Deshima, n° 6
De Anna Maria van Schurman à Rozalie Hirs
Anna Maria van Schurman
Le dernier numéro de Deshima, revue d’histoire globale des pays du Nord, est largement consacré aux pays scandinaves à travers des dossiers portant sur le développement durable dans l’architecture et l’urbanisme et sur la littérature jeunesse. La rubrique « Savants mélange » invite ensuite le lecteur en Islande dans les pas de Xavier Marmier, à Paris dans ceux de Hans Christian Andersen et en Finlande dans l’œuvre de la peintre Helene Schjerflbeck.
Les Pays-Bas ne sont toutefois pas oubliés : une visite, en 1652, de la Hollande savante, entre autres chez Anna Maria van Schurman, avec le grand érudit français Pierre-Daniel Huet, un article charnière dans la carrière de Johan Huizinga ainsi qu’un choix de poèmes de Vasalis et de la compositrice Rozalie Hirs*.
SOMMAIRE
Thomas Beaufils & Thomas Mohnike : Préface
Modèle nordique et développement durable
Aurélie Choné & Philippe Hamman : Faut-il rendre la ville invisible ? Retours sur le « modèle nordique » d’urbanisme durable
Philippe Hamman : Les ex- périences de « villes durables » nordiques en Europe. Visibilité et invisibilité d’un « modèle » d’action publique
Karine Dupré : Ville ou quartier durable en Fin- lande. Entre modèle et fantasme
Karen Hoffmann-Schickel : Le village du Père Noël de Rovaniemi : imaginaires du Nord, syncrétisme culturel et construction éco-touristique
Giacomo Bottà : Sustainable Helsinki as a Reality and as a Cultural Representation
Klas Sandell : Friluftsliv et allemansrätt : « vie au grand air » et droit universel d’accès à la nature en Suède : Identité, démocratie et inspiration éco-politique (trad. Emmanuel Curtil)
Martin Kylhammar : Écologie et politique ? Et si l’on donnait la parole aux écrivains... (trad. Mélanie Hatava & Mélanie Louchard, révisée par Sylvain Briens)
L’identité en question(s) dans la littérature de jeunesse scandinave
Bente Christensen : L’argent et la vie : la littérature pour jeunes filles dans la Norvège de l’entre-deux-guerres
Lena Kåreland : Les différents visages du pouvoir – classe, genre et sexualité. La littérature suédoise pour la jeu- nesse, 1985-2010
Björn Sundmark : Guer- riers égarés : Les Vikings dans la littérature de jeunesse
Catherine Renaud : Entre tradition, modernité et mondialisation, l’identité culturelle dans le livre pour la jeunesse danois contemporain
Svante Lindberg : Performativité et ap- partenance samis et amérindiennes dans le roman pour la jeunesse. Ann-Hélen Laestadius (Suède) et Michel Noël (Québec)
Annelie Jarl Ireman : La nouvelle Suède vue de l’intérieur. Jeunes en quête d’identité
Savants mélanges
Pierre-Daniel Huet
Guillaume Ducœur : Pierre-Daniel Huet et la Hollande : voyage, éru- dition et éditions
Gaëlle Reneteaud : Évo- lution de la représentation de l’Islande et des Is- landais en France, l’apport du philologue et voyageur Xavier Marmier au XIXe siècle
Kristina Junge Jørgensen : Hans Christian Andersen à Paris
Anne-Estelle Leguy : Les visages d’Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) – les traits contrastés d’une légende
Johan Huizinga : De l’oiseau Charadrius (trad. Thomas Beaufils, Sébastien Pettoello, Guillaume Ducœur & Martine Breuillot)
Arts et lettres des pays du Nord
Rozalie Hirs : Poèmes (trad. Kim Andringa & Daniel Cunin)
M. Vasalis : Poèmes (trad. Daniel Cunin & Kiki Coumans)
Pour se procurer le numéro (392 p., 15 euros) : revue Deshima
* Les 10 poèmes de Rozalie Hirs publiés dans ce numéro sont extraits de Geluks- brenger (2008). Nous proposons ci-dessous un poème en néerlan- dais et sa version an- glaise tels qu’ils figurent dans le récent recueil ge sta mel de werken (Amsterdam, Querido, 2012) : il s’agit du premier volet d’une série qui explore les règles intrinsèques du néerlandais et de l’anglais – par le moyen de structures syntaxiques – à partir de groupes lexicaux présents dans le poème [0].
het wil en wil je
[0]
het wil en wil je tegen die boom daar
zien van hoe je stam bloeit in parels
vochtigst zaadbad weg te drinken grasland
in zeven sloten langs het tafelblad tegelijk
onze handen elkaar te grazen trapgat
nemen roekeloos waar met ons het roer om
en om zonder een lettergreep knoppen
betasten de jij en jij die wij bloot in het verwogen
verhemelte weg te gaan aangroeien
tot duizend sterren wegschietende
hemelen er binnenin wegen
tegen een huidrots van water?
long at present longing
[0]
it wants and will you against that tree there
look away from your stem blossoming pearls
wettest bath of seeds drink pastures
seven streams along the tabletop at once
meadowing our hands into a daredevil stairwell
turn the helm to where with us around and around
without a syllable feel buds uncovering
the you and you of us stirred bare in the palate
go to grow away into a thousand stars
expulsion of heavens inside as to weigh
against the skinrock of water?
deux reproductions du tableau de Helene Schjerfbeck, Park Alley, 1882-1884 (détails), Ostrobothnian Museum, Collection Karl Hedman (Pohjanmaan Museo) (©: Vaasa, Ostrobothnian Museum, Collection Karl Hedman).
The article explores how space is represented in Hans Christian Andersen’s I Spanien (1863). The travelog begins at the French border and continues through Spain via Gibraltar, down to Morocco, and from there back to Spain via another route. It is characterized by precise observations, numerous poems, and passages of lyrical prose. The descriptions of architecture and infrastructures, landscapes and cities are enriched with inter-textual references, historical background information, and the emotions of the first-person narrator. This creates a complex image of the spaces described, which is analyzed with the help of David Harvey’s Marxist cultural geography and Edward Said’s postcolonial theory. The emphasis of this inquiry is on the relationship between Denmark, Spain, and Africa in the topography of I Spanien. The article demonstrates how I Spanien establishes a hybrid geography of mutual relations and thus opens a space for a different understanding of the relationship between Europe and Africa than was common in the nineteenth century.
In postcolonial studies, the subversion of binary ways of thinking is regarded as a useful device for resistance. One of the strategies used for overcoming binaries is “mimicry”, which means that the colonized imitate their colonizers in order to communicate on the same level. At the same time, imitation can never be just a copy; it will always change the original. This hypothesis is examined using two literary texts from Scandinavia: Peter Høeg’s Rejse ind i et mørkt hjerte (1990) and Verner von Heidenstam’s Endymion (1889). Both texts connect the colonial situation with the subversion of gender differences. Høeg meets our expectations, since in his text the breakdown of the gender paradigm causes the deconstruction of the domination of colonial power, whereas the analysis leads us to the surprising result in Heidenstam’s text that the subversion of gender differences stabilizes the colonial difference.
Starting in 1830, the Dutch were obliged to reinforce their troops in the East Indies (now Indonesia) to extend their colonial domination. Because of the shortage of European soldiers, the Dutch turned to the Gold Coast in West Africa. As of 1637, they were in possession of Elmina, the commercial port of the Ashanti kingdom, from which tens of thousands of slaves were shipped to Brazil, Curacao, Surinam and other places to work on plantations. But the Dutch had little success recruiting Ashanti volunteers. Only 3,000 men left for Java between 1831 and 1872. These Belanda Hitam (Black Dutch) participated in military campaigns in Borneo, Bali, and Sumatra. They were considered to be “insolent Negroes,” unable to adapt to colonial society. And yet they eventually became completely integrated, and most of them stayed in Java and started families. To counterbalance their story of becoming Black Dutch citizens in the East Indies, I evoke the extraordinary adventure of two Ashanti princes, Kwasi and Kwame, who were sent to Holland to obtain a Dutch education and become Black Dutch citizens by striking the opposite path in a story related by Arthur Japin in his beautiful novel The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi.
Although Frieda von Bülow and Karen Blixen lived in different times, they shared a strange community of fate. Both of them staged their lives in East Africa in novels: Bülow in Im Lande der Verheißung (1899) and Blixen in Out of Africa / Den afrikanske Farm (1937). The two writers share a colonial attitude and treat Africa in similar ways. They confess their adoration for African nature and succumb to the spell of exoticism when encountering a continent of charming beauty, all the while reaffirming their attachment to their worlds of origin by relying on the image of an immense African farm overseen by a woman with a firm hand. In the two novels, a white, European aristocratic woman is depicted as exercising authority over the indigenous population, thus enacting a kind of “feudal colonial feminism” as a condition for her own liberty and liberation. The African farm thus becomes a symbol of a utopian social project that opens up a field of unlimited possibilities, combinations, hybridizations, and reconstructions, erasing borders of time and space as well as those of identity.
This essay demonstrates the analytical potential of the motif of hunger in Knut Hamsun’s Sult (Hunger) (1890) and J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983). Sult was published in Norway at the end the nineteenth century and Life & Times of Michael K in South Africa almost one hundred years later. In spite of these different historical and geographical backgrounds, the motif of hunger in both texts reveals similar questions. They explore strategies working against the modern disciplining of the body. This article presents a short history of hunger and analyzes the motif of hunger in the texts from a comparative perspective. It focuses on the semantics of the descriptions of hunger, on the perception of time, and on forms of control that are contrasted with the protagonists’ behaviour, revealing a close relation between hunger and the modern bio-political practices reflected in the texts.
Nordahl Grieg (1902-1943) was a Norwegian traveller, journalist, poet, and a writer. In the 1930s, he became a communist and supported the USSR unconditionally. In interviews and features in the press, he approved of the Moscow trials (staged by Stalin against former Bolsheviks) and later the German-Soviet pact. But when the German army attacked his own country in April 1940, he immediately volunteered to defend it and became an ardent Norwegian patriot. In the novel Ung må verden ennu være (1938) (The World Must Still Be Young), Grieg describes the USSR, the trials, and the Spanish Civil War. He later stated that the novel was intended to justify soviet policy, including its more questionable sides. But when reading this work today, it appears rather to depict a dismal picture of soviet society. This article is an attempt to read Ung må verden ennu være from this perspective of what we know about its author. Grieg’s novel thus appears as a broad description of Europe in the 1930s, where the storm of major catastrophes is brewing.
In the Dutch Golden Age, the production of winter scenes in paintings reached a climax. In focusing on these representations of winter and coldness, one might wonder whether the paintings correlated with the actual weather. If so, do the paintings genuinely show the weather at the time they were painted? In this article, I discuss that, because the winter scenes became exceedingly appreciated by a buying public, painters began to produce these paintings without taking the actual weather into account. Eventually, they painted winter scènes de genre and developed a typology of images for these winter scenes. The unusual, rough coldness of the Little Ice Age winters actually taking place outside generally disappeared from the paintings, and joyful winter scenes were preferred.
Le romancier Jean de La Va- rende a effectué plusieurs sé- jours aux Pays-Bas. L’article reproduit ci-dessous (publié dans Deshima, n° 2, 2008, p. 267-278) part sur les traces de l’écrivain. Il s’agit d’une première étape qu’il conviendrait de compléter par un survol du roman 
Écrivain méconnu aujour- d’hui en France, 
in den vreemde (2ème édition revue et augmentée, Leyde, 2008). Aux lecteurs n’ayant pas accès à la langue néerlandaise, on conseillera la lecture du roman « indonésien » La Force des ténèbres (De stille kracht, 1900), dans la traduction de 
The present article strives to investigate the importance of Couperus’ Paris journey for his work and aesthetics, taking one of his masterpieces, Metamor- phosis, as its focal point. The analysis shows the interaction of life and literary work, sug- gesting traces of literary works and persons that may have ins- pired and influenced the author.
This article offers an insight into the French readings of Louis Couperus which left their marks on his work. He is at first attracted by art for art’s sake, but Zola opens his eyes to realism. His personal natu- ralism is less theoretical and more psychological than Zola’s, which makes him a fellow of Bourget. His interest for the life of the soul reveals the influence of Maeterlinck. In his historical novels, Cou- perus sets greater value than Flaubert or Lombard in the psychology of his protagonists. His “king’s novels”, like the one by Lemaître, show us a king in doubt about monarchy, but he insists on the human rather than the political dimension. Couperus was an inspired reader, taking from his French masters the elements that allowed him to let his personal voice as a writer be heard.
The article explores the im- portance of the city of Nice for the life and oeuvre of Louis Couperus. In June 1899, Louis Couperus (who had the idea for some time to leave the Nether- lands for good) and his wife stayed for the first time in Nice merely by chance, as they came here to wait for the ship that would take them to Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. In the work of Couperus, Nice appears at first as a place of aristocratic cosmo- politism, but than even and foremost as a place of sensuality and liberty – as opposed to the North, particularly The Hague, which is described as op- pressing and frigid. The Hague represents traditions and conventions, Nice the emancipation from tradition; the North is melancholic, the South enthusiastic. Nice becomes feminized; a sultana gleaming of purity and whiteness.
In the winter of 1920, Louis Couperus made a trip of six months to Algeria. His im- pressions were published in a book in 1921, after being serialized in a Dutch weekly. At the beginning, Couperus was overwhelmed by the “Oriental dream”, which he thought he met everywhere. Later, however, his enthusiasm was tempered. In her article, José Buschman reveals what Couperus must have witnessed in Northern Africa, but did not describe. Her explanation for this reticence draws upon new psychological insights in Couperus’ life and art.
Using several Dutch articles and an unpublished Paris III
Charley Toorop (1891
This pages form extracts of interviews that 
Paul Gadenne, the author of La Plage de Scheveningen, was born in French Flanders. This region, however is not predominant in his oeuvre. The article seeks to analyze to what extend the author was marked by it, and asks, what place he gives in his work to Flanders in general. It seems that the region of his childhood is too near to him; he could not manipulate the landscape as he wanted. Flanders is an element of his imaginative substratum that re-emerges every now and then, often when an intense moment of innocence, purity, happiness illuminates the soul of a character.
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