Poetry
Wiekslag om de kim
Not translated into English
Karel van de Woestijne · 1928
Opening lines
Wanneer, geteekend met de onloochenbaarste merken,
hoe lastig nog zijn leên van lijdelijken groei,
’t argwanig kind den eersten drift in zich voelt werken
en schaduw werpen op zijn plots-beschaamd gestoei; […]
When, marked with the most undeniable signs,
however awkward still his limbs of passive growth,
the suspicious child feels the first urge stir in him
and cast a shadow on his suddenly shamefaced play; […]
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from dbnl.org
Synopsis
A triptych of collections preceded by a long poem, Het menschelijk brood, in which an adolescent becomes a man through a hunger of body and mind. The first part, De modderen man (1920), is according to the author the sensual part, “an end and a settling of accounts”. The second, God aan zee (1926), opened by a baptism and closed by the funeral of a beggar, takes a more mystical turn: by the sea, the soul finds God. The third, Het berg-meer (1928), opens on the man born blind. Each book, the author said, starts from sensuality and rises towards the deliverance of the self.
Context
The first sketches of this great composition date from November 1911, and its three parts appeared separately in 1920, 1926 and 1928. Leo Jansen, who produced the scholarly edition in 1996, writes that the author regarded it as his masterwork. The overall title comes from a notebook of 1927, “Titre général de la trilogie : Wiekslag om de kim”, and was made public only in June 1942, when the Brussels publisher Manteau brought the three collections together for the first time in one volume, with the introductory poem at the head. Stols published another edition in The Hague the following year.
Who it is for
Three collections and a long prologue in Dutch, of a verbal art that critics call baroque; no French or English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
The spiritual triptych regarded as the summit of its author's poetry, gathered into a single volume thirteen years after his death.