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| Photos by Jane Draycott |
The city was exactly where I wanted to be - I was on the track of Dutch poet Martinus Nijhoff's mysterious 1934 poem Awater, whose narrator tails his neighbour – Awater – through the night streets, pursuing him like a spy from location to location, scene to scene, ending at the station square where a Salvationist addresses the crowd and the Orient Express waits to depart:
Her clanking girdle's forged from links of iron.
She sings, her knees inch up in clouds of steam.
She moves and leaves at the appointed time.
Described by Brodsky as 'the future of poetry', Nijhoff's allusive 300-line narrative is the great Dutch modernist poem. I hadn't encountered it until the poet Thomas Möhlmann, tireless torch-bearer for Netherlands poetry, included David Colmer's excellent new translation in his 2010 Anvil edition of the poem.
The poem's narrator deliberately keeps his distance from his target:
….tonight I'll be Awater's shadowBut who in Nijhoff's imagination was Awater? The Dutch writer Erik de Visser emailed me, 'You will never be able to grasp – I mean "catch" – him but that's the poem's haunting purpose. Awater is great companionship, is all about travelling instead of arriving.'
and bide my time until I have his measure...
I've forged that plan, but here, before the steps,
I hesitate...
In his 1935 lecture 'Poetry in a Period of Crisis' Nijhoff explained 'Awater was to be an arbitrary individual with whom I had no personal ties... he was to remain abstraction and multitude. At any cost I had to avoid coming into contact with him.' Academics, literary historians, poets and translators have been on Awater's trail ever since. The distinguished Nijhoff scholar and poet Professor Wiljan van den Akker, Dean of Humanities at Utrecht University, had his bags packed ready to go on summer leave when I visited, but still generously found time to talk. He suggested that Awater ('a respectable gentleman, clean-shaven, working at an office; who is also known to be a great artist...') might even be a figure for Eliot himself. On the terrace of Amsterdam's new EYE building later, I was treated to a memorable evening by Thomas Möhlmann in the company of poet Robert Anker, who has written his own response to Awater in his episodic poem, 'Goede Manieren' ('Good Manners'). In Utrecht the literary historian Niels Bokhove kindly gave up a long morning to be my guide through the streets where Nijhoff lived during the Awater years, illuminating for me some of the detailed literary detective work he has done in his comprehensive book Awaters Spoor.
Awaters Spoor: Awater's Track. We're all on his track it seems. So who are the figures writers chase down corridors like a receding lantern that stops and starts, keeping our distance, piggy-backing on their power and energy? Who is that person who when you first sit down to write you discover already at the scene, waiting for you?
All quotes from the poem are from David Colmer's tremendous 2010 translation, published by Anvil (ed. Thomas Möhlmann). Also included in that edition is Professor Wijan van den Akker's essay 'Martinus Nijhoff's Awater as a Dutch Contribution to Modernism' (2010) and notes from Nijhoff's 1935 lecture given at Enschede Folk University (transl. James Homes).
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| Author photo by Jemimah Kuhfeld |
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