Elsien's Traveblogue
Monday, May 28, 2018
Dutch Book Festival in Montpellier
I've had the most
wonderful few days at the Comédie
du Livre in Montpellier. It is a Book Fair that takes place every
year and focuses on a different nationality each year. This year it
was Dutch and Flemish literature.
My Dutch
friend Els, a translator, was slightly involved in it and thanks to
her I could participate in Breakfast with Dutch author Gerbrand
Bakker and another one, the next day, with Flemish writer Stefan Brijs. I am not that au fait with
modern Dutch literature, so had never heard of these two writers and
had to start reading at some pace! Thank Goodness for Amazon, the
Dutch on-line bookseller Bol.com as well as Kindle, Kobo and E-Pubs.
By co-incidence, trying to sort out my overfull DropBox I found that
a lovely Dutch friend had given me access to hers, which was
choc-a-full of Dutch literature! Wow, thank you!
So,
I got through enough of the books to be able to have some idea. I
read all of 'Arend', by Stefan Brijs. A bit bizarre, not easy to
read, about a somewhat monstrous-looking child, the 'Arend' of the
title, who is neglected, mainly in horror of his looks, by his single
mother. He finds a neighbour, or rather, the similarly eccentric,
shunned by others, neighbour finds him and the two become friends.
The neighbour, a much-needed father figure, collects feathers, which
fits in beautifully with Arend's various obsessions and the boy dies,
in the end, spoiler-alert – trying to fly … 'Arend', in Dutch,
means 'Eagle'.
Stefan
Brijs is better known for a more recent book, 'The Angel-Maker',
about a medical researcher who clones a triplet, after his own, far
from perfect image, with his genetic material. I have almost finished
the book, fascinating, but long … The interview with the author,
over 'breakfast', a cup of coffee, glass of juice and little
croissant, was excellent and really added another layer of
understanding to the books and their author. I was extremely
impressed with the interpreter who not only translated swiftly and
accurately, using French words and expressions that really gave the
sense and flavour of the original Dutch, but managed to wait until
the author had stopped speaking and then gave the translation of his
words. See below, it's not always like this …
We
had the same interpreter for Gerbrand Bakker and she did the same
fabulous job there. I almost finished reading his books 'Boven is het
Still' (It's Quiet Upstairs), in a very agricultural setting, and
'The Detour', set in Cornwall about a woman trying to finish her
dissertation on Emily Dickinson. Still reading both! I have an
affinity both to farming settings and to Cornwall and know a bit
about Emily Dickinson. I was especially struck by the beauty of
Bakker's language and found out that his degree is in historical
linguistics, so not too surprising he finds words fascinating too …
There
were more interviews during those three days. I got so tired I missed
Day 3, also because of other circumstances, but I did a pretty full-on Day 1 and
2.
An
amazing discussion with focus on 'The Other', immigration and
integration, a real topic, problem in the Netherlands, well, Europe.
Toine Heijmans, whose column in the Dutch newspaper 'The Volkskrant'
I read from time to time (but none of his books yet – will try!),
Annelies Verbeke, another Flemish author, whose book '30 Days' I had
actually read, thanks to my now 95-year-old mother, who started her
studies of Dutch Language and Literature aged 40, taught Dutch for 20
years and still reads several novels a week (day?) to maintain her
sanity, living with my Dad who hasn't got much left in the way of
memory. My Mum has been really enthusiastic about this event: I have had
to phone her all the time and she'd tell me what other books I had to
read …
The
third author in the discussion above was someone called Fouad Laroui.
I'd never heard of him, but he was a marvel. Look him up on Google, I
think. He was born in Morocco, is an engineer, lives in Amsterdam, is fluent in Arabic, French and
Dutch (probably English as well) and shares with me, and so many of
my friends, this European identity, and this phenomenon of roots in
one language and culture, but feeling totally at home and integrated
in another. I bought Joseph his 'Insoumise de la Porte de Flandres',
set in Molenbeek, Brussels, as Joseph had lived in Brussels for so long. I still have to read it myself … So much to read!
Another
author interview was with Inge Schelperoord, whose debut book is
about a pedophile, trying to become a good man (my Mum hated it),
then Joost de Vries, 'L'Heritier', another debut novel, not read that either. The
interpreter kept almost constantly interrupting him, in her hurry to translate,
while Joost was still searching for words and he then promptly lost his train
of thought as she came in with her interpretation … I thought it
was a perfect example of how not to interpret … However, she also
did the interpretation with Anna Enquist, a real 'grande dame' of
Dutch contemporary literature and she was fine then, maybe because
Anna stopped at convenient moments to enable the interpreter to do
her stuff...
I
love Anna Enquists's books, and so does my Mum. I especially love the
ones where she uses her musical background as a professional pianist
to tie in with her books, but I also love, from my own past in the Pacific, the book about
Captain James Cook. The interview was excellent, and made much of
this musical past as well.She's astonishing, wouldn't mind interviewing her myself.
I
also loved David van Reybrouck, whose book about the Congo has been
on my Dad's bookshelves for a long time now. I never read it in
Dutch, but I found a pretty cheap French language translation of it in paperback in
our local bookshop. I'm halfway through! It's incredibly impressive,
mixing history and human experience to an amazing degree, well
written! The author is bi-, if not tri-lingual and, as the story of
the Congo, if not in Lingala or another Congolese language, is mainly
in French, the language of the Belgian colonisers, I have no problem
reading it in French. In the case of Gerbrand Bakker's book, 'Boven
is het Stil' (It's Quiet Upstairs), I had real trouble linking the
French translation of the first pages, which was read out during the
breakfast, to the Dutch I had read, where you could smell the cows,
the fields, the water, see the skies … This, to me, seemed sadly missing in the French translation.
Who
else? Herman Koch, 'The Dinner' – I read this ages ago, my Mum gave it to me, of course. A good interview
and a very intriguing book, from beginning to end. By this time I had
lost my Dutch mates, I don't know what happened to them. There was so
much going on, it's not surprising. I'll try and find them again
today …
I
lost them when I went to the local museum, the Musée
Fabre, where one of the curators gave a talk with slides about the
Dutch and Flemish influence on French painters, as seen by the
collection of the museum. Absolutely fascinating, and I left the
room, head buzzing with ideas for my own research, half a dozen of
possible PhD's...
So,
I'm now back at my desk, newly re-captured from my partner, who's
used this study for more than six years, while I have had to keep moving
from pillar to post. He's not got much work now, so I'm supremely
happy to be here and still feeling inspired to be productive. Proof:
I've written 1200 words on this, today!
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