5. ‘It’s a part of me’: the literary ambitions of Pieter Geyl

Wim Berkelaar

Pieter Geyl’s retirement from his post as professor of modern history at Utrecht University in 1958 would probably not be noteworthy in itself. He had reached the age of seventy, the then compulsory retirement age for academic staff in the Netherlands. Never in the course of his life had Geyl been more famous than at this point in time. His well-known vanity was flattered more than ever when, on 21 May 1958, he was awarded the P. C. Hooft Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the Netherlands at the time, named after the seventeenth-century historian, poet and playwright, for whom Geyl had much respect, especially for his Nederlandsche historiën (‘Dutch Histories’, 1628–47). One could have asked Geyl at this point in his life: what more could he wish for?

However, this was not Pieter Geyl’s reaction. Two months before the prize ceremony in Muiderslot Castle near Amsterdam, his students had organized a farewell ceremony for their academic teacher in the same venue, during which Geyl reflected on his long and prolific career. Overall, he was satisfied with his life achievements, but there was one thing that still left him discontented: the lack of recognition as a poet and literary writer. In the address to his students,1 Geyl spoke with some irritation about the rejection of his early novel, written (but not finished) around 1910, by the then influential writer and essayist Albert Verwey, a prominent member of the famous Tachtigers, a group of Dutch writers who, at the end of the nineteenth century, sought to replace the pastoral literature that had dominated Dutch writing since the mid-nineteenth century with a new, heroic and romantic genre. ‘Was Albert Verwey the right person to judge my novel?’ Geyl grumbled.

Geyl’s novel arouses one’s curiosity but unfortunately it has not been preserved in his rich archive, kept in the Special Collections department of Utrecht University Library.2 Still, we know from Geyl’s letters to his childhood friend, Pieter Nicolaas van Eyck (1887–1954), that Geyl had been working on the novel. Van Eyck and Geyl were schoolmates at the Gymnasium Haganum in The Hague, where the two boys had started a passionate correspondence about literature, which lasted almost fifty years, until Van Eyck’s death in 1954. Their shared infatuation with literature could, however, not mask their different worldviews. Whereas Geyl was secular and pragmatic, Van Eyck could probably best be called a pantheist with an antenna for religion. Both admired the Tachtigers, although Geyl had more reservations than Van Eyck; he condemned Lodewijk van Deyssel’s dubious way of living and had no appreciation for the poems of Herman Gorter, preferring instead authors in the group who now have largely been forgotten, such as Jacob van Looy, Jan Apol and Hélène Swarth.

Both friends began to write poetry, Geyl somewhat half-heartedly. He limited himself largely to imitating the Tachtigers, whereas Van Eyck managed to find his own voice and become one of the representatives of the ‘generation of 1910’, a group of poets born in the 1880s who entered the literary scene that decade. Van Eyck, although nowadays considered to be somewhat obscure, became a successful poet in the first half of the twentieth century, winning one of the most prestigious literary prizes for Dutch literature, the Constantijn Huygens Prize, in 1947.

The young Van Eyck tried to stimulate his friend to excel in the literary field. However, only some unpublished short stories by Geyl’s hand remain, inspired not only by Van Eyck’s influence, but also by an episode of unrequited love. In the summer of 1902, Geyl had fallen in love with his classmate Margriet Réthy, who left school a year later and moved to Germany with her parents. Geyl’s strong feelings for her inspired him to write short stories, although these were no romantic tales. On the contrary, one of them was about Joan of Arc fighting the British invaders of France in the fifteenth century, driven by visions sent by God. Another, ‘The Sultan’, revolved around a Muslim tyrant who attempted to suppress his people. As with his earlier novel, all these short stories remained unfinished. Nevertheless, they clearly demonstrate Geyl’s interest in historical fiction. He enjoyed historical novels such as Majoor Frans by Truitje Bosboom-Toussaint and adored the novel Vorstengunst by A. S. C. Wallis, the pseudonym of Adèle Opzoomer, daughter of the then famous philosopher Cornelis Willem Opzoomer.

Although the young Geyl did not complete his short stories, at least he left us some finished poems, almost all of them about Christ. In his archive, a collection named Golgotha is preserved, with the subtitle Tien gedichten over het lijdensverhaal (‘Ten poems about the way of the Cross’).3 As Geyl later frankly admitted, these poems were inspired by Albert Verwey, the same man who had been so critical about his unpublished novel. Verwey’s poem O man van smarten (‘Christ on the Cross’),4 for example, inspired Geyl to write the poem below, Wijding (‘Consecration’):

This highly pathetic poem, a poor imitation of Verwey’s, is but one of Geyl’s early attempts of dubious quality. The Christ poems contain a certain level of irony, as in his posthumously published autobiography, written when held in Nazi-German hostage camps in the 1940s, Geyl frankly admits that as a young man he had no particular interest in Christ, but considered himself ‘a tremendous rationalist’.6

His early poems can thus be regarded as little more than the work of a romantic young man who desired to be a poet and imitated his literary heroes, the Tachtigers. Van Eyck reprimanded Geyl for not taking poetry seriously enough; for example Geyl admitted to composing poetry while lying on the floor next to his stove, a practice that in van Eyck’s eyes did not befit an aspiring serious poet.7

Fig. 5.1: Medieval Dutch plays Lancelot of Denmark (1924) and The Tale of Beatrice (1927), translated by Geyl. Both were staged in London’s West End.

Unlike Van Eyck, who not only became Albert Verwey’s successor as professor of Dutch language and literature in Leiden, but also a prize-winning poet, the young Pieter Geyl discovered that he was much more of a historian and an essayist. Still, during his university years in Leiden he maintained his interest in literature. His first publication was an essay on the French medieval poet François Villon.8 He also wrote about Joost van den Vondel, the great Dutch poet of the seventeenth century,9 and revised his university paper on the quarrel between the nineteenth-century writers Jacob van Lennep and Eduard Douwes Dekker, the anti-colonial writer who published under the pseudonym Multatuli.10 Instead of becoming a novelist or poet himself, Geyl, alongside his historical work, frequently ventured into the field of literary criticism.

However, being a critic was not enough to satisfy Geyl’s literary ambitions. During his years in London, he set himself the task of translating the medieval plays Lancelot of Denmark (1924)11 and The Tale of Beatrice (1927) into English (fig. 5.1).12 In his autobiography, Geyl dates his translation of Lancelot to 1919/20.13 In the foreword to that play, published in the Dutch Library series by Martinus Nijhoff, Geyl emphasized the fact that the fourteenth-century play’s unknown author probably originated from Brabant: ‘It can be regarded as certain that the author, of whom nothing else is known, not even his name, was a South Netherlander, that is to say, that he was a native of the Dutch-speaking region of the present kingdom of Belgium.’ While historically correct, this was doubtless also a statement indicating his enthusiasm for the Greater Netherlands idea. Geyl was proud of his translation and, in particular, the compliment he received from the Scottish scholar and essayist W. P. Ker, then Quain Professor of English language and literature at UCL. Ker wrote to him, ‘Your translation reads and sounds like a medieval play, with just the right amount of quaintness and old fashion in the style of phrasing.’14

However, the verdict was harsher in the Netherlands. K. H. de Raaf, himself deeply familiar with medieval literature, was especially critical of Geyl’s Lancelot of Denmark and Beatrice. According to him, Geyl’s interpretation of the characters of Lancelot in his foreword was flat and inaccurate (‘The characters in the play are real human beings, none wholly good or wholly evil’). At the same time De Raaf judged that Geyl’s translation of Beatrice had ‘a somewhat drier or harsher quality’ than that of Lancelot of Denmark.15 The English press was more positive: the Manchester Guardian of 24 June 1924 praised ‘the technical ability of Dr Geyl: He has rendered the verging of the mediaeval spirit on the modern and preserved the mediaeval flavour of the language.’16 At the end of 1923, Geyl’s translation of Lancelot of Denmark was even staged in London’s West End (at Playroom Six, 6 New Compton Street, Cambridge Circus), with Hilda Maude among the cast. Geyl was romantically attracted to the actress, but if we can believe the account in his autobiography, they only talked about and never engaged in intimacy.17 In any case, this theatrical experience gave him a taste for more, and his second play, The tale of Beatrice, would also be staged (in 1927). For both stage projects he managed to enlist help from the poet Robert Trevelyan, the nephew of the historian George Trevelyan.18

During his years in London Geyl also wrote his own plays. One of them he read out loud to Elisabeth de Roos in Kensington Gardens in the hope of impressing her. It did not, at least not in the way Geyl had hoped: she would later marry the Dutch writer Edgar du Perron. Geyl later wondered why none of his English plays had survived,19 and I wonder with him, because in Geyl’s rich archive not one of them can be found. In the 1930s, when most of his attention was devoted to historical work on the relations between the House of Orange and the stadholders and to his magnum opus Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche Stam, his literary interests seemed to disappear into the background. His latent ambitions were, however, revived during the Second World War, when Geyl, between October 1940 and February 1944, was imprisoned by the Nazi regime. There were plenty of reasons for his arrest. In the 1930s, Geyl had published several essays critical of Nazi-Germany. He had also been a prominent member of the movement Eenheid door Democratie (‘Unity through Democracy’), which was opposed to both Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union.20 Along with others, Geyl was taken first to Buchenwald (1940), and then moved on to hostage camps in Haaren (1941) and Sint-Michielsgestel in the Netherlands (1942–44).21

In Sint-Michielsgestel, in just three weeks, Geyl wrote the thriller Moord op de plas (‘Murder on the Lake’), a book full of reminiscences of his childhood, when he used to sail in Krimpen, South Holland (fig. 5.2b). When it was published after the war (1946), Geyl, ostentatiously modest, called his crime novel a ‘light’ book,22 but in reality he was anxious to know how literary critics would react. The reviews were mixed. ‘A good detective story’ was the verdict of the Catholic periodical De Linie.23 In contrast, Ben Stroman, then a well-known critic, wrote that the book lacked tension, a devastating verdict for a crime novel.24 Later, Geyl came to the opinion that it was not of the same quality as his poems. Still, he never disowned it and later said: ‘It’s a part of me.’25 A persistent rumour in Utrecht has it that until his death at the end of 1966, Geyl used to regularly visit the bookshops in the city to enquire whether Moord op de plas was still in stock.

Fig. 5.2: Written during Geyl’s captivity (1940–44): the sonnet collection O vrijheid (‘Oh, freedom’, 1945), and the detective novel Moord op de plas (‘Murder on the Lake’, 1946).

It was only fourteen days into his captivity that Geyl began to compose poetry again. What was the reason for this? Was it because he had no access to his library? Or did he feel that he had to record his experiences in captivity and regarded poetry as the best means to express himself? Whatever the reason, during the war he composed thirty-two poems. With the help of a fellow prisoner, the writer Nico Donkersloot, twelve of them were published in the literary periodical Criterium under the pseudonym P. van Haaren, which alluded to their place of internment in 1941. In 1944, a further twenty poems were published under the title Het wachtwoord (‘The Password’), under the pseudonym A. van der Merwe, a reference to one of the places of his childhood.

Ed Hoornik, the editor of Criterium and himself a poet, who had initially judged Geyl’s poems positively, turned more critical. In his verdict, they were more reflective than poetical,26 and this assessment makes sense. Take the following poem, for example, still of interest today because it tells us something about Geyl’s love of history.

In some of the poems one can recognize Geyl’s nostalgia for his time in England, as in the opening sentences below:

After the war, other critics arrived at verdicts similar to Hoornik’s, for example the young modern poet Koos Schuur, as well as Simon Vestdijk, one of the most famous Dutch writers of the time. They published critical reviews of O, vrijheid …! (‘O, Freedom …!’), the title under which Geyl’s poems had been published after the liberation (fig. 5.2a), irritating Geyl considerably. Vestdijk wrote that Geyl’s poems would be better read as a commentary on his imprisonment than as poetry.28 Geyl responded: ‘It worries me that you judge my work only as an expression of a strange experience in a strange age. I think that my poems express an experience that can move my readers. Will that not show that I have realized myself poetically?’29

That two lifelong friends, the historian J. S. Bartstra and the liberal politician F. W. J. Drion, thought positively of his poetry was cold comfort to Geyl; the verdict of his long-standing ally (and occasional foe) Carel Gerretson mattered much more to him, for Gerretson had acquired great fame as a poet with his highly acclaimed collection of poems Experimenten (1911), published under the pseudonym Geerten Gossaert around the time the two of them first met. It was a friendship based on their shared support for the Greater Netherlands idea.

Geyl was curious as to what Gerretson thought of his poems. After initial reluctance, his friend agreed to evaluate them in December 1942. He praised Geyl for his translations of Lancelot and Beatrice, saying they had a perfect balance between ‘outer appearance’ and ‘inner emotions’. But in Gerretson’s opinion Geyl’s feelings were not expressed profoundly enough: ‘In the end you are a rationalist. There’s too little of your heart (which is something different than sentiment) in your poems.’30

Geyl considered Gerretson’s opinion just because in it he recognized his shortcomings. His old friend van Eyck, however, remained silent, and a frustrated Geyl complained about the silence of their common friend in a letter to Gerretson.31 The praise he received from the literary critic P. Minderaa compensated to some extent; Minderaa wrote:

The poems have their own character. These are not poems of a bookworm, but of a man who looks to nature with a power of perception, who is moved by love and friendship and also by questions of the mind. But these are also poems of a thinker who observes the world and who has a sense for writing concisely. Spontaneous expressions of emotion are followed by reasonable considerations. But the poems are never cerebral. The heart remains the source.32

However, it was the criticism of the young writer and essayist Pierre H. Dubois that most lifted Geyl’s spirits. According to Dubois, O, vrijheid …!, while ‘not a masterpiece’, still contained verses that had poetical qualities. Dubois also remarked that the historian Geyl had always had something of a poet about him. Touched by that remark, Geyl responded to Dubois: ‘In my youth I wrote a lot of poems and thought that I would be a poet. But I felt myself inferior in comparison with Van Eyck and studying [history] silenced me.’33

The poet Geyl also remained silent after the war. It is doubtful that he was muted by the criticism he encountered. Probably he was just too absorbed by his historical work and had little time left to continue composing poetry. Two years before his retirement, a reprint of Moord op de plas was received relatively well by the critics, most of whom emphasized the versatility of the author rather than the qualities of the novel itself. This did not bother Geyl. Buoyed by the novel’s recent positive reception, he began to hope that his poetry volumes might be reissued. In 1958, after consulting Pierre Dubois, who had reviewed O, vrijheid …! favourably, Geyl re-published his poems under the title Het leven wint altoos (‘Life Always Wins’), omitting poems that directly referred to events in the war, such as the execution of five hostages in August 1942.

The publication of Het leven wint altoos drew only one serious review, and it was devestating. In the Catholic newspaper De Tijd, Jan Elemans wrote that he was ‘never captured’ by the poems, which demonstrated the author’s incapacity as a poet.34 Only after Geyl received the P. C. Hooft Prize did the collection attract some attention in the press. But again, the reviews were rather on the critical side. As was the case in 1946, the younger and older generations of critics differed in opinion. While older critics tended to judge them relatively positively, among them C. J. E. Dinaux, who praised Geyl’s poetical reflections on history,35 younger writers such as Adriaan Morriën were dismissive. While Morriën enjoyed Geyl’s poetry as a form of history writing, he still did not want to call him a poet, feeling that Geyl’s historical consciousness blocked his emotions, whereas the individual expression of emotion was what distinguished a true poet.36

Characteristically, the P. C. Hooft Prize presented to Geyl on 21 May 1958 was awarded not for his literary but for his historical work and, in particular, for his essays (fig. 5.3). The jury consisted of the writer Adriaan van der Veen, the librarian Leendert Brummel, the art historian Hans Ludwig Cohn Jaffé, the literary critic Pierre H. Dubois and the Catholic historian Lodewijk J. Rogier, who was also the ‘strong man’ of the jury. Rogier had long admired Geyl, not just as a writer but as a historian who, in his Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche Stam, had paid attention to the important, but until then often overlooked, role of Catholics in the early modern Netherlands.37 In the jury’s report, Geyl’s style was described as ‘sober’ and ‘efficient’.38 Sober and efficient referred to his polemics and portraits as well as to his historical studies, but there was no word on his literary writings.

Fig. 5.3: Geyl receiving the P. C. Hooft Prize, 21 May 1958. Nationaal Archief Den Haag, Fotocollectie Anefo (photo: Joop van Bilsen), inv. no. 909-5807.

This was never to change. Anyone who wrote about Pieter Geyl wrote about his historical work. Geyl’s poems and detective stories were (and continue to be) neglected. And this continued to be the case after his passing on 31 December 1966.39 None of Geyl’s poems made its way into the great anthologies of Dutch poetry such as Gerrit Komrij’s Dutch Poetry in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. However, there is one poem that future anthologies, in my opinion, cannot afford to miss. It was written on 18 December 1943, in the middle of the war, and reflects Geyl’s vision of human life and death in the endless universe:

The stars are fright’ning: the cold universe,
Boundless and silent, goes revolving on,
Worlds without end. The grace of God is gone.
A vast indifference, deadlier than a curse,
Chills our poor globe, which Heaven seemed to nurse
So fondly: Twas God’s rainbow when it shone,
Until we searched. Now as we count and con
Gusts of infinity, our hopes disperse.
Well, it’s so, then turn your eyes away
From Heav’n. Look at the earth, in its array
Of life and beauty – Transitory? Maybe,
But so you are. Let stark eternity
Heed its own self, and you, enjoy your day,
And when death calls, then quietly obey.40