicitly mentioned.16 I suggest that there may be more unity to this volume of Miscellaneous Poems than meets the eye, especially between the poems Geerars sets apart as Minnezangen or love poems and the poems on poetry. One of these love poems is a lover’s dialogue between Mars and Venus (Poot 1716, pp. 47-51), another well-known topos in early modern art and literature. Mars convinces Venus to take off her girdle, but eventually they are caught together in bed: Venus’ jealous husband Vulcan has crafted a net of diamonds and traps the lovers in it. Mars and Venus are publicly mocked by the other gods: purely physical lust is punished. Bax & Vuijk (1993) claim that the noble intentions of the superior gods Mars and Venus are blocked by the ‘lower’ god Vulcan, suggesting that good intentions are thwarted by the harsh reality of everyday life. Leferink (1993), however, questions whether their intentions are really blocked: after all they are not separated, but tied together. Vulcan may put them to public shame, yet he does not punish them, but rather completes their physical union. In view of the larger ethics of the volume, these views are not irreconcilable. The gods’ intentions are not entirely noble, though: Mars and Venus give in to their earthly lust and are subsequently punished to a certain extent. However, they remain tied to each other: even the gods cannot escape from the longing for earthly pleasure. The ‘I’ of ‘Thwarted Attempt’ may have been wrong in wishing to write an epic poem about the honour and glory of war, at least it showed the ambition of the poet to write true poetry (as expressed in the volume’s first poems). All his attempts lead to love songs, but the title of the poem does not seem to acknowledge these love songs as true poetry: the poet’s attempt 15 ‘Helt Orfeus harp, die ’t woest gewelt / Der wilde wouden toomt, / Gaf ooren aen het doove velt, / en voeten aen’t geboomt. / Wie spreekt niet van Amfions lier, / Die steden bouwen kon? / Of van Arions citerzwier, / die ’t zeegevaer verwon?’ (Poot, 1716, p. 104). 16 In his analysis of ‘Flying love’ (‘Vliegende Min’), Jean Weisgerber calls Poot’s combination of domesticity with mythology, word play, pastoral poetry and carpe diem a ‘peculiar amalgam’ (Weisgerber, 2003, p. 383).

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is thwarted.17 All his feelings of lust and joy are directed at Rosemond’s physical appearance, rather than the higher calling of poetry. He cannot deny the intensity of his earthly desire, but the fire of these passionate feelings goes against the pious modesty of true virtue. Moreover, to give voice to these passionate feelings he takes recourse to a set of Petrarchan clichés.18

The poet addresses his lover Rosemond thus becomes a symbol not only of irresistible love and (physical) pleasure, but also of the limitations and thwarted ambitions that mark Poot’s own poetry, and by extension his entire human existence. Moreover, by directly speaking to her and by stressing her physical features, the poet renders her presence in the poem as physical as the love she stands for. By immediately addressing Rosemond, the poet addresses his very condition humaine, torn between love and guilt, physicality and morality. Whether Rosemond should be flattered or insulted to be called an irresistible yet guilty pleasure remains a mystery. Jonathan Culler suggests that in love poems ‘the beloved addressed acquires a transcendental, nonempirical character, less a person than a poetic function, addressed for poetic purposes’ (2015, p. 207). Addressing his lover with a fictional name, which once again refers to her physicality, indeed seems to strip her of her individuality. Culler continues: What does address to the beloved accomplish? First, it gives us an event in the lyric present, the moment of address, when one longs for or praises the beloved or complains about his or her unresponsiveness. This permits a more vivid expression of feeling, not as something to be described from a past which is narrated but rather as an act of praise or blame in the 17 This is what sets this poem apart from the tradition or the topos of the humble or modest poet, in which the poet presents his poems as mere attempts, while at the same time highlighting his stylistic and technical mastery. Poot’s poem is not a mere attempt, it is a thwarted attempt. He does not display (possibly feigned) modesty, but expresses the frustration caused by his failure. 18 I have argued that the use of the alexandrine refers to the desire to compose an epic, because the Ovidian example poem refers to Cupid stealing a metric foot. However, the iambic hexameter, or alexandrine, is often used in the Petrarchan sonnet. ‘Thwarted attempt’ is not a sonnet. This could be interpreted as either another failed attempt (at Petrarchan poetry this time), or a reluctance to formally give in to the Petrarchan model. In light of the use of the alexandrine in the model poem by Ovid, I argue for the latter interpretation.

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present, or, often, an active questioning of the process in which one is engaged. (Culler, 2015, pp. 207-208)

Indeed, when the poet addresses his lover, he turns away from the narrative in which his initial intent to write epic poetry is given up in favour of love poetry. This turning from narrative to event is reflected in the tense: whereas the first eight lines of the poem are in the simple past tense, the final four lines, the address, are set in the present tense. At the same time, the focus shifts from the subject and style of poetry to emotions: a hatred for the frenzy of war, the ardent feelings of love, and the lust Rosemond’s physical appearance arouses. It is this shift that prompted Schenkeveld-van der Dussen to mark this poem as the dawning of Poot’s sincere love poetry (1968, p. 75). In the first eight lines, he explicitly names his literary examples, Virgil and – albeit reluctantly – Ovid; in the final lines, Poot does not mention a literary example, but the imagery is Petrarchan: this seems to suggest that even when he attempts to write sincere, true poetry, he cannot but turn to yet another classic example. In other words: not only does he surrender to mere physicality, he also fails to find his own poetic idiom. In this sense, Rosemond does indeed become a poetic function, addressed merely for poetic purposes: this is not so much a love poem as it is a poem about poetry.

The love poem as part of a narrative on poetry Does this recourse to Petrarchan motives mean that Poot uses a form of romantic irony, or a parodist’s play on the Petrarchan genre? I do not believe so. I hold that the imagery is not an ironic reiteration, but a sarcastic admittance of the inability to go beyond cliché: an admittance of defeat, both morally and poetically. However, this is only a step in the larger narrative that makes up the entire volume of Mengeldichten. In ‘To someone beautiful’ (‘Aen eene schoone’), the poem immediately following ‘Thwarted Attenpt’, the poet gives in to the Petrarchan tone of his poetry, although he does stress that beauty is not merely physical: ‘What comes first, the mind or the body? / Virtue renders beauty a noble charm […] / Where would you find one who praises your golden mores / As highly as I do?’19 In the next poem he begs his lover for forgiveness, 19 ‘Wat stel ik hier, ’t verstant of ’t lichaem, boven? / De deugt heeft by de schoonheit eedler zwier […] / Waer vint ge toch een’ die uw goude zeden / Zoo op haer’ prys waardeeren zoude als ik?’ (Poot, 1716, pp. 68-69).

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because he had lost the reasonable track (buiten ’t redespoor) and had asked, in the heat of his love’s fire (heet van minnebrant), to return sweet love (suikre weêrmin) (Poot 1716, pp. 70-71). Again, physical love is considered to be morally objectionable. The next two poems, ‘Flying love’ (‘Vliegende Min’) and ‘Happy unhappiness’ (‘Gelukkigh Ongeluk’), both warn against unrequited and misdirected love, while ‘Morning’ (‘Uchtentstont’) seems to be another surrender to, and even a celebration of physical love. ‘Spring’ (‘De Lente’) is a playful invitation to two young sisters to come and enjoy the blossoming of new life in the countryside. It ends, however, with a chaste apostrophe to his lyre: ‘Hush, my lyre, you make four beautiful cheeks blush.’20 The next poem is the final love poem in Geerars’s reconstruction of the original Minnezangen (incorporated without any changes in Mengeldichten). Poot praises and thanks the muse of lyric love poetry, Erato: ‘I have received the people’s favour through your favour, / And I live and float on anyone’s tongue. / Each points at me, and says, to my regard: / There goes the one who sang of Venus’.21 I believe that when the poet cries out that he wishes he could repay his muse for her merits, he is in fact also expressing the desire to make a living from his poetry.22 In this sense, it is no coincidence that the next seven poems are occasional poems, which were commissioned for birthdays, a wedding and a funeral. It seems that the larger narrative of Poot’s debut collection of poetry, in which the narrative of the Rosemond poems forms an episode, is that the poet longs to write true poetry, but realizes that in order to be free to do so, he needs the support of benefactors. To ensure this support he writes (commissioned) occasional poems. His attempts to write true poetry direct him toward the strongest of emotions, love. And, in this sense, ‘Thwarted Attempt’ truly is a pivotal poem, but not in the sense Schenkeveld-van der Dussen claims: according to her, in this poem Poot expresses that he has found his own original voice in love poetry. The interest in love poetry leads him away from the grand scheme of the most prestigious form of poetry, the epic. At the same time, however, he mistakes lust for love, and his Ovidian-Petrarchan erotic love poetry focuses on physical love. Moreover, to give voice to this physicality he finds himself reiterating Petrarchan clichés. ‘Thwarted Attempt’, specifically the address that concludes it, 20 ‘Maer zacht, myn lier, gy doet vier schoone wangen blozen’ (Poot, 1716, p. 78). 21 ‘’k Heb ’s vollex gunst door uwe gunst verkregen, / En leve en zweve op ieders tong. / Elk wyst me na, en zegt, tot my genegen: / Daer gaet hy die van Venus zong’ (Poot, 1716, p. 79). 22 ‘Och! kost ik u naer uw verdiensten loonen’ (Poot, 1716, p. 80).

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marks this insight as a pivotal event in the narrative. The seemingly loving outcry of passion that concludes the poem may be sincere, but its formal imitation of Petrarch combined with the reluctance to give up the epic alexandrine show the poet’s failure to write true poetry, including his surrender to both in­escapable physicality and the slavish imitation of literary examples. However, the poet continues writing and tries to incorporate a higher morale in his love poetry – the appearance of religious poetry in Mengeldichten seems to suggest that this higher morale is of a Christian nature. This attempt takes time, and again he needs to turn to benefactors, and occasional poetry, all for the greater goal of reaching true poetry, with which the volume ends. It is very tempting to link this narrative to Poot’s biography. The main outline of this narrative may well be autobiographical, it could also be read generally as that of any poet’s career: it starts with high ambitions, followed by a learning process via the imitation of literary examples, which leads to the painful realization that, although his poetic style may have improved, the imitations do not live up to his original ambitions, and yet, the story ends with a renewal of these ambitions, enriched with a deeper insight into style and ethics. An important aspect, however, stressed by Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (in her edition Poot, 1995, pp. 2-3), is Poot’s ambition to live by the pen. The success of the 1716 publication led to a new expanded edition of the collection (with a new publisher, causing legal problems) in 1722. Poot decided to move away from the countryside to try to make a living as a poet and a writer in the city of Delft. However, he did not become successful: Poot succumbed instead to the seductions of ‘the big city’ and became an alcoholic. In order to support himself, he wrote an abundance of occasional poems, later collected in the second volume of his Poems (Gedichten) (1728), but shortly thereafter he returned to his native Abtswoude, impoverished and disillusioned. In his later poetry, he continued to write about nature, but most of his poems are deeply religious, expressing feelings of guilt and regret: although he seemingly continued to describe pastoral scenes, these scenes are tainted by the loss of innocence. His life ended tragically: although he finally discovered love and married in 1732, in 1733 his daughter died only two weeks old, and later that same year he himself died at the age of 44.23

23 For a more extensive biography: see Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (2009).

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Conclusion ‘Thwarted Attempt of the Poet’ seems to be a love poem in the tradition of Ovid and Petrarch. It starts with the Ovidian topos of the poet in love rejecting epic poetry and turning to lyric (erotic) love poetry. In the address to his lover, the poet again renounces the horrors of war and celebrates in a Petrarchan style the physical beauty of his lover. However, I have argued that what seems to be a fairly traditional love poem is in fact a reflection on the nature of poetry itself and the status of the poet. The poem is the final poem in a series of four. The first three follow a familiar pattern. The first one laments the unrequited love for Rosemond while the second describes the poet anxiously awaiting his lover, who has finally agreed to meet with him. In the third poem, the poet recalls a night of physical love. The final poem, ‘Thwarted Attempt of the Poet’ stands out in this narrative. Ovidian and Petrarchan love poetry celebrate love and eroticism, but this fourth poem shifts the attention from the lover to the poet. The celebration of physical love is presented as a guilty pleasure, something that has led the poet to stray from his higher goal. The address to his lover, given a fictional name stressing her physical appearance, highlights this insight by self-consciously and sarcastically reiterating Petrarchan imagery. This poem marks a humbling insight into the self: Poot expresses that he reluctantly accepts his physicality, while at the same time he strives to move beyond its mortal limitations through poetry.

Bibliography Bax, M. & W. Vuijk , ‘Planeten tussen de lakens. H.K. Poots “Mars en Venus beddepraet”: Hoerenlied of levenslied?’, in In de zevende hemel: Opstellen voor P.E.L. Verkuyl over literatuur en kosmos, ed. by H. van Dijk, M.H. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen & J.M.J. Sicking (Groningen: Uitgeverij Passage, 1993), pp. 197-203. Culler, J., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). de Vries, J., Griexe Luyt ofte Lierzangen vanden Teïschen Anacreon, Vertaelt door Johan de Vries (’s Gravenhage: Weduwe van Isaac Burghoorn, 1656). Geerars, C.M., Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1954). Geerars, C.M., Minnezangen van Hubert Korneliszoon Poot: Ingeleid en van aantekeningen voorzien door Dr. C.M. Geerars (Culemborg: Tjeenk Willink / Noorduijn B.V., 1977 [1964]). Hooft, P.C., Liederen en gezangen, ed. by J. Koppenol (Amsterdam: Athenaeum / Polak & Van Gennep, 2004).

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Kalff, G., Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde (Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1910). Leemans, I. & G.J. Johannes, Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700-1800: de Republiek (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2013). Leferink, H., ‘Mars en Venus in de zevende hemel’, in In de zevende hemel: Opstellen voor P.E.L. Verkuyl over literatuur en kosmos, ed. by H. van Dijk, M.H. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen & J.M.J. Sicking (Groningen: Uitgeverij Passage, 1993), pp. 190-196. Poot, H.K., Mengeldichten (Rotterdam: Arnold Willis, 1716). Poot, H.K., Gedichten. Eerste deel (Delft: Reinier Boitet, 1722). Poot, H.K., Gedichten. Tweede deel (Delft: Reinier Boitet, 1728). Poot, H.K., Gedichten. Derde deel (Delft: Reinier Boitet, 1735). Poot, H.K., Gedichten. Voorafgegaan door de biografie van de dichter door Jacob Spex, ed. by M.A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995). Porteman, K. & M.B. Smits-Veldt, Een nieuw vaderland voor de muzen. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1560-1700 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2008). Potgieter, E.J., ‘De folio-bijbel’, in E.J. Potgieter, De werken, ed. by Joh. C. Zimmerman (Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink, 1842 [1903]), vol. 2, pp. 197-213. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., Het dichterschap van Hubert Korneliszoon Poot. Een vergelijking van de ‘Mengeldichten’ en het ‘Vervolg der Gedichten’ (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1968). Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., ‘28 februari 1722: Arnold Willis schrijft het woord vooraf voor zijn uitgave van H.K. Poots Mengeldichten. Tweede deel. Tussen twee eeuwen: de dichter Hubert Korneliszoon Poot’, in Nederlandse Literatuur, een geschiedenis, ed. by M.A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff, 1993), pp. 314-318. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M.A., Dichter en boer. Hubert Korneliszoon Poot. Zijn leven, zijn gedichten (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2009). Weisgerber, J., ‘De jacht op de nimf. Korte wordingsgeschiedenis van het thema en drie variaties: Hooft, Poot en Claus’, Verslagen en mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde (2003), pp. 367-390. Zak, G., Petrarch’s Humanism and the Care of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Aan mejuffrouw Agatha Deken Ach DEKEN! DEKEN, ach! myn waarde WOLFF! myn man! – In ’t holst des nachts! – ’k zit voor zyn ledikant te leezen; Hy spreekt met my, hy sterft, valt in myn’ arm! – ik kan Niet schryven! – hemel! moest ik juist alleenig weezen! Geen ziekte, zelfs geen koorts; zo zegt hy nog: ’k Ben wèl; Slechts wat vermoeid; dit komt van gisteren te preéken: Myn lief, ’k word wat benaauwd – hy richt zig op – ’k ontstel; ’k Vlieg op – hy zwygt, hy geeft een snik – zyne oogen breeken; Zyn hoofd zygt op myn hart – hy ziet my stervende aan: ‘Myn lieve waarde WOLFF! – afgryslyke oogenblikken! ‘Ach kent gy my niet meer? ik ben ’t:’ het was gedaan. Denk, denk eens myn vriendin! hoe dit my heeft doen schrikken! ’k Ben byna levenloos! (gy kent myn teder hart:) Ach, niemand spreekt my toe! geen maagschap, geene vrinden! Ik schryf ’t, ik klaag ’t aan u – wat is myn geest verward! Ja! dit’s het doodsgewaad; daarin zult gy hem vinden. Geheel alleen! – wat zal ik doen? wie geeft my raad? ’k Moet van dit sterfgeval noodzaaklyk kennis geeven: Ja, ’k moet; maar vinde my hiertoe gantsch buiten staat: Hoe zal dat gaan? zie, hoe myn zwakke vingren beeven: Ik schryf onleesbaar schrift: vriendin! wie staat my by? Wie helpt, wie troost my? ach! myn waardste DEKEN! gy. In de Beemster, 29 april ’s nachts, ten 1 uure, MDCCLXXVII.

To Miss Agatha Deken Oh DEKEN! DEKEN! Oh my husband WOLFF, dear man! – So late at night! – I sit down near his bed to read; He talks, he dies, he falls into my arms! – I can Not write now! – Heavens! Why was no one there with me? Not ill, no fever even; he says: I’m all right, Just somewhat tired out from preaching nowadays. My love, I can’t breathe well – sits up, and – oh, the fright! I jump up – he says nothing, gasps – his eyes are glazed; He gives me one last look – his head sinks down Upon my heart. Oh, dreadful moments! – “WOLFF, my dear! Oh, can’t you see, my love? It’s me!” But he was gone. Just think, my friend, just think how I was seized with fear! (You know my tender heart.) I feel about to die! Oh, no one talks to me! No relative, no friend! I write, complain to you – my thoughts are all awry! Yes! Here’s his funeral shroud; that’s how you’ll next see him. I’m so alone! – And who can say what I should do? I must report this death, that’s the most pressing thing; Yes, yes I must, but find I am unable to. How can I, weak as this? Look how my hand is trembling; No one can read my writing. Friend! Who can soothe This anguish? Who can help? Ah, dearest DEKEN! You. In the Beemster, 29 April 1777 at 1 o’clock in the morning

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Same-Sex Intimacy in EighteenthCentury Occasional Poetry Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker, ‘To Miss Agatha Deken’ (1777) Maaike Meijer

This remarkable poem was written by the Dutch poet and novelist Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker (1738-1804) and addressed to her bosom friend Agatha Deken (1741-1804). The poem strikes me because it uses the apostrophe to create a highly dramatic present moment: while Deken is addressed – we ‘overhear’ Elizabeth’s outburst of shock – death strikes. The moment of address and the moment of dying almost coincide. Elizabeth’s husband, the elderly reverend Wolff, passes away in l. 3: ‘[…] he dies, he falls into my arms! – I can / Not write now! – Heavens! Why was no one there with me?’ In l. 5, a flashback begins in which the ‘I’ relates the brief process of his falling ill: […] he says: I’m all right, Just somewhat tired out from preaching nowadays. My love, I can’t breathe well – sits up, and – oh, the fright! I jump up – he says nothing, gasps – his eyes are glazed; He gives me one last look – his head sinks […]

It is told in the present tense, which creates the sensation that we are standing in the very room when death strikes. One imagines the astonishment of the lyrical ‘I’: her being taken by surprise is expressed in the present tense. This effect is also reached by an embedded second apostrophe: while recounting Wolff’s rapid deterioration, the lyrical ‘I’ addresses him: ‘“Wolff, my dear! / Oh, can’t you see, my love? It’s me!” But he was gone.’ (ll. 10-11). The apostrophe cannot keep the reverend alive. This part of the poem shows to what extent narrative can be embedded in a lyrical text without destroying the structure of address that Northrop Frye and Jonathan Culler among others rightly declare typical for poetry. The recounting of events is only a short interruption of a repeated apostrophizing, taken up again in the following line: ‘Just think, my friend, just think how I was seized with fear!’ The danger that narrative would take over, reducing the poem to a story, is thus countered by a corset of apostrophes, strengthening time and again the apostrophic nature of this text. Also, the fact that the actual dying is

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recounted twice, first as a shock which is experienced in the present, then as part of a slightly longer narrative flashback, safeguards the lyrical nature of the text.1 Repetition is less problematic in poetry than it is in narrative. The dramatic introduction is followed by a couple of emotional cries, after which we read a series of desperate questions, ‘who can say what I should do?’, a list of things that must be taken care of now, and more rhetorical questions such as ‘Who can soothe / This anguish? Who can help?’ (ll. 21-22), with the liberating conclusion that we have seen coming: ‘Ah, dearest DEKEN. You’ (l. 22). This finale is a repetition of the apostrophe to the husband, but not a literal one. The epithet ‘dear’, which has been used twice for the reverend Wolff, is now shifted to Deken in its superlative form: ‘dearest’. My interpretation of this superlative is that Deken is invited to take the Reverend’s place at the widowed Elizabeth’s side as her new life companion. ‘Dearest’ is a performance of Elizabeth’s choice for the future mistress of her heart. This poem, then, is a report of the death of the beloved and a declaration of love to the new spouse at the same time. Most Dutch readers would know that Elizabeth Wolff and Agatha Deken quickly proceeded to set up house together after the Reverend Wolff’s death and formed a famous, productive and socially well-connected writers couple, living happily ever after. The poem’s combined agenda may at first seem striking, even cruel, to us, but in Elizabeth’s time, being attached to your husband and loving and cherishing your best female friend were – for a woman – not seen as irreconcilable or unseemly. So a relevant comment on this poem would be an explanation of why the loss of the husband and the reaching out to the friend who is invited to take his place are so compatible. Another element that needs reflection is the specific use of apostrophe. The addressee is in this case a real person. The invitation to Deken to become the new spouse was at some point a real-life event. Does it change the nature and function of the apostrophe when the addressee is not an ostensibly imaginary figure (like the wind, the moon or some god), when s/he is not an unreachable beauty or a dead person, but a very real person, who could even be brought into the orbit of the lyrical ‘I’ by the present poem? This seems to me an occasional poem if ever there was one. How easily or uneasily do occasional poems fit into the general theory of the lyrical outlined by Jonathan Culler in his ambitious book Theory of the Lyric (2015)? I will try to answer this question first. 1 Elsewhere (Meijer, 2011), I proposed to call the way in which narrative can be embedded in poetry ‘lyrical narrativity’.

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Occasional poetry and lyrical theory Occasional poetry was much more common in the past than it is today. Poems to celebrate a wedding or a birth, to console a mourner, to mark a political event, to praise a deceased celebrity or to inaugurate a new public building, for example, were much more familiar in the Dutch sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than autonomous ‘unoccasional’ poetry to map individual feelings.2 Vondel’s poetry was mainly occasional (see his ‘Salutation to the Most Illustrious and Noble Prince Frederick Henry’ analysed by Marrigje Paijmans in this volume; Jürgen Pieters and Marijn van Dijk also deal with occasional poems in their chapters). Occasional poetry has now become rare, notwithstanding attempts to revive it, as in the English institution of the national ‘poet laureate’ and the Dutch succession of ‘poets of the fatherland’ and ‘poets of the city’. The recent attempt to create a Koningslied (‘King’s Song’) when the new Dutch King Willem Alexander ascended the throne in 2013 was another attempt to revive an old tradition of poetry as a discourse with a political, community-building, epideictic function: it took a long time to reach a national consensus about the text (a process that ended in an awkward compromise between something modern and something extremely archaic), and the song sunk into oblivion after its rather painful performance on the occasion of Willem Alexander’s coronation. Poetry lost its public function broadly speaking in the early nineteenth century, after romantic poetry, which was geared towards individual expression, had taken over as the most dominant lyrical mode. Poetry then took the form of the meditative poem in which the ‘I’ solipsistically explores his/her innermost feelings, mediated by an explicit or indirect apostrophic structure of address. Apostrophe as a technique of representation, however, can be put to very different ends, as Culler shows in his exploration of the history of different forms of poetry from antiquity to the present. While classical poetry was epideictic – ‘a discourse of praise and blame, articulating values’ (Culler, 2015, p. 7) – aimed at morally influencing citizens and the society at large, romantic poets turned their backs upon the world, thereby often criticizing it implicitly. In Theory of the Lyric, Culler also attempts to construct a model for lyrics that is able to cover all its different manifestations. He argues that hermeneutic interpretation does not give optimal access to poetry, 2 Smits-Veldt (1993). Alpers (2013) points to the same predominance of occasional poetry in pre-Romantic English poetry. Occasional poems could be the vehicle for individual emotion too, but not exclusively so.

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but experience does. We should experience a poem as if it were a song. A poem is always an event, and ‘the subjectivity at work in the lyric is a formal principle of unity more than the consciousness of a given individual’ (p. 350). The crucial figure of the apostrophe creates ‘the power of poetry to make something happen’ (p. 140) and ‘to apostrophize is to will a state of affairs, to attempt to call it into being’ (p. 139). Culler also highlights ‘the ritualistic dimensions of lyric: rhythm, sound patterning of all kinds, lyric address and invocation’ – in short the strangenesses that attracts us in poetry: ‘they are what make lyrics different from prose reflections on the world’ (p. 350). Culler admits that a general model for lyrics of all times can never be simple. Yet he does not want to give in to the historicist presumption ‘that any broad claim is an illicit imposition that neglects the historical particularities of each era’ (Culler, 2015, p. 3). He tries to hold on to some seemingly endlessly recurring characteristics of poetry, such as its triangular structure of address. Culler searches for possible historical exceptions to this triangular pattern. He thoroughly investigates claims that classical poetry (such as the work by Horace and Catullus) was still directly addressed to an audience. But his conclusion is invariably that the poetic structure of address is ahistorical: it was always there, it always functions in the same triangular way. Direct addresses to the reader are exceptions to the rule, and the use of the apostrophe may be mild or wild, verging on magic, logical or exaggerated, but it always comes down to the same thing: ‘Lyric is pre-eminently the utterance that is overheard’, or the poet ‘turns his back on his listeners’ (Frye, 1957, pp. 249-50), even when this is done to reach them more effectively. I would like to join in on Culler’s investigation of the different uses of the lyrical structure of address. And maybe the occasional poem, so omnipresent in the Dutch seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, presents us with an interesting case.

Women’s poems of praise In 1998, I edited a Dutch-Flemish volume for a series of international bilingual anthologies of women’s poetry (The Defiant Muse, 1998). During this work, I encountered a number of female poets who composed poems of praise for other female poets. These poems gave a twist to an existing tradition of male praise for exceptional women – including Anna Roemers Visscher, Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, Anna Maria van Schurman and Katharina Questiers, all Dutch poetesses who lived and worked in the seventeenth century. Anna Roemers Visscher was highly praised by many of her famous male contemporaries, such as Cats, Constantijn Huygens and

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Vondel. They called her a second Sappho, a tenth Muse, a fourth Grace, the first virgin who climbed the Helicon and the like. The same kind of panegyrics were showered upon the others. My interpretation of this phenomenon is that it construes these women poets as miraculous sheep with five legs, as rare birds, as exceptions. Interestingly enough, later historiographers do not tell us very much about the content and artistic devices of their poetry, but only repeat the praise of their male contemporaries, invoking their authority to justify these women’s place in the canon, as if intergenerational intermale solidarity forbids that these women are ignored. They never mention these women’s praise for one another. Yet Anna Roemers Visscher wrote the following poem for Georgette de Monteneij, whose Cent emblêmes chrestiens she had translated from the French: To Miss Georgette de Monteneij Georgette, kindly pardon me, I’ve been so bold, perhaps too free When rendering your poetry Into my native Dutch. You’ll see I didn’t always find a way To shape the meanings you convey But humbly used my own good sense. Your book afforded me immense Delight right from the first. What’s more, this was a maiden’s verse! That I admired – wished dearly, too, For a playmate such as you. Though in the body this can’t be, Our spirits know no boundary.3

She also addressed a poem to Johanna Comans, which was even engraved on a wine glass as a memorial to the occasion of their dining together.

3 Trans. Myra Scholz in Meijer, 1998, p. 55. In Dutch: ‘Aen Joffvrouw Georgette de Monteneij // Georgette, Eij, vergeft het mij / Dat ick soo stout vermetel sij / Dat ick in onse duytsche tael / Van woort tot woort niet altemael / ’t francoys ghevolght heb, noch u sin / Recht wt gebeelt: maar smeet daar in / ’t goetduncken van mijn cleyn verstant. / Doe ick u boeck creech inde hant / ’T heft ij soo wonder-wel behaacht, / te meer omdat het van een Maacht / Gheschreven was. Dat docht my gróót. / Ick wenschte Sulcken speelgenóót / Maer can int Lichaem niet gheschiên, / Mijn Geest zal Lijckwel bij u vliên’.

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Another poem she wrote is addressed to Anna Maria van Schurman. I only quote the opening lines: To Miss Anna Maria Schuermans Hail! O bright young flower, hail! Whose wisdom I do sing the praise, Whom I respect and I do love, Whom I do hold to be my friend, Who is to be the future queen (Should Heaven be so willing) Of all fair maidens in the world, Who Science ever have pursued. […]4

Culler’s analyses of two classical poems that are also addressed to real, though not always historically identifiable, people may be helpful to understand how Anna Roemers’ apostrophes work. What a proper name can do, Culler writes, choosing the case of ode 1.11, a moral lesson by Horace, is to soften the moral and invite the reader to feel addressed without directly being lectured to. In the second of Culler’s examples, Catullus’ poem to Licinius, Calvus addresses a man the ‘I’ is madly in love with and begins by describing the erotic pleasures they enjoyed together during the previous evening. Culler observes that this seems strange at first, since the ‘description of yesterday’s activities would be superfluous for the partner in the activities: they recount what readers need to know’ (Culler, 2015, p. 205). Culler refers to Paul Veyne who shows how the text’s challenging erotic excess and its lavish use of intertextual allusions and poetic models turns the poem into ‘a selfconscious outrageous poetic performance’ (p. 205). He concludes that Catullus’ poem is not so much an utterance which the reader can ‘overhear’ as a text with which the poet is ‘winking at the reader’, while seemingly addressing someone else. There are ‘aspects of the poem which do not make sense as spoken to the ostensible addressee, but are crucial to the address to a wider audience of readers’ (p. 206). This is exactly what happens in the two poems by Anna Roemers Visscher quoted above. The addressee – Georgette de Monteneij – surely already 4 Trans. Tony Briggs in Meijer, 1998, p. 51. In Dutch: ‘Aen Juffrouwe Anna Maria Schuermans // Sijt gegroet, ô Jonge Bloem, / Van wiens kennis dat ik roem, / Die ik acht en’ die ik mine, / Die ik hou voor mijn vriendinne: / Die in toecomende tijdt / (Immers soo ’t den Hemel lijdt) / ’T puijk sal wesen van die maechden, / Die ooijt wetenschap bejaechden’.

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knows that Anna Roemers Visscher translated her work from the French, but the audience needs to be made aware of this fact. It also needs to witness this exchange, to feel the respect Anna has for her French colleague. Anna Maria van Schurman already knows that she is a remarkable scholar, but the audience needs to hear this as well. It seems clear that these poems are addresses to the reader, albeit indirect ones: the reader has to be convinced that women can be scholars, great writers, geniuses even. This is polemics by means of poetry, and the moral feminist statement is softened – as in Horace 1.11 – through the address to a living person. Apostrophe creates an event, and thereby the address itself performs the positive relation that women have to each other, which is a feminist gesture. That is why the poems of praise to women by men are different from those by women to each other. While the male poems perform a male-female relation in which men construct themselves as protective, appreciating and superior, the female poems of praise perform a new relation between equals. That is why Anna Roemers Visscher is not just following the conventions of a male genre. She is conquering this genre, adapting it for a new use. She creates a position for writing women, not as rare exceptions, but as a new class of rightful owners of culture and learning – including herself – who do not need male approval. This tradition continued into the eighteenth century with Elizabeth WolffBekker as one of its most remarkable representatives. For example, in her long poem ‘To Miss Anna van der Horst’, she movingly describes almost every Dutch and French female scholar and writer known from the Renaissance onwards. Domna Stanton has pointed to a similar phenomenon in French women’s poetry during this period in her French Defiant Muse anthology. She found the role of Muse could be filled by a woman and ‘poems highlight lists of celebrated foremothers and contemporaries as objects of inspiration and veneration’ (Stanton, 1986, p. xxii). Thus, we have encountered a kind of topical verse that enjoyed international currency among women. It is epideictic poetry, which educates its readers and tries to win their hearts and minds. The structure of lyric address seems to me to be crucial for the lyric mode as Culler says it is, but we need to know more about the different uses to which it can be put. Who addresses whom and to what effect are issues that belong to the relations between literary strategies and social power. Feminist critics have shown that literary conventions – such as male lyrical subjects addressing women for the pleasure of male audiences – constitute a deeply engrained literary patriarchy (van Alphen & Meijer, 1991; Meijer, 1995; and Meijer, 1996). When women start to write, they often use exactly the same tricks of the trade for very different ends, the creation of female subjectivity for example. Adrienne Rich’s poetry is full of apostrophes to women she remembers or

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admires. In his chapter on ‘Lyric and Society’, Culler (2015, pp. 296-348) fails to reflect on feminism as a crucial political development, in which social transformation brought strikingly new uses of literary devices in its wake.5 He also sometimes slips into thematic interpretations of the ideological content of certain poems or lyrical traditions or into a very general discussion about the social effects of specific poems instead of rigorously keeping the focus on poetics or how the poem technically creates social effects. He neglects his own programme of asking ‘what are the conventions that enable this work to have the sorts of meanings and effects it does for readers’ (Culler, 2015, p. 6). More can be said about women’s contributions to Dutch occasional poetry. We might consider the playful verses that were exchanged in the so-called ‘Muiderkring’ to which Anna Roemers belonged. The Muiderkring was a lively company of friends, all very priviliged, powerful, witty, well travelled and educated according to the new Renaissance standards. They came together regularly to read one another’s work, to discuss art and politics, to sing and enjoy themselves, and to flirt. Innumerable letters and occasional verses were exchanged among the members of this circle. (Marijn van Dijk studies some of their exchanges in this volume). Tesselschade, Anna’s younger sister partook in the game. Her poem ‘Challenge – to M.D.’ makes clear to a certain M.D., with ample display of rhetorical devices and intertextual allusions, that she is not seriously in love with this gentleman, although she likes to tease him. She performs her power to flirt on an equal basis, but also her power as a poet. Just as remarkable is Katharina Questiers who, together with her close friend Cornelia van der Veer, published the Lauwerstryt (Praise Contest, 1665), in which the two competed in writing laudatory poems to each other. How wittily they played with the genre of the occasional poem can be seen in Questiers’ poem on the occasion of finding van der Veer’s garter in her room: To Miss Cornelia van der Veer On finding the garter she left in my room If Egypt’s ancient goddess deigned to favor me As long ago she granted Iphis’s desperate plea, Then – England notwithstanding – I’d have a weapon made, And ‘Knight of this New Garter’ would be my accolade.6 5 For the extensive and highly influential literary practice of feminist rewriting and revision see Plate (2011) 6 Trans. Myra Scholz in Meijer, 1998, p. 61. In Dutch: ‘Aen Jufr. Cornelia van der Veer / Op haer kouse-band die zij op mijn kamer had laaten leggen // Wou my de hulp-Goddin van ’t groot

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The ‘I’ dedicates this playful poem to Cornelia upon finding her garter and wishes that the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis would change her into a boy. This refers to a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which Iphis is raised as a boy, falls in love with the girl Ianthe and magically transforms into a young man on her wedding day with Isis’ help. All of this is quite tantalizing for modern readers, as it probably was also for contemporary readers, who were acquainted with romantic friendship, but not with descriptions of very explicit physical intimacies of a sexual nature between women. This poem has distinct Catullian overtones: it displays liberties among women, it winks at the curious reader lifting only a tip of the erotic veil and it shows off knowledge of mythology and the institution of English knighthood (reserved for men only), both of which are performatively reused in this poem, conquered for women as well. Most of the occasional poems I have treated so far use apostrophes whose effects can be understood through the lens of Culler’s reflections on this crucial lyrical device. What is surprising to me is the extent to which women poets are involved in this ‘winking at the reader’ and how cleverly Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker exploits the possibilities of occasional poetry and lyrical poetry combined. Her address to Agatha Deken creates an event, which allows us to be present at the highly dramatic sudden death of her husband and uses the power of poetry to establish a bond with a new lover – Deken. A pile-up, a case of ‘hyperbolic performativity’ and a demonstration of her power as a poet, I dare say. In search of similar highly dramatic poems, I can only think of the song ‘Stan’ (2000) by the rapper Eminem, in which the ‘I’ (Eminem) is addressed by a fan named Stan who dies in a car crash in the middle of the song. The use of apostrophe creates a shocking presence, as if we are witnessing the crash. We might wish that Culler had devoted more explicit attention to the vast tradition of the occasional poem in which the addressee is a real person. I will come back to this point.

Romantic friendship Culler wants to do without ‘historicist presumptions’, but this might hamper our understanding of the poem which I have put centre stage here. ‘To Miss Agatha Deken’ is in need of some historical contextualization to explain why Aegyptenlant / Zoo gunstig zyn als zy wel eertyds Iphis deede / Ik liet, spyt Engelland, een Waapen voor my smeeden / En wiert een Ridder van dees nieuwe Kousebant.’

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contemporaries could have readily accepted Elizabeth’s emotional turn to her bosom friend. I have already commented on the networks of friendship and admiration among women poets of the Renaissance, but another type of attachment, the ‘romantic friendship’, came to flourish in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Betje Wolff-Bekker and Aagje Deken offer a good example of women living out this ideal in the Low Countries. They found each other in 1776 when they were approaching their forties, as Buijnsters (1984) has documented. It was love at first sight, although Elizabeth was married at the time. After the death of her husband, they decided to live together. Wolff-Bekker and Deken co-authored numerous novels that are still highly readable and valued today. They also formed the core of a lively network of learned, literary and women-loving women. Both of them had already had several intimate relationships with women (Elizabeth also with men) before they met. Aagje Deken’s sentimental friendships with Maria Bavinck and the poet Maria Bosch are documented in the book of poems Aagje compiled of their joint works in 1775.7 The Deken-Bosch relationship characteristically mixes highly emotional ‘divine friendship’ and pietist religiosity. Deken’s poem ‘Vriendschapszucht’ (‘Love of Friendship’) exemplifies this peculiar blend of feelings. Love of friendship Thou shaper of souls, that gave to each her own! May I not love as Heaven’s gift, my soul companion? … Oh, the life of women friends who are parted Is cruel, bitter, and broken-hearted! I love her as myself, yes I love her tenderly, Then alas! I barely saw her, who must leave me! Let me live with my MARIA, as well I may, I’ll wish no more, O Friend of Friends, to whom I pray.8

The reason that Aagje could not live with her Maria had nothing to do with a social taboo on homosexuality. Such a taboo did not exist yet, at least not for 7 Stichtelyke gedichten van Maria Bosch en Agatha Deken (Amsterdam, 1775). 8 Trans. J.H. Prins & J.W. Prins in Meijer, 1998, pp. 72-73. In Dutch: ‘Vriendschapszucht // Gy die de zielen vormde, en elk haare egaê gaf! /Mag ik die hemelgift, myn Zielsvriendin! niet minnen? … / Wat valt het leeven van trouwhartige Vriendinnen, / Als zy gescheiden zyn niet bitter, hard en straf! / Ik min haar als my-zelf, ja ’k min haar al zo teêr: / Dan ach! naauw zie ik haar, of moet haar weêr begeeven! / Laat my toch, ’t gaa hoe ’t gaa, met myn MARIA leeven! / Gun my dees bede, o Vriend der Vrienden! ’k wensch niet meer.’

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women. Other constraints, namely obligations to work elsewhere and a lack of money to travel to see each other, kept the friends apart. Romantic friendship among women was not only a literary theme; it was also a lived reality. Feminist scholars have documented romantic friendship in England (Mavor, 1974), France (Bonnet, 1981), Germany and the Netherlands (Meijer, 1984; Everard, 1994). Romantic friendship of the religious variety was generally accepted and valued at the time, certainly among the middle and upper classes, as the profusion of devout and devoted poems exchanged between women shows.9 The public acclaim of intimate female and also male same-sex friendship, which was deemed to be of great value for the formation of the soul and the refinement of the feelings, runs parallel to the pattern that Lillian Faderman (1981) described in presexologist and pre-Freudian Anglo-American culture, in which romantic friendship was an ‘institution’, a cultural ideal. The invention of ‘perversions’ alongside normative heterosexuality by the sexologists Krafft-Ebing in Germany and Havelock Ellis in the English-speaking world threw a very different light on these friendships from the late nineteenth century onwards – they became increasingly ‘suspect’.

The uses of poetry Occasional poems such as the ones presented above seem to differ from better known representatives of the lyrical genre, since they address a real person and not an imaginary one. Yet the apostrophe is technically comparable to – let’s say – the one in the Stones song ‘Angie’, where the lyrical ‘I’ addresses the girlfriend ‘you’ whom the ‘I’ intends to leave. The reader is eavesdropping, a position legitimated by the institution of poetry. The apostrophe that organizes the poem ‘To Miss Agatha Deken’ introduces Miss Deken as an enabling figure who is spoken to, monologically, while the reader is invited to eavesdrop on the utterances of the lyrical ‘I’. The addressee never talks back: thus, the apostrophe creates the playing field for the lyrical ‘I’. In the case of Agatha Deken, everyone knew and knows she was also a real person. By referring explicitly to the outside world, poetry could act in the outside world. In modern poetry – and pop songs, which belong intrinsically to it – the addressee is mostly a mere function of the lyrical situation, through which, for example, the display of complicated 9 Apart from Agatha Deken and Maria Bosch their contemporary Elizabeth Maria Post can be mentioned in the eighteenth century, while Petronella Moens and Adriana van Overstraten are interesting figures in the nineteenth century.

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individual emotion becomes possible. The creation of a subject whose whole world revolves around ‘love’ and the effusion of emotion is a romantic as well as a modern phenomenon (with the pop song as its epitome), and its social effects are as vast as they are diverse. On the one hand, the genre enables the discovery of inner life for young people; on the other, it creates normative images of masculinity and femininity in which love, sex and attractiveness are the core of one’s being. But this is not the only possible effect of the vehicle of the apostrophe. Apostrophe can be used to exclude other people in order to arrive at the solipsistic state of mind from which the lyrical utterance comes, but also, on the contrary, to open up to the social world and to really address real others and convince the readers of something. The reader does not illegitimately overhear a private utterance, but is involved by being so obviously winked at. Poetry is polemics here, a strategy to convince. I have shown that Anna Roemers Visscher wrote poems with the obvious intention of strengthening the bond with her female colleagues and to convince her readers of their excellence as well as of the general capabilities of women. I have shown how Tesselschade and Katharina Questiers used poetry as a means of constructing themselves as equals in the social game of flirting. I think that Elizabeth Wolff’s poem ‘To Miss Agatha Deken’ served as a showcase for her spectacular powers as a poet, but also as a public wedding announcement and as an essay on the worthiness and equal stature of the female ‘Boston Marriage’ (as the bonds of love between women were later called in the United States). These poems create, change or celebrate social relations, whereas modern poetry and contemporary pop songs mainly celebrate the inner self. And the astonishing thing is, indeed: traditions that seem worlds apart share the same lyrical conventions and use the same technical devices.10

Bibliography Alpers, P., ‘Apostrophe and the Rhetoric of Renaissance Lyric’, Representations, 122 (2013), pp. 1-22. 10 Alpers (2013) also questioned the pertinence of romantic models of lyric poetry for Renaissance lyrics. Although his conclusion resembles mine – Renaissance lyric is distinctive through ‘its persistently social mode of address’ (p. 1) – he hardly refers to the ubiquitous occasional poetry to defend that statement. I think that it was mainly the occasional nature of much poetry before Romanticism, which made lyrics into a powerful social medium. I agree with Alpers’ invitation ‘to pay closer attention to the differences among historically diverse lyric cultures’ (p. 1) but I think he almost overlooks the most important difference.

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Bonnet, M.-J., Un choix sans équivoque (Paris: Denoël-Gonthier, 1981). Bosch, M. & A. Deken, Stichtelyke gedichten (Amsterdam: Intema en Tieboel, 1775). Buijnsters, P.J., Wolff & Deken. Een biografie (Utrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984). Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Everard, M., Ziel en zinnen. Over liefde en lust tussen vrouwen in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 1994). Faderman, L., Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Junction Books, 1981). Frye, N., ‘Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres’, in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 243-340. Mavor, E., The Ladies of Llangollen. A Study in Romantic Friendship (London: Joseph, 1974). Meijer, M., ‘Vrome en geleerde hartsvriendinnen in de achttiende eeuw in Nederland’, in Onder mannen onder vrouwen: Studies van homosociale emancipatie, ed. by M. Duyves et al. (Amsterdam: SUA, 1984), pp. 167-181. Meijer, M., ‘A Manual for Self-Defence: Feminist Literary Theory’, in Women’s Studies and Culture: A Feminist Introduction, ed. by R. Buikema & A. Smelik (London: Zed Books, 1995), pp. 26-39. Meijer, M., In tekst gevat: Inleiding tot een kritiek van representatie (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996). Meijer, M., ‘Poëzie en de cultuur van het innerlijk’, in Van Nijntje tot Nabokov. Stadia in geletterdheid, ed. by H. van Lierop-Debrauwer, H. Peters & A. de Vries (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1997), pp. 144-160. Meijer, M., ed., The Defiant Muse: Dutch and Flemish Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: The Feminist Press, 1998). Meijer, M., ‘Lyrical Narrativity’, Eighty-Eight: Mieke Bal PhDs 1983–2011, ed. by E. Peeren & M. Aydemir (Amsterdam: Asca, 2011), pp. 10-20. Plate, L., Transforming Memories in Contemporary Women’s Rewriting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Smits-Veldt, M., ‘17 juni 1660: De zuster van de Engelse koning Karel II houdt een intocht in Amsterdam: Dichters als maatschappelijke en politieke commentatoren’, in Nederlandse literatuur, een geschiedenis, ed. by M.A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (Groningen: Nijhoff, 1993), pp. 265-270. Stanton, D.C., ed., The Defiant Muse: French Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: The Feminist Press, 1986). van Alphen, E. & M. Meijer, eds., De canon onder vuur: Nederlandse literatuur tegendraads gelezen (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1991).

Aan myne Vrienden

Als wy, op den weg des levens, Aan den kant van ’t stille water, In een koele schaduw rusten; Als de lieve zuidewindjes, Dart’lend, door mijn lokken, spelen, En der bloemen frische geuren, Door de zuiv’re lugt verspreïen; Dan gevoel ik al den wellust, Dien Natuur mij doet genieten; Maar, hoe groot, hoe onuitspreeklijk, Wordt die wellust, lieve vrienden, Daar we, in ons verëenigd harte, Dien gevoelen en bezingen!



Als de stormen uit het noorden, Buld’rend, door de boomen, gieren, Ons, den scherpgepunten hagel, In ’t gebogen aanzigt drijven; Als een ratelende donder, Met de forsche stem der winden, Ons het jeugdig hart doet rillen; Als het opgezette water, Bruischend, spoelt, langs onze wegen, Ons, onzeker, voord doet hijgen; Dan, mijn vrienden, stroomt vertroosting, Uit uw hart, in mijnen boezem! Dan zijn mij uw gulle blikken, Zonnen, die mijn ziel verheugen!



Lieve vrienden, reisgenooten, Als ik eens, vermoeid van ’t wand’len, Aan uw zijde, neêr zal zijgen, En de Dood mijn oogen sluiten, En mij zagtkens zal doen slaapen, Dan, mijn vrienden, voert mij slaapend, In een stil en eenzaam boschje: Ziet gij daar twee digte boomen,



Die elkander als omhelzen; Geeft mij, onder deeze boomen, Dan een stille, zagte, rustplaats!



En, als gij, mijn lieve vrienden, Dan uw’ weg weêr rustig wandelt, Wilt mij dan niet gansch vergeten: Leest, om aan uw’ vriend te denken, Somtijds eens in deze zangen!

To my Friends 5 10

When we, on the path of life, Rest in cooling shade At the side of quiet water; When endearing southern breezes Frolic, gently, through my hair, And blossoms spread their fragrance Through the clear, untainted air; Then I feel all the pleasures That Nature grants to me; But how great, how inexpressible Those delights can be, dear friends, When we, with our united heart, Feel and sing them in our verse.

15 20 25

When the storms from northern regions Rage, shrieking, through the trees, Driving into our bowed faces Sharp stings of pointed hail; When a sudden roll of thunder With the shouting voice of wind Sets our youthful hearts atremble; When the water swells and washes, Seething, all along our paths As we plod, unsure and breathless; Then, my friends, solace streams out From your hearts into my bosom!



Then I find in your kind glances Suns that warm my soul!

30 35 40

Dear friends, fellow wayfarers, If, weary from the walking, I someday sink down at your side, And Death should close my eyes And lull me into sleep, Then, my friends, take me sleeping To a quiet lonely wood: If you find two leafy trees there That appear to be embracing, Give me then, beneath those trees, A soft and quiet resting place!

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And when you then, my dearest friends, Walk calmly on your way again, I pray, do not forget me: Read, in memory of your friend, From time to time these songs!

10 Nature, Poetry and the Address of Friends Jacobus Bellamy, ‘To my Friends’ (1785) Cornelis van der Haven Chants from the heart, loosely written to suggest that they express spontaneous impressions – this is how Jacobus Bellamy (1757-1786) wants his readers to consider his Gezangen (Songs), published in 1785, from which ‘To my Friends’ originates (Bellamy, 1785a, pp. 1-4). The title of each of his three main collections of poetry contains the word gezangen (songs). Bellamy conceives of his poems in the first place as songs, which, because of their ‘lightness and naturalness, immediately affect the imagination and the heart’, as the poet writes in the preface to his Patriotic Songs (Vaderlandsche Gezangen) of 1782-1783 (Bellamy, 1785b, pp. x-xi). However, Bellamy does not mention any tunes to which his songs can be performed. Also, his idea of ‘singing’ often seems to refer to his ideal of the poem as an inspired ‘song of the heart’ (van der Haven, 2016, pp. 766-767). Yet, each of these poems is not just a simple song but also a gezang, with the prefix ‘ge’ referring to both the act of singing and the content of what is sung. In Dutch the verbal noun gezang bears a stronger relationship with singing than lied, the more common term for song. It transforms the act of writing songs into a way of ‘singing’ that can be adopted by the reader, which means that the experience that underlies the origin of the song can be re-experienced by the reader through the (imagined) act of singing. Taking his poems as songs, Bellamy underlines the social function of poetry, read by a congenial group of readers who enjoy the beauty of the poetry as shared songs of the heart. Friendship and poetry were closely linked phenomena in the Utrecht circle of poets to which the young Jacobus Bellamy belonged (Nijland, 1917, vol. 1, pp. 175-178). The genius-cult that flourished in the circles of friends around popular poets of the eighteenth century inspired Bellamy and his friends to establish their own club of ‘ingenious friends’. Their friendship was a form of reassuring each other’s brilliance by praising friendship through the appraisal of each other’s poetry (and vice versa) (Leemans & Johannes, 2013, pp. 538-539). The lyric address to friends and friendship in these poems often is at the same time an address to poetry itself, the object of devotion around which the friends have organized themselves. When Bellamy

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addresses his friends in a poem, there is a felt spiritual affinity (in Dutch: zielsverwantschap) in their shared affection for literature. Even unknown ‘friends’ can become part of this community: Bellamy has written odes on poets he was never able to get acquainted with, like Johann Kaspar Lavater and Johann Heinrich Stilling, stressing how poetry enables him to imagine these literary idols as being his friends (P.J. Buijnsters in Bellamy, 1994, p. 8): To Lavater Although my eye never saw you, My young heart loves, worships you! You are, for me, a true, a tender friend!1

The distance in time and space should not hinder the poet to speak with those with whom he is only spiritually connected, like in literary conversations with the dead (Pieters, 2005, pp. 37-40, see also his chapter in this book). Thus, poetry enables the author to know and love the heart of someone he never met in person. This function is twofold, since it is through the writings of Lavater that Bellamy has learned to adore this man, as it is through his own song that he can express these feelings and strengthen his spiritual affinity with his Swiss colleague. Literature is not just a way to express friendship, it can forge friendships that without poetry would not exist. In the poetry of Bellamy, a popular image to address issues like (imaginary) friendship is the path of life (levensweg) and the continuation of that path after death. In the poem addressed to Lavater it is the ‘long night of time’ during which an encounter between Bellamy and Lavater takes place (see Buijnsters’ remarks in Bellamy, 1994, p. 8). As soon as both poets rise from their graves, together with their Saviour, their spiritual affinity is recognized in the cheering heart of the lyrical ‘I’: o Honourable man! once my eye will see you, When, after a night, the long night of time, The morning of eternity will arise, And we, with him, will rise from our grave: Then I will run up to you, with a cheering heart!2 1 ‘Aan Lavater / Ofschoon mijn oog u nimmer heeft gezien, / Mijn jeugdig hart bemint, eerbiedigt u! / Gij zijt, voor mij, een waar, een teder vriend!’ (Bellamy, 1994, p. 61). 2 ‘o Ed’le man! Eens zal mijn oog u zien, / Als, na den nagt, den langen nagt des tijds, / De morgenstond der eeuwigheid verrijst, / En wij, met hem, verrijzen uit ons graf: / Dan snel ik u, al juichende, in ’t gemoed!’ (Bellamy, 1994, p. 61).

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Friends who have never met, need poetry to imagine a relationship resembling a friendship that in reality was non-existent. Existing friendships on the other hand do not fully depend on the power of literature to express and share feelings of friendship. In what seems to be a fictional letter to one of his closest friends, the poet J.P. Kleyn (‘To my friend Kleyn’), which also functions as an introduction to his Songs, Bellamy obliquely raises the matter of friendship and the written word. The words addressed to Kleyn are presented to the reader as a fragment of a letter, unfinished and without a clear opening or salutation. In the last lines, the poet admits that there was much more to say to his dear friend, but that this further saying would be useless, since Kleyn could very well finish this ‘raw sketch (of Bellamy’s life) himself’ and ‘give it more colour’, if necessary (Bellamy, 1785a, p. xvi). Real friends do not need the written word to know about each other’s feelings and thoughts – since this sharing of feelings and thoughts in itself is the essence of real friendships. Kleyn could already speak for Bellamy, which means that in order to feel what Bellamy feels, it is unnecessary to read the whole letter – a fragment is enough and the friend could complete it by way of his own imagination.3 The letter in which Bellamy addresses his friend Kleyn is instrumental to the address of his readership in general, but it enables the poet to create an atmosphere of intimacy while talking about his coming of age and indicating how the reader should situate this particular collection of poems in the author’s life story. Just like the letter to Kleyn seems to be an imaginative letter, not written to be read by its ‘real’ addressee (Kleyn) in particular, so Bellamy’s Songs (Gezangen) seem to be ‘imaginative’ songs, i.e. songs solely performed in the minds and heads of both the inspired poet and his ‘listeners’. As Culler puts it, forms of ‘direct’ address in poetry do not prohibit the poet to speak to himself or to unspecif ied ‘others’ apart from the specific addressee or the poet’s actual audience (Culler, 2015, pp. 198-201). Like the idea of writing and receiving letters, the idea of singing could thus easily connect the content of a literary text to distant audiences and spaces (in time, in place) where imagined acquaintances acquire shape. By way of lyric address, however, a song could also lend its voice to the community of readers. A lyrical ‘I’ (or we) can speak to his/ her listeners, but also for them (or even with them) and because of this 3 This intimacy between friends of the same sex should be situated in the context of eighteenth-century sentimental friendships and male intimacy, before the romantic notion of friendship tended to exclude such feelings of intimacy and affection in same-sex relationships (Faderman, 1981, pp. 74-84).

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power to become collective speech, poetry can sing about friendship, activate feelings of friendship, and present itself as the source of those feelings, at different places and in different times, even after (or in) the moment of death.

Address The title of the song ‘To my Friends’ indicates that we are dealing with an ode – in Dutch ‘lyre song’ (lierzang) –, which means that we have to take into account in any case the presence of a third party, apart from reader and poet, to whom the singing is more specifically addressed. The title refers to how the act of singing (as a gezang) is connected directly with the object of the ode’s praise: the beloved Friends as the addressee of the song. By addressing his friends, the lyrical ‘I’ also sings about nature and poetry. But it is even more complicated than this, as it works the other way round too: the lyrical ‘I’ is connected to each of these three objects, being part of nature, part of the group of friends and bound of course to the poem as its singer. Thus, the poem’s lyrical voice unites nature, friendship and poetry and in an attempt to connect these three objects, Bellamy introduces the sweet summer weather and the storms and rains as his companions on the path of life, together with (or as) his friends and poetry. Strictly speaking, the salutation ‘To my Friends’ only applies to the third and fourth stanzas, which indeed open with such an address. Nature, the lyrical ‘I’ and the path of life prevail in the first and second stanzas, before the ‘dear friends, fellow wayfarers’ actually appear. It appears that at least for the first half of the poem a more appropriate title would have been ‘To Friendship’, since the ‘we’ perspective of the friends themselves seems to be dominant here, except in ll. 8 and 9. Speaking from the first person plural ‘we’ to that very same group of friends seems to be difficult, if not impossible. This brings us to the question whether the ‘lyrical we’ of the poem’s first stanza really is the equivalent of this group of friends or the reference to a rather indeterminate, general ‘we’. Whereas the individual experience of nature ‘At the side of quiet water’ (l. 3) prevails here, the ‘we’ broadens that perspective to a collective experience: ‘When we …’ (l. 1), ‘Then I …’ (l. 8). Once that ‘silent’ individual experience becomes self-referential poetry in ll. 10 to 13, the lyrical ‘I’ more specifically relates the ‘we’ perspective with the perspective of his friends (l. 11), knowing that he can feel the beauty of nature in solitude because he has learned that feeling from his friends. It

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is only in their (imaginary) proximity that he can feel that beauty again, namely through his poetry. The friends in Bellamy’s poem are addressed five times in the poem: ‘dear friends’ (l. 11), ‘my friends’ (l. 25), ‘dear friends, fellow wayfarers’ (l. 30), ‘my friends’ (l. 35) and ‘dearest friends’ (l. 42). In none of these cases could the noun do without an adjective or pronoun to express feelings of personal attachment and/or possession (‘dear’, ‘my’). Reading how the friends are addressed, readers may feel excluded, wondering if they could count themselves as friends too. The explicit reference to shared memories and experiences may even strengthen this feeling of exclusion. Yet, following Culler’s thesis of a triangulated address as the lyrical root-form, the reader is being addressed as well, even if the lyrical ‘I’ appears to have turned his back on his listeners. Culler calls this our ‘ventriloquizing of ambiguously directed address’ (Culler, 2015, p. 187). Even though in Bellamy’s poem the lyrical ‘I’ refers to a particular group of friends, it is through his address of friends that we can hear the address of friendship in general. When this is the case, the reader does not have to feel excluded at all, as (s)he is included in the praise of friendship in general as much as any other person who has friends, which means that (s)he does not have to be part of the poet’s intimate circle in order to feel addressed by Bellamy’s poem. When we take a look at the particular lines in the poem where the friends are addressed we will soon notice that the placement of these lines is different for each stanza. In the first and second stanzas, the address is preceded by a long description of the beauty, delight and dangers one could encounter on the path of life, whereas in the third and fourth stanzas, the friends are immediately addressed in the first line. The thematic structure of the stanzas – nature (1), nature (2), death (3) and remembrance (4) – seems to divide the poem in two. In the first half of the poem, nature is the predominant topic and it is by describing nature that the lyrical ‘I’ broaches upon the subject of friendship. Here, the depiction of nature is not only instrumental to the path of life metaphor, representing its better and worse periods; rather, it is in the experience of nature (both its dangers and its delight) on the path of life that the lyrical ‘I’ experiences friendship. The presence of friendship in the poem is no longer in need of a poetic address put at the beginning of the stanza, as the friends are already present in the description of nature as a pivotal experience of friendship. In the moment of death however, the friends are addressed first, to remind them of their responsibility towards the lyrical ‘I’ as their ‘fellow traveller’.

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Nature Besides Death, Nature is the only word in the poem which is capitalized. The experience of Nature is the source of everything: Nature is the place where the lyrical ‘I’ meets his friends, it is the essence of happiness and the core of poetic inspiration. Where there is nature, there is poetry. Nature, moreover, refers to more than the beauty of the Creation and constitutes a reference to the ‘nature’ of the poem too: the origin of the poem such as it stems from the poet, i.e. not from the artificial mimesis of nature as something that already exists before the poem, but from the poetic soul itself. In his preface to Songs – the already mentioned letter to his friend Kleyn – Bellamy discusses the act of walking as an experience of nature, but at the same time this experience brings him to what he considers to be the core of poetry as a genre that finds its origins not in art but in ‘Nature’ itself. ‘Nature’ has taught him to sing songs he did not know before but which enter his mind and can be felt as ‘unwritten songs’: I can clearly remember how during solitary walks I contemplated the sunset, the quiet sea, and the landscape entirely at rest, with feeling and delight, which allowed songs to enter my mind, such as I had never read from the pen of my poets. I felt these songs, without being able to express them; and I was too much addicted to my examples, not to think that the true language of poetry was theirs. 4

Nature itself is singing here and as soon as the poet’s body and mind are moved by this song of nature, he should transform that feeling into poetry and music, as especially those art forms can speak directly to the human soul (see also Strategier, 2001, pp. 217-218). In Bellamy’s Songs, nature also is the great farewell to the other source of inspiration for the poet: the fatherland. In his earlier collection of patriotic songs (Songs for the Fatherland), ‘Fatherland’ and ‘Freedom’ are invariably addressed and celebrated as the poet’s main sources of inspiration. The line ‘Enough, my Fatherland! I have sung for you!’ in one of the last poems of this collection points forward to the subsequent collection of Songs that 4 ‘’t Staat mij nog duidelijk voor, dat ik dikwijls, in eenzaame wandelingen, de ondergaande zon, de stille zee, en het gansche rustende landschap, met een gevoel en een verrukking, beschouwde, die liederen in mij deden opkomen, zoo als ik er nog geene, bij mijne dichters, gelezen had. Deze liederen gevoelde ik, zonder hen te konnen uitdrukken; ook was ik te veel verslaafd aan mijne voorbeelden, om niet te denken, dat de waare taal der dichtkunst de hunne was.’ (Bellamy, 1785a, p. xiii).

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bears a title in which the adjective ‘Patriotic’ is omitted. This final poem is called ‘To my Fatherland’ and it addresses the fatherland by means of an apostrophic address of the lyre, which is put down by the poet waiting for better times; here, the personified ‘Freedom’ will join ‘Nature’ in order to let his voice resound once more: ‘Lie there, my lovely lyre, offered to me by Freedom, / And, stringed by the generous hand of Nature!’ (Bellamy, 1994, p. 36, ll. 29-30). The natural character of songs that could easily be understood by the people who ‘sing with’ the poet is formulated by Bellamy as one of his main principles of true lyrical songs in the preface to these patriotic songs of 1782-1783 (van der Haven, 2016, p. 778). In this last poem of that collection, however, the poet admits that these political songs have shouted down the voice of nature and in his farewell to the fatherland as his main source of inspiration, Bellamy refers to his songs as being out of tune. It is by addressing ‘Nature’ that he refers to what should be his main source of inspiration instead of the political conflicts the poet had been involved in. Bellamy explicitly mentions the ‘path of life’ metaphor in his preface to Songs as an example of how the images taken from ‘Nature’ could provide the most powerful figures of speech in poetry: Concepts of thought never (…) come to my mind in a more lively and touching way, than when I would walk, in solitude, through a dense wood, or, along a hardly trodden path: what is more natural, than to borrow the clothing of our thoughts from those objects which are around us and which touch us most?5

‘To my Friends’ could be considered a poetic search for the origins of poetic speech in the images that nature provides to the poet in daily life. What is addressed through the ‘Friends’ finally is song and poetry itself, which means that the poem in a way is self-referential and examines its own origins. The act of singing, as an introverted contemplation of nature and self, certainly becomes more lyrical here, as the title already seems to emphasize (‘To my Friends’). The idea of lyric address and praise then is subordinated to the individual experience of the poet. In regard to the first stanza, the reader may think that the first plural ‘we’ represents the speaker of the poem, drawing the reader into the poem 5 ‘Nooit komen de denkbeelden (…) mij levendiger en meer roerend voor den geest, dan wanneer ik, in mijne eenzaamheid, door een digt bosch, of, langs eenen weinig betreden weg, wandelde: wat is nu natuurlijker, dan dat wij de bekleedzels, voor onze gedagten, ontleenen, van die dingen, die rondöm ons zijn, en ons het meest treffen?’ (Bellamy, 1785a, pp. xiv-xv).

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by immediately presenting itself in the first line. As we have seen above, the poet is playing here with the ambiguity of the closed circle of friends addressed in the title of the poem, and the more ambiguous ‘we’ of the lyrical voice. The ‘we’ of the lyrical voice does not define which effects nature could have on the human soul. As we have seen before, the perspective suddenly shifts from the plural to the singular lyrical subject, as soon as the effect of nature’s beauty is described in l. 9: ‘When we, on the path of life, / Rest in cooling shade (…) / Then I feel all the pleasures, / That Nature grants to me, (…).’ (ll. 1-2, 8-9). The reader and the friends are addressed in the first line as fellow travellers on the path of life, but nature’s emotional effect on the human soul can only be discovered through the eyes of the individual. Even though the individual experience of nature stems from shared experience and will become so again in ll. 10-13, only the lyrical ‘I’ can lend the poet his voice to describe nature’s effect on the human soul in the spiritual union of the friends.

Friendship In the experience of nature – the ‘storms’, ‘rage’, ‘shrieking’, ‘sudden role of thunder’, ‘the shouting voice of wind’ – the lyrical ‘I’ experiences the beauty, turmoil and instability, but also the happiness of friendship. Through the difficulties and uncertainties to which the unruly appearance of nature refers, the friends feel united in their mutual assistance to overcome these difficulties. Only with the second address however – ‘Then, my friends, solace streams out …’ (l. 25) – the friends’ mutual assistance is realized, introducing a smooth transition from the movement of nature to the origin of friendship, to how it was set in motion: feeling. The bubbling, streaming and seething continues, but not in the appearance of water and wind, but through the feelings of friendship, ending in consolation. The exchange of feelings clearly is ‘sympathetic’ and flows from one to the other: ‘From your hearts into my bosom!’ (l. 26). Even the moment of mutual consolation is shaped by nature. Consolation is natural here because it stems from the same movement as nature itself, but also because it appears to the lyrical ‘I’ in the form of ‘Suns’, the metaphor highlighted through inversion, which refers to the ‘kind glances’ of the friends (ll. 27-28). Thus, the sunrays do not break through on the path of life before the appearance of the ‘dear friends’ and the shape of their facial expressions have become part of nature themselves. In the third stanza, friendship takes on a more def inite shape. The proximity of the friends is no longer imagined by the lyrical ‘I’ sojourning

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in nature and becomes more concrete when the friends are explicitly addressed as ‘fellow wayfarers’ on the path of life (l. 30). Whereas in the first and second stanzas nature was the acting force, now the friends should take their turn. However, the double address in the first line of the third stanza – ‘Dear friends, fellow wayfarers’ – also opens up the possibility to broaden the circle of friendship, since it is not absolutely clear if we should read this as a restrictive or non-restrictive relative clause. Even though the first interpretation may be the most plausible one at first sight, we can also imagine that this longer address addresses the broader readership of the poem. As we have seen in the poem to Lavater, the ‘path of life’ could easily be extended to the eternal path, where the lyrical ‘I’ will be able to meet ‘Friends’ he never saw in person, but with whom he has a spiritual affinity not bound to the limitations of the flesh. As soon as the friends become more concrete in the poem’s third stanza, Death makes its entry as well. The movement which started in the fury of nature and continued in the feelings and comfort of friendship comes to an end in the appearance of death. Nature and death are the two counterpoints of the poem and death restores friendship into nature’s silent form, just as in the first stanza. Friendship takes shape in nature, marking the final resting place of the lyrical ‘I’ with ‘two leafy trees / That appear to be embracing’ (ll. 37-38). The lyrical ‘I’’s lifeless body however also identifies as the continuation of friendship, spiritually, in life after death. Death lulls him to sleep and it is that state of ‘sleeping’, while awaiting the resurrection at the end of time, which the poem refers to in ll. 33-35. The double address of the friends in l. 30 already points forward to that interpretation: the path of life does not end where death appears, but death is the continuation of that path in a new form, shedding new light on the feelings of friendship, testified by the moment of passing away in the arms of both nature and the solidarity of friends as wayfarers.

Poetry Friendship, in the poem, is kept on the beaten path of life, paved by the counterpoints of Death and Nature. There is little room for escape from that path and the driving force of nature. The only way out offered in the poem is poetry itself, which finally enables the lyrical ‘I’ and his friends to come to grips with death and nature. By ‘feeling and singing’ its delight, nature becomes ‘real’, real in the sense that it can be felt in the ‘united hearts’ of the friends and their songs. These songs are located in the hearts, where

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the tremendous impact of nature on the human soul is felt through the act of singing, which at the same time makes that feeling inexpressible (l. 10). The reader therefore may wonder if the poem can ever be a reverberation of that very feeling. This contradictory nature of the poem confronts him with the question whether these feelings can ever be expressed by the written word, or whether they have to remain implicit in songs that can only be performed silently, in the united hearts of friendship. The sensual delight (wellust), which is mentioned twice in the first stanza (ll. 8, 11), not only refers to nature itself, but also to the aesthetic pleasure provided by the collective experience of nature’s beauty. ‘Now Nature entire became poetry to me!’, Bellamy writes in the prefatory letter of Songs (Bellamy, 1785a, p. xi), where he describes his solitary walks in his early days as a ‘core experience’ that was crucial to his understanding of true poetry. In ‘To my Friends’, this representation of nature becomes a shared experience in the hearts of Friends. The last lines of the first and last stanzas both refer to this power of song. In the first stanza, song refers to the inexpressibility of nature, though its beauty resounds through song in the hearts and minds of the friends. In the last stanza, however, song is a way of commemorating these inexpressible moments, which can be called into being again and again by the (re)reading of this very song. The complex play with poetic self-referentiality in Bellamy’s song is a play with the (im)possible task of the poet to describe something that cannot be described. Friendship is the source of experiences that only become ‘real’ in the spiritual relationship between people, like between Bellamy and the friends of the Utrecht circle of poets, or his friendship with imaginative friends like Lavater. The written poem always falls short in a way, because it cannot fully put into writing something that depends on such moments of spiritual recognition and affinity (zielsverwantschap). That affinity is too big and too complex to describe: it is only through song that we can experience what cannot be expressed with mere words. Feeling and song (l. 13) are united in moments of motion – in nature, and in the hearts of the friends – but only when these moments are taken up by the sympathetic understanding of each other’s spiritual constitution. That moment of sympathy is a ‘moving’ moment, and that movement is song, like in this very poem the ‘southern breezes’, the ‘spread of fragrance’, the ‘storms’, the ‘rage’, the ‘shrieking’, the ‘shouting voice of wind’, and the ‘swelling water’. As soon as the hearts of the friends are moved, as in the hearts ‘set atremble’ in l. 21, that heart has broken into song. The question of how we can read songs is raised in the last lines of the poems. Song as a reference to the intangible moments of the friends’

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trembling hearts, moved by the beauty of nature and friendship, turns out to be problematic as soon as death appears. The last words ‘Read … these songs!’ address the friends by way of an interpellation. This speech act transforms both the ‘listeners’ and the friends (as fellow poets) into readers, who are urged to read and reread the songs and thus it also transforms the friends into adherents and devotees, who will feel urged to keep remembering their friend as a Poet regularly. The last address in the poem explicitly aims at a reading audience that is bigger than the group of friends. Through poetry, the appearance of friendship and nature not only becomes moving and compelling: its beauty will also last longer and become visible to others. Now, poetry as it is practised in the companionship of friends, will continue to exist and through the written word the delight of nature and friendship will survive, even though nature itself has caused the lyrical ‘I’ to die.

Bibliography Bellamy, J., Gezangen (Amsterdam: A. Mens Jansz., 1785a). Bellamy, J., Vaderlandsche gezangen (Amsterdam: A. Mens Jansz, 1785b). Bellamy, J., Gedichten, ed. by P.J. Buijnsters (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994). Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Faderman, L., Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Junction Books, 1981). Leemans, I. & G.-J. Johannes, Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700-1800. De Republiek (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2013). Nijland, J., Leven en werken van Jacobus Bellamy (1757-1786), 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1917). Pieters, J., Speaking with the Dead: Explorations in Literature and History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005). Strategier, E., De taal der hartstochten. De visie van drie achttiende-eeuwse Nederlandse schrijvers op muziek en haar relatie met de dichtkunst (Overveen: author, 2001). van der Haven, C., ‘Singing the Nation: Imagined Collectivity and the Poetics of Identification in Dutch Political Songs (1780-1800)’, Modern Language Review, 111.3 (2016), pp. 758-779.

Epilogue Lyrical and Theatrical Apostrophe, from Performing Actor to Textual Self Frans-Willem Korsten The previous chapters are all in dialogue, or in debate, with one of the most important studies to appear recently on the nature of the lyric, Jonathan Culler’s Theory of the Lyric (2015). In this epilogue I would like to deal with the pivot of these dialogues and debates: the nature of apostrophe as lyric address in terms of its either being read or heard. Rather than reviewing the excellent arguments brought forward in this volume, I would like to take the opportunity to trace the conceptual framework that informs Culler’s study and to see whether this may have caused some confusion about the status of his definition of apostrophe as the key marker of the lyric. I would also like to discuss the matter of translation, not unimportant in such a volume as the present one, and how this relates to forms of lyric address. When presented with studies on lyric address in ten famous or important medieval and early modern poems in Dutch, one could of course ask what happens with this address, or with address in general, if one takes into account how they involve different historical forms of self. I would like to consider how the different chapters in this book may have something systematic in common in their responses to Culler’s study, due the relation between self and collective. This will also lead me to reconsider the origin of apostrophe as a dramatic or theatrical one. I will do so in the light of a historical difference that cannot be stressed enough, between poetry intended to be performed or to be read. Basically put, my question here is: might it be the case that the lyrical subject, as a self, comes to life only once poetry becomes something that instead of having to be performed turns into something to be published, printed and read? Finally I will ask what happens with modes of address when texts are translated, as they are here.

Structuralism and rhetoric When in 1943 the German physicist Erwin Schrödinger held his famous series of lectures in Dublin that would later be published as What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, he was suggesting to look for the smallest or

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most basic unit of biological life, just as in the previous decades physicists had been looking for the smallest or most basic unit in the inorganic world. In this endeavour, Schrödinger, who lived from 1887 to 1961, was clearly a child of his times, which had a similar interest in finding the smallest or most basic units of language. Such was the goal of structuralism, which in its Eastern European variant was represented by the key figures of Roman Jakobson, René Wellek and Jan Mukařovský. In studying the way in which language functioned, one of their contentions was that the basic units of language remain the same whether one studies language synchronically or diachronically. Jonathan Culler wrote a standard introduction to structuralism in the 1970s: Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (1975). Translating the logic of linguistic structuralism into the domain of literature, Culler’s key tenets were that, structurally speaking, literature has basic building blocks that likewise could be studied both synchronically and diachronically, and that these building blocks determine how literature functions. A telling quote from Structuralist Poetics is the one where Culler states that a structuralist approach to literature has the advantage of avoiding ‘premature foreclosure – the unseemly rush from word to world – and stays within the literary system for as long as possible’. Or, as he emphasizes, a structuralist approach insists ‘that literature is something other than a statement about the world’ (Culler, 1975, p. 130). The very uncoupling of word and world necessarily follows from the claim that the basic structure of such a building block as lyric address remains the same synchronically and diachronically. It may be clear, meanwhile, how Culler was as much a child of his times. The 1970s was not only the heyday of French poststructuralism, and, in the US, of Paul de Man’s teaching at Yale, but also of a great interest in what could constitute the aesthetic and political autonomy of literature. In this context, Culler’s definition of the lyric should be considered as an attempt to define the most basic forms of address operative in literature – synchronically, diachronically and functionally – within the poetic system. The lyric is distinct here from the other two basic generic modes, narrative and drama. In narrative someone is telling something in addressing an audience or a reader who cannot talk back; in drama the characters address one another; and in lyric the speaking subject is a ‘self’ addressing something else. Despite this structural definition, the dominance of the three genres obviously goes back to Goethe who in 1819 defined defined lyric, drama and epic (basically narrative in nature) as ‘the three natural forms of poetry’.1 But then again, it has been argued that 1 Goethe: ‘Es gibt nur drei echte Naturformen der Poesie: Die klar erzählende, die enthusiastisch aufgeregte und die persönlich handelnde: Epos, Lyrik und Drama.’ (Goethe, 1981, vol. 2, p. 187).

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modern theories on the lyric were ‘a project modern literary criticism took from the nineteenth century and made its own’ (Jackson & Prins, 2014, p. 2). Tellingly, several contributors in this volume have paid attention to occasional poetry, which is distinctly historical in that it is related to a specific moment. It is a genre, moreover, that defies the notion of an ‘unseemly rush from word to world’, by its insistence on the connection of words to world. Culler’s definition of the lyric falters, in this context, because occasional poetry employs a double address: one that remains inside the literary system and one that by definition must step beyond it. A passage from a poem by Elizabeth Wolff that Maaike Meijer cites in this volume may serve to illustrate this point. Wolff describes the death of her husband to her friend Agatha Deken: Oh DEKEN! DEKEN! Oh my husband Wolff, dear man! So late at night! – I sit down near his bed to read; He talks, he dies, he falls into my arms! – I can Not write now! – Heavens! Why was no one there with me?

Lines 3 and 4 contain a double address. The apostrophe internal to the literary text calls upon ‘Heavens’ and poetically addresses the figure of the dying husband. In the domain of this apostrophe, the speaker is not writing. How could she: her husband has just dropped dead in her arms! At the same time, however, she is writing and she can write, namely to her best friend Deken, the other object of lyric address in this poem. This should not lead to the conclusion, however, that Culler’s definition of lyric address misses the point. Rather, this is a matter of a shift in focus. Following the logic of structuralism, Culler’s definition of the lyric is wilfully and functionally located within the domain of literature and language. Occasional poetry, however, seems to favour a definition of the lyric in rhetorical terms, with rhetoric demanding the connection of word to world. The discrepancy between the two foci forces us to assess how the character of the lyric, even in Culler’s abstract sense, can be historically anchored time and again. In this context, there might be a structurally and historically speaking functional element to the double address, an element related to the apostrophe’s dual origin. Even though in recent decades apostrophe has come to be seen as the hallmark of lyric poetry, its historical origin is rhetorico-theatrical, as the following will discuss. This has principal consequences for the status of the self.

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Address through time: different sources of selves This volume gathers a set of poems that are centuries apart in themselves, and centuries removed from the current situation. We move from the thirteenth century to the second half of the eighteenth, and in doing so we are dealing with rather different lyrical genres: mystical love poetry (Hadewijch – Daróczi); elegy (Egidius – Strijbosch); a combination of a love and drinking song (‘Aenmerct’ – van der Poel); a sonnet (Hooft – Grootes); a laudatory poem (Vondel – Paijmans); a sonnet annex letter (Tesselschade – van Dijk); a consolatory poem (Six van Chandelier – Pieters); a love poem (Poot – Madelein); an occasional poem (Wolff/Bekker – Meijer) and an ode (Bellamy – van der Haven). Clearly, these all imply different modes of address. To modern readers, moreover, they may be difficult to experience or understand, for two reasons. The first is that a substantial number of these poems was not so much meant to be read but to be heard. Three poems in this volume are actually songs (Daróczi, Strijbosch, van der Poel), and several of the poems were meant to be read out loud or performed or could both be read in silence and read out loud. Secondly, there is the breach of modernity and the redefinition of the self and consequent redefinition of the lyric that came with it. I will deal with the latter first and come back to the difference between performing and reading in the next section. Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989), explored the consequences of so-called ‘expressivism’ in relation to the identity of the modern self. In defining modern identity, Taylor paid attention to three axes. The first one concerns the value people attribute to, or the respect they have for (human) life, the second one concerns our ideas of what kind of life we think is worth living (one of the dominant questions in the historical avant-garde), the third is a matter of dignity in connection to societal roles. These three axes, in turn, organize the ways in which any self, in terms of identity, relates to the world. Such relations are substantially, at times incomprehensibly different in different cultures and times. In relation to lyrical apostrophe, historical differences concern the favourite themes that are being called upon, or likely and unlikely themes; they concern the nature of the ‘calling upon’, for instance when the border between poem and prayer is porous; and most importantly, they concern the nature or identity of the speaking self in its relation to the world. In this volume several contributions address this issue of the historical specificity of subjectivity, notably Britt Grootes. The different ideas on what the lyric historically means and implies in terms of subjectivity, and how this relates to modern theories, were

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at the centre of a volume edited by Virginia Jackson & Yopie Prins, The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology. In the introduction to the second part of their book they write: ‘while the previous section (…) showed the consolidation of lyric as a genre through twentieth-century genre-theory, this section demonstrates how that idea has been projected back into literary history’ (Jackson & Prins, 2014, p. 86). Such projection backwards may be a straightforward form of anachronism, but may also be a problem of different forms of self that relate to different media. Let me take one song in this volume to address the issue, the one from the mid-sixteenth century, discussed by Dieuwke van der Poel, that starts with: Come hear my sad complaint, You knaves with hearts carefree. I grieve both day and night And moan ‘Oh, woe is me!’ And surely I may grieve, For one I saw that day Has pierced my heart with love.

The historical anchors of the poem are def ined by van der Poel as follows. Firstly, thematically speaking the song harks back to the medieval times of roaming knights: ‘sometimes indeed as soldiers but more often as romanticized adventurers, lower-class heroes and embodiments of virility: the images range from spirited lads to lusty rogues and sometimes even downright malevolent rapists’. Secondly, these figures from another world came to stand at the centre of poems and songs to a sixteenthcentury bourgeois audience. To make the historical gap between the two understandable, van der Poel suggests that Westerns play a similar role to current audiences. The comparison surely helps. Yet, it is of course a translation that does not and perhaps cannot explain how a mid-sixteenth-century audience would use and experience medieval themes that were taken up in contemporary modes of address. In terms of historical differences, a third element is that there was this specific company in which and for which the poem was performed: a company of rhetoricians. Fourthly, the poem or song started to travel to a wider audience, or rather audiences. Fifthly, the melody of the song could be used to propel other texts. In this case, the medieval secular love poem was being changed into a sixteenth-century devotional one. In all cases the poem/song functioned not so much to allow for individual expression, but to facilitate collective bonding.

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One could be tempted to consider one of the most distinctive differences between modern lyric and lyric from earlier times to be the opposition between individual self and collective. Yet such an opposition is false, as we will see in the next session. What this example first and foremost suggests is that it is very much the question whether any historical self has a source comparable to the modern one, and whether this self is the source of the lyrical text. The individual texts dealt with by van der Poel are not unique expressions, with unique apostrophes, meant to be read. Rather, they are flexible ones, facilitating several modes of address in relation to different situations and audiences, but all in terms of performance. For Taylor, the modern self relates to art in the sense that the hidden nature of the modern self can be brought forward, or can be called upon, by means of expression, and lyric would be the paradigmatic case of such expression. Yet, in earlier forms of lyric any hidden nature is not the subject’s source, nor the thing to be called upon. In the case of this text, for instance, there is more reason to consider the melody, rather, as the source of different textual versions throughout decades. It is one that is not hidden at all. Rather it offers different selves a medium to tap into. The very issue of music, as a matter of performance, brings us back to the pivot of address.

Expressivism: confusing prosopopeia with self Taylor considered Romanticism the conceptual cradle of the idea that the modern self has an inner source (in nature) that allows it to appear as authentic and in that context specified this source as an ‘inner voice’. It concerns a voice, then, that comes out of some ‘inner’ self and that as such runs counter to a voice that is taken from someone else, as when someone is speaking from behind a mask, or takes on someone else’s voice. In her response to Taylor’s work, Victoria Fareld defined expressivism as an ‘embrace’, namely of ‘something that precedes and exists independently of the expression itself, as well as something that is brought into being in and by the expression itself’ (Fareld, 2007, p. 171). One of the things previously existing independently of the expression itself, the one that precedes it, is of course the language used to express something with. It is this previous existence that links any voice, any speaking subject, or any lyrical subject, intrinsically to a collective of subjects that is always being addressed implicitly through or by means of any self expressing itself. In this context we have to reconsider the origins of apostrophe in drama and its distinctly rhetorical nature following from those origins.

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In a pivotal study by Stephen Usher the use of apostrophe by orators is traced back to the fourth century BCE in classical Greece. Usher’s study was again of relevance to David Sansone, who in Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric considered the apostrophe in its effective dramatic use. Here, both dramatically and rhetorically speaking, the apostrophe indicates the turning away from one party addressed to another party, for instance from an actor to the audience, or from one character to another, etc. Apostrophe literally means: ‘to turn’ (stréphein) ‘away’ or ‘aside’ (apo). This theatrical and rhetorical nature of apostrophe is then both historically and systematically connected to the domain of law. As for the apostrophe’s effect, there is a principal link, here, with the system of justice, that has been dealt with in theories of expressivism as well. The basic question is whether law only has to solve legal issues case per case, serving the individual needs of people, or whether any case and verdict always speaks doubly, in turning away from the parties concerned in court to an audience at large.2 And obviously, any court case itself is dramatic and theatrical in nature. It involves a distinct set of roles and players: the accused, the judge presiding, a lawyer defending and either an accuser or an officer of prosecution. In some cases there will be a jury. Next, there is the audience present to witness, of which many will have a distinct interest in the case. All these parties will have to be addressed at some point, but since they are all there, within the very same space, all roles and players involved will always hear what is being said, even when they are not addressed explicitly. Apostrophe has its origin in this context and structure. Quintilian in his Institutes of Oratory deals with it, first in the context of a court case, and then together with the figure of parenthesis. In the first case he defines it in a remarkably ambiguous way, as a ‘diversion’, a ‘digression’ or a ‘calling upon’. The first concerns the rhetorical attack on an adversary, the second an appeal, the third a prosopopoeia (Quintilian, book IX, chapter 2:38). What connects apostrophe with parenthesis for Quintilian, consequently, is that the parenthesis equally implies a different address (book IX, chapter 3:23). Here as well, what is said in-between, between brackets, involves another addressee. It is in turning away, then, to another addressee in the full knowledge that the one addressed previously is still able to hear this all, that the ‘extraordinary effect,’ or the rhetorical power of apostrophe, comes about.3 2 On this see Adler, 2000. Adler deals especially with those who have favourably considered expressivism in law, such as Elizabeth Anderson, Robert Cooter, Dan Kahan, Larry Lessig and Richard Pildes. On a defence of expressivism in law, see Strudler, 2001. 3 Longinus, in his study on the sublime, also emphasizes how the change of person has a ‘vivid effect’ (Longinus, 1991, pp. 200-201).

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The dynamics in play, consequently, concern two pivotal issues in relation to self and address. Prosopopeia is the figure that allows an actor, an orator, a speaker or writer to communicate by speaking as someone or something else. In the cases dealt with in this volume the most pronounced example is the poem by Six van Chandelier (Pieters), where the voice is leant to the dead father. Likewise, when an orator in court suddenly calls out ‘O Porcian and Sempronian laws’, he is clearly calling upon something but not as a self. He takes the voice of another. Secondly the distinction in play in terms of addressed is not one between something or someone being addressed and an audience not being addressed. There is a simultaneous double address. In her evaluation of Taylor’s analysis of the modern self, Seyla Benhabib (2002) argues that two metaphors dominate Taylor’s analysis of identity: horizon and web of interlocution. Taken together they both imply that ‘[t]he answer to the question of who I am always involves reference to “where” I am speaking from and to whom or with whom’ (Benhabib, 2002, p. 145). In the context of this volume on lyric address, one could very well wonder whether this basic structure is specific to the modern self in terms of its desire to answer the question: ‘Who am I?’ What the theatrical apostrophe captures is how an address within one world, a world staged within a certain horizon, always concerns a staged voice that relates a self to a collective that may not be addressed explicitly, but is explicitly present, well aware that it is connected to the one speaking by a web of interlocution. In the context of the role of the witness, I came to define the doubleness of theatrical apostrophe as a form of ‘not-being-there in being-there’ or the simultaneous realization of two modes of address: address of attention and address of expression (Korsten, 2012). In witnessing something, someone is not a witness yet (in the sense of bearing witness) but addressing what is happening (the focus of attention) with an eye on subsequent expression. Once bearing witness is in play, this duality reverses. In bearing witness, someone is no longer witnessing something concretely; what was addressed by means of attention is now being expressed. Sequentially, this means that someone must have paid attention first to what happened; and in bearing witness, consequently, performs a double address: one to the matter that is being witnessed, the other to the subjects to whom such matters are testified. This double address is also at stake, I think, in these medieval and early modern poems. The introduction and opening chapter of this volume discusses a thirteenth century song by Hadewijch. As Aniko Daróczi duly notes, the poem would have been sung (to the melody of the chanson S’Amours veut que mes chans remaigne by the trouvère Blondel le Nesle). In this context, Daróczi’s

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principal point is that the definition of Hadewijch’s texts by scholar Jozef van Mierlo as poems, should be amended (see note 1 of her chapter). They were songs, as Veerle Fraeters & Frank Willaert also argued in their 2009 edition of the songs. My point is that this implies a double address in the reversed sense of the witness. The singer wants to express something, in the sense of lyrically calling upon something, but does so in paying attention to the audience, which she addresses in terms of attention. So how would this affect our reading of the final stanza’s opening lines? So he who hopes for Love’s saving grace should spare no effort, no cost, no loss. He must persevere through trials he’ll face in arduous labours for Love’s high cause.

If we read this only in terms of address through language, there appears to be a lyrical apostrophe à la Culler in play. A lyrical subject calls upon a ‘he who hopes for Love’, with an audience overhearing it. So, the apostrophe stands, whether a ‘you’ is explicitly called upon or not. No mistake, Culler’s ideas on lyrical apostrophe concern a triangulation. Yet J. Douglas Kneale (1991 and 1995) argued that in his focus on voice, self and address, Culler basically confused apostrophe with prosopopeia. Again, this is the rhetorical figure that allows an actor, an orator, a speaker or writer to communicate by speaking as someone or something else. The lyrical ‘I’, so Kneale argues, is not an expressing self, it is an ‘I’ that is a mask. It can only be confused with a self, so I argue, once poetry becomes something to be expressed through writing and print, and consequently something to be read. Then the theatrical dynamic falls away and a self with an inner voice seems to appear, by means of apostrophe. Whereas Culler appears to be dealing with poetry first and foremost as something to be read – a modern idea of poetry – poetry has mostly been sung by a singer, addressing an audience, and this singer is not the self. Moreover, formally and due to the conflation of language with music, a dynamic of time in the theatrical apostrophe – addressing one party first and then another – is being fused in the lyrical apostrophe. This formal fusion has principal implications for self and collective, for two reasons. Music itself is not vectorized in terms of an address. Music sur-rounds all those present, as has been pointed out in the introduction in reference to the work of Heinz Schlaffer, whose quote is worth repeating here: ‘Wer den Gesang hört, hat an dessen Macht teil (…)’ (Schlaffer, 2012, p. 76): ‘Whomever hears the song, takes part in its power.’ Still, music must in turn also be

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distinguished from the singer, a figure analogous to but also different from the lyrical subject. The singer is a theatrical figure, not a self calling upon something in a text to be read, and it is this musico-theatrical figure that is able to address an audience, changing it from an audience that overhears to an audience addressed as a collective. If the lyrical subject can only speak because language, as the embodiment of the collective, enables it to speak, the lyrical subject as a singer is able to address this collective explicitly. As such it is not just calling upon an audience in a lyrical way, calling it to life, but it is calling upon its potential to respond. The theatrical origin of the apostrophe relates to response-ability, that is, which is less an aesthetic than an ethical category.

Untranslatability and lyrical apostrophe Whatever the precise nature of the poems gathered here, they are all translated, not just in time but also in terms of language. The issue of linguistic translation brings in a specific problematic for the definition of apostrophe and the lyric. Let me uncouple the issue from the historical examples presented in this volume by bringing in a contemporary poem/ song that can also be seen as an explicit address to an audience. In 2014, the Dutch spoken-word artist Typhoon (Glenn de Randamie) released a new album entitled Lobi da Basi. In the Dutch context the title of the album was a clear sign of its being situated against Randamie’s Surinamese background. Although the rest of the album is in Dutch, the title suggests that a Dutch audience, or rather Dutch audiences, should perhaps understand the Dutch language in a new or different light, following a different rhythm, and referring to a diverse and broad idea of Dutchness. The very first song is titled ‘We zijn er’, which, for the time being, I will translate as ‘We are here’ (as we shall see, it is almost impossible to translate the phrase adequately). This title is connected to a central theme in this song, which is apparent in lines such as: ‘To the underground, chased by dogs, waiting in the water, head below level so that they lose track’; an explicit reference to the way in which slaves who had run away were chased. An implicit reference, a little later is: ‘I am going wild, find peace in our history, although, thoughts of pain pop up.’4 In the context 4 ‘Naar de ondergrondse, achtervolgd door honden, wachtend in het water. Koppie onder zodat ze het spoor bijster raken’ and ‘Ik vind rust in onze historie al poppen de pijngedachtes op.’ From the song ‘We zijn er’, Lobi da basi, 2014.

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of this indeed painful colonial history, the title becomes a self-conscious statement. The approximately 350,000 people who since Suriname’s independence chose to remain Dutch or came to the Netherlands are not to be ignored or marginalized or wished away as an awkward colonial leftover. They are ‘here’. In terms of the lyric the phrase ‘We are here’ is an apostrophe calling upon this ‘we’. The apostrophe is distinctly Dutch in its address, partly because of the specific Dutch circumstances, but more basically because of Dutch language. The Dutch phrase ‘We zijn er’ is untranslatable in the sense of Barbara Cassin, and Emily Apter in her wake.5 The untranslatable, here, is not meant to imply that words or phrases in a specific language are impossible to translate, but refers to how certain words and phrases constantly provoke new attempts at translation because an ultimately adequate translation does not exist. In the case of the Dutch phrase ‘We zijn er’ the short adverb ‘er’ is indistinctive, or only becomes meaningful in the context of a sentence. ‘We zijn er’ can mean: ‘We are here’ or ‘We are there’, but it can also mean ‘We have arrived’, as when for instance slaves on the run could say they had arrived as soon as they were in safety. Most literally, the phrase can even mean: ‘We are er’, when the verb is considered a copula and the ‘er’ becomes a predicative. This may seem strange or absurd but something similar is the case in a poem by the Dutch poet Lucebert: Here is I and there is a name here in one understands the air but not man6

In this case as well, the phrase in the original ‘er is ik en er is’ appears to be untranslatable, with our having to choose between ‘here’ and ‘there’ and losing the connotations of the Dutch phrase that the ‘I’ may be an ‘er’. This may all seem something internal to Dutch language. Yet the very fact of untranslatability suggests something else. The specificity of this address is only understandable to a Dutch audience. That is: the apostrophe, 5 See Cassin’s Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles or the later Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Not so much the philosophical but the political implications of the issue, specifically in the scholarly and literary domain, were explored in Apter, 2013. 6 ‘Er is ik en er is / daarin een naam / de lucht verstaat men / maar de mens niet’. (Lucebert, 2002, p. 62).

190 Fr ans-Willem Korsten

here, addresses a ‘we’ but the way in which it addresses this ‘we’ is only understandable to the ones who, in Culler’s conceptualization, are supposedly positioned as the ones who ‘overhear’. To Culler, the ‘self’ is central, both as the one who calls the things into being that it addresses and as the one who, simultaneously, calls itself into being. It does so, however, in a specific language, targeting a collective audience that is addressed. The ‘self’ expressing itself is well aware that others are listening in and that indeed without those others it would not be able to speak in the first place. Or, the self implicitly addresses the collective that enables it to speak as a necessary and inevitable connotation. It is like when Typhoon states ‘When I make music, I have to feel it, it has to resonate’.7 In the case of spokenword artists, this involves both language and music proper. To be able to express things adequately this self is in need of itself as a sensory, sensing and sensible unit and in need of a connection with something else, as the very term ‘resonate’ suggests. The two combined are, of course, historically and culturally specific. If in this volume medieval and early modern texts are translated into English, this is effectively a form of prosopopeia. They have come to speak through the figure of another language. At the same time they have made use of theatrical apostrophes, in turning away from the collective to which they were addressed in order to address other collectives. Meanwhile, in reading them, we can see how they are apostrophic in calling upon things, subjects, feelings, as a result of which we might imagine that we hear historical selves speaking.

Bibliography Adler, M.A., ‘Expressive Theories of Law: A Skeptical Overview’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 148 (2000), pp. 1364-1501. Apter, E., Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (London/ New York: Verso, 2013). Benhabib, S., ‘Sexual Difference and Collective Identity: The New Global Constellation’, in Visible Women: Essays on Feminist Legal Theory and Political Philosophy, ed. by S. James & S. Palmer (Oxford/ Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2002), pp. 137-158. 7 Source: interview of Paul Timmermans with Typhoon of 27 February 2014 on: www. hiphopinjesmoel.com/interviews/liefde-staat-centraal-typhoons-lobi-da-basi/. The original is: ‘Als ik muziek maak, moet ik dat voelen, dat moet resoneren.’

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191

Cassin, B., Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles (Paris: Seuil, 2004). Cassin, B., E. Apter, J. Lezra & M. Wood, eds., Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Culler, J.D., Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London: Routledge, 1975) Culler, J.D., Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Fareld, V., ‘Charles Taylor’s Identity Holism: Romantic Expressivism as Epigenetic Self-Realization’, Telos, 2007, pp. 166-186. Goethe, J.W. von, ‘West-Östlicher Divan’, Goethes Werke, ed. by E. Trunz, 14 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 7-270. Hadewijch, Poetry of Hadewijch, transl. Marieke van Baest (Leuven: Peeters, 1998). Hadewijch, Liederen, ed. by V. Fraeters & F. Willaert, Frank (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2009). Jackson, V. & Y. Prins, eds., The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Kneale, D.J., ‘Romantic Aversions: Apostrophe Reconsidered’, ELH, 58:1 (1991), pp. 141-165. Republished in: Don H. Bialostosky & Lawrence D. Needham, Rhetorical Traditions and British Romantic Literature (Bloomington/ Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 149-172. Korsten, F.W., ‘Apostrophe, Witnessing, and Its Essentially Theatrical Modes of Address – Maria Dermôut on Pattimura and Kara Walker on the New Orleans Flooding’, AI & SOCIETY: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication, 27 (2012), pp. 13-23. Longinus, On Great Writing (On the Sublime), transl. G.M.A. Grube (Cambridge/ Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1991). Lucebert, ‘apocrief / de analphabetische naam’, in: Verzamelde gedichten, ed. Victor Schiferli (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2002), pp. 13-79. Quintillian, Institutes of Oratory, or Education of the Orator, transl. J.S. Watson (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015). Sansone, D., Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric (Malden/Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2012). Schlaffer, H., Geistersprache: Zweck und Mittel der Lyrik (München: Hanser, 2012). Schrödinger, E., What Is Life? With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Strudler, A., ‘The Power of Expressive Theories of Law’, Maryland Law Review, 60:3 (2001), pp. 492-505. Taylor, Ch., Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (New York: Harvard University Press, 1989).

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Timmermans, P., ‘Liefde staat centraal in Typhoon’s Lobi Da Basi’, http://www. hiphopinjesmoel.com/interviews/liefde-staat-centraal-typhoons-lobi-da-basi (last accessed 26 January 2017). Typhoon, Lobi da Basi (CD Top Notch, 2014). Usher, S., ‘Apostrophe in Greek Oratory’, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 28.4 (2010), pp. 351-362.



List of Poems (Sources)

1. Song 31 in Hadewijch, Liederen, ed. by V. Fraeters, F. Willaert & L.P. Grijp (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2009), pp. 244-247. 2. Het Gruuthuse-handschrift. Hs. Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek 79 K 10, ed. by H. Brinkman & I. de Loos, 2 vols. (Hilversum: Verloren, 2015), vol.1, pp. 474-477 (Gruuthuse MS, fol. 28v). 3. Song 221 in Het Antwerps Liedboek, ed. by D.E. van der Poel, D. Geirnaert, H. Joldersma & J.B. Oosterman, reconstr. melodies by L.P. Grijp, 2 vols. (Tielt: Lannoo, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 10-11. 4. Poem 91 in P.C. Hooft, De gedichten, ed. by J. Koppenol, T. van Strien and N.Veldhorst (Amsterdam: Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, 2012), p. 193. 5. J. van den Vondel, Begroetenis aen den doorluchtighsten en hooghgeboren Vorst Frederick Henrick, Van Gods genade Prince van Orangie, […] Op den Intree van zijn Stadhouderschap en Landbestiering over Gelderland, Holland, Zeeland, Overyssel, Utrecht, etc. (Amsterdam: Willem Jansz Blaeu, 1626), fol. A2r/v and B2v. 6. M.T. Roemers Visscher, De gedichten van Tesselschade Roemers, ed. by A. Sneller & O. van Marion (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), p. 30. 7. Poem 132 in Joannes Six van Chandelier, Gedichten, ed. A.E. Jacobs, 2 vols. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1991), vol. 1, p. 228. 8. Hubert Korneliszoon Poot, Mengeldichten (Rotterdam: Arnold Willis, 1716), p. 67. 9. Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker, Mengel-poëzy, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: J.B. Elwe & D.M. Langeveld, 1786), vol. 3, pp. 107-108. 10. Jacobus Bellamy, Gezangen (Amsterdam: A. Mens Jansz., 1785), pp. 1-4.



Index of Names

Achilles 92 Alexander, Gavin 128n16 Alpers, Paul 10, 18, 128n16, 153n2, 162n10 Althusser, Louis 132 Amphion 142 Apter, Emily 189 Arion 142 Aristotle 78-79, 124 Ashbery, John 121-122 Auden, W.H. (Wystan Hugh) 121-122 Bavinck, Maria 160 Bax, Marcel 142 Bellamy, Jacobus 18, 164-177, 182 Benhabib, Seyla 186 Bodin, Jean 96 Boethius 47-48, 56 Bosch, Maria 160 Bredero, G.A. 62 Bronzwaer, Wim 16 Buijnsters, P.J. (Petrus Jacobus) 160, 168 Burt, Stephen 10 Burton, Robert 113 Cassin, Barbara 191 Cats, Jacob 122, 139, 154 Catullus [Gaius Valerius Catullus] 154, 156, 159 Christ 64-66 Cock, Symon 64n17, 66 Comans, Johanna 155 Costerius, Henricus 67n25 Crombalch, Allard 106, 116 Crombalch, Teetgen 106 Culler, Jonathan 9-19, 27n7, 32n21, 39, 66n23, 75-76, 80-84, 97-99, 110-112, 114, 127-128, 132, 143, 151-154, 156-159, 169, 171, 179-181, 187, 190 Cupid 137, 140 Dante [degli Alighieri] 48n11 Daróczi, Aniko 14, 18, 182, 186 David 141 Dechamps, Eustache 48 de Graeff, Jocob Dirksz 90n3 De Harduwijn, Justus 139n8 Deken, Agatha 149-162, 181-182 de Loos, Ike 51n26 de Machaut, Jean 48 de Man, Paul 180 Demetrius [Demetrius of Phaleron] 132 de Meun, Jean 48 de Monteneij, Georgette 155-156 de Vlaming van Oudshoorn, Pieter 90n3 de Vries, Johan 137n2 Donne, John 107, 114-115

Egidius 182 Eliot, T.S. (Thomas Stearns) 32n21 Eminem [Marshall Bruce Mathers III] 159 Erato 140, 145 Eurydice 133, 142 Faderman, Lilian 161, 169 Fareld, Victoria 184 Fineman, Joel 75-82 Foucault, Michel 75-78, 95 Fraeters, Veerle 187 Frederick Henry [of Orange-Nassau] 89-100, 113, 153 Froberger, Johann 51n27 Frye, Northrop 27n7, 32, 39, 151, 154 Geelvinck, Jan Cornelisz 90n4 Geerars, C.M. (Cornelis Maria) 139-140, 145 Geirnaert, Noël 49 Gerritsen, W.P. 49n17 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 15, 180 Greene, Roland 8, 10-11, 13, 17 Grijp, Louis-Peter 32n20, 66n22 Grootes, Britt 11-12, 182 Gruuthuse, Louis of 45, 48 Hadewijch 18, 21-40, 182, 186 Hamburger, Käte 8, 11, 14-15, 17 Havelock Ellis, Henry 161 Heeroma, Klaas 49 Heracles 141 Herbert, George 15 Herrnstein-Smith, Barbara 8, 11 Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon 62n8, 74-86, 90, 103-117, 122, 139, 182 Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] 108, 124, 154, 156-157 Hošek, Chaviva 8 Huygens, Constantijn 103-117, 122-124, 130, 154 Jackson, Virginia 183 Jacobs, Anne 123n7, 125n12, 131 Jakobson, Roman 180 Job 129 Johnson, W. Ralph 8, 13-16 Jonah [the prophet] 127 Juliens, Sarah 125 Keats, John 15 Kleyn, J.P. (Joannes Petrus) 169, 172 Kneale, J. Douglas 128n16, 187 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von 161 Lacan, Jacques 132 Lavater, Johann Kaspar 168, 175-176

196 

Lyric Address in Dutch Liter ature, 1250 -1800

Leferink, Hein 142 le Nesle, Blondel 25, 186 Longinus 185n3 Lucebert [Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk] 189 Luyken, Jan 62, 139 MacLeish, Archibald 10 Madelein, Christophe 11, 182 Maes, Aegied 59 Mars 94, 137, 142 Mary 64, 67 Maurice [of Orange-Nassau] 89-90, 92-93 Meijer, Maaike 17, 98-99, 181-182 Meyster, Everard 63n9 Mikics, David 10 Mill, John Stuart 8, 27n7, 39 Moens, Petronella 161n9 Moritoen, Jan 45, 49 Mukařovský, Jan 180 Niobe 142 Oetgens van Waveren, Anthony 90n4 Onin, Gilles 49 Orpheus 133, 142 Oversteegen, J.J. (Jacob Jan) 75n2 Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso] 108, 137-140, 143n18, 144, 147, 159 Paijmans, Marrigje 13, 17, 153, 182 Pallas 137 Pan 139 Parker, Patricia 8 Paul, Saint 117, 126, 130 Persius [Aules Persius Flaccus] 124 Petrarch 10, 122, 137n2, 138-140, 143-145, 147 Pickstock, Catherine 31 Pieters, Jürgen 17-18, 153, 168, 182, 186 Pindar 91, 92n5 Plantin, Christophe 92n5 Plato 78 Plowden, Edmnund 96 Poot, Hubert Korneliszoon 136-147, 182 Post, Elizabeth Maria 161n9 Potgieter, E.J. (Everardus Johannes) 141n12 Prins, Yopie 183 Questiers, Katharina 154, 158, 162 Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus] 81, 91, 93, 112, 185 Rans, Paul 60n2 Rich, Adrienne 157 Riffaterre, Michaell 8 Roemers Visscher, Anna 154, 156-158, 162 Roemers Visscher, Maria Tesselschade 103-117, 154, 158, 162, 182 Rolling Stones, The 161 Roulans, Jan 64n17

Sansone, David 185 Sappho 155 Sardanapalus 141 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 91 Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, Riet 124, 138, 144, 146 Schlaffer, Heinz 8, 13, 16, 187 Scholz, Myra 10 Schrödinger, Erwin 179-180 Shakespeare, William 78, 81 Six, Jakob 125, 129-130, 132-133 Six, Jan 122 Six van Chandelier, Jan 119-133, 182, 186 Sneller, Agnes 110 Solomon 38 Spex, Jacob 139n5 Spies, Marijke 91 Stanton, Domna 157 Stilling, Johann Heinrich 168 Strengholt, Leendert 111n8 Strijbosch, Clara 14, 182 Taylor, Charles 182, 184, 186 Theodotus, Salomon 67n25 Typhoon [Glenn de Randamie] 188, 190 Usher, Stephen 185 Valéry, Paul 32n21 van Alphen, Ernst 110, 112 van Baerle, Suzanna 105-107, 117, 130 van de Pol, Harmen Gysbertsz 90n3 van der Goes, Antonides 139 van der Haven, Cornelis 14, 182 van der Horst, Anna 157 van der Meel, Nico 69n26 van der Poel, Dieuwke 14, 18, 182-183 van der Veer, Cornelia 158-159 van Dijk, Marijn 14, 17-18, 153, 158, 182 van Erp, Christina 75 van Hulst, Jan 45, 47 van Marion, Olga 110 van Mierlo, Jozef 25n1, 187 van Neck, Jacob 90n4 van Oldebarneveldt, Johan 89 van Overstraten, Adriana 161n9 van Schurman, Anna Maria 154, 156-157 van Zuylen van Nyeveldt, Willem 67 Vellekoop, Kees 51n26 Venus 142 Vilt, Jacob 48 Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] 91, 97, 123n7, 137 Vondel, Joost van den 87-100, 122-123, 138, 155, 182 Vossius, Gerardus 9 Vuijk, Wim 142 Waters, William 8, 13, 16-17 Weisgerber, Jean 142n16

197

Index of Names

Wellek, René 180 Willaert, Frank 187 Willem Alexander [King of the Netherlands] 153 William [of Orange-Nassau] 92, 94 Witstein, Sonja 108

Wolff, Adriaan [Reverend] 149-152 Wolff-Bekker, Elizabeth 149-162, 181-182 Zak, Gur 140n10 Zwaan, F.I. 75n2