Kentering wending knik. Dynamiek in modern dichterschap
SUMMARY This thesis tries to find an answer to why most studies on the work of the poets that are central to our understanding of modern Dutch poetry discuss only a small part of their complete poetic works. It questions the assumption in the academic study of literature that a select number of works embodies the central themes and occupations of modern poetry most clearly. Those parts of these poets’ oeuvres in which they question or even move away from from what I call the ‘paradigm of modern poetry’ are ignored in most studies on their work. This study, however, argues that a focus on exactly those works that are being marked as making a transition or even departing from this paradigm is crucial to a more comprehensive understanding of modern poetry. The main questions in this study are how these poets change their views on their poethood and poetry, what made them change their way of writing, what made them put the modern paradigm aside, and what the way they have been studied up till now tells us about the conception of modern poetry in the study of literature. Central in this study are the works of Herman Gorter (1864-1927), Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953), and Willem Jan Otten (1951). Departing from the case of the most paradigmatic modern poet, T.S. Eliot, this study puts forward a new model that charts the complete development of modern poets. Taking into account those parts of their oeuvres that are deemed ‘modern’ as well as, crucially, those writings that preceded and followed, I move away from conceptions that see these latter parts as ‘prologues’, on the one hand, and ‘discontinuities’ or even ‘betrayals’, on the other. In the case of Eliot it is often assumed, for example, that his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism was the end of his modernism. The model that I develop here, however, reassess these poets’ oeuvres and adopts a view of modern poethood as essentially dynamic, thereby seeing the different parts of these oeuvres as equally important phases. The introductory chapter of this study argues that, due to its perceived shortcomings, modern poets deliberately left the ‘paradigm of modern poetry’ they helped create themselves. Initially, the transition of their first works to their ‘modern masterworks’ cohered with their affirmation of what I have called ‘the primacy of poetry’: the conviction that poetry can do more than other forms of language. Judging paradigms other than modern poetry as insufficient, these poets saw poetry as, in the words of Wallace Stevens, ‘the supreme fiction’. Modern poetry in their view was characterized by negativity in that it refuted other socio-symbolic systems of rationality, religion and politics. In their most modern works, these poets detached themselves thoroughly from these paradigms in order to create poems that they saw as credible alternatives. The fact, however, that after these central works a number of these poets reaffirmed the paradigms they refuted earlier on leads to the conclusion that modern poetry, as a paradigm, did not live up to their expectations. This study tries to understand what made them dismiss modern poetry as a credible paradigm, and what led them to the negation of the primacy of poetry. In the three chapters at the core of this study three Dutch poets are being read within this conceptual framework. Herman Gorter and M. Nijhoff both have written works that have a firm place in the history modern Dutch poetry: Gorter is considered the ‘first modern’, Nijhoff the central modernist. In both cases, though, their position is based on the work of only a small period. After his avant-garde work around 1890, Gorter turned to Marxism. Nijhoff left the purely literary context that he defended and explored in his criticism and poetry in the third decade of the twentieth century and developed a poethood that was closely connected to different communities in the broader Dutch society, including religious groups. The last chapter, on the contemporary poet Willem Jan Otten, looks at his recent work in which he adapts a religious point of view to address the flaws of modern poetry and its paradigm, which he had explicitly affirmed in an earlier stage of his career. All three chapters analyse the dynamics in the works of these poets on three different levels: formal, intertextual and paradigmatic. In the concluding chapter the results are brought together in a comprehensive perspective on the dynamics of modern poethood. Formally, the modern paradigm correlated with the emergence and development of free verse as the formal consequence of the modern primacy of poetry. All three cases show a negation of traditional form that led to a more or less free verse. This affirmation of free verse, though, turned out to be temporary. In the Dutch context, Gorter was the poet who invented free verse, but he returned to sonnets shortly afterwards and eventually left his lyricism behind for epic poetry. After a few years of mainly writing sonnets, Nijhoff stopped seeing this verse form as the most appropriate one, created numerous other lyrical, epical and dramatic forms, and ended with writing verse dramas. Otten opened his closed early poetry with his affirmation of free verse, but later on chose a more strict versification, which can be read as a negation of the paradigmatic modern form of free verse. This leads to the conclusion that the more free verse becomes an indication of modernity, the more the semantic potential of poetic form is being acknowledged. For the first moderns, free verse was a denial of fixed formal patterns. When free verse had been established as modern, fixed forms too became meaningful, namely as a choice against the modern paradigm. Intertextually, these modern poets created poems that did not derive their meanings primarily from texts outside the poem itself. The modern poem became to be seen as its own architext. To achieve that, these poets had to surpass those texts that influenced them. Artistic rivalry led to their most modern works: emulation was the intertextual consequence of the primacy of poetry. Gorter tried to achieve this with his ‘break with all tradition’ in 1890, Nijhoff by leaving the Dutch context for an international, modernist perspective. When they started to relate their poetry explicitly to other text, they defied the modern paradigm intertextually. The way Gorter subsumed his poetry to the philosophy of Spinoza was a radical example of this negation. Nijhoff started to relate his poetry more openly to other texts after his most modern works, and added many classical writers to his formally modernist horizon. Otten explicitly tried to modernize his poetry by following modernist examples, as he strove to emulate them to become a modern poet himself. After his most modern works, Otten turned to other literary converts – his emulation became Christian instead of modern. In this context, what I have called ‘modern emulation’ indicates the modern poet choosing to build on the work of other modern poets, thereby consciously emulating them to become a modern poet himself. The main conclusion of this thesis is that in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of the oeuvres of these poets, the various phases of their poethood have to be studied in relation to each other. By investigating what happens when modern poets reach the end of and depart from the modern paradigm, a clearer view can be offered of both the potential and shortcomings it had for these writers. Claiming that the works of poets written after they left the modern paradigm are redundant, as has often been done in the academic study of their work, denies the dynamics of their oeuvres and the paradigm. By thinking discontinuity together with continuity, seemingly inconsistent poethoods turn out to have an internal dynamics the study of which leads to a richer apprehension of their works.
Poetry, Modernism, Dutch, Arts & humanities, Literature, Arts & sciences humaines, Littérature
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