Ongepubliceerd werk

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Twee toasten en een toespraak

I

Excellency, my dear Host, Gentlemen,

I am not an artist of the spoken word, not even in my own language, but I should like to say how deeply touched I am by the kind reception with which I have met in London.

I feel greatly honoured that His Excellency, the Netherlands Minister accepted my host's invitation to sit down at this lunch offered to me that I should meet you all. I feel honoured by your all coming here and am grateful for my young friend's extreme kindness.

Excellency, my dear Host, Gentlemen, I propose to drink the prosperity of modern English litterature and art.

II

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It will be impossible for me to say, especially in a language not my own, how deeply touched I am by the most kind reception I have met with in London. I feel entirely indebted herefor to my dear friend's, Teixeira's translations of my books. Teixeira is an artist of the English language; he is master of every expression and shade of expression. And I am always amazed, enraptured by his most subtle way of finding in English the equivalent of my own

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Dutch words. His translations remain my own work and still reveal the translator's brilliant personality.

I want this moment to thank him and to thank you all, men and women of intellectual distinction of every kind, who are sitting here around me. Believe, I beg of you, in the great emotion, that overflows me this moment. My emotion is full of gratefulness to Teixeira, to you all and at the same time I feel proud to represent, if I may say so, modern litterature of my dear Country and my dear language of the Netherlands. As this representant, ladies and gentlemen, I feel happy to drink your health.

III

Mr. Chairman, my lords, ladies and gentlemen,

Words have been spoken that have filled me with great gratitude on behalf of those who are my spiritual children, I mean the novels which I have written during more than thirty years. I proffer a father's thanks when I reply in their name. They cannot themselves add a word to those which Mr. Teixeira, with unfaltering love and care, has made them utter.

Yes, books are like children, they are our boys and girls; and life lies before them from the moment when they are written. Life will be different for them all. And they have their fates and destinies, as has been said before. They travel far from their parents; and some of mine have made their way among yourselves. They have been arrayed in beautiful garments such as only a kind rich uncle like Teixeira could afford to give them out of his treasury of English language and style. But, when I saw them thus clad, I recognized them at once. They were not changed, they were the same, they were my very own boys and girls, grown up, smiling and prosperous; and they said to me:

- Father, we have found our way; and people have been nice to us. We have tried to please them in that country across the sea where you are always hesitating to come, because the sun is so rare

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there and because you prefer to roam through southern lands where you imagine that the sun is always shining. Father, we tell you, we have met with a most charming reception, among many English people of intellectual distinction; and it seems that we do not do you so much discredit as you are inclined to think directly you have finished creating us. They admire us and they like and love us - so at least they say - and indeed you ought to feel very much obliged to Uncle Tex, who spared no expense in dressing us in these English clothes of ours, so that we might appear familiar to the English public and give it what we may call a reflection and a living picture of modern literature in our dear Netherlands.

- I am pleased with you, boys and girls, I tried to say to them.

But they interrupted me and continued in chorus:

- Father, we know you think, because we were born twenty years and more ago, that we are not so very deserving. We have always remarked with a certain jealousy that you love only your last book, your new-born child, your Benjamin, as you now are fondest of our youngest brother Iskander, whom you called by the Persian name of Alexander the Great, the hero of your latest and far too highly-valued novel. Father, you are sometimes most unjust to us. It is true, you have never disowned us; but you have always seemed rather indifferent towards your boys and girls of twenty and thirty, who had to make their own way in the world. You place us in the charge of publishers - as the masters seem to be called who prepare us to appear before the public - and then you take no further notice of us. We repeat, father dear, you are often very unjust to us; and we insist on telling you that may delightful English people do not agree with you at all!

Thus my boys and girls, standing around me in their sturdy English fashion, reproached their father; and I felt that they were right. I hope that you will not think me too vain a father if I confess that I was proud of them.

Dear Mr. Chairman, I repeat, I am grateful for the sympathy which these grown-up boys and girls of mine have found in England...

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Well, I believe with you that it is a wonderful and mysterious riddle of metempsychosis that resolves itself in an author's mind when he calls up the different characters of his books, men and women, old and young, kings and beggars, heroes and heroines of love and passion. The man who writes novels has himself to live every character that he creates, has to penetrate into every sort of soul, young or old, male or female, strong or weak, vigorous or decadent. How shall he do this? By trying to peep through a mystic lens into the souls of all who surround him? I am afraid that this would always lead to mere guessing. If what you told me is indeed true, that I know what happens inside the souls of the many divergent characters that appear to live in my stories, let me reveal my secret to you and lift the veil. I believe that in each man's soul there is everything that is capable of existing in the human soul, that in each man's soul there is a universe. I believe each man's soul to contain an atom of every existing thing. In each man's soul there are noble things and evil things: there is generosity and heroism; and abject sins lie slumbering beneath these glories. In each man's soul there is everything that the good gods and the bad demons created for the purpose of their great war. If an author is aware of this, if he creates a hero out of the tiny particles of heroism which he may be able to discover in his mind or in his heart, if he creates a criminal out of the sins and base desires which stand suddenly revealed to him, he will, I think, write the best books that he has it in him to write. It remains a cruel self-analysis; but we have to pay a high price in this world of ours for everything that we achieve and are able to do. It is from the hotly coursing blood of his own soul that an author evokes the dream-children of his mind; and the outer world which he never penetrates will only help him to suggest an ambient sphere. Am I indeed revealing a mystery? I think not. It is a mystery known to every author; and it forms the fate of all of us writers of what we call novels.

I fear that I have lingered over-long in attempting to explain secrets clear as crystal. I am certain that you, dear Stephen

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McKenna, brilliant representative that you are of the latest development in the modern novel, fathom this secret most triumphantly, to judge by the admirable works that have already issued from your pen. Rather let me end by assuring you all how intensely I hope that the object of the Anglo-Batavian Society, which is to keep up the most sincere friendly relations between Great Britain and the Netherlands, will prosper in the days to come, days bound to shed glory upon your great country and upon every people that aims at the sublime ideal of justice shining throughout the world.

Mr. Chairman, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you, not only in my wife's name and my own, but in that of my fellow-authors in the Netherlands, for the great and generous compliment which you have paid us to-night; and I raise my glass to the lasting friendship - nay, more than friendship - the lasting affection that exists between our Netherlands and your noble empire of Great Britain.