Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 16, Issue 2, 2011

This article takes as its point of departure the obvious heterogeneity of the present debate on interdisciplinary research. An effort to find explanatory factors for this heterogeneity is combined with a plea for interdisciplinary research based on disciplinary research questions and/or on what Bourdieu calls ‘participant objectivation’ as a mode of foregrounding the foundations of disciplines. Against this background, the second part of this article tries to give an example for interdisciplinary research on the area of law and literature in which the professional view of the juridical field on literature is analyzed from the perspective whether it can give more plausible and profound answers to questions concerning the literary field. Especially the hypothesis of the rise of a literary field in the Netherlands around 1900 is tested with regard to the recognition of a relative autonomous literary field by the field of power, in casu by jurisdiction. As a case study, the reflection of the trials 1919/1920 on the Dutch translation of the novel De hel by the French writer Henri Barbusse is analyzed with regard to the concept of institutional autonomy of literature within the legal field. That reconstruction is undertaken from different sources, among which newspaperarticles, a parliamentary debate and a juridical journal.

In this essay the author examines the relationship between the Present and the Happiness in the works of Louis Couperus. He also examines to what extent Couperus’ moments of happiness match the literary epiphany as defined by Van Halsema in his book Epifanie. It appears that around 1900 a turning point occurred in Couperus’ appreciation of the present. Before that time the term stood for everything that was small and insignificant. After that Couperus generated the idea that happiness comes from the acceptance of the present. In a series of variations on the theme Couperus unfolds his views on the connection of the present and happiness. The story ‘Jahve’ and the novel Antiek toerisme are of crucial importance for this relationship. In these two texts the acceptance of the present is a divine power that man must master. The epiphany character of the moments is initially weak. Only at the end of Couperus’ career as a writer do the moments of happiness get the character of an epiphany.

The poet P.C. Boutens was much interested in the poems and artworks of the English Pre-Raphaelite painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He bought and read Rossetti’s books, translated Rossetti’s poetry, and alluded to Rossetti’s artworks in his own poetry. In the ‘Sonnet / aan D.G. Rossetti’, Boutens refers to Rossetti’s portrait studies of Jane Morris. This paper explores the function of the reference to Rossetti’s visual artworks in this poem, and indicates how Boutens’ ‘picture-sonnet’ can be related to international tendencies in the genre of ekphrasis (or ‘Bildgedichten’) around 1900, and to Rossetti’s double works of art in particular. I will show that Boutens placed himself in Rossetti’s tradition with his poem to D.G. Rossetti by choosing the sonnet form, by articulating the attempt to get a glimpse of an eternal soul through the visual representation of a face, and by putting this momentary experience into a permanent, symbolist language.

J.D.F. van Halsema, Vrienden & visioenen. Een biografie van Tachtig. Groningen, Historische Uitgeverij, 2010. ISBN 978- 90-6554-033-1. 495 pp. € 39,95.; Arthur van Schendel, Drie Hollandse romans. De waterman – Een Hollands drama – De grauwe vogels. Bezorgd door Hans Anten, Wilbert Smulders en Joke van der Wiel. Amsterdam: Athenaeum - Polak & van Gennep, 2010. ISBN 978 90 253 6741 1. € 34,95; Lars Bernaerts, Hans Vandevoorde en Bart Vervaeck (red.), Jan Walravens en het experiment. Gent (Academiapress) 2011, 229 bladzijden, ISBN 9789038217079, € 25,00.