Stevens. For that matter, the last-named is cited as an example or foil by several other Dutch-language writers apart from Hertmans, just as he remains a presence in the work of several young American poets (e.g. John Ashbery). And just as for them, Stevens proves to occupy a pivotal position in the transition from modernism to postmodernism.
After his first novel Space (Ruimte, 1981), Hertmans also had several collections of stories published, including Coagulated Clouds (Gestolde wolken, 1987) and The Boundaries of Deserts (De grenzen van woestijnen, 1989), which attracted keen attention. In this genre he deviates sharply from the average narrative prose. In his earliest work there is in fact no sign of linear development at all: the causal connection that takes us safely from the beginning to the end of the story is replaced here by metaphors and sequences that move concentrically and engage with each other across their own boundary lines. But Hertmans refuses any form of labelling and the impoverishment that goes with it. Referring to the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, he argues for a poetics of continuous dislocation or derailment, a sustained ‘dérèglement de tous les sens’.
In his prose, as in his poetry, he seeks to explore and expand his own boundaries. It is true that in his more recent stories the traditional, narrative element has once again made its appearance, but in Hertmans' work the quality of the anecdote is non-realistic, grotesque or bizarre. The whimsical fantasy of these stories puts them on the borderline between the real and the unreal and, by way of the polysemic metaphor, repeatedly joins the concrete to the abstract. Solid matter begins to melt (a house becomes a raft) or memories turn out to be only illusions.
In The Boundaries of Deserts, the breaking of boundaries is now focused on literary games, just as in the later poetry. In the story called ‘The Realm of Lights’ (‘Het rijk der lichten’), for example, the writer enters into a dialogue with Kafka: clear reminiscences of The Trial are incorporated into the text. In these stories, reality is dominated by intriguing and surprising ‘deviations’. ‘A Bigger Head’ (‘Een groter hoofd’) is typical of this - the story of young Bodo, who has what is called a ‘great and useless talent’ - he can jump from the front to the back of a house over the roof, and even extends his skill to include a church tower. Bodo is also the victim of his talent, the narrator's comment tells us, since such a great and useless talent leads to loneliness, despair and pride.
In another story, it turns out that Maria, a singer and child prodigy, is carrying a built-in virtuoso nightingale in her lower body. A similarly bizarre fantasy also appears to be a feature of the more recent autobiographical novel To Merelbeke (Naar Merelbeke, 1994)1, in which Hertmans at once ironically tackles the realistic conventions of the genre itself. In so doing, Hertmans has grown well away from his original fixation on the individual ego and the closed, detached, independent things. His examination of the open, the wilful sounding out and the drifting that also come to the fore in the preferences shown by Hertmans the critic, mark him as a child of his age. He has surrendered the predilection for the absolute and the truth in favour of relativism, scepticism and a multiplicity of views, but the noncommittal aspect of postmodernism now proves to be an outmoded point of view to him too: keeping the borders open demands the courage of a critical intel-
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