Literature

The Netherlands Literature Museum and Documentation Centre
Where Readers Become Spectators

Encouraged by the success of the ‘Literary Exhibition’ held in the Town Hall of The Hague in 1923 to mark Queen Wilhelmina's Silver Jubilee, the city's municipal archivist, Dr W. Moll, took a few tentative steps towards establishing a literary collection. Thirty years later he had an assortment of over 1,500 literary documents in his charge - a veritable cuckoo's chick. In 1953 this collection formed the healthy basis of the Netherlands Literature Museum and Documentation Centre founded in that year, which some forty years on has grown into a national literary archive-cum-museum containing some 20,000 manuscripts, over 1,000,000 letters and more than 60,000 photographs and 2,000 painted and drawn portraits relating to Dutch literature after 1750. Since 1982 the museum has been housed in the Royal Library complex, directly adjacent to the Central Railway Station. It confines its activities to more recent Dutch literature from the Netherlands. Flanders has its own Archive and Museum for Flemish Culture in Antwerp, founded in 1933, and in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland, the Frisian Literature Museum and Documentation Centre occupies the childhood home of the famous spy Mata Hari.

What does the Literature Museum do? It has more than 10,000 items in its care: gifts, permanent loans and - to a lesser extent - purchases, ranging from the literary estates of prominent Dutch writers (including Louis Couperus, Herman Gorter, Willem Kloos, Edgar du Perron and Simon Vestdijk), to not particularly important letters from not particularly important writers to ditto colleagues. Foreign writers are of course also represented in the collection, by virtue of their correspondence with Dutch writers: these include André Gide (corresponding with Jef Last), D.H. Lawrence (letters to and from Augusta de Wit), Jean Rhys (who was married to the Dutchman Eduard de Nève from 1919 to 1926), Rainer Maria Rilke, Jules Verne and Emile Zola. The main emphasis in the collection is on the period 1880-1950; besides letters and manuscripts, other items relating to writers are collected. Notes, reviews, proofs, publishers' contracts, portraits, book illustrations, busts, posters, videotapes, books containing dedications which because of those dedications have become literary documents, curiosities - in short, everything connected with the writers which is not a book. For books the Literature Museum relies on its neighbour, the Royal Library. All these items are not catalogued in strict order of acquisition; newlyacquired letters of, say, P.N. van Eyck, who in the 1930s was London correspondent of one of the principal Dutch dailies, are added to the existing P.N. van Eyck collection. The obvious advantage of this system is that the researcher can find all the documents relating to one writer in the same place, and does not have to consult what may be dozens of collections. Nevertheless, for fifty years after the writer's death, in order to study those documents not already published, he / she requires the permission of the copyright-holder(s): of the author himself / herself during his lifetime, thereafter of the heirs. It is true that the collections of the Literature Museum afford researchers the opportunity of studying writers in great depth and hence possibly - which is the object of the exercise - of gaining a greater insight into their work, but only with the permission of the copyright-holder(s). This of course also applies to the publication of letters, variants and other




matter not primarily intended for the press. This brings us to the publications of the Literature Museum.

In the first place there are the Writers' Picture Books (Schrijversprentenboeken), usually literary exhibitions in book form devoted to one author or literary movement, of which thirty-five have appeared to date. As a rule they accompany an exhibition mounted by the Museum. Recent volumes were concerned with the grand old lady of Dutch letters, Hella Haasse, the celebrated children's author Annie M.G. Schmidt, so popular that she is sometimes called the real queen of the Netherlands, and Harry Mulisch, who with the publication of his magnum opus The Discovery of Heaven (De ontdekking van de hemel, 1992) was recognised as an author of European stature. The series Behind the Book (Achter het boek), aimed at a less general readership, contains mainly correspondence between important writers, provided with an extensive commentary. Up to now twenty-six annual issues of this periodical in book form have appeared. In addition the Museum issues postcards with portraits and manuscripts of writers and publishes a Yearbook.

Finally there are the exhibitions. There is a permanent exhibition illustrating Dutch literature since 1750, and temporary displays are organised to commemorate centenaries or writers' anniversaries. Children's literature, too, will shortly be given its rightful place within the Museum.

Though memorial houses of writers may be thin on the ground in the Netherlands compared with the United Kingdom - we can point to little apart from the Multatuli Museum in Amsterdam - there is nevertheless a Literature Museum which does its best to fill that gap. A place where readers can come and look. Before returning to their reading.

 

anton korteweg

Translated by Paul Vincent.

 

address

Netherlands Literature Museum and Documentation Centre

Prinses Irenepad 10 / 2595 bg / The Hague / The Netherlands

tel. +31 (0) 70 347 11 14 / fax +31 (0) 70 347 79 41

Correspondence:

P.O. Box 90515 / 2509 lm / The Hague / The Netherlands

Opening hours: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. (Tuesday - Saturday) 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. (Sunday)