Geel, Belgium

This is an amazing and heart-warming story.

For all those times we doubt if humanity could ever raise its head out of the mud of its selfishness, here is one stepping stone to dry land.

Story? It is reportage, of a small city in Belgium, Geel, that has opened its doors to the mentally ill… for centuries. Since the fifteenth century.
And the custom continues. 

Based on the legend of Irish king’s daughter, Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness, the then town took to her. It was here that she died/martyred by the madness of her father, and it’s here, to her shrine, that pilgrims come to pay homage.

The city has become a resource centre for psychiatric and psychology research; a hub of knowledge; an example of what can be achieved.

The writer is Derek Blythe, British journalist, and frequent contributor to The High Road to Culture…pages. For more on Derek Blythe, see:

https://flandersintheuk.be/en/in-the-spotlight-derek-blyth

Here is the link to, once again, the excellent High Road to Culture in Flanders and the Netherlands site.

Follow the links.

https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/mad-about-geel

And the street art in Geel is phenomenal. In the Netherlands also public art and street art is high standard, and plentiful.

The article also tells us:
One of the oldest reggae festivals in Europe, Reggae Geel was launched by a group of friends in 1978. After a modest beginning, it has evolved into a major summer festival that brings some of the best Jamaican music to Geel.

Yep, this article is a great read.
Highly recommended.

https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/mad-about-geel

Dominique de Groen

Ok, here’s one from my secret chamber of cherished writers: Dominique de Groen.

She is a Belgian poet. She is also another poet who featured in the High Road to Culture – Lowlands Friday Verses slot.

There is also a generous translation of her work, plus great introduction, on the Poetry International site:

https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/29417/Dominique-De-Groen/en/tile

From High Road to Culture – Lowlands
https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/dreaming-of-the-sacrificial-lamb-dream-1

Dominique De Groen (b. 1991, Jette) is a writer, artist and co-founder of Marktkorruptie, a label that publishes magazines and DIY booklets. Her debut collection Shop Girl (het balanseer, 2017), was nominated for the poetic debut prize Aan Zee and the LZWL trophy. In May 2019 her second collection, Sticky Drama, appeared.

Dreaming of the Sacrificial Lamb

Dream #1

No one wishes bad things on the sacrificial sheep
in itself
but everyone wants to see it shiver
stripped of its perfect fleece

see how its perfect belly is torn to shreds
quartered by market forces
endless lengths of entrails pulled out
on its glittering navel ring.

Interpret this nightmare for me? Here is the money I don’t have.
I put my cards on the table but they’re unreadable.
On my smooth palms no lifelines but barcodes.

In the dream a rainbow trout swam
downstream along the till roll towards me.
It looked at me with sad eyes and glittered hard and cold.
Between us endless stony deserts of interpretation.
The kiss changed us both for good.

Is this enough?
The sky is bare and without auspices.
The innards black and without symbols.
The sacrificial sheep bleeds dry, alone on the chopping block.
Cold, hard blood trickles down the centuries. I shiver.

Against the generations of empty men I have my weapons.
The dry blood poisoned with copper.
No life possible here. But not there either. So.

Pull the plug out of the sacrificial sheep and the universe will
bleed dry, as above
so below.

No, this dream is too insubstantial
to be interpreted.
It is an impenetrable thing
that has nestled in me.
Leech that sucks the sickness from me
to which I cling.

The colour drains from the trout.
It becomes ghastly and white.
Resists the evil eye of my analytical mind.
The awful blondness of the pop princess.
Drag her by the navel ring to the chopping block
but in her realm the moon never sets.

When the water of the world was on fire
and all animals were boiled alive
and all suns rose at once

lonely whale in grey channels of this hinterland
a premonition of what was to come…

Spirals of life thinner and thinner.
Beings that warm each other till the end of time.
Till we too reach melting point.

In me, a soft lamb, evil spirits move
of toxins and trans fats
detox an expensive exorcism
I am draining
under a sky without birds
filled with entrail without microbes.

Demonology of a purified body.
The lamb primed with laxatives.
The anus raw and inflamed.
On the eve of the sacrifice.

And the animals burn in the night sky
like sulky supernovas
till we all become liquid
in their embrace.

Once again, Tom Christaens, sub-editor of High Roads to Culture, has given permission to reproduce Dominique de Groens’ Friday Verses. Translation by Paul Vincent.

See also her own page:

https://www.versopolis-poetry.com/poet/313/dominique-de-groen

And, on YouTube:

I would love a copy of Shop Girls.

Jens Meijen

ON Friday 8th April, the ‘High Road to Culture – The Low Countries‘ site published in their Friday Verses slot, a poem by the Belgian poet Jens Meijen.

Jens Meijen is almost unknown in the English-speaking world, which is a great shame.
His poem Luxe/Luxury took me by surprise with its reach, its implications, and its assured style. And also by its humour.
Translated by Paul Vincent, I have now gained permission to share it here, and have also included their biographical support details.

www.the-low-countries.com

This week’s Friday Verses are written by Jens Meijen. We translated Luxe (Luxury). This poem first appeared in Dutch in Het Liegend Konijn, a magazine for contemporary Dutch-language poetry.

Jens Meijen (Beringen, b. 1996) holds Master’s degrees in Literature and European Studies and works as an assistant and postgraduate researcher in political science at the Catholic University of Leuven. His first poetry collection, Xenomorf, was published by De Bezige Bij in 2019, and in 2020 won the C. Buddingh’ Prize for the best debut in Dutch. His first novel, De Lichtjaren (The light Years, De Bezige Bij), will appear in August 2021. Besides pursuing his creative writing, he works as a journalist and literary reviewer for Humo, a freelance translator, and member of the central editorial committee of the literary magazine Dietse Warande en Belfort. He has published previously in literary periodicals such as De Revisor, Kluger Hans, deFusie, Hard//hoofd and Deus Ex Machina. In 2016 he was elected as the first young Belgian National Poet.

Luxury

the customer knows that the paris fashion store where the customer
buys clothes channels all its income
into tax havens: where the palm trees are green with
dollars
the sun a lump of gold, the moon a lump of gold, the nipples
little lumps of gold
the birds long opulent tails
waving in the wind
and tax-deductible balance-sheet items are unloaded
onto the windscreen of an azure Maserati

the customer puckers its lips
diverts the air currents to its mouth,
cash flows, tangling roots
the riparian motions
that flow along the seabeds of the mouth

the customer complains about the careless stitching on the hem
of the cut-price trousers
and hence complains about the lax child labourer who sewed it
out of shame the customer eats the chemical granules that
are supposed to remove damp from the trousers and so
unexpectedly finds damp after all in the crotch

the corporation selling clothes channels
the streets rot underfoot
as if the customer steps in hot chocolate
the cut-price moccasins get stuck
in the chocolate
now the customer has to continue barefoot
and travel along mountain trails, meandering
paths, bays overlooking the ocean
the sun squeezed under its armpits
the moon wrapped in a cloth and held close
like a baby

suckling, stroking, a sweet rough skull
and so on the way to the edge of the world
to undreamt-of secrets, hidden under blushing bushes
looking for jewels, salty shells with ribbed rims
the world a Rubik’s cube
the customer forgets it is a customer
and thinks a final thought: I could serve as
an ash tray-holder make a career of it 
build a life out of it would be cool
so fucking cool

Enjoy reading.

Further information:

https://www.jensmeijen.be

LOUIS PAUL BOON

I’m always coming in on things half way through.

First time I read The Lord of the Rings my local library only had The Twin Towers at the time. I started there (strangely, the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring read rather flat after that). But there have been many examples of this.

Take this one: the first of Louis Paul Boon’s major books is Chapel Road. I started with Summer in Termuren, the follow-up. And, strangely, despite all the voices saying, No, Chapel Road is the best! I prefer Summer in Termuren.

His other books in translation are: My Little War, Dalkey Archive, 2010; Minuet, a 1979 translation, is difficult to get hold of.

Louis Paul Boon.
Famous Belgian writer? Tipped for Nobel Prize for Chapel Road?
Yes, everyone has heard of Hugo Claus, George Simenon, Maurice Maeterlinck, of Felix Timmermans, even Camille Lemmonier, Margueritte Yourcenar.

Born in Aalst, near Brussels, 1912. Died 1979.
Maybe you don’t know of him because he is usually classed as a Flemish writer. Is that it?
The curse of categories.
His two major novels are written in Flemish, with his local, regional dialect. His online interview has, he warns the interviewer, Flemish, and with the regional words , phrasings, accents.

This makes translation, let’s say, difficult rather than impossible.

The Dalkey Archive publishes both books in excellent translations.

What is it about Louis Paul Boon?
He’s a modernist. That dates him now. But modernism is still so refreshing to read.
He looked to the American pioneers (John Dos Passos in particular) – he wrote regular newspaper columns exploring among other topics the new thinking, new ideas, new writing.

Chapel Road opens with several of the main inhabitants of this tiny town of the two mills, meeting up with the writer Boon/Boontje and discussing how a book might be written at that time. We have not only the setting of the intellectual and cultural environment of the book, but of the establishment of characters, their relations, backgrounds, and vested interests in the book. We also have discussion of fiction theory, cultural theory, writing theory – and also the rejection of most of this for the sake of ‘the book’.

The publication date was 1953.
Time in the novels can be anything but linear. The books’ storylines are anything but linear: they move in segments, interspersing with Ondine’s story.
Boon was a member of the community of the growing town so was naturally a character in the book.

The discussions among characters about the progress of the book, among general and particular reflections on life in the little town, in the country, the nation, carry on throughout the books.
The main character is little Ondine, along with her poor brother Valeer. This is the anchor. In Summer in Termuren it becomes Ondine and Oscar/Oscarke, the sculptor she married.

The two mills are owned by one a Catholic family, the other a Protestant. Behind the scenes of this obvious cultural, historical  fissure and dichotomy, the sons of the mill owners are best of friends. They are moneyed, spoilt and can get away with anything.
And Ondine wants in.
We have all felt at some time in our growing up we don’t belong with this family we are in. This is what horror stories and mysteries feed from. ‘What if I really belong to…?’ And what if you take it too far in your desperate struggle to climb out of the unremitting poverty the political and social world concretes you into?

Against this background we see the birth and growth of the socialist ideal; and its death, as war reconfigured class and privilege. Then its rebirth after the war. Which war? Both wars are here, cutting off the new green shoots each time. If you look for jeopardy to spur the action in the novel, look to history and its vicious trampling of hopes.

Boon interweaves with the movement of Chapel Road the story of Reynard the Fox,  which was set in the same vicinity.
Reynard’s is a hard tale, it has its own cruelty and amorality: the cruelty is difficult to take at times; it is not the cruelty of a child, nor the beast, but a knowing human cruelty.

How about the cruelty of the mill owners? One takes all his mill-workers to church on the town’s saint’s day. Ah, but then they have to work into the night to make up the time.
He employs child labour below the legal age. Ah, but, he says when an inspector comes across one, They are so keen to work here they sneak out of school.
Why is he believed? Why is the government minister who molests young girls (the ‘pepperpot’) believed when he protests innocence?
Because of wealth, position.

Then there are characters who traverse this yawning gap between the haves and the never-will-haves, people like the painter Tippetotje. She lives later with her Baron in Brussels, but cannot get the town of two mills out of her system.

There is another tantalising cover to Summer in Termuren that is almost identical to the one above. Almost, because the other cover contains a human figure to the left of the pole.

One classic, superb, episode for me is in Summer in Termuren. Boontje was returning by train from giving a reading of his work-in-progress to a local group. A fellow traveller was a scientist who has just been reading his paper. They conversed, the train jerked. And Boontje’s papers scattered everywhere. The following segments of the book has his main characters all swapped around, acting and speaking as each other. That takes a big risk in establishing characters. But it works.

So… what happened about the rumoured Nobel Prize?
It is rumoured the judges heard the rumour of his ‘other’ interests. There still are copious and carefully catalogued books in boxes he collected over the years in his home museum… of naked women.

It spills into his books a little: the growing up of Ondine; but especially Oscarke’s interest in the daughter of the monumental mason he worked for in Brussels. What happened to her? He went back after the war; she had married a German Officer (Spoiler Alert!).

When you mean to depict all life, you cannot pick and choose.
Take the socialist councillor, full of hope and striving and struggle for a better future – and later, deep in drink, when he found his party had been dipping into party funds for their own benefit (Spoiler Alert!).

What was it Boon said? Something like, ‘I believe in socialism; I just don’t think people are capable of it.’

And now Aalst is known for an active group of alt-Right.
Yup, people.

Louis Paul Boon, 1912 – 1979