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Novels and poetry

May 31, 2010
In the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer a list was recently published of the twenty-one most important novels of the twenty-first century. It included books by Philip Roth, Arnon Grunberg, Sandro Veronesi, Dave Eggers and Marlene van Niekerk, to mention a few authors who, according to the literary critics, authors and publishers, are representative of 21st-century literature so far. Among this selection of novels, might there be a few that will leave their mark on other literary genres in the near future? Or which have perhaps already done so?
The question of whether novels, and above all classics, have had an influence on poetry is the main theme of the festival programme on Monday evening. This sounds like a straightforward question, and yet the relation between the two genres is more complex than would appear at first sight.

“On other days, bad days, he wonders whether emotions as monotonous as his will ever fuel great poetry. The musical impulse within him, once so strong, has already waned. Is he now in the process of losing the poetic impulse? Will he be driven from poetry to prose? Is that what prose secretly is; the second-best choice, the resort of failing creative spirits?” The protagonist of Youth torments himself with these questions. In this 21st-century novel by the South African author J.M. Coetzee – a noticeable absentee in the list mentioned above – a young man is speaking who wants to become a poet.

The Dutch word for ‘novel’ is roman. The word has more than one meaning, however. The Van Dale Dutch dictionary states as its first definition, “Medieval epic poem telling of the adventures of knights”. In many of these chivalric romances, or rhyming narratives, a major role was set aside for the emperor Charlemagne. Even though only a few fragments of it have survived, the Roelandslied, a Dutch version of the French Chanson de Roland, remains well known.

In the eighteenth century, the foundations were laid for what is seen today as the novel, with the epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson. This successful form was imitated in the Netherlands in Sara Burgerhart, a novel by the women authors Elisabeth Wolff and Aagje Deken. A century later, with Charles Dickens’s novels, which appeared in instalments, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in Russia, and the works of writers such as Stendhal and Balzac in France, the novel came to full maturity. Attention was paid to character development and the plot and tension of the narrative. Humour was also an ingredient. Many novels were also used to expose social abuses. The best-known Dutch example is Multatuli’s Max Havelaar.

The route taken by the novel was able to remain separate from that of poetry for long before the two genres began to appear somewhat estranged from each other. If truth to reality continued to be an important criterion for fiction, in poetry more and more attempts were made to achieve a high degree of autonomy.

New forms of art such as photography, with its still images, and film, with its editing techniques, had a great influence on innovative poets such as Paul van Ostaijen. The same was true of the improvisational character of the new music, namely jazz. There was plenty of interaction between poets and artists in movements such as Dada, while the ‘Fifties’ poets in Holland had strong ties with the Cobra group of painters.

Even so, the great novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have definitely left their mark on poetry, just as important poems had an impact on fiction. Poetry International asked all the poets performing in the 2010 festival which novels were most influential for their work. This too produced an interesting list, including many of the great classics – for instance Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Gustave Flaubert with Madame Bovary, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf and Robert Musil.

Strikingly enough, Pedro Páramo, a novel by the Mexican author Juan Rulfo, was named twice. According to Carlos López Degregori of Peru, one of the poets influenced by this novel, Pedro Páramo can be read as a poem in prose as well as a novel, due to the fragmented character of the text and its rejection of linear time. The precise use of language, the rhythmic structures, the mixture of real and imaginary worlds, and, above all, the highly charged atmosphere of fantasy reinforced that idea. López Degregori’s fascination with Rulfo, but also with authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Mario Vagas Llosa and Julio Cortázar, has certainly had its impact on his own poems, revealing itself in the narrative structures and scenario-like character of his work.

López Degregori is not alone in this. While the distinction between novels and poems may in many cases be totally obvious, writers frequently cross the borders of their genres. The modern novel in verse is a good means for exploring one’s personal history, as well as that of one’s native land and of the world as a whole. In Omeros by Derek Walcott, for example, the colonial past of the Caribbean is linked with the modern everyday life on these islands by way of the classical epic poet Homer. Or take History, the Home Movie by Craig Raine, who tells the history of the past century with reference to the experiences of an English family and a Russian one. Conversely, the prose poem in Dutch poetry has acquired an entirely new significance due to the work of the poet Alfred Schaffer.

The most recent novel on the list of Poetry International festival poets dates from 1997. It is The God of Small Things by the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy; it is perhaps a bit too early to decide what books will be the ‘classics’ of the twenty-first century or how much influence they will exert. And yet some such books have already indirectly left a mark. The Danish poet, Ursula Andkjaer Olsen, who is also one of the performers in Rotterdam, has an interesting take on this. “It often happens behind my back. When I was working on my book, Beauty Hangs in the Trees, I wasn’t thinking about Beckett at all and it was a good three years since I had last read him. But, especially in the tone of the book, Beckett’s influence is plain to see. So the influence has been brewing a long time.” About the influence of novels on poetry, and vice-versa, the last word has not yet been spoken. This text was written on the occasion of the 41st Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, in relation to the festival event on Monday 14 June at 20.00 hrs:

All in one breath: The influence of prose on poetry (NL/EN)

Kamran Mir Hazar (Afghanistan) and Carlos López Degregori (Peru) talk about their favorite novel Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo and elaborate on the ways this lyrical novel influenced their work. Ursula Andkjaer Olsen (Denmark) and Christian Hawkey (USA) chose Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett as their favorite trilogy. Both poets recount their fascination with these works and read fragments from The Unnamable as well as from their own poetry inspired by Beckett.

For more information about the festival, visit www.poetry.nl.
© Janita Monna
Translator: Donald Gardner
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