J.H. Moesman. The Rumour. 1935-1941. Canvas, 120 × 100.5 cm.
In my more melancholy moments I fear that I even subscribe to Pascal's declaration that all the world's misery is the consequence of the fact that man is not capable of sitting quietly at home - implicitly an argument against every form of mobility. But if one has to move, then as far as I am concerned it's by bike. Because, as one of the greatest post-war Dutch poets, Rutger Kopland, once wrote in a collection with the eloquent title of Everything by Bike (Alles op de fiets, 1981): ‘On the bike everything goes slowly / but still fairly fast.’ And that is precisely the speed I like. Every day for almost a quarter of a century I have covered the distance from my home in Leiden to my place of work in The Hague by bike - 35 kilometres there and back. The little bonus I like most is to come across the same cyclists at the same place every day. This ideal cannot be fully achieved but one comes close, at least when I leave home at the same time, take the same route and keep to the same speed, and when the others, always the same ones, do this too. As if we were not moving ourselves forward, but were being moved forward, fixed on two conveyor belts moving in opposite directions.
And as a telling Dutch saying points out, one which perfectly expresses the thrift in our national character, on the bicycle you will get where you want virtually free of charge (‘Op de fiets geniet je voor niets’ - ‘Enjoy the bike at a price you like’), which is of course an added bonus.
To conclude: to the poet, unlike the ordinary earthly mortal, cycling, or the movement the legs make while doing it, has one great advantage over every other means of movement, including running. The cycling movement is... cyclical: your legs turn, you pump something up. Cycling draws up water, brings things to the surface, like the dredger. Without cycling there are no thoughts, or at least far fewer thoughts, and without thoughts there are no poems.
Translated by Gregory Ball