BeaIisn as a Conic Mode Lov-LiJe Fainling Seen lIvougI Bvedevo's Ees

AulIov|s) SvelIana AIpevs

Souvce SinioIus NelIevIands QuavlevI Jov lIe Hislov oJ Avl, VoI. 8, No. 3 |1975 - 1976),
pp. 115-144
FuIIisIed I SlicIling voov NedevIandse KunslIisloviscIe FuIIicalies
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I15
Realism as a comic mode:
low-life
painting
seen
through
Bredero's
eyes*
Svetlana
Alpers
It is notorious that there is no
contemporary theory
to
explain
what the
great
northern
I7th-century genre
painters
were
up
to in their art. Fromentin's
passionate
evocation of the oneness of Dutch art and
life,
the
notion that instead of
talking
or even
thinking
about
what he was
doing
the Dutch artist
simply
set himself
the task of
describing
all of the world around
him,
dies
hard. Its
point
would seem to be that Dutch artists did
not make
art, they
rendered life. One of the
many
problems
with this
conception
is the
selectivity
the
Dutch artist exercised. In
art,
for
example, peasants
celebrate with
drinking, fighting
and
making
love
(and
there are
separate
works devoted to each
activity
and
combinations
thereof),
labor in the context of seasonal
landscape representations,
or
simply provide staffage
for
landscape
or interior scenes of their
dwellings.
With
very
few
exceptions,
the actual
experience
of the
peas-
ant or the
poor
which we find later in Courbet's Stone-
breakers or van
Gogh's
Potato eaters is
impossible
in the
I7th
century
when in
art,
at
least,
such
people
neither
suffer normal human ills nor die natural deaths. The
problem
we face in
interpreting I7th-century
northern
*
I want to thank the
John
Simon
Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation
whose
support during I972-73
enabled me to do the research for and
write this article.
My
thanks also
go
to
Jerrold
Lanes who as editor
of the Art
Quarterly
made several
helpful suggestions
about the article
which he
planned
to
publish
in that
temporarily (I hope) suspended
publication.
I T.J.
Clark in his fine revisionist
study
of
Courbet, Image of
the
people:
Gustave Courbet and the 1848 revolution, Greenwich,
Connec-
ticut
1973, implies
that the realist bias and manifestoes of the
mid-I9th
century,
such as we
find,
for
example,
in the
writing
of
Champfleury,
did not do
justice
to the kind of social realities dealt with
by
Courbet
in his works.
Nevertheless,
the issue of realism was a matter of dis-
cussion at the time. See Linda
Nochlin, Realism,
Harmondsworth &
Baltimore
I97I,
for the best
survey
of
19th-century
texts on realism
in
art,
which she summarizes as
presenting
a
"program
in contem-
poraneity" (p. 28).
2 Far from
being unique,
this situation in the north of
Europe
ex-
actly parallels
that in the south
where,
as has been
pointed
out
before,
realism is no different
really
from the
problem
we face
in
understanding
the
admittedly
less
frequent examples
of such realism in
Italian,
French or
Spanish
art of the
time. The
peasant
families of the Le
Nains,
or the so-
called
Egg-cooker
of
Velazquez,
like Ter
Brugghen's
musicians or Brouwer's
fighting peasants,
remain ad-
mired and
yet puzzling
works: it is hard to
equate
the
artistic
impressiveness
of such
images
with the
goal
of
simply imitating
nature.
The basic
problem,
of
course,
is that
I7th-century
"realists," unlike those of the
Igth century,
drew
up
no
program
for their realism.' All the theoretical
writing
of the
period,
from let us
say
Karel van Mander to
Jan
de
Bisschop,
is
broadly
classicistic in its
assumptions,
for this was the
only vocabulary
available for
instructing
painters
and
describing
their
paintings.2
The verbal
formula that comes closest to
describing
the obvious
concerns of Dutch and Flemish
paintings
is "naer het
leven"
(from life),
the
phrase
used sometimes
by
the
artists themselves and
by
theorists such as van Mander
to
designate
those works drawn
directly
after nature.3
But while Fromentin saw "naer het leven" as the
there is a
striking falling-off
of theoretical
publications
on art in the
first half of the
i7th century, starting
at the time of what we
might
call
the "return to nature" of Annibale Carracci and
Caravaggio. My point
is that there was no available
vocabulary
either in the north or the south
for
putting
forth the
assumptions
of the
essentially
imitative
aspects
of
a
pictorial
art. In
retrospect,
as I
hope
to show in this
article,
contem-
porary literary theory
and
practice
can help us fill in this verbal
gap.
3
While the evidence offered
by
draftsmen's notations and written
accounts demonstrated that
portraits
and
landscapes
were often done
"naer het
leven,"
there is a
problem
as to who did the first
drawings
after activities of
daily
life.
E.K.J. Reznicek,
Die
Zeichnungen
von
Hendrik
Goltzius,
vol.
I,
Utrecht
I96I, p. I74, gives
the honor to
Jacques
de
Gheyn;
while
Joaneath
Ann
Spicer,
"The 'Naer het leven'
drawings: by
Pieter
Bruegel
or Roelandt
Savery ?,"
Master
Drawings
8
(1970),
pp.
I6-17,
counters with
Savery.
Of
course,
as we cannot
help
remarking (since
Gombrich's Art and
illusion),
even
drawing
the activ-
ities of
daily
life after life involves artistic choices and
conventions,
as
concerns both what is imitated and how this is done.
SVETLANA ALPERS
guiding principle
of Dutch
art,
modern studies have
had the effect of
setting
this concern in
appropriate
contexts.
Few,
if
any,
life-like
paintings
were
actually
executed
directly
from
life,
and
stylistic
studies such as
that of Reznicek on Goltzius have
emphasized
the con-
tinuing importance
of
imagined
elements
("uit
den
geest"). Meanwhile, iconographic studies,
the most
thorough being
those
by
E. de
Jongh,
have demon-
strated that moral
meanings
are hidden beneath the
realistic surface of
many
works.4 It is
surely paradoxical
that beneath the seductive
rendering
of the middle-class
world as we find
it,
for
example,
in Vermeer's famous
Love letter in the
Rijksmuseum,
lurk
warnings against
the seductions of the world. But it remains to be
explained,
I
think, why
the
new,
realistic
representa-
tions of middle-class life serve as moral
examples.
To
put
it another
way, why
and how are the moral
teachings
of
I6th-century
art now transformed into a realistic
mode of
representation?
Is
it, perhaps, owing
to a
Calvinist
impulse (such
as we find in New
England
puritanism)
to look for
spiritual meanings
in
every
ob-
ject
of the world? But
although
we cannot
yet
answer
this
question,
it is
already
clear that the
relationship
de
Jongh
has been able to demonstrate between
genre
paintings
of middle-class life and the illustrations and
meanings
of
contemporary
emblem books can be used
to
compensate significantly
for the absence of
any
con-
temporary theory
about the rationale for a realistic
art,
so much so that there is a
tendency today
to conclude
that if a
17th-century painting
is
realistic,
it must be
teaching
us a lesson. We
look,
in other
words,
for the
moral lesson in
every painting.
The
purpose
of this
paper
is to call attention to
another context in which we can consider northern
realism and
specifically
the so-called "low-life" works
4 See E. de
Jongh,
Zinne- en minnebeelden in de schilderkunst van de
zeventiende
eeuw,
Amsterdam
I967,
and
E.K.J. Reznicek,
"Realism
as a 'side road or
byway'
in Dutch
art,"
Acts
of
the XXth Art Historical
Congress,
vol.
2,
Princeton
1963, pp. 247-53.
Since the
completion
of
this article three
years ago,
this mode of
interpreting
Dutch realism
has
proliferated
and been further
developed.
See for
example
Hessel
Miedema,
"Over het realisme in de Nederlandse schilderkunst van de
zeventiende
eeuw,"
Oud-Holland
89 (I975), pp.
2-i8. While I still
stand
by my proposal
of a comic
interpretation
of certain Dutch
peasant pictures,
I have now come to think that in our
attempts
to
explain
the art we have tended to
underestimate,
to look
right through
as it
were,
its
descriptive
concerns. Dutch art is more an art of
descrip-
tion,
art
functioning
as
description,
than scholars
today
allow it to be.
5
G.A.
Bredero,
Groot
lied-boeck,
Amsterdam
1622;
I have modern-
ized the
spelling
when not
referring
to the
original
edition. A modern
that
depict peasants
and
poorer
elements of
society.
Since we lack
any contemporary
theoretical discussions
of the nature and
meanings
of such
realism,
I have
turned instead to one of the few available
contemporary
discussions of the
peasant
in
art, namely
the
preface
("
Voorrede" in
Dutch)
to the first section of the Groot
lied-boeck
by
G.A. Bredero
(I585-1618),
best-known
among 17th-century
Dutch writers for his realistic
poetry
and farcical
plays (kluchten).5
The
poet proposes
"boertige vermakelijkheid" (1. 9)-literally
broad or
rustic comic amusements-as the rationale for his real-
istic
poems
about
peasants
in a
way
that is
suggestive
for the
understanding
of
peasants
as
they appear
in art.
The
parallel
that can be drawn between some of his
"boertige
liedkens"
(literally songs
"comic in a rustic
way"-though,
as the
poems
and the
preface
make
clear,
the connection with
peasants
is foremost in the
poet's mind)
and
particular types
of
peasant paintings
confirms the
pertinence
of this text for the student and
viewer of art.
Let us start
by examining
Bredero's
preface
and the
explanation
it offers of the realistic
representation
of the
peasant.
Then we shall turn to the
working-out
of these
views as we find it in some of the
poems themselves,
and
finally
to some works of art which I
hope
will seem
more
intelligible
as the result of our
preparation
for
them.
BREDERO'S PREFACE
The
preface by
Bredero that is
printed
at the
beginning
of the 1622 edition of his Groot lied-boeck is known to-
day
to art historians because of a
single phrase referring
to "the
painter's adage
that those are the best
painters
who come closest to
life," (1. 73).6
What we wish the
painters
had come
right
out and said themselves is here
edition is in
print,
edited
by
A.A. van
Rijnbach,
Groot lied-boek van
G.A.
Brederode,
Rotterdam
I971 (first published
in this edition in
I944),
hereafter to be cited as
"Rijnbach,
Bredero." A new edition is
presently being prepared,
as
part
of the edition of Bredero's
complete
works,
under the
general editorship
of Garmt
Stuiveling.
As an
appendix
to this article I have
printed
the Dutch text of the
preface
and
an
English
translation. Line references in
my
article will be made to
the Dutch text.
My
thanks to David
Freedberg
of The Courtauld
Institute,
London
University,
and to
Gary
Schwartz of
Maarssen,
The
Netherlands,
for their
help
in
providing
a translation of this
complex
and
witty
text. Professor
Johann Snapper
of the
University
of Califor-
nia, Berkeley,
also came to
my
aid on a moment's notice with some
advice about Dutch
usage
and
spelling.
6 For a characteristic reference to this
phrase,
see
S.J. Gudlaugsson,
"Bredero's Lucelle," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch
7aarboek
I
(I947),
p.
I72.
II6
Realism as a comic mode
casually
attributed to them as a
commonplace. Further,
Bredero
goes
on to
put
this
praise
of the imitation of
nature into the context of the conflict between those
painters
who
argue
for
being
close to nature and those
who
prefer
"the
twisting
and
bending
of
joints
...
posi-
tions and attitudes outside of nature" (1.
76).
We have
in these words a
summary
of the conflict between real-
ism and mannerism that is
commonly
seen
today
as a
major
issue in Dutch and Flemish art in the
years just
prior
to the
writing
of the
preface.
From this statement and from the
poems
it is meant
to
introduce,
we tend to conclude that Bredero was
simply
a
realist,
and it is for this reason that he is so
often cited as the closest
parallel
to artists such as
Bruegel
or Ostade and thus as the most Dutch of Dutch
poets.
It is
important
to
say
at the outset that this does
not
give
a
just picture
of him. Bredero was
part
of the
renaissance of Dutch literature at the start of the
I7th
century and,
like other writers of the
time,
such as
Hooft,
he was attracted to the
great example
of a
literary
renaissance in
France,
the
poetry
of the
Pleiade,
itself
a vernacular
response
to the achievement of
Rome,
if
you
will.
Although
Bredero wrote
songs
and farces in a
realistic
mode,
he
also,
in his short
life,
tried his hand
at elevated love
lyrics, spiritual songs
and a
tragedy.
Far
from
setting
his
sights only
on the common
people,
he
dedicated his
plays
to men of wealth
(Rodd'rick
and
Alphonsus [I616]
to
Hugo
de
Groot,
and The
Spanish
Brabander [I6I8]
to the Swedish ambassador to The
Hague), though
at the same time he made much both
of his lack of education in
foreign tongues
and of his
being
a
simple,
native Amsterdamer
(he
signed
his
song-book
"Bredero
Amsterdammer").
In other
words,
Bredero flirted with the
example
offered
by
the
Pleiade,
but he was
special among
the
leading
Dutch
poets
of
his time for not
accepting
it as his touchstone. The
conflict between a native realism and a
foreign high
style is,
of
course,
an issue in
contemporary painting
also and makes the
example
of Bredero
particularly
interesting
for the student of art.
7 Although
none of his works seem to be
preserved, Bredero,
who
was born in
I585,
worked for a time under the Italianate
painter
of
Flemish
origins, Francois Badens. The will
listing
Bredero's father's
effects mentions
paintings by
his son of David and
Bathsheba,
David
and
Abigail, Pyramus
and Thisbe and a Fortune. Bredero himself
wrote to Badens about a
copy
he had made after a work
by
Sebastian
Vrancx;
and he must have known Pieter
Lastman,
as Bredero's sister
was
engaged
in a law-suit
(perhaps
over a broken
engagement)
with
that well-known Amsterdam
painter.
On Bredero's life see
J.A.N.
Bredero had
unique authority
to
provide
an
analogy
between his
poetry
and
art, since,
as he
says
earlier in
the
passage quoted above,
he had been a
painter
him-
self.7 But we must not
forget
that here he
speaks
as a
poet
and that the reference to
painting
after life stands
as an
explanation
of the
language
he
employs
in his
"boertige" poems. Though
real and low were bound
by
an
age-old link,
the nature of this link was rather
different,
I
think,
in the
I7th century
from what it
might
be to us
today.
For
us,
as heirs to the
Igth-century
novel
and to critics like
Auerbach,
it seems natural that real-
ism should deal with
simple, ordinary people.8
For
Bredero and the
I7th century,
the
reasoning
worked
in
just
the other direction: it was
only appropriate
to
represent ordinary people
in a realistic manner. And
ordinary life, realistically rendered,
was
specifically
conceived of as the stuff of which
comedy
was made.
Hence,
Bredero's
remark,
in the context of the
preface
as a
whole,
is a defense not of realism as
such,
but of
realism as the
poet employs
it in a
specifically
comic
mode of
poetry dealing
with
peasant
life and habits.
Bredero's
preface,
to summarize it
briefly, begins by
describing
his
poems
as entertainment suitable for
festive
occasions,
what we
might
call
light
verse.
Next,
he defends at some
length
his
attempt
to
employ
actual
speech-that is,
not
just
the vernacular in contrast to
Latin,
but the
speech
of
particular peasants
from Old
Amsterdam and Waterland (an area
just
north of the
city);
it is in this context that Bredero offers
painting
after life as an
analogy
to his verse. He then
proceeds
to
suggest
a moral
purpose
for
clothing city
sins in
country
dress and concludes
by claiming
that he never
wanted even to
publish
these ditties
anyhow
and is
only
bowing
to the
pressure brought
to bear on him
by
the
popularity
of
earlier,
unauthorized editions
(1. 135).
The
preface
is
written, then,
as a kind of rhetorical tour de
force,
full of
gaiety,
wit and
art,
casual and
yet
with a
clear
purpose.
In effect it sets forth the rationale of a
professional poet
for
having
taken
up
as a form of
poetry
what had been
originally
a kind of
song, anonymous by
Knuttel, Bredero, poeet
en Amsterdammer, Amsterdam
I968, pp. 9-28.
This article was
completed
before the
interesting study
of
Moeyart's
painting
based on a Bredero
play appeared:
Pieter
J.J.
van
Thiel,
"Moeyaert
and Bredero: a curious case of Dutch theatre as
depicted
in
art,"
Simiolus 6
(1972/73), pp. 29-49.
8
By
"mimesis" Auerbach
actually
refers to the serious treatment
of the life of the common
people-to
be realistic about the
upper
classes is almost a contradiction in terms for him. See Erich
Auerbach,
Mimesis: the
representation of reality
in Western literature, trans. Wil-
lard R.
Trask,
Princeton
1968.
117
SVETLANA ALPERS
its
very nature,
which had first been collected and
published
in the
mid-I6th century
and had a
great
vogue
in the
spate
of
song-books published
around the
turn of the
I7th century
in the north Netherlands.
Here we must
stop
for a
moment,
before
discussing
the comic context of the
preface,
to
untangle
the com-
plex bibliographical story
of Bredero's
songs,
because
this has some
bearing
on our
understanding
of it. No
copies
remain of the first two editions of the
poems
mentioned
by
Bredero in his
preface
as
having
been
published
in Leiden and
Amsterdam,
nor are there
any
of the third
edition,
for which the
preface
was
originally
written. The earliest edition that is extant
today
was
actually
the fourth to be
printed,
that of 1621
(it ap-
peared posthumously,
three
years
after the
poet's
death),
a
tiny
volume the
only copy
of which is
pre-
served in the
Koninklijke
Bibliotheek in The
Hague.9
It would
appear,
from what Bredero
says
in his
preface,
that the lost third edition
(and
presumably
the two
earlier ones as
well)
contained
only
comic
songs,
entitled
"geestig,"
or
witty, by
the editor rather than
"mal,"
or
crazy,
as the
poet
would have
preferred.10
It is for these
comic
poems
that the
preface
we are
considering
was
prepared.
The
162I edition, though
entitled
"Geestig"
on the title
page, includes,
in
addition,
sections entitled
"Bron der minnen"
(Source
of
love)
and
"Aandachtig
liedboek"
(Spiritual song-book), following
the tradi-
tional
I6th-century
divisions of
rederijkers'
verse. It is
important
to
remember, however,
that both the
general
title, Geestig,
and Bredero's
preface,
refer
only
to the
first section. In the
splendidly produced
volume of
1622,
the
publisher
not
only
added some
previously
unpublished poems by Bredero,
but also retitled the
entire book Groot lied-boeck
(Great song-book);
the
poems previously
entitled
"geestig"
now
appear
for the
first time as
"boertig."
Once
again,
of
course,
the
preface
refers
only
to the
poems
in the first section
and,
owing
to the
melange
of
different, unpublished poems
the editor
added, by
now
only
to a certain number of
those.1
9
G.A.
Bredero, Geestigh liedt-boecxken, Amsterdam
I621,
de-
scribed as a small octavo
(7.5
x
9.9
cm.
by my measurements).
Io Rijnbach
does not make this
clear,
but Bredero tells his readers
in the
preface
that "before
long
I
propose
to devote a
bigger song
book
to
you
to be named Bron der minne"
(1. 181),
thus
revealing
that
this,
the second section
(like
the
third),
was
yet
to be written.
1 iFor a discussion of these
problems
see
Rijnbach, Bredero, op.
cit.
(note 5),
pp.
xix,
xx.
12 Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, The
Hague, I882-
Now to return to the
preface
of the 622 edition itself.
The term
"boertig," although actually
the choice of
Bredero's
publisher
after the
poet's death,
has an ad-
vantage
over the
previous
titles
given
to these
poems
(Bredero's
"malle" and the first-used
"geestige"),
in
that it
suggests just
that
play
on words between
boertig,
meaning funny
in a
broad,
rustic
way,
and boer, peasant,
which is central to the
preface
and the
poems
them-
selves.12 Bredero
begins by offering
the
poems
as some-
thing
to be
enjoyed
at feast times
("banquets,
feasts or
weddings")
and
half-way through
returns to this theme
in
slightly
different
words, moving abruptly
from his
discussion of the element of moral instruction contained
in them to reiterate that
they
are to be
enjoyed
with
good
cheer and entertainment
(1.
i
I6).
This
linking
of
comedy
and the feast has a venerable
history.
What
began
with
Plato's
Symposium
was stressed
again,
most
particularly
by
the humanists in the Renaissance. Rabelais ad-
dressed his
Gargantua (I533)
to "most noble boozers"
and describes himself as
having
been
drinking
while he
wrote. And while Rabelais
characteristically emphasizes
the
physical
fact of
bodily
refreshment on the
part
of
the writer and the
reader,
it is
perhaps
more common to
emphasize
the occasion of the feast as such: works as
dissimilar as the Divers
jeux rustiques
of Du
Bellay
(1558)
and Ben
Jonson's
Epicene (1609)
are offered in
just
these terms.13 The recreative nature of the feast
provides
a
justification
for the casual terms in which the
work is
composed
and meant to be received.
Another
aspect
of the
recreative,
even informal con-
dition of the
composition
is the
repeated
claim of the
writers of comic works that
they
had no intention of
publishing them,
that it was all done
against
their will.
The most famous of such disclaimers is
surely
that of
Erasmus,
who in his
preface
claims to have written The
praise offolly
while
travelling by
horse from
Italy
to
England
and in the letter to
Dorp
further elaborates
this account into the claim that he wrote it with no idea
of
publication, simply
as distraction from the
pain
of a
kidney
attack when
caught
without his books at the
(hereafter cited as WNT), s.v.
boertig,
which refers in turn to the root-
word boert from the Old French bourde, meaning play
or
joke.
13 Francois Rabelais,
The histories
of Gargantua
and
Pantagruel,
trans.
J.M. Cohen,
Harmondsworth & Baltimore
1957,
p.
37; Joachim
du
Bellay, Diversjeux rustiques,
Geneva
1965, pp. 3-4; "Epicene,"
in
Ben
Jonson, Works, ed. C.H. Herford &
Percy
and
Evelyn Simpson,
vol.
5,
pp.
163-64,
hereafter to be cited as
"Jonson,
Works." I want to
thank
Jonas
A. Barish and Paul
Alpers
for
helping
me to understand
Bredero's notion of
comedy
from a
literary point
of view.
II8
Realism as a comic mode
house of Sir Thomas More. Friends
simply
twisted his
arm,
as it
were,
to make him let them
publish
it.14
Predictably,
we find Bredero
placing
his book of
songs
in this
very tradition, claiming
that not
once,
but
twice,
these
"capricious
fantasies"
(1. 140)
were
published
without either his desire or his
permission.15
The notion of
writing
comedies on
vacation,
so to
speak (or
at and for
feasts),
is
subtly
bound
up
with the
notion of the license
permitted
to such occasions
and,
by analogy,
to such
writings. Erasmus,
himself the
creator of
literary banquets, provides
an instance of this
view in his letter to
Dorp,
where he introduces Plato's
approval
of
"fairly
lavish
drinking
matches at
banquets
because he believes there are certain faults that
austerity
cannot correct but that the
gaiety
of
wine-drinking
can
dispel."16
But there are certain limits to this license.
Here,
as in the influential Table talk, where Plutarch
argues
that freedom of
speech
and
wit,
like a
brawl,
are
all
right
at a
banquet
if
they
arise
naturally,
the
image
is one of the license
permitted
to a
group
of friends.17
Wit is
appropriate-decorous,
to use the more technical
word-to such a
group
because it
involves, perhaps
implicates,
them all in some similar
way.
Thus,
it is not
only
the certain
pleasures
that are
suggested by
the
image
of the
banquet but, further,
the
assumption
of
familiarity
with his audience who are
sitting
down with him at the same table
(compare
Bredero's address of the
songs
to
"mij
en
mijne
vrien-
den en
vriendinnen,"
myself
and
my friends,
both male
and female
(1. 18),
with Erasmus's dedication of The
14 Erasmus,
Praise
offolly,
trans.
Betty Radice,
Harmondsworth &
Baltimore
1971,
pp.
55, 217-18.
15
For
my attempt
to demonstrate the relevance of Bredero's notion
of comic literature to
art,
it is
significant
that his reference to
"grillige
grilletjes" (which
we have translated as
"capricious fancies")
echoes
Pliny's
humorous artistic
category
of
Grilli,
which term was
applied
in turn
by
Don
Felipe
de Guevara to Bosch and in van
Dyck's Iconog-
raphie
to Adriaen
Brouwer,
who is called
"grillorum pictor":
see E.H.
Gombrich,
Norm
andform,
London
1966, p. 15I,
note
30.
Since I
completed
this article an
exchange
on the
subject
of low-life
depictions
as
grilli,
and hence as
comic, appeared
in
Proef, February
and
May
I974. Though
Bredero was
appropriately mentioned,
the
general
emphasis
of the
exchange
was on the
etymology
of the word and the
categories
of art works to which it was
applied
rather than on inter-
pretation
which is
my
main interest here. I want to thank
Eddy
de
Jongh
for first
pointing
out the relevance of this term to me and also
for the
helpful suggestions
that he made when he read this article in
an earlier form. This is also the
place
to thank Hessel Miedema
(who
introduced the
topic
of
"grilli"
in
Proef)
for
sharing
with me some of
his wide
knowledge
of the
peasant
as a
subject
in Dutch art.
I6 Ibid., pp. 2I5-i6.
praise of folly
to
More,
or Rabelais's dedication of
Gargantua
to "most noble boozers and
you my
most
esteemed
poxy
friends-for
you
and
you
alone are
my
writings dedicated")
that marks Bredero's Voorrede as
being
well within this comic tradition.
For these reasons the
peasants
Bredero introduces us
to in the
preface
are not meant to evoke a censorious
response,
nor to
encourage mocking laughter; rather,
they appeal
to our instinct for
feasting
and
physical
pleasure.
This is what has been
justly
termed festive
comedy,
as contrasted with a moralistic
one, although
the two are best
thought
of not as
contradictory
but as
differing
in
emphasis.18 Bredero,
as we shall
see,
is
concerned with moral issues in his comic
verse,
but in a
particularly
festive mode.
Though
it is
quite
clear
throughout
the
preface
that the
poet
is not a
peasant
(as neither,
of
course,
were his
readers),
he
places strong
emphasis
on the
community
of human
pleasures
shared
by
both: how
easily
the convivial
image
of the
poet
offering
entertainment to his reader (in the first sen-
tence)
slides into Bredero's
memory
of his own
youthful
hours
spent
with a
company
of
peasants.
What the
peasant
once did for
him,
his
poems
will now do for his
audience. This
is,
in Bredero's
view,
the
purpose
of his
comic
verse,
and it is
fully
and most
splendidly
realized
in the
poems
that follow.
In both
literary theory
and
practice, comedy
had been
since
antiquity
the low
genre
and as such the realistic
one. The issue of the decorum of
imitating
low
speech
in art was the
subject
of
lively
discussion in i6th- and
17 Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales,
2.1.634.
I found
Mary
A.
Grant,
The ancient rhetorical theories
of
the
laughable,
Madison
(Uni-
versity
of Wisconsin Studies in
Language
and
Literature,
nr. 2
) 1924,
a
helpful guide
to ancient writers on the
subject
of humor.
18 See C.L.
Barber, Shakespeare's festive comedy,
Princeton
1959,
for the identification and
analysis
of this comic mode in
Shakespeare's
comedies. It is
interesting
that in the
17th-century
Netherlands the
popular
festivities that Barber
suggests Shakespeare
drew on in his
comic
plays emerge primarily
in art rather than in literature as
they
did in
England.
Thus Bredero's
songs are,
I
believe,
an
exception.
A
similar kind of festive invitation and
address, without, however,
reference to
peasants,
turns
up
in other
contemporary song-books;
see,
for
example,
Den nieuwen
lust-hof,
Amsterdam 1602, whose title
page
introduces the
songs
as
"Mey, bruylofts,
Tafel ende
Nieuvv-jaers
liedekens." See
below,
note
45,
for more on this
song-book. Joel
Lefebvre, Lesfols
et
lafolie,
Paris
1968,
traces a similar comic strain
in
16th-century
German literature
dealing
with fools. His
emphasis
on
the artistic basis of this comic mode is
complemented,
as it
were, by
Bakhtin's
study
of
Rabelais,
which assumes that this kind of
comedy
is native to and thus a
product
of the common
people
themselves:
Mikhail
Bakhtin,
Rabelais and his
world,
trans. Helene
Iswolsky,
Cam-
bridge,
Massachusetts
1968.
IIQ
SVETLANA ALPERS
17th-century
comic
theory.
In theoretical
statements,
at
least,
the rule of decorum in
language
and action
generally prevailed-it
was
Terence,
not
Plautus,
who
was held
up
as a model.19 In this
context,
what is most
interesting
about Bredero is his
argument
for actual
low
speech:
"It is all the same to me if I learn the
knowledge
of
my
mother
tongue
from a
mighty king
or a
poor beggar,
if the words come from the rubbish
bin or from the most
elegant
and
greatest
treasure house
of the world: each must
provide
me with
gold,
silver and
copper money according
to their
proper
worth" (1.
55).
While the
image
of
language
as minted coin is a con-
ventional
one,
Bredero's
appeal
for the use of tarnished
coins,
"old and
mouldy
and
square,"
with the added
filip
"from the rubbish bin,"
is not. One
might compare
his view to Ben
Jonson's
middle-of-the-road
argument
for the best of the new and the best of the old
coinage,
as he states it in his
Discoveries,
for
example.20
But
perhaps
more unusual is Bredero's
argument
for the use
of the
particular
Amsterdam and Waterland dialects:
few if
any
comic writers of the time
argue
in this
way
for
a
particular vocabulary
and
way
of
speech.
The nation-
alism common to all Renaissance
arguments
for the
vernacular,
which is revealed in Bredero's defence of
Dutch
against
the
Latinizers,
is
distinguished by
his
emphasis
on the actual
speech
of a
specific group
of
peasants.
If we consider this attitude in the context of Dutch
literature,
rather than as
part
of comic
theory
and
prac-
tice,
we find that lowness seems to have been
practiced,
on
occasion,
even
by
a writer as different from Bredero
as P. C. Hooft. We recall Hooft's statement in a letter of
I630,
to
Huygens,
"To
pick up
outcast words off the
street and make them do such service as suits
them,
even
though
it were
among nobility,
is a
thing
one can take
credit for."21 But it has been
pointed
out that Bredero's
insistence on and use of Amsterdam dialect is a
protest
-a radical
protest,
in fact-from within the vernacular
movement
against
the
hegemony
of the Brabant
(i.e.
southern) dialect,
which was the established
literary
language
of the Netherlands at the time.22
19
Marvin T.
Herrick,
Comic
theory
in the sixteenth
century,
Urbana
(Illinois
Studies in
Language
and
Literature,
nr.
34, I-2) I950,
is the
standard
survey
of Renaissance comic
theory.
20
Jonson, Works, op.
cit.
(note 13),
vol.
8, p. 622,
lines
I926-44.
21 P.C.
Hoofts,
brieven:
nieuwe, vermeerderde,
en naar den
oorspron-
kelijken
text herziene
uitgave,
met
toelicht, aanteekeningen
en
bijlagen
[by J.
van
Vloten],
vol. 2:
163o-34,
Leiden
I856, p.
I.
Aside from the issue of
decorum,
the other
major
issue
facing
the writer of
comedy
was
naturally
the
moral one: to what
purpose
is
comedy
written? Most
Renaissance writers claimed for
comedy
the same mix-
ture of
delighting
and
teaching
that was claimed for the
higher genre, tragedy.
But the answers to the
question
extended from an extreme of the notion of the elevated
comic moralist
(to
continue our earlier
comparison,
one
might example
the
preface
of Ben
Jonson's
Volpone
[i6o3])23
to the extreme of the entertainer (Jonson's
actual
writing
of Bartholomew
fair [I614]).
Bredero's
preface
does mention the moral
purpose
of his
poems:
"I describe the follies of some
people
in a ridiculous
manner ... I have
put many things
in a rustic
way
that
none the less takes into account
city
dwellers"
(1. 99).
He aims to make
palatable
an
exposure
of the follies of
his middle-class audience
by disguising
them in
peasant
dress. But I think it fair to
say-though previous
com-
mentators would
perhaps
not
agree-that
this is
hardly
more than
pro forma.
Bredero in fact could
(and
did on
occasion) speak
more
strongly
on this issue. The con-
trast between this mild and casual reference to
teaching
and his
preface
to The
Spanish
Brabander,
where moral
instruction is a serious
issue,
is
striking. Here,
in the
preface
to his
Boertig liedboek, Bredero,
after
fending
off
the
anticipated
accusation of
being
a
satirist,
switches
his
fast-moving
chatter from morals to
entertainment,
declaring
that he has written these
poems
more from
delight
than with troublesome intentions
(the
Dutch
"meer uit lust als uit laster"
[1. II5]
is succinct and
witty,
as the
English
is
not).
Bredero's
point
is well taken. The notion of
comedy
in his
preface
is dominated
by
the notion of
"lust,"
as
it is
gaily presented
to us in the conventional
image
of
the
banquet
or feast.
THE POEMS
After the author's vehement defence of the
principle
of
realistic
rendering
of
peasant language,
it is
surprising
to turn to the
"boertige" songs themselves,
which are
conceived-as the two additional books of the Great
22 See A.A.
Verdenius,
"Bredero's dialectkunst als Hollandse reac-
tie
tegen
Zuidnederlandse
taalhegemonie,"
in Studies over zeventiende
eeuws,
Amsterdam
1946,
pp. 3-I8. As Dr.
Sonja
Witstein of Utrecht
rightly pointed
out to
me,
in
comparison
to the
Netherlands, England
(and certainly
the other
major literary countries-France, Italy
and
Germany)
did not have such a
great
number of distinct
regional
dia-
lects on which to draw.
23 Jonson, Works, op.
cit.
(note 13),
vol.
5,
pp.
17-21.
I20
Realism as a comic mode
song-book
were to be-in the framework of the i6th-
century rederijker
tradition of the
humorous,
amorous
and
spiritual lyric.24
In
keeping
with this
tradition,
the
twenty poems
in the first section of the
book,
which are
properly
called
"boertig,"
render stock situations from
the life of the common
people
that had
already
been the
choice of
poets and, probably following
their
lead,
painters
in the i6th
century.25
It is certain
pleasures
and
entertainments of the
peasant,
not at all the
living
and
working
conditions of his
existence,
that are at issue.
Peasants here
occupy
themselves with a
party,
a
kermis,
the celebration of St.
John's Eve,
or else
they
have time
to
stand, arranged
in conventional
pairings-age
and
youth,
uncle and
niece,
aunt and
nephew,
mother and
daughter,
and so on-to discuss the state of their loves
and
possible marriages.
We must
keep
in
mind,
to
continue our
major theme,
that at the time such scenes
were
recognized,
at least in
contemporary literary
theory,
as
being
the stuff of which
comedy
is made. So
strong
were these artistic conventions that Martin
Opitz, writing
in
1624, got
himself into the
position
of
speaking
of
weddings, parties
and
games
as if
they
were
peculiar
to low
people: comedy,
he
says,
is concerned
only
with "low
beings
and
persons"
and with events
that
commonly
take
place among them,
such as "wed-
dings, parties, games,
the deceit and
trickery
of
servants,
boastful
servants, flirtations,
the
frivolity
of
youth,
the
avarice of old
age, imping
and such
things."26
But the results that come from Bredero's treatment
of these conventional comic scenes are
surprising. Take,
for
example,
the old man
courting
the
young woman,
offering
her his
riches,
both
literally
and
figuratively-
his
money along
with the wisdom and
experience
of his
years.
Bredero uses the
predictable rejection
of his suit
by
the
girl
not
just
as a device to
point up
the
folly
of
24 Although
there are
many separate
studies of the tradition of such
songs,
the best
summary
treatment I have found that
places
them in
the context of
literary history
is in
Jan
te
Winkel,
De
ontwikkelingsgang
der Nederlandsche letterkunde, 2nd
ed., 7 vols.,
Haarlem
1922-27,
vol.
2, p. 244ff.
25
In the introduction to his edition of the Groot lied-boeck
Rijn-
bach
argues
that
only
about a
quarter
of the 82
songs
included
among
the
songs grouped
as
boertig
were
properly
called so. The rest were
simply
included
by
the
editor,
who aimed to fit into the
tripartite
format of the book all the
unprinted songs
of the
recently
dead Bre-
dero.
Rijnbach, Bredero, op.
cit.
(note 5), p.
xix.
26 Martin
Opitz,
Buch von der deutschen
poeterey (I624),
ed. Richard
Alewyn, Tiibingen 1963, p.
20. The
passage
reads in the
original:
"Die Comedie bestehet in schlechtem wesen unnd
[sic] personen:
redet von hochzeiten
/ gastgeboten / spielen / betrug
und schalckheit
the
aged lover,
but also to
argue
that it is satisfaction
that is true wealth. As the
young
woman
says
close to
the end of the
poem,
"Don't
you
know that who is
satisfied is rich ?"27 The
passion
of the old man's insis-
tent suit is,
in
effect,
refashioned
by
the
young woman,
who
argues
that what her suitor
wants,
she wants also:
the refrain
goes,
"What
you seek,
I also seek."28
She,
too,
wants love and
passion,
but an ill-matched
couple
is not the
way
to
get
such satisfaction. Bredero's as-
sumption
about the
necessity
of
equality
of
age
in
marriage ("gelijkheid
in den echten
staat"),29
stated
directly
in the
companion poem
with the same
refrain,
which
presents
the
wooing
of a
young
man
by
an old
woman,
is
hardly
an innovative
morality. However,
it
is characteristic of these
poems
that
they
do not use the
stock comic situations
just
to show
up
the
aging
suitor
and, by implication,
to make fun of and condemn his
passions,
but rather to reveal such
passions
as the
common human lot. There is a fine sense
here,
and in
all the
poems,
of the
necessary playing
out of human
passions
in the
world,
with no
impulse
to turn
against
them as a
way
out of the situations
they get
men into.
It is in this sense that the
"boertige" poems unabashedly
invite us, the readers, to
partake
of
what,
with frank
reference to the
preface,
we can call a
pleasurable
feast.
The most
striking example
of this comic mode at
work
is,
in
fact,
the
very
first
poem
of the
book,
which
describes a
peasant party.30
The
peasants gather, slowly
at
first,
dressed in
bright
colors.
By
the sixth stanza the
tempo quickens-they
are
drinking, singing
and indeed
roaring, dancing;
a
couple
in the seventh stanza make
love in the
hay;
a
fight erupts
for no clear reason in the
eighth,
a man is killed in the
ninth,
and the
peasants
scatter. The touch is
light
and the mood
lively
and
gay;
the
killing
is not
anticipated by poet
or reader. The
der knechte
/ ruhmratigen
Landsknechten
/
buhlersachen
/
leichtfer-
tigkeit
der
jugend / geisste
des alters
/ kuppleren
und solchen sachen
/
die
taglich
unter
gemeinen
Leuten vorlauffen." I first came
upon
this
passage quoted
in the
unpublished manuscript
of a book on caricature
by
Ernst Kris and E.H. Gombrich.
My
thanks to Professor Gombrich
for
letting
me read this
study,
which is one of the rare
general
studies
of
comedy
in art.
27
"Weet jij niet, zalige bestvaar, /
Dat wie
genoegt
is
rijk?," Rijn-
bach, Bredero, op.
cit.
(note 5), p. 43.
28 "Dat jij zoekt,
zoek ik mee."
29 Rijnbach, Bredero, op.
cit.
(note 5), p. 45.
30 Although
this article will deal at some
length
with the
represen-
tation of
kermises,
I am
intentionally concentrating
on Bredero's
Peasant
party
or Boeren
gezelschap
rather than his kermis
poem,
Van
Gijsjen
en
Trijn Luls, since the former
engages
more of the issues we
find in art.
121
SVETLANA ALPERS
moral seems
unambiguous,
and it is stated
by
the
poet
at the
beginning
of the final
stanza,
where he
says
that
fine and cheerful
burghers
should not
get
mixed
up
in
peasant parties
because these are not sweet occasions:
people
often
get
killed.
But,
concludes the
speaker,
quite unexpectedly,
come and drink a
jug
of wine with
me,
it will do
you good! Through
the
poem,
the
poet
catches himself and the reader
up
in the
party only
to reveal the
dangers-drunkenness
and
death; yet,
even as he directs our attention to the outcome of such
festivities,
he
encourages
us to
indulge
ourselves. The
festive mood is sustained at the
end, although,
as in the
poems
about
love,
we are now aware of the human
conditions of such
delights.
And
here,
as in the
preface,
the comic attitude
depends
on the
engagement
of the
poet,
and in turn his
engagement
of the
reader,
with
the
distinctly separate, distinctly
lower world of the
peasant,
to whom such
pleasures
come
naturally.
It is
precisely
the
ambiguous implications
of that relation-
ship-can
we
indulge
in such natural
pleasures
and not
act and be like
peasants
ourselves ?-that is left
open
in
the invitation to the reader in the last line to come and
drink with the
poet.
We
may
contrast all this with
Rotgans's
Boerekermis of
I708,
which in
part adapts
and
expands
this
particular poem by Bredero,
but in which
the
poet-narrator
beats a
quick
retreat as a
fight
heats
up
at the end of Book One and
clearly
reveals his
general
detachment from the
peasants by
his
abrupt
retirement
to bed at the end of the
poem.31
Of
course,
a
good
number of the
I6th-century song
books that Bredero is
imitating
made a similar
appeal,
but it is of their essence that
they,
with
apparent
innocence,
do not
acknowledge
the moral issues in-
31
Lukas
Rotgans,
Boerekermis, Gorinchem
I968, pp. 40, 74.
If the
reader doubts that a
fight
could be taken as
fun, perhaps
this item from
a recent
newspaper
column will
help persuade
him. One of the answers
to a street interviewer who
asked,
"What is the best
party you
have
ever been to?" went as follows: "A
rowdy party.
One where there's a
lot of
tension,
a lot of
energy.
Where
people
don't like
you
at first and
then
you
have a
big fight
and afterwards
you
wind
up liking
them.
You
always
know
somebody pretty
well after a
big fight."
The San
Francisco Chronicle, May 29, I974.
32
See Het
Antwerps liedboek, ed. K.
Vellekoop
& H.
Wagenaar-
Nolthenius,
Amsterdam
1972,
vol.
i,
nr.
26,
"Ghi Sotten ende sottine-
kens." This edition
reprints
and
analyzes
a selection of
songs
from this
famous
publication-the
first of the
many song-books
to be
published
-which
today
exists in
only
one
copy
in the
Herzog August
Bibliothek
in Wolfenbiittel.
33
Jean Claude
Margolin,
Erasme et la
musique,
Paris
1965, p. i6ff.,
analyzes
this
passage
in the context of Erasmus's
very
critical attitude
volved. The
song
about the kermis of the fools in the
1544 Antwerp song-book,
for
example, presents
the
goings-on
as the actions of
fools,
but allows the listener
or reader
simply
to be entertained: our
superiority
lets
us be
vicariously
amused
by
actions for which we take
no
responsibility.32
If
contemporary
confirmation is
needed of the kind of moral
appeal
these
songs
were
feared to
have,
we
may
find it in Erasmus's frontal
attack on what he considered to be the blatant immo-
rality
of the
printing
of such
songs,
and of the custom
of
encouraging young girls
to learn to
sing
them.33
It is, I
trust, unnecessary-and
in fact would risk
seeming oppressive,
because so out of
keeping
with the
light
touch of both the
preface
and the
poems
them-
selves-to belabor this
point
about Bredero's comic
view
any
further. Let us
just
conclude
merely by
stressing
for a moment not what these
poems
do re-
present,
but what
they
do not.
They
do not
represent
the
peasants
as ridiculous creatures whose behavior
stands as an
example
of the sins that other men are to
avoid.34
SOME KERMIS PAINTINGS AND LITERATURE
Very well,
but what does Bredero's comic mode have to
do with the art of his time? Trained as we have
been,
in recent
years,
to read i6th- and
I7th-century
realism
as moral
exemplum,
Bredero's comic views seem far-
fetched indeed. I
think, however,
that
they
are most
suggestive
of the
way
in which a
large
number of low-
life
genre
works were conceived. Let us take as a
parallel
to the
poem
we have
just discussed,
Karel van Mander's
I592 drawing
of a
peasant
kermis
(fig. i),
which was
engraved by
Nicolas Clock in
1593 (fig. 2).35 Drinking
toward music in churches. Erasmus's clear
antagonism
toward and
suspicion
of music and art seem in
striking
contrast to his much more
ambivalent
feelings
about literature.
34
See Svetlana
Alpers, "Bruegel's
festive
peasants,"
Simiolus 6
(1972/73),
pp.
163-76,
in which I
argued
for the comic tone and intent
informing Bruegel's depiction
of
peasants.
Since it was
Bruegel
who
established not
only
the
compositional
and
figural
formulas but also
the basic nature of the
I7th-century
treatment of the
peasant
in
Netherlandish
art,
there is a certain
overlapping
in these two articles.
35
The
drawing
is in the collection of Prof. Dr.
J.Q.
van
Regteren
Altena,
Amsterdam. It was not known to Elisabeth Valentiner when
she
published
her Karel van Mander als
Maler, Strassbourg I930,
but
was mentioned
by
Hollstein in connection with the Clock
print;
see
F.W.H.
Hollstein,
Dutch and Flemish
etchings, engravings
and wood-
cuts,
ca.
I450-I700,
Amsterdam
I949ff.,
vol. 4, p.
172,
nr. I
,
and vol.
I, p. 163,
nr.
55.
The
drawing
measures
28.4
x
40.6 cm., pen
and
wash in
grey
and brown
ink, signed
KvMander
1592
at the left, with
122
Realism as a comic mode
I KarelvanMander,
The
peasant
kermis.
Prof. Dr.
J.Q:
van
Regteren Altena,
Amsterdam
(photo:
? University of
Amsterdam)
2 Nicolas
Clock,
after Karel van
Mander,
Der
bouwren kermis.
Oxford,
Ashmolean
Museum
~"IIIIIIIQ?l
1.?
a
*!
I,
-r
rr? i
*?I- I?*2?C
, Br?.; ??:: ,?r
I. ... ??r ? .1? 1?I*?
a;r.r \.? .r.. :- i?it??e?rx_
"*9
*, . "* %. . ..,,-. f..
" -"
i..
..*.-.
t.. .
'
.
.
*.
O" * ?? ~i^ a
123
SVETLANA ALPERS
and
eating (with urinating
and
vomiting
as the natural
results), kissing, dancing
and
fighting,
are all
here,
as
in the
Bredero,
with the additions of those
specific
accoutrements of the kermis
itself,
the saint's
flag flying
at the
left,
the
flag
on the church
steeple,
the market
booths in the distance and a
sample
of various
sporting
events. Not
only
is there no
attempt
to
gloss
over the
rough
and
vulgar aspects
of the
peasant kermis,
the
very
point
seems to be to assemble
pictorial
emblems for the
deadly sins,
emblems that can be traced back
through
the tradition of such
representations
initiated in monu-
mental art
by,
or at least at about the time
of,
Bosch's
famous
table-top
in the Prado. The
gluttony
of the
pigs
who
lap up
the vomit of someone who has over-in-
dulged,
the
anger
of those
engaged
in the
fight,
the lust
of the frenzied dancers and the
embracing couples
here
and
there,
the sloth of the
people lounging
at the distant
table-the moral of all these would seem to be drawn
by
the
non-peasant couple
who converse at the
right
side of the
drawing
while
gesturing
toward the scene
before our
eyes.
But what
seems,
is not so. For if one reads the
legend
underneath-written in van Mander's own hand on the
drawing
and
presented
in a
slightly
altered Latin ver-
an
inscription (of
which more in a
moment)
underneath. It was sold
out of the C. Ploos van Amstel
Collection,
2 March I8oo and
following
days,
Album
oo,
nr.
I,
for fl. I2 to Ph. van der
Schley. Subsequently
it was in the Lord Northwick Collection. It has been exhibited at the
Rijksbureau
voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie,
The
Hague,
in an
exhibition entitled Hollandse
tekeningen
rond
i600,
20
July-I August
1952,
nr.
55,
and in the van Mander exhibition of the
Koninklijk
Oudheidskundig Genootschap
in
I936. My
warmest thanks to Prof.
Dr. van
Regteren
Altena for the information he
gave
me about this
drawing
and for his
permission
to
publish
it here.
36
The two
inscriptions
are as follows:
(I)
Siet hier de
boeren,
in haer
mayesteyt
coen
De kermis vieren met
gieten
en
gapen
Sij
houden wel vele van
goet bescheyt
doen
Maer
weynich bescheyt
canmen daer
betrapen
Deen
singth
dander
springht
de derde wil
slapen
Of de
papegaei schieten,
voor slechten
buyt
Daer de verkens commen de
pijlen rapen
Dan
compt
het noch
diewijls op
een vechten
uyt
(2)
En leti celebrant Encenia Ruris Alumni
Et
Thymele Mopso post pucula
Basia
figit.
Hinc Canit
Atque
salit Chromis et
Mnasylus
et
Aegle
Est vomitu instauret
spurcis qui praudia
Porcis.
Mos uter inflatur miser Irus Cormia sumit
sion
signed by
F.E.
(Franco Estius)
on the
engraving
(fig. 2)-the point
seems to be that such a
celebration,
with all its
fighting, drinking, vomiting
and so
forth,
is
just
what
peasants
will do.36 It is not
inappropriate
that
a
second,
undated
engraving,
attributed to Gillis van
Breen,37 adds to the Latin
inscription
of Estius the
Dutch
legend
which can be
loosely translated,
"Now
let us
put
on our
Sunday
best and wash our faces
because it is not a kermis
every day"-or,
as a current
Dutch-English dictionary
has it
(for
the
expression
still
lives),
"Christmas comes but once a
year," or,
"life is
not all beer and skittles."38 This defence of the
peasant's
periodic letting-go supplements,
but in no
way
con-
tradicts,
the
legend
on van Mander's
drawing
of
1592.
It
was,
in
fact,
taken
by
the
publisher
from a
closely
related work
by
van
Mander,
a
1588 drawing (certainly
intended for
engraving)
of a
couple
off to a kermis
(fig. 3).39
This
couple,
who first
appear
in
1588, romp
their
way through
van Mander's two later kermis draw-
ings, carrying
the festive mood with them.
They appear
in the center of the
I592
van
Regteren
Altena
drawing
with which we
began
our
discussion,
and at the left of
a
I590
or
1591 drawing formerly
in the Masson Col-
lection,
Paris.40
Classica Post
mangnos
blaterat Traso seval Culullos.
37 Hollstein, op.
cit.
(note 35),
vol.
3,
p.
I60,
nr.
60,
and vol.
iI,
p. I63,
nr.
33.
38
The
inscription
in Dutch reads "Nu laet ons wesen
fraey
en fris
want ten is alle
dage geen
keremis." This translation stands as a cor-
rection to that which I offered of the same
passage
in
my
article in
Simiolus 6
(1972/73),
p.
I71.
For the modem versions of it see K. ten
Bruggencate, Engels woordenboek,
Groningen I97I,
s.v. kermis.
39 Prentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
nr. Fv
31, 24.7
x
I9.2 cm., pen
and wash. The
inscription
in van Mander's hand
reads,
"Nu benick lustich
fijn
ende fris
/
maer ten is niet allendach kerremis."
This
drawing
was
engraved
at least twice. One is
by
an unknown
engraver, appearing
in
reverse, Hollstein, op.
cit.
(note 35),
vol. x
i, p.
I65,
nr.
175,
with the
original inscription slightly
altered and an
additional line
emphasizing
the sexual dimensions of the
day, "Je lieve
hannen men
seyt ghewis /
Waer vrucht in
hys,
daer druck voor duer
is." It is
quite
characteristic that in its second
appearance,
in
J.Th.
and
J.
de
Bry,
Emblemata
saecularia...,
Frankfurt
1596,
nr.
35 (listed by
Hollstein, op.
cit.
[note 35],
vol.
4, p. 38,
nrs.
240-87),
a
Latin,
moral-
istic
inscription replaces
the festive Dutch one.
40
Elisabeth
Valentiner,
Karel van Mander als
Maler, Strassbourg
1930,
cat. nr.
32, pl. 28. I have been unable to trace the
present
where-
abouts of this
drawing,
which neither was
given
to the Academie des
Beaux-Arts with
many
other Masson
drawings
nor
appears
in the sales
catalogues
of the remainder of his collection. It would be
interesting
to know if it also bore an
inscription by
van Mander. It shares
many
motifs with the van
Regteren
Altena
drawing
but lacks the well-
dressed
couple
at the left.
124
Realism as a comic mode
Recent
studies,
most
prominently
that of Konrad
Renger
on the so-called
prodigal
son
paintings
of the
I6th century,
have
emphasized
the
cautionary-or,
better,
the
hortatory-tone
of works
drawing
on rather
similar
imagery
to
represent
the evil results of drink.41
But must we not take into account the context in which
such
images
or activities occur? Was the effect of wine
always clearly
condemned ?
Or,
to
put
it in terms of the
pictorial image,
in a
painting
do
drinking, fighting,
love-
making
and
pigs always simply convey
sinfulness?42
One need not dismiss out of hand the
possibility
that
representations
of the seven
deadly
sins were the source
of the
depiction
of
particular
actions and
objects-
which are not
just common,
but
quite predictable
in
kermis
settings-in
order to admit the
change
of em-
phasis
to what I think could be termed a comic view of
41
Konrad
Renger,
Lockere
Gesellschaft:
zur
Ikonographie
des ver-
lorenen Sohnes und von Wirtshausszenen in der niederlandischen Malerei,
Berlin I970.
Similar materials are
brought
to bear on the
analysis
of a
painting by Jan Steen,
with similar
moralizing results, by
Axel von
Griegern,
"Abfahrt von einem
Wirtshaus,"
Oud-Holland 86
(1971),
pp. 9-3
. For a subtle corrective to this view see the article
by
Wolf-
3
Karel van
Mander,
Peasant
couple. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet
the events at hand. After
all,
what is it like to view a
kermis
during
which
peasants vomit, urinate, fight,
dance,
make love and so on? Not
unexpectedly,
the
proverbial sayings
current at the time
present
the ker-
mis in
just
this
light.
Far from
condemning
the kermis
they testify
to its social
function,
as a kind of measure
of a town or district. "It is a
poor
town which does not
have a kermis once a
year"
is one such
saying.43
As the
proverb quoted by
van Mander
says rightly,
it is not a
kermis
every day.
This is a
holiday,
an
exception
from
regular life,
an occasion which
permits
unusual behav-
ior,
even
including
laws of its own
(facilitating
free
trade and
leading
to free
behavior),
as is
traditionally
proclaimed by
the
flag
flown from the church
steeple.
I am not
claiming
that van Mander was an enthusiast
about drink and its
effects,
and it would be an error to
gang
Stechow discussed
below,
note
43.
42
When
Renger, op.
cit.
(note 41), pp. 89-90,
turns his attention to
Hans Sebald Beham's woodcut Das
grosse
Kirch
Weihfest,
he does
just
this, interpreting
the inn scene in the center as
part
of the tradition of
representing
the
consequences
of
drinking
or the sin of
drinking.
43 WNT, s.v. kermis.
I25
?,'d 3Pr CLQ?
jq.jgy 1Sdtt i':IUFIIILilk --C-- 3C
- 1C*
'3*s.. af*-J-;
*u?:iiff; .;..; ,,*,o, bi.,.;;;.,?,: ,r'L.?.*H*"S ?3 i
SVETLANA ALPERS
do so. In Den
grondt,
his
long
verse treatment of art
theory
and the
training
of the
artist,
he
specifically
comments on the
dangers
of
intemperance,
the
fights
and
killings
that result (Het schilder-boeck... Haarlem
I604,
Aiiv and
Aiii).
But
here,
as in his account of the
lives of those
painters (for example Aertgen
van
Leyden
and Frans
Floris)
who he feels sacrificed their art to
wasteful
drinking,
van Mander's
emphasis
is on habit-
ual
drinking
as destructive for
artists,
not on the
party-
ing
of
peasants
on a
day
of celebration.
Three
years
after the
appearance
of the
print
of
1592,
van Mander returned
briefly
to the kermis
subject,
this
time in
writing.
In a
passage
of his
poem
in
praise
of his
adopted home, Haarlem,
he reveals more of his
assump-
tions about the
kermis, proposing
it as a kind of model
for the behavior of the rest of
society. Describing
the
woods south of Haarlem where the
townsfolk, young
and
old, go
to
"eat, drink, play, read, sing
and drive
away melancholy,"
van Mander
concludes,
"It is
just
like a
kermis, people
like
clothing
must sometimes be
aired."44 The
peasant holiday
is
simply
and
naturally
introduced to
explain, perhaps
a bit to
excuse,
the
goings-on
in the Haarlem woods. I think that it is in
just
this
way
that van Mander's
depictions
of
peasant
kermises,
as well as those of other artists of the
time,
were meant to be understood.
There
is, however,
a
problem
that van Mander
chooses to
ignore
in the
passage just quoted. Although
the
pleasures
of the Haarlem woods offer recreation like
(in
the sense of "as
does,"
"even
as")
the
village fair,
the
pleasures
of the woods are not like
(in the sense of
44
Karel van
Mander,
Beelden van Haarlem in Drie
lofdichten op
Haarlem, ed.
J.D. Rutgers
van der
Loeff,
Haarlem
191I, p.
22. This
publication (includingtwo
Haarlem
poems by
van Mander and one
by
an earlier
author)
was done from a
manuscript,
as no
copies
exist of a
I6IO publication
of van Mander's
poem.
The editor dates the
poem
to
just
before
I596.
Since the
publication
is hard to come
by,
I shall
quote
the stanza referred to
(stanza 9)
in full:
Noch
Zuijd
van der stat soo men
gaet
na
Leijden
Langhs
de
groene weijden
ist Haerlems
foreest,
Daer hem
jonck
en out mach
gaen vermeijden,
Kuijeren, spatseeren,
hier en daer
verscheijden,
Int
groen
hen
spreijden,
om
verheughen
den
geest;
Eten, drincken, spelen, lesen, singhen onbevreest,
't Welck veel
tempeest
van
droefheijt
vluchten doet.
Het
schijnt
daer recht te wesen een kermisfeest:
Den mensch-als een kleet-hem
somtijts
verluchten moet.
45
In this
connection,
it is
interesting
to
compare
these works with
a
group
of middle-class festive
scenes, variously
titled
Prodigal Son,
Merry Party,
Golden
Age,
Feast of the
Gods,
or Bacchanal discussed
identical
with)
those of the fair-far from
it,
for
quite
different
people
are involved. While the Haarlem
young
and old
eat, drink,
read and
sing,
the
peasants,
as we
see in van Mander's
print, get drunk, vomit,
dance and
fight,
with not a book to be seen
anywhere.
There
is,
in
other
words,
a real difference between the
pastimes
of
the
townspeople
out in the woods and the cruder
plea-
sures of the
peasant. So,
to return to the
poem
and the
print (fig. 2),
what is the assumed
relationship
between
the
presumably non-peasant
reader or viewer and the
peasants depicted
at their kermis? Are we
expected
(invited)
to act like them or
just
to feel like them? Is the
second
possible
without the first? The
problem
is that
of the
relationship
between
high
and
low,
one
that,
in
the verbal
usage
common to both van Mander's time
and
ours, engages
both social and artistic concerns.
The van Mander
engraving,
like the
poem
of
Bredero,
deals with this
problem directly.
It is not
only
comic
attitudes that these works have in
common,
but the
artistic device of the viewer or witness to the kermis who
is not a
peasant
himself. What Bredero does with his
voice in the last
stanza,
van Mander tries to do with the
two well-dressed
figures standing
at the left and direct-
ing
our attention to the kermis. In each case the
peas-
ant's
superior
is
helping us,
also his
superior,
to take in
the scene. But while in van Mander's
print
the viewers
remain
curiously separate, observing
and observed
(notice
the children
looking up
at them and the
dancing
man in the center who
appears
to
perform
for
them)
but
not
taking any part
in the
kermis,
Bredero's
poem,
as
we have
seen,
invites
participation
of a kind.45
by Wolfgang
Stechow.
Having
identified the
subject
of several such
paintings
as Life Before the Last
Judgment, certainly
a
moralizing
scene,
Stechow
pointed
to a
surprising legend
on a Galle
engraving
of
one such work
by
Sweelinck
(Hollstein, op.
cit.
[note 35],
vol.
7, p. 61,
nr.
376),
which is
nothing
else than an invitation to
join
the
party
for
"Verum ... nostro
carpite
more iocos... Verum adsit lusus
laetitiaeque
modus." One
might
have
thought
that the distance or lower class of
the
peasant
would make the
depiction
of
letting-go
more
permissible,
but here we find it
presented directly
in terms of the viewer's own
class,
with no intermediaries deemed
necessary.
It seems to me that the Galle
engraving
and other works like it are best understood in the context of
the illustrations for
contemporary song-books,
whose
prefatory
words
often issue a similar invitation to
party pleasures. See,
for
example,
the
David Vinckboons
design
for the
frontispiece
of the i602 Nieuwen
lust-hof, mentioned
above,
note
18,
which
appears
similar to the Swee-
linck
painting and,
like the Galle
engraving,
is
accompanied by
the
invitation to
enjoy
the
songs
at
parties, weddings,
New Year's
days,
and so forth. See
Wolfgang Stechow,
"Lusus
laetitiaeque modus,"
Art
Quarterly 35 (1972), pp. I65-75.
I26
Realism as a comic mode
At this
point
a word of
explanation may
be needed to
lay
to rest
any
uneasiness the reader
might
feel about
reaching
back some
twenty years
from Bredero to van
Mander,
and in addition for
paralleling,
as I have
done,
verbal and
pictorial
works. To take the second
point
first,
in
spite
of what
appears
to be the
unliterary
nature
of their
subject-matter,
it is nevertheless true that the
practitioners
of the lowest
genre
of
painting,
those who
painted peasants
and
landscapes,
were
frequently
mem-
bers of the
rederijker
societies-we could
name, among
others,
Peter Baltens in Mechelen and later Brouwer in
Haarlem.
Bruegel's
contact with the world of the intel-
ligentsia,
of which we have read much
recently,
was not
unusual for a
painter
of
peasants.
This is not
surprising,
perhaps,
if we remember that at the
rederijkers'
festivals
songs
and
plays
were
performed
which offer the closest
analogy
to the comic
peasant
that we have found in art.
The
painter
and
singer,
the writer of farces and collector
of
folksongs,
had close contact in the i6th
century
and
in more than one instance
were,
in
fact,
one and the
same.
(This
does not mean that their traditions were
one-we do
not,
for
example, specifically
find
weddings
and kermises as the
subject
of
any
farces or
many songs;
nor do the tales of the
singers,
such as that about Claes
Molenaer,
turn
up
in
painting. Renger's example
of the
parallel
verbal and
pictorial
treatment of the
prodigal
son is
unusual.)
To take
up
the first
question
raised
above,
we can
trace a tradition of similar attitudes towards and
pre-
sentations of the
peasant
in the
Antwerp song-book
of
1544,
the works
ofBruegel, Baltens,
Maerten van
Cleef,
and van Mander's
Kermis,
Bredero's
preface
and the
works
ofVinckboons,
Ostade and other
peasant painters
of the
I7th century.
The
anonymous
life of van Mander
that
appears
at the end of the I6I8 edition of his
Schilder-boeck describes his
early days
as a theatrical
designer
and
producer
and
specifically
mentions the
farces
(kluchten)
that he wrote 'with
peasants
as the butt
46 "Soote-kluyten
van
eenighe
boerten vande boeren
bedreyen
...
ende Liedekens
/
so in't
gheestelijck
als in't vroede in't sotte
/
ofte in't
minne...,"
Karel van
Mander,
Het
schilder-boeck...,
2nd
ed.,
Haar-
lem
1618,
R
iiiv,
col. i. It has been
suggested, though
not
proven,
that
Bredero was the author of this account of van Mander's life.
47
The
publication
of the
songs
seems
directly
tied to
religious
and
political history, although
this does not
explain
their character or
popularity.
The
Antwerp song-book
of
1544
was
put
on the Index in
1546
but
by 1569
was so
completely
eradicated that it no
longer
appeared
on the Duke of Alba's list of banned books. The
publication
of his humor" as well as
songs humorous,
amorous and
spiritual.46 Thus,
in van Mander's
literary
activities of
the
years just
before
1568 (born
in
1548,
he left his home
in
I568),
we
recognize
a
good general description
of
Bredero's concerns some
forty years
later.
Although
Bredero was born into another
generation
and
although
his
poems
date some
twenty years
after the van Mander
Kermis,
both are
properly
seen as
part
of the
great
revival of
songs
and farces at the end of the I6th and the
beginning
of the
i7th
centuries.47 It is not
only
con-
venient to relate these
works,
but
quite fitting.
It was
perhaps
Bredero's sense of this shared cultural back-
ground
that drew him to van
Mander,
in
spite
of all the
differences between them as men and as
artists,
and led
to Bredero's
writing
the
celebratory
verse to the dead
van Mander that closes the 1618 edition of the Schilder-
boeck.
But,
the reader
might object, though
it is true that
these
particular works,
the Kermis of van Mander and
the
poems
of
Bredero,
are
comparable, they are,
after
all,
not
equally representative
of the works of the two
artists. While it is
quite customary
to introduce Bredero
into a discussion of realistic low art-he is the
poet
who
is
consistently
cited as a
parallel
for Ostade-van
Mander
spoke up
in
opposition
to the minor
genres
of
Dutch
art, arguing
for the virtues of the Italian concern
with the nude and the
high
themes of
history painting.
Van Mander's kermises must be seen as
displaying
an
uncharacteristic
aspect
of his art that seems to lead to
the future-to the
art, say,
of his most famous
pupil,
Frans Hals.
Such a view of both men results from
emphasizing
a
realistic revolution in Dutch art
shortly
after the
year
I600.
In an
important sense, however,
Bredero's low-
life realism takes a
traditional,
not a
revolutionary,
stand. In
writing
his
songs,
and the
preface
to
them,
Bredero was
offering
an
alternative,
albeit in a Renais-
sance rhetorical
mode,
to the
French-inspired poetry
of
of
song-books picks up again,
with a
great
number
coming
out in
Holland in the
i58os,
and the revival continues
through
the I7th
century.
Bredero was not the
only professional
writer to draw on this
tradition
during
these
years:
Samuel Coster's farce Teeuwis de
boer,
for
example,
is based on a
song
in the
Antwerp Song-Book.
See P.F.
Scheurleer,
Nederlandsche liedboeken, The
Hague I912, suppl. I923,
for a list of all
song-books published
in the Netherlands at this
time,
which makes this
history
clear. A
good,
brief account of the nature
and
history
of
song-books
is
given by
D.
Bax,
"Het
wereldlijke
lied in
de
xvIe eeuw,"
in Geschiedenis van de letterkunde der
Nederlanden,
vol.
3,
ed. G.S.
Overdiep, Antwerp 1944,
pp.
242-75.
127
SVETLANA ALPERS
4 Adriaen Pietersz. van de
Venne,
Princes Maurits and Frederik Hendrik at the
Valkenburg
horse
fair. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Hooft, by reaching
back into and
developing
out of the
realistic,
comic tradition of the
previous century.
Van
Mander's kermises are
similarly traditional;
the differ-
ence is-and it is of course a
great
difference-that van
Mander,
unlike
Bredero,
seems to have
thought
that
this native tradition was not the
path
to a
great
Dutch
art or
literature,
but rather
only
an admirable
past.
If we consider the
history
of Dutch literature in the
I7th century,
we find that van Mander
was,
in a
sense,
proved right:
it was the Renaissance revolution that
took
over;
while in the
history
of Dutch
painting,
Bre-
dero's
proposal-of making
new the
past-triumphed.
Understood in the context of the tradition of
peasant
themes,
at
least,
the
triumph
of
17th-century
realistic
painting,
like Bredero's
preface
and
poems, appears
more
properly
a
conservatively-based making new,
rather than a radical break with the
past.
SOME KERMIS PAINTINGS AND LIFE
Let us return
now,
aware of the
justness
of its com-
parison
with
Bredero,
to the
engraving designed by
van
Mander
(fig. 2).
It should be noted that the
large
fore-
ground figures, placed
to one
side, negotiating
between
48
See
F.J. Kalf,
"Drie
tekeningen
van B. van
Orley
of
zijn omge-
ving?,"
in De bloeitgd van de vlaamse
tapjkunst (conference
of
I961),
Brussels
(Koninklijke
Vlaamse Akademie voor
Wetenschappen,
Let-
teren en Schone
Kunsten) 1969,
p. 260. This
drawing
is the basis for
a
tapestry
in the series known as the Lucas van
Leyden Months;
see
Ludwig Baldass,
Die Wiener
Gobelinsammlung,
Vienna
I920,
nr.
II4.
the main scene and the
viewer, belong
to an established
I6th-century pictorial
tradition: a
drawing
of one of the
seasons attributed to van
Orley,
for
example,
shows
peasants working
in the fields to the
right
and an aristo-
cratic
couple
who
point
them out to the viewer as an
example
of summer's labors.48 Here not
only
the
size,
and the
position,
but also the social
relationship
of the
figures
are like those in van Mander's
composition.
However,
in the case of the kermis the
relationship
between
high
and
low,
between the
non-peasant
and
the
peasant,
has not
only
an
artistic,
but an actual
dimension. We should not
forget that, although
the
kermis was
primarily
a
peasant
celebration
(note
that
like
many
other works of this
type
the Clock
engraving
after van Mander's
drawing
is entitled Der bouwren
kermis)
there were
commonly
outside
visitors;
for in the
16th and
I7th
centuries as from time
immemorial,
it
was an occasion for the
mingling
of rich and
poor,
townsman and
villager.
It
is,
as it
were, symbolic
of this
situation that the Prince
Regent
of the Netherlands was
expected
to
put
in an annual
appearance
at the
Hague
Kermis and was even criticized
severely
when he did
not.49 Adrian van de
Venne,
best-known as the illustra-
49
This is referred to
by
G.A. Wumkes in the useful
compendium
study "Kermissen,"
in Uit onzen
bloeitijd,
ed. S.D. van
Veen,
Baarn
9Io0,
ser.
2,
nr.
8, p. 15. Wumkes's source was the
very
useful foot-
notes
by
R. Fruin to his edition of Coenraet
Drost, Overblyfsels
van
geheugenis,
2
vols.,
Leiden
I897.
This
long autobiographical poem,
first
published
in
I723,
is an
interesting
source for Dutch
life,
in
particular
court
life,
in the later
I7th
and
early
i8th centuries.
128
Realism as a comic mode
5
David
Vinckboons,
Kermis.
Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen
tor of
Cats,
but also a
painter
attendant on the court at
the
Hague,
recorded a similar visit of Frederick
Henry
in i6i8 to the horse-fair at
Valkenburg (fig.
4)-one of
those unusual works in which this artist combines his
interest in the morals and mores of the
people
with his
courtly
commitment.50 The
great majority
of kermis
paintings
include well-to-do
non-peasants (easily
iden-
tifiable
by
their
clothes) alighting
from their
wagons,
50 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
cat. nr.
2488.
There are other
pic-
tures of this
type showing royalty
at
peasant
fetes-for
example,
Esaias van de Velde's Prince Maurits and Frederick
Henry
at the
Rijs-
wijkfair,
of
1625,
Six
Collection, Amsterdam,
and also several works
or sometimes
boats,
and
strolling among
the revellers.
It is true that
they
are never
depicted
as
getting drunk,
vomiting, defecating
or
fighting
as the
peasants do,
but
they occasionally join
the
peasants
in a
dance,
as in
Vinckboons's Kermis in Munich
(fig. 5),
and in one rare
instance a
gentleman
even tries a tune on a
bag-pipe
offered him
by
a
peasant.51 Often,
a few of the non-
peasant
visitors to the kermis are
placed prominently
in
by Jan Bruegel showing
Albert and Isabella at a
peasant wedding
and
dance: see
below,
note 62.
5i Bayer. Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich,
inv. nr.
4927, pres-
ently
on
deposit
at
Schleissheim,
and Lukas van
Valkenborch, Village
festival, Hermitage, Leningrad,
inv. nr.
396.
129
SVETLANA ALPERS
6 Hans
Bol,
Kermis.
Antwerp, Koninklijk
Museum voor Schone Kunsten
(photo: ACL, Brussels)
the
foreground (fig. 6),
as if
posing
for the
painter.52
On the basis of such visual
evidence,
one is
tempted
to
guess
that a number of such
paintings
did in fact re-
present particular people-the
commissioner of the
work and his
family, perhaps, attending
a kermis. Aside
from the
royal
visitors mentioned
above,
I have so far
come
upon
one
contemporary description
of a
painting
which
appears
to substantiate this
possibility.
A work
by
Gillis van Mostaert is described
by
van Mander as a
52 See,
for
example,
Hans
Bol, Village kermis, Koninklijk
Museum
voor Schone
Kunsten, Antwerp,
cat. nr.
5020.
53
Karel van
Mander,
Het Schilder-boeck..., Haarlem
i604,
fol.
26Iv.
54
Sander
Pierron,
Les Mostaert, Brussels & Paris
I912,
p.
137.
Kunsthalle, Bremen,
cat.
I939,
nr.
93. Unfortunately,
the
picture
does
good-sized, many-figured
work
depicting
the Schetsen
brothers,
bankers of
Hoboken, being
feted
by
the
peas-
ants of the town.53 Even if Pierron was incorrect in
suggesting
that Mostaert's Kermis of
1589
in
Bremen,
which features two
portraits
at the
left,
is the work
described
by
van
Mander,
still we have a clear instance
in van Mander's account of a
painting
ordered with the
aim of
celebrating
the
presence
of
particular people
at
a
peasant
fete.54
not seem to be identical with van Mander's
description
of a
presenta-
tion scene. But at least van Mander's text substantiates this kind of
commission. Of
course,
the
question
should also be
raised, exactly
what was the
relationship
between
peasant
and middle-class
patron
that
they
should want to be
depicted
in this
way.
Professor Hermann
van der Wee of the Catholic
University, Louvain, suggested
to me in
130
Realism as a comic mode
_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. - k ' %
7 David Vinckboons, Kermis. Dresden, Gemaldegalerie (photo: Deutsche Fotothek Dresden)
In
short,
the
non-peasant
went to
and,
what is
more,
wanted to be
depicted going
to
kermises,
while
clearly
observing
a certain
decorum,
a certain
distance,
if
you
will. If this social
situation,
like its
rendering
in
art,
appears
an obvious and natural
one,
we should
perhaps
remind ourselves that it was not
always necessarily
so.
On this
very point
it is
fascinating
to read of the
objec-
tions raised
by
the father of David
Wilkie,
the
early
1gth-century
Scottish
painter,
to
being depicted
in the
crowd of his son's
Pitlessiefair.55 Wilkie,
who was con-
cerned in
many
of his works with Scottish life and mores
in conscious imitation of
7th-century painters,
seems
to have done the Dutch one better
by depicting
his
family,
friends and
neighbors along
with the
peasants
at the
village fair; but, according
to Wilkie's
biographer,
conversation that in
mid-i6th-century
Flanders middle-class entre-
preneurs
from the cities set
up cottage
industries for
spinning
in the
countryside,
and
perhaps
the contact between
peasant
and middle
class which we see
depicted
in kermises from this time reflects this.
The actual economic
relationship seems, however,
more restricted as
to time and
place
than the convention of the kermis as a
place
for such
mixing.
55
National
Gallery
of
Scotland, Edinburgh,
nr.
1527,
dated
I804.
See A.
Cunningham, Life of
Sir David Wilkie,
vol.
I,
London
I843,
this
practice
was not well received: "Some district
worthies affected
displeasure
and ... even his
father,
who is
represented standing conversing
with a
publican,
looked
grave
at this until someone
suggested
that he
seemed in the act of
warning
the other to
keep
a deco-
rous house." The evidence offered
by
the kermis
paint-
ings
is that Dutch and Flemish citizens did not stand
so much on their
dignity
on such occasions.
The
vulgarity,
or natural behavior of the
peasant,
depending
on how it is
interpreted,
was not hidden
from the
17th-century
viewer
by
the artist. In Vinck-
boons's Kermis in
Dresden,56
a
vomiting
man and a
urinating
child frame the scene in the
foreground,
while
dancing, eating
and
lusty embracing go
on in-between
(fig. 7).
If one looks
carefully
at the middle and back-
pp. 62-63,
for this anecdote. It is a remarkable
testimony
to the
per-
sistence of the traditions that we are
tracing-the relationship
of
peasants
in
song, poetry
and
painting
and the interest of
royalty
and
the
upper
classes in such
subjects
in
paint-that
Wilkie's famous
depiction
of a
peasant wedding (The penny wedding, Buckingham
Palace, London,
dated
i8i8)
was ordered
by
the Prince
Regent
and
was based on a ballad sent to the
painter by
an
admiring contemporary,
the
poet John Gait,
himself an enthusiast about the
description
of
peasant
life in art.
56 Gemaldegalerie, Dresden,
cat.
I930,
nr.
937.
I3I
SVETLANA ALPERS
ground figures
one finds
people urinating,
a
fight
com-
plete
with ladders and chairs
traditionally
used as
battering
rams and defensive
weapons,
and for
good
measure a
meandering hog
or two. The
legends
under
kermis
engravings
in the
I6th and
I7th
centuries re-
peatedly
refer in
general
terms to such
goings-on:
that
under
Bruegel's
Hoboken kermis,57 which
speaks
of
peasants dancing, springing
and
drinking
themselves
drunk like beasts is
typical.
But whether the words are
presented
as
coming
from the
peasants
themselves58 or
from an
outsider,
the concern is
always
with how the
rest of
society
comes to terms with such
behavior;
and
the common counsel is to
accept. Thus,
the
inscription
on the
Bruegel
Hoboken kermis ends
by arguing
that the
peasant
has his kermis no matter what it costs him in
hunger
the rest of the
year.
"Let the
peasants
have their
kermis," proclaimed on the
flag flying
in
Bruegel's
St.
George
Kermis and
repeated
as the
legend
on countless
other scenes of this
kind,
can be understood in this
festive context.59
If, then,
we stand
back,
as we are meant
to,
from a
Vinckboons and take an over-all
view,
the individual
vulgarities
or sins are to be seen as
part
of a
general
scene of human
gaiety
and
letting-go.
The
festivity
takes
in,
rather than
opposes,
the
church,
which is
always placed
at the rear with its kermis
flag flying.
The
foundation of the church and the
day
of its
patron saint,
after
all, provide
the occasion for the kermis in Catholic
countries
(kermis
=
kirk-mass).
The
festivity
also em-
braces the barter of
goods
at the stalls. Vinckboons's
kermises in
particular involve,
to an
extraordinary
degree,
the
mixing
of social classes. While his
drawing
of
I602
in
Copenhagen,
known
through
the
print
of
Nicolas de
Bruyn
and
through painted
versions in
57
Louis
Lebeer, Catalogue
raisonne des
estampes
de
Bruegel l'ancien,
Brussels
I969,
nr.
30.
58
See the
Jan
Both
drawing
in the
Kiiperferstichkabinett, Berlin,
Bock &
Rosenberg,
nr.
2265,
with an
inscription beginning
"lat ons
vry
drinken" or "let us drink
freely" (or
"at our
leisure").
59 Lebeer, op.
cit.
(note 57),
nr.
52.
A.
Jans,
"Enkele
grepen
uit de
kerkelijke wetgeving
ten
tijde
van Pieter
Bruegel,"
aarboek
Koninklijk
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1969-70,
pp.
105-I i,
demon-
strates that the
Bruegel
kermises do not describe behavior that
goes
against
the
rulings
of the church
synods
in the
previous years.
Al-
though
he admits it is
possible,
he also doubts that the
flag
in the St.
George
kermis
represents
a
protest against
the often-referred-to edict
of Charles v ten
years before, limiting
and
curtailing
kermis celebra-
tions. It is
significant
that so
many proverbial sayings
about kermises
share this
tone, e.g.,
"It is a
poor
land that does not have a kermis at
Antwerp,
Brunswick and
elsewhere,60 presents
a tran-
sition from rich
burger
to
peasant through
the line of
figures strung
across the
foreground,
the Munich Ker-
mis of about I608
(fig. 5)
shows
elegant people really
joining
in the dance with the
peasants.
Vinckboons even
modifies the
figure-types, tending
to
merge high
and
low in order to effect this union. A
great part
of the
artistic success and individual
quality
of Vinckboons's
kermises is due to the fact that he deals
fully
and
frankly
with their crude
aspects,
while at the same time
giving
the
pleasurable aspects
of the celebration their due. He
puts
the festive occasion at the heart of the
good
cheer
and
well-being
of the entire
society.
Of
course,
a
range
of
tone,
and indeed of
attitude,
was
possible
in the
presentation
of such
scenes; obviously,
they
are not
simply
a direct
rendering
of life but an
interpretation
of it.
Thus,
as we have
seen,
the
peasant
pleasures
that are
simply catalogued
and offered to our
view
by
van
Mander,
are
actually
assimilated to the
reader's and viewer's
experience by
the
workings
of
Bredero's
poem
and Vinckboons's
paintings.
The
per-
ception
of bestial
aspects
of
peasant behavior,
often an
element in such
scenes,
sometimes
gets
the
upper hand,
as in the earliest kermises attributed to Brouwer. One
is reminded of the
disparaging
tone with which the
Cardinal Infant
Ferdinand,
in a letter to his
brother,
Philip iv,
refers to the bestial
eating
and
drinking
of the
Antwerp citizenry during
the
August
kermis.61 What a
different view of the
peasantry-a
decorous view-
Philip
IV
got
from
Jan Bruegel's paintings
of Albert and
Isabella,
Ferdinand's
predecessors, attending
a
peasant
wedding
or dance
(figs. 8-9).
While Ferdinand's letter
contains the frank off-the-cuff remarks of a ruler to his
brother, Jan Bruegel's paintings
of Albert and Isabella
least once a
year."
60 For the
drawing,
see Korneel
Goossens,
David Vinckboons,
Antwerp 1954, p. 65
and
fig. 30;
the
engraving
is in
Hollstein, op.
cit.
(note 35),
vol.
3, p. 66,
nr.
320;
the
paintings
are in the
Koninklijk
Museum voor Schone
Kunsten, Antwerp,
cat. nr.
495,
and
Herzog
Anton Ulrich
Museum, Brunswick,
nr. 90. Of the several
painted
examples
of this
composition
that
exist,
none has been
conclusively
accepted
as
autograph.
6i
"Ayer
fu6 la fiesta
mayor
deste
lugar que
llaman la
caramesa,
es
una
procesion
bien
larga
con muchos carros
triunfales,
a mi
parecer
mejor que
en
Bruselas, y despues que
ha
pasado todo,
se van a comer
y
i bever
y para
todo en
emborracharse, que
sin esto no
hay
fiesta en
este
pais.
Cierto
que
viven como bestias en esta
parte." Correspondance
de Rubens, traduits, annot6s
par
Ch. Ruelens et Max
Rooses,
vol.
6,
Antwerp 1909, p. 237.
132
Realism as a comic mode
8
Jan Bruegel, Weddingfeast
with Albert and Isabella.
Madrid,
Prado
(photo: Mas, Barcelona)
9 Jan Bruegel, Country
dance with Albert and Isabella.
Madrid,
Prado
(photo: Mas, Barcelona)
I33
SVETLANA ALPERS
i_
rt ...j ,
i,
~q
;
E,I
I
Engraving
executed
by
Michel Le
Blon, Bredero, Geestigh
liedt-
cxken,
1621
io
Engraving
executed
by
Michel Le
Blon, Bredero,
Groot lied-boeck,
I622
seem to have
represented
the
public policy
of their
regime.62 Curiously enough,
and
completely
out of
keeping
with the character of the
engraving illustrating
the
poem,
the
inscription
attached to the illustration of
Bredero's
peasant party poem
in the I622 Groot lied-
boeck
(fig. io)
is
negative
in
tone,
as it asks
rhetorically
why
one should not loathe the
drinking
and
resulting
fight
between the
peasants.63
Aside from this
potential
for a black, or
perhaps
a
grey, comedy,
there
are,
of
course,
inscriptions
for
engravings specifically
devised
to alert us to the
dangers
rather than to the
pleasures
of
peasant
entertainments. The
deadly
sins are at one
pole
of this comic
presentation-or rather,
I should
say, they
lie
just
outside it.
Very
often we find scenes
originally
62 See Marcel de
Maeyer,
Albrecht en Isabella en de schilderkunst,
Brussels
1955,
who mentions the four works which
today
are all in the
Prado: a Peasant dance
(Prado,
cat.
1953,
nr.
1439)
with the Archduke
and Duchess in
attendance,
and its
pendant,
a Peasant
wedding,
dated
1623 (Prado,
cat.
I953,
nr.
1438);
and a Peasant
wedding
with the
Archduke and Duchess in attendance
(Prado,
cat.
1953,
nr.
1442),
with
a
Wedding procession (Prado,
cat.
1953,
nr.
I44I)
as its
pendant.
I will
quote
in full the
passage
de
Maeyer
cites from a
posthumous publica-
tion in honor of Archduke
Albert,
which
presents
this
mixing
with the
people
as
part
of his
public policy:
"... ceste familiarite
qu'il
monstrait
au
peuple
se trouvant a leurs festes.
Ainsy
l'aves-vous veu tirer au
papegay,
s'en aller a la foire des
verres,
assister aux danses
villageoises
et aux aultres exercices du
peuple guayement.
Et bien
qu'en
toutes ses
rencontres ce
grand prince
fust
toujours serieux,
si ravaillait-il ceste
gravite
et radoucissait ceste fermete
parce qu'il voyait
servir a la
recreation de sa cour et du
peuple
... Tout cela le faisait aimer
grande-
ment de son
peuple."
Le soleil
eclipse
ou discours sur la vie et la mort du
sirinissime archiduc
Albert,
Brussels
1622, p.
88.
comic in intent rather
unconvincingly
transformed into
didactic ones
by
means of an
inscription.
Van Mander's
1588 drawing
of the
couple
off to the
kermis,
whose
inscription
allows this occasion to be a
happy
one for the
peasant, appears
in
I596
as an
engraving
in a German
emblem book
warning against gluttony.64
Even works
that are
negative
in
intent, however,
seem to retain some
impulse
to entertain and
thus,
in
spite
of
themselves,
end
up
somewhat
ambiguously.
We
may
contrast them
with certain
preachers
of the time who fulminated
against
kermises. William Teellinck of
Middelburg,
who dedicated to Cats his little
1624
treatise
against
the
kermis,
refuses to shock or
perhaps
to entertain his
readers with the horrors of the occasion. Unlike the
63
This
engraving,
one of the two which
appeared
even in the 1621
song-book (see fig. II),
was executed and
signed
in 1621
by
Michel le
Blon
(see J.Ph.
van der
Kellen,
Michel Le Blon: receuil d'ornements,
The
Hague 1900,
nr.
221).
It has often been
mistakenly
attributed to
Jan
van de
Velde, probably
because he did execute some
engravings
after
designs by Buytewech
for the new illustrations added to the 1622
edition. We do not know who
designed
this
engraving.
The interior
setting
reminds
one,
as Prof.
J.G.
van Gelder
suggested
to
me,
of
I6th-
century
brothel
scenes, with, however,
none of the usual sinful over-
tones.
Perhaps, indeed,
it is Le Blon's
copy
of an older scene.
Only
the
pitchforks leaning against
the
wall,
which
suggest
a
peasant festivity,
seem to fit the Bredero
poem,
and it seems
justified
to assume that the
engraving
was not
designed
with the
poem
in mind. The rather
severe,
moralistic
verses,
which seem most
inappropriate
to the tone of the
poem,
were
only
added in the 1622 Groot lied-boeck, where the
original
engraving,
much
enlarged
and without Le Bon's
name, appears
in
reverse.
64
See
above,
note
39.
I34
vuc;
i
h
C:
%
,!!r ??..?? .r i' ?*
LIL,R I
*Ji.n .I;'/J 's
Realism as a comic mode
12 Karel van
Mander,
Kermis.
Leningrad, Hermitage
contemporary paintings,
he offers his readers no de-
scription
of the
celebration; instead,
he exhorts them
with
lengthy scriptural exegesis.
There is no
place
for
ambiguity
here as to how we take the kermis: it is
simply
sin,
and
boring
at that.65
This
range
of tone and attitude sometimes makes
interpretation, particularly
of individual
paintings,
hard. Van Mander's one
painted
Kermis
(fig. 12),
in the
Hermitage,
his final
presentation
of the
subject,
seems
to me a work which neither
clearly
extols
pleasure
nor
clearly
condemns sins.66 I
suspect
that it reveals a con-
fusion on his own
part. Generally, however,
the comic
view is
stronger
than the moralistic and didactic
one,
65
W.
Teellinck,
Gesonde
bitterheyt
voor den
weelderighen
christen
die
geerne
kermisse houdt, Middelburg 1624.
perhaps just
because it is the
peasants
and not the
viewer,
not the
middle-class,
that are at issue.
Symp-
tomatic of this is the
uniqueness
(as
far as I
know)
of
the de
Bry
emblem book of
I59667
in the number of
emblems
(8
out of
48)
which feature
peasants:
for all
their
popularity
as a
subject
for
art, peasants simply
do
not count in the
i7th century
at the life-and-death
level. It is for this reason that death most
literally
does
not lurk in the scenes of entertainment. The
figure
of
death that
appears
behind the doomed
earthly
lovers in
a
print designed by Vinckboons,
or the scene of the
crucifixion on the distant hill that tells us that Christ
forgives
the
transgressions
of the noble
participants
in
66
Hermitage, Leningrad,
cat. nr.
3055, signed
and dated i600.
67 J.Th.
and
J.
de
Bry,
Emblemata
saecularia...,
Frankfurt
1596.
I35
SVETLANA ALPERS
the forest
fete,
are
notably
absent from low-life enter-
tainment scenes.68 When we find the
figure
of death
with his
hourglass
as the last in a
sequence
of woodcuts
making up
a broadsheet
illustrating
events at the ker-
mis, it is
bringing
down the curtain on a human
comedy
rather than
serving
as an exhortation
against
sin.69
RAMIFICATIONS
There is an
important
sense in which the
appeal
to a
comic
understanding
of low-life
paintings
is far from
new. It is
perhaps
the oldest view of these works. Ever
since the
I7th century,
when
pictures
of the common
people
were referred to as
drolleries,
it has been com-
mon to treat works
depicting
low life as
comical,
with
reactions to them
ranging
from amusement to
disgust.70
It is
only
in our own time that this view has been so
completely
dismissed. As
recently
as Max
J.
Fried-
laender,
one could write of the artist
revealing
"un-
pathetische Betrachtung
des Lebens ...
die,
dem harm-
losen Inhalte
gemass
dem Beobachter seelischen Ab-
stand sicherten und einen
Standpunkt,
von dem er
duldsam vorurteilslos und schliesslich mit Humor dem
Treiben des
Alltags
zusah."71 One of the constant ele-
ments in this once traditional comic view of low-life
paintings
was its
simple
or mirror view of realism:
whether
depicted
as
funny, ugly
or
disgusting,
the
common
people
in art were considered to have been
painted
as
they
are. The works
testify
to the artists'
attentiveness to
this,
and
commentators,
be
they
admir-
ing
or
condemning
of low-life
subjects,
all testified to
the realism of such works: van Mander
praised Bruegel
for,
in
effect, really capturing
the
funny peasant,
while
de
Bisschop
attacked those works which
depicted
the
68
Hollstein, op.
cit.
(note 35),
vol.
4,
p. 22,
nr.
173, J. Bruyn
sc.
I6oI. There are
exceptions,
of course. Vinckboons's
drawing
in the
British Museum
(nr. I847.3.I8.66)
of
peasants carousing
outside a
cottage
features a
figure
of death
running through
the field
beyond-
which
is, however,
left out of the
print
made after the
drawing.
I have
found at least two
depictions
of low-life
fights
which feature the
figure
of death and an
inscription warning
of his swift
arrival,
but these are
isolated
depictions
of
brawls,
not
properly
scenes of entertainment:
Joos van
Craesbeck, Koninklijk
Museum voor Schone
Kunsten,
Antwerp,
cat. nr.
850,
Rixe devant le
cabaret, and the
engraving
after
Lievens,
D.
Rovinski,
L'oeuvre
grave
de
Rembrandt, St.
Petersburg
1890,
ii".
69
See Ludovicus
Meyere,
L'art
populaire flamande, Antwerp
&
Brussels
1934,
p.
263, fig. I41.
70 WNT, s.v.
drol; Oxford English dictionary, s.v. droll. Van Man-
der in his Lives
frequently
uses the word to characterize
peasants
depicted
in art and at least once to characterize the art based on it.
gluttonous peasant, despicable
in
every way,
"too
filthy
even to
depict
in words."72 This
simple approach
to
realism has been
articulately questioned
in our time
by
the search for
deeper meanings.
Konrad
Renger replies
to the
passage
from Friedlaender
quoted
above
by an
appeal
to the "tieferen Sinnes" of
pictures
of
drinking
and
lovemaking, by
which he means the moral lesson
about mortal sins which
they present.73
But such an
interpretation,
like the earlier notion of the droll
peas-
ants,
leaves out that
very
element which we have found
to be so
important
in our discussion of the comic mode
-namely
the attitude of the
viewer,
the nature of his
engagement
with what is
depicted,
in other words the
relationship
and attitude of the
non-peasant
to the
peasant.
While the earlier comic
interpretation
assumed
that the
non-peasant
was
just seeing
the
peasant steadily
and
seeing
him
whole, finding
him
entertaining,
the
new
iconography
has the
non-peasant solemnly finding
instruction in the follies of the lower classes. Neither
view comes to terms
with,
or even
admits,
the
possibil-
ity
of a
range
of attitudes towards the
peasant.
But the
works of art
testify
to this.
Though
the
revolutionary
sympathy
for the
peasant
that we find in a Courbet was
impossible
at this
time,
the bond of human
sympathy
framed in
laughter
at our common human lot was not.
When I
speak
of the
peasant
as
comic,
I mean that he
is the source of an
essentially
comic
understanding
of
the world on our
part.
The artist or viewer's
relationship
to his
subject is,
of
course,
an issue in
any
work of art. But it seems to me
a
particularly pressing problem
when we deal with
works of art whose
appeal
is
necessarily
based on a
social distinction between them and us. A
just
under-
See Lydia de Pauw-de
Veen,
De
Begrippen "schilder," "schilderij,"
en
"schilderen" in de zeventiende eeuw, Brussels
(Verhandelingen
van de
Koninklijke
Vlaamse Academie voor
Wetenschappen,
Letteren en
Schone Kunsten van
Belgie,
Klasse der Schone
Kunsten,
vol.
31,
nr.
22) 1969, p. 170,
for the use of the similar word "boots" or
"bootserij."
71
Max
J. Friedlaender,
Die altniederlindische malerei, vol.
12,
Ber-
lin & Leiden
1924-37,
p.
94, quoted by Renger, op.
cit.
(note 41),
p.
Io6.
72 Jan de
Bisschop, Paradigmata graphices
variorum
artificium,
Amsterdam
I670,
from the dedication to Jan Six. The
complete pas-
sage-which, incidentally gives
a
classically-oriented
view of Dutch
low-life
paintings-reads
as follows: "Men sach
by
nae niet anders als
geselschappen
van
bedelaers, kreepel, gebult
en
ongehavent,
bordelen
vol
slordigheyt,
droncke
gelagen
van
gulsige
boeren
op velerley
manier
afsienelijck
te
vuyl
om met woorden af te schilderen." See
J.A.
Emmens,
Rembrandt en de regels van de kunst, Utrecht
1968, p. 56ff.
for a discussion of this
passage.
73 Renger, op.
cit.
(note 41),
p. io6.
I36
Realism as a comic mode
13
Theodor van
Thulden,
Flemish
wedding. Brussels,
Musees
Royaux
des
Beaux-Arts
(photo:
ACL, Brussels)
standing
of this
relationship,
in its various manifesta-
tions,
with its various causes
(for example,
is the
change
in the
depiction
of the
peasant
from
early
works
by
Ostade to late ones based on artistic
development,
or on
social
change,
or
both?)
will
help
us to solve those
problems
about low-life works which we now
attempt
to deal with
by
an
appeal
to
"deeper
hidden
meanings"
or the
application
of a
history
of
style.
Let me
give
some
examples
of what I mean.
There are numerous devices
by
which the artist con-
trols the viewer's
relationship
to the work. Van
Mander,
as we have
seen,
used
figures interpolated (both socially
and
spatially)
between us and the
peasant
frivolities.
Normally
the size and
arrangement
of
figures
in a
paint-
ing play
a
significant
role. The
bird's-eye
view from
which we see most kermis
paintings (we
could also cite
here Callot's
Impruneta)
removes
something
of the bite
from the less attractive
goings-on,
while at the same
time
providing ways
for us to
accept
the
mingling
of
the various classes of
people depicted.
It lessens the
unpleasantness
of what is
ugly
in the behavior of men.
It
is,
of
course, possible,
on the other
hand,
to make the
74 See,
for
example,
Mathieu
Schoevaerdts,
Le
cortege
du
boeufgras,
Brussels,
cat. nr.
417.
figures
so small in a
given setting
that the viewer is made
to feel
totally
uninvolved.74
Our
relationship
is determined also
by
the
descriptive
treatment of the individual
figures.
If
they
are
ugly
in
appearance,
the viewer feels either disturbed
by
what
is revealed-as the
expression goes,
he is too close for
comfort-or so
superior
that he is detached. Brouwer's
peasants pose
real
problems
in this
respect.
The fact
that the Haarlem school of low-life
genre painters-
Ostade,
Brouwer, Dusart-did not
pursue
the
depiction
of scenes such as
kermises,
which mix
high
and
low,
rich and
poor,
but rather tended to devote themselves
to scenes
exclusively
devoted to
peasants,
is at least
partly
understandable in terms of the
style
of their
figures-figures
whose
ugliness
and whose lowness
assumes their
separation from,
rather than their inter-
course
with, gentle
folk.
If,
on the other
hand,
the
peas-
ant
figures
are
prettied up,
as in the later
paintings
of
Teniers,
our
relationship
to them
is,
as it
were,
nullified
and
neutralized-they
become the
peasants
of an aris-
tocrat's
dream,
before which he can
safely parade
his
family.
A
painting by
Theodor van Thulden
(fig. 13)
I37
SVETLANA ALPERS
offers an excellent
example
of the kind of artistic con-
fusions that are
produced
if our
relationship
to a work
is not controlled
by descriptive
means:
taking
off from
Rubens's
Kermis,
his Noces
improbably
combines scur-
rilous-looking peasants
and noble
aristocrats,
and no
one knows
quite
how to behave. Unless it is intended
as a
spoof
on
previous
works
(which
I
doubt),
the
painting
is
unconvincing
because no one can think of
a
circumstance,
real or
imagined,
which would
produce
such a
meeting-the peasants
are too
low,
the nobles
too
high
in
appearance.75
In
appealing
to the
unimaginable
circumstance de-
picted
in this
painting
of van
Thulden,
I want to
suggest
once more that the
relationship
between
non-peasant
and
peasant
which is
figured
in the
pictorial
devices of
art is not
only
a
problem
in
image-making.
In other
words,
while
bearing
in mind the artistic manifestation
of certain attitudes toward the
peasant,
it
is,
of
course,
essential that we
investigate
and
keep
in balance the
civic and economic situation of the
peasant
at this time.
We are
dealing
with the artistic conventions
engaged
in
complex ways
with social
realities,
and it is a hard
task to sort out the
part played by
these factors in
any
particular
work. Not
only
was the
peasant
the
subject
of social and economic concern for both the civil and
ecclesiastical
authorities,
but the evidence is that he
also was
prominently
on the minds of the
leading
princes
as a source of entertainment for their courts. It
is
this, perhaps,
which can be tied most
clearly
to the
making
of art. Both
Bruegel's
and Rubens's
peasant
works,
to take but the two most famous
examples,
were
hung
in courts which not
only
had
already adopted
peasant
dances for their own use in the I6th
century,
but which
staged peasant weddings
and
ftes,
some-
times
bringing
in
peasants
for the
occasion,
sometimes
recruiting
members of the court to
play
the
peasant.
I am
speaking
here not of the taste for the
figure
of the
shepherd,
but
specifically
the
simple peasant. Although
the
paintings
of
Bruegel
and Rubens were not
initially
75
Theodor van
Thulden,
Une
noceflamande, Brussels,
cat. nr.
465.
76
For a
representation
of this
peasant-wedding masquerade
at
court,
see the
engraving by
Le Pautre after a Berlain
drawing repro-
duced
by
Emile
Magne,
Les
fetes
en
Europe
aux XVII siecle, Paris
I930.
In this
context,
it is
particularly interesting
that Rubens's so-called
Kermis is in fact a
representation
of a
peasant wedding,
as was noted
when it was first referred to in the French
royal
collection as "Les
noces de
village."
I
plan
to
publish
a
study
of this
painting
and the
various contexts in which it should be seen.
commissioned
by
these
courts,
it would be instructive
to consider the ambiance in which
they
existed and
were admired within
fifty years
of their execution:
Rubens's Kermis in the
Louvre,
for
example,
was
bought by
Louis xiv in
1685,
and we have
knowledge
of a
peasant wedding performed
at the court in honor
of the
Dauphin only
two
years
before.76
It should be made
clear,
in
conclusion,
that the comic
mode
suggested
here accounts for
only
a certain
portion
of the works
dealing
with
peasants
in the
I7th century;
I
hope
that
recognizing
it will
help
us to sort out the
other modes in which the
peasants
were treated at the
time. For
example,
there is the
peasant
as seen in
nature,
in a
landscape setting,
often at his seasonal
labor, though
also
(so
much for the
separation
of
modes) likely
to
break into dance or frolic-we think of the St. Martin's
Day
frolickers in
Bruegel's Gloomy day
or those
peas-
ants who
characteristically
break into dance for their
betters,
as in so
many village landscapes by Jan Bruegel.
Then there is a small but distinctive
group
of works
which chronicle the conflict between
peasant
and sol-
dier-the
subject
of
elegies
in the literature of the time
and
also,
as it
were,
in the
painting. Finally,
there is
what
might
be called the somber
peasant,
never more
strikingly
somber than when
appearing
so at a time of
relaxation. Le Nain's
monumental,
serious
figures
at
table or in the
farm-yard
seem less
unique,
and
perhaps
less
puzzling,
when we start to assemble the Otium
prints
of Bloemart or the
peasant
celebrations
by Jan
van de Velde
(fig. 14),
both of which
present
a similar
image
of the
peasant.77
Is this the laborer at his well-
earned rest ? Do we find here an
emphasis
on what
might
be called the
Georgic
tradition of the laborer whose
feasting
is seen as
part
of the
yearly
round ?78
But to return to the
point
and the works at hand. I
hope
that
focussing
on a comic mode can serve to turn
us
away
from the excessive
moralizing
that has affected
our view of i6th- and
17th-century genre painting.
The
point
is not that moral
meanings
are not to be found in
77 Hollstein, op.
cit.
(note 35),
vol.
2, p. 65,
nrs.
27-42 (four
of these
are illustrated on
p. 77
of the same volume and
mistakenly
numbered
there as
212-i6),
and L'oeuvre dejan van de
Velde,
D. Franken &
J.Ph.
van der
Kellen,
Amsterdam & Paris
1883,
nrs.
97-98.
78
The
presentation
of the
peasant
in the
Zede-printen (1623)
of
Constantijn Huygens (character
studies of different
types
in
society,
based rather
generally
on the
example
of
Theophrastus)
confirms these
proposed categories:
see C.
Huygens, Zede-printen,
ed.
H.J. Eijmael,
Groningen 1891, pp. 23-27.
I38
Realism as a comic mode
1 a
Y-... .. . . .- . ..
Bacchanal neia seicre apud
rufticos nefaa eit,noiunt ili tesrpus irrcparabile
in hifee rebus contemni;fuie
qucemo.
operibus tra-
duc i diemn volnt ita ili du male fariunt.
edunt
bibunt,uid amplus.
fi id ferre neqceant quod redundat cvoltunt. Au^-.,61y ,.ttl
,Clngbn,qi-d 1an-p
.f ..............................'..t
14 Jan
van de
Velde,
Great
villagefestival. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet
the art of the
time,
but that
they
have dominated our
sense of the art in a
particular
fashion: we have em-
phasized
the moral
message
at the
expense
of the comic
mode of
presentation.
To
preach
a sermon
against
drinking, over-eating, dancing
and
love-making,
and to
produce
a
painting
which
encourages
us to
laugh
at and
to live with these human
indulgences,
are two different
things,
and there
are,
of
course,
various
positions pos-
sible in-between. It is
symptomatic
of our time that the
comic
Bruegel
has been
superseded by
the dark and
pessimistic one, yet
it was characteristic of his time and
his art that the two
aspects
were bound
together.
His
art is more amused and tolerant of than
condemning
of
man's needs and
desires;
van Mander's
testimony
that
the most
straightlaced
of men cannot
help laughing
at
a
Bruegel painting
is
justified by
the works. It is an
attitude that does
not,
it seems to
me,
take
Bruegel
lightly,
but rather takes
comedy seriously.
I
hope
in
this
paper
to have at least
suggested
the
degree
to which
I7th-century
low-life
painters
were heirs to this comic
mode.
I39
SVETLANA ALPERS
VOORREDE
VAN
G.A. BREDERO'S
GEESTIG
LIEDBOEKSKEN,
BIJ
HEM ZELVEN UITGEGEVEN.
Lustige
en
vrolijkmoedige Maagden
en
Jon-
gelingen,
die uw
geneugte
en
vermakinge
in
zoete
tijdkortinge neemt,
ik offere ulieden
op
mijne blijgeestige kindertjes,
om te leren en
5 tot uwen dienst te
gebruiken, hetzij
in
vrolijke
maaltijden, gezelschappen
en bruiloftsfees-
ten,
of om voor u zelven van
zwaarmoedige
gedachten
te
ontledigen
met hare
boertige
vermakelijkheid,
want
zij
hebben voorzeker
o0 een
aardjen
van
mij,
haar
vader,
die weleer
een
zonderlinge wellustigheid
uit der boeren
ommegang haalde,
welker
boertige trekjes zij
op
het
levendigste naspelen
en
-spreken
zul-
len,
indien
gij
haar niet en steurt noch en ver-
15 kort in haar
eigenschap
van
uitspraak:
de
oude Aamsteldamse en Waterlandse taal
hebben
zij
zo
nagekomen
als haar
onze,
doch
te
luttel,
letteren toelieten. Veel oude en
ge-
bruikelijke
woorden der landluiden hebben
20
zij innegenomen,
die
sommige Latinisten,
die
doch eer en meer uitheems dan Duits
geleerd
hebben,
veroordelen en
smadelijk verwerpen,
omdat
zij
ze
juist
door onkunde niet en ken-
nen. Maar
gij
toetsers en
proefmeesters
van
25 ons
goude Nederlands,
die zo
vrijpostig
de
Hollandse woorden aan den steen van uw zin-
nelijkheid strijkt
en daarenboven
stoutelijk
dezelve voor
ongoed,
vals of
biljon verklaart,
keurt ende markt
verbiedt,
omdat 't
bij
u niet
30
gangbaar
noch bekend en
is,
is het daaromme
al in reden
gegrond,
dat men dat oude ver-
schimmelde
potgeld
en de vierkante stukken
zal
verachten,
daar men nochtans door oude
lieden haar
waardije,
ende aan haar zwaarte
35 en
kracht,
hare
deugd
wel kan
gissen,
bereke-
nen en kennen? Voor
mijn deel,
ik beken
't,
dat ik met dit nieuwe Leidse
gevoelen
niet
overeen en kom en dat ik met een ketterse
stijfzinnigheid
aan het oude
hange, ja dat,
al
PREFACE
TO
G.A. BREDERO'S
WITTY LITTLE BOOK OF SONGS
PUBLISHED BY HIMSELF
Merry
and
happy-hearted
maids and
youths,
who take
pleasure
and amusement in sweet
pastimes,
I dedicate
to
you my
cheerful children with their
amusing
enter-
tainments,
to learn and to
put
to
your
own
use,
either
at
happy meals, companies,
or
weddings,
or to relieve
yourselves
of
heavy-hearted thoughts.
For
they
cer-
tainly
have a
drop
of me in
them,
who used to take
special delight
in the
company
of
peasants-whose
rustic
jokes they
will imitate and mimic at their liveliest
provided you
don't disturb or curtail their
peculiarities
of
speech. They
have come as close to the old Amster-
dam and Waterland
speech
as our rather limited letters
allow.
They
have taken over
many
old and
customary
words of the
country people,
which some
latinists,
who
have learnt rather more of
foreign languages
than
Dutch,
condemn and
disdainfully reject, precisely
be-
cause, through
lack of
knowledge, they
don't know
them. But
you assayers
and connoisseurs of our
golden
Netherlandish,
who so
unashamedly
test the Dutch
words
according
to the touchstone of
your
individual
preferences, and,
what's
more,
so
boldly adjudge
them
false, forged
or
adulterated,
and
prevent
their
currency,
because
they
are neither used
by
nor known to
you-
do
you
think it is reasonable to
despise
old and
moldy
coins and the
square pennies
when it is
possible
to tell
their value from old
folk,
and
guess,
estimate, and
know their true worth from their
weight
and
vigor?
For
my part,
I admit that I don't
agree
with those
Leidenish
sentiments,
and I
cling
to the old ones with
an heretical
stubbornness,
even
though
I am no coin-
140
Realism as a comic mode
141
40 ben ik geen
schrooier, geen goudsmid
noch
muntmeester,
die oude
potpenningen
met
voordeel
opzoek
om daar de ene
tijd
of d'an-
der iets
goeds
na
mijn behagen
en
vermogen
af te maken. Het is
mijn
al
goed,
als 't hier-
45
landse, onvervalste, onvermengde
munte
is,
als ik
weet,
dat het
bij
de
gemene
man in de
dagelijkse handeling
en
ommegang gewraakt
noch
geweigerd,
maar
bij
haarlieden voor
goed gekend
en
ontvangen
wordt. Het is
mij
50 al eens of ik van een
machtig koning
of van
een arm bedelaar leer de kennisse van
mijn
moeders tale en of de woorden uit het vuilnis-
vat of uit de
sierlijkste
en
grootste
schatka-
mers van de wereld komen: doch moet
mij
55 elk na haar waarde
goude,
zilveren en
kope-
ren
gelde
verstrekken.
Zekerlijk,
ik en zal
mij
nimmermeer zo zeer niet binden an de een-
rinstigheid
van
sommige eenzinnige schrij-
vers,
die meer der
vreemdelingen
boeken
60 doorsnoffelen als de
gewoonte
van 't
spreken
haarder
medeburgeren
en landsluiden door-
zoeken en
op
haar
eigen
invallen en inbeel-
dingen onverzettelijke
kerken
bouwen,
die
dikwijls
na wat
ondergravens lichtelijk
daar-
65 henen storten en vallen. Wat
mij belangt,
ik
heb anders
geen
boek
geleerd
als het boek des
gebruiks;
zo ik dan door onwetenheid der uit-
landser
spraken, wetenschappen
en konsten
hebbe
gedoold,
verschoont
mij, ongeleerde
70
lekebroeder,
en
geeft
den Duitse wat
toe,
want ik heb als een schilder de schilderach-
tige spreuke gevolgd
die daar zeit: Het
zijn
de
beste schilders die 't leven naast
komen,
en
niet
degene
die voor een
geestig dingen
hou-
75 den het stellen der standen buiten de nature
en het
wringen
en
buigen
der
geleden
en
ge-
beenderen,
die
zij
vaak te
onredelijk
en buiten
de
loop
des
behoorlijkheids opschorten
en
ommekrommen. Ik hebbe zo veel als ik ver-
80 mocht de
boerterijen
met de zoetste boere-
woorden
uitgedrukt; hetgene
hierinne door
verzuimelheid is
mishandeld, overgeslagen
ofte
vergeten,
wilt dat met uw alwetende
ge-
leerdheid en
gewoonlijke goedigheid
verbete-
85
ren,
zo zult
gij
alderbest betonen
clipper, goldsmith
or
mintmaker,
who seeks out old
coins in
anticipation
of
disposing
of
something good
at
one time or another
according
to
my pleasure
or
capa-
bility.
For me
they're good
if
they're indigenous, gen-
uine and
unalloyed,
as
long
as I know
they're
not
objected
to or refused
by
the common man in
daily
commerce and
intercourse,
but are
regarded
as
good,
and
accepted
as such. It is all the same to me if I learn
the
knowledge
of
my
mother
tongue
from a
mighty king
or a
poor beggar,
if the words came from the rubbish
bin or from the most
elegant
and
greatest
treasure-
house of the world: each must
provide
me with
gold,
silver and
copper money according
to their
proper
worth.
Certainly,
I will nevermore attach
myself
to the
self-conceit of some one-track
writers,
who snuffle more
through foreigners'
books than
investigate
the manner
in which their own fellow citizens and
countrymen
speak,
and build enormous churches-which
often,
after a little
undermining, easily collapse
and fall down
-on the basis of their own brainwaves and
imagination.
When it comes to
me,
I have learnt from no book but
the book of
usage,
so if I have
gone astray through
ignorance
of
foreign languages,
sciences and
arts, par-
don
me,
unlearned
lay-brother,
and allow the Dutch a
little.
For, being
a
painter,
I have followed the
painter's
adage
which
says:
The best
painters
are those who
imitate
life,
and not those who
regard
as
spiritual things
positions
and attitudes which are outside of
nature,
and
the
twisting
and
bending
of
joints
and
limbs,
which all
too often are unreasonable and foreshortened and
twisted round outside the bounds of
propriety.
I
have,
as far as I was
capable, expressed
the rustic
pleasantries
with the sweetest rustic words: whatever has
gone
wrong
in
these,
been
passed over,
or
forgotten
as a
result of
oversight-will you
correct it with
your
all-
knowing learning
and usual
good nature,
so that
you
best show
SVETLANA ALPERS
Dat
hij
is
wijs
en
welgeleerd
Die alle
ding
ten besten keert.
Enige neuswijze
en
nauwgezette lieden,
met
een vooroordeel
innegenomen zijnde,
zullen
90 deze
mijne
liedekens van
lichtvaardigheid
beschuldigen
aleer
zij
de moeiten zullen doen
van te onderzoeken
waarom,
waartoe en hoe
die
gemaakt zijn: zwaarlijk
zullen
zij
konnen
geloven,
dat ik de
zottigheden eniger
mensen
95 met een
lachelijke
manier
beschrijf, zoetjes
berisp
en haar
dwaling
voor de
ogen hou,
straffe,
en andere
waarschouwinge
doe om
die
dwaalwegen bekwamelijk
te
vermijden.
Veel
dingen
heb ik
op zijn
boerts
gezet,
die
100 nochtans voor
ettelijke
steelieden haar reke-
ninge zijn,
die ik vermits ik hare
ziekte,
krank-
heid en schurfte
kende,
aldus heb moeten
handelen,
wetende dat 't anders al te korre-
zijvig,
bitter en te
scharp bijten
zoude en om-
105 dat het
bij
velen niet
kwalijk genomen
zoude
werden, gaan zij
al
vermomd,
onder boeren-
gedaanten
daarhenen met veranderde namen
en
bekledinge.
De
uitlegginge
hebben som-
mige
haar reukeloos
genoeg onderwonden,
1o maar
mijns
bedenkens nooit
gevonden,
daar
ik
mij
in
verblijde,
want ik en ben met eens
anders schande niet verkuist en om de waar-
heid te
spreken,
ik heb haast
vijanden genoeg,
al en maak ik er
geen
meerder. Ik hebbe deze
115
malligheidjes
meer uit lust als uit laster ver-
dicht om in
banketten, gastgeboden,
waard-
schappen
en andere
uitspanningen
des
ge-
moeds
mij
en
mijne
vrienden en vriendinnen
wat te
verlustigen
met de
verkwikkelijkheid
120 der
nieuwigheidjes,
die ik voor deze van nie-
mand anders veel
gezien hebbe;
nochtans
was ik nooit van zinne bekoord om deze
gril-
lige grilletjes
door den druk
gemeen
te ma-
ken,
want
mij
docht altoos dat er
wispelturig-
125 heids en Druks
genoeg
in de wereld
was,
maar
iemand van
mijn voortreffelijkste vrunden,
die daar meer werks van maakten als ik
zelve,
heeft die
naarstig
en
schriftelijk
bekomen en
met een
heerlijke
en
grote
voorreden vereerd
130 en de naam van
Geestig gegeven (of
't het-
zelve
verdient,
laat ik de
verstandige
en die
That he is wise and learned well
Who turns
everything
to the best.
Some
hypercritical
and
particular people,
all taken
by
a
prejudice,
will
charge
these little
songs
of mine with
frivolity,
before
they
take the trouble to
investigate why,
for
what,
and how
they
were made:
they
will
hardly
be
able to believe that I describe the follies of some
people
in a ridiculous
manner, gently reprimand them,
and
hold their error before their
eyes,
chastise
them,
and
make other
admonishments,
in order that
they may
avoid their erroneous
ways
in a
proper
fashion. I have
put many things
in a rustic
peasant way,
which none-
theless takes some
city
dwellers into account.
Being
aware of their
sickness, disease,
or
scabbiness,
I have
had to handle them in this
way, knowing
that
they
would otherwise be too
coarse,
or
bitter, or bite too
sharply,
and that not
many
would find it
blameworthy
if
they
went about
disguised,
in the
appearance
of
peasants,
with
changed
names and
clothing.
Some have
rashly attempted
to find
interpretations,
but have
not,
in
my opinion,
found them-I'm
pleased
at
this,
since
I am not served
by
someone else's
shamefulness, and,
to tell the
truth,
I
already
have
quite enough
enemies
without
making any
more. I have
composed
these little
follies more out of
delight
than with troublesome inten-
tions;
in order to
delight myself and
my friends,
male
and
female,
at
banquets, feasts, weddings,
and other
recreations,
to
delight
with the refreshment of little
novelties
(of
which I have not seen
many
before
by
others). Nonetheless,
I was never
tempted
to make
these
capricious
fancies common
by publishing
them-
since I
always thought that there was
enough
fickleness
and
printed
matter in the world-but one of
my
ex-
cellent friends-who made more work of them than
I
myself-industriously got
them in
writing,
and hon-
ored them with a
big foreword,
and
gave
them the name
of
witty.
Whether
they
deserve this name I leave to the
intelligent
to
judge,
and those who
enjoy making judg-
142
Realism as a comic mode
daar lust in
hebben, oordelen,
voor
mijn,
ik
heb ze altoos
mijn
malle Liedekens
geheten)
en
zijn bij
Govert Basson tot Leiden eerst-
135 maal
gedrukt,
die
dezelvige
in een heel zeld-
zame en
ongelooflijke
kortheid van
tijd
ver-
zonden en verkocht
heeft,
en is in zulker voe-
gen begeerd geweest,
dat ik zelver
geen
exem-
plaar
en heb
mogen
behouwen om het de een
140 of d'ander reis te doen
herdrukken,
doch is
het ten tweeden male t'Amsterdam van
enige
gezellen
zonder
mijn
weten
gedrukt,
met
sommige oneerlijke
en
ontuchtige Liedekens,
die al
op mijnen
naam
lopen,
maar de eer die
145
mij
daarmede
geschied is,
en de dankbaar-
heid die ik haar hierover
schuldig ben,
zal ik
haar ter
gelegendheid
met een
vriendschap
vergelden,
die haar
heugen
zal. Want
waarlijk
alle
zuiverhertige
en
edelmoedige
mensen
150 zullen zich voortaan wachten iets
geneuge-
lijks
te laten
uitgaan,
nu de
ongeoorlofd-
heden zo
groot zijn,
dat men onder den dek-
mantel van iemand anders
zijn vuiligheid
uitstrooien
mag.
155
Gij Rijmers
en
gij
brave
Dichtschrijvers
van deze
fraaiigheidjes,
ik bedank u en bidde
u dat
gij
voorder
mijn
werken niet meerder
met de uwe en
vermengelt,
want ik ben tevre-
den dat
gij
al
moogt
maken wat u
lust,
maar
160 ik en
begeer niet,
dat
gij mijn deuntjens
aan
de uwe
koppelt
en
kettingt,
ik en sta na nie-
mands onere en ik
gunne
u uit
goeder
herten
de lof die u
toekomt,
doch
zijt gij
heel
eergie-
rig,
betoont uw edele
geest
en klaarheid van
165 uw verstand en
schrijft
zulke
dingen
die alle
mensen verschrikken en ontzetten en laat
mij
bij mijn
zoete
zotternijen blijven
en besteedt
uw
medelijden
en verkeerde
bermhertigheid
aan iemand anders
armoede;
voor
mijn,
ik
170 ben uwe
hulp
voor deze
tijd nog onbehoeftig,
God
dank,
want ik laat
mij voorstaan,
al luidt
't
wat
verwaandelijk,
dat ik er al heel veel
meer van die
slag
zou konnen
voortbrengen,
als 't
mij
eers
genoeg was, gelijk
ik met
enige
175
nieuwetjes,
hier
ingevoegd,
bewezen hebbe.
Maar wat is dit? Ik
praat hemelval,
ik
spring
van 't een
op
't ander. Eerwaarde
Maagdekens
en
lustige Jongelingen,
ik stuur u dit kleine
ments. For
my part,
I
always
called them
my crazy
little
songs. They
were first
printed by
Govert Basson
in
Leiden,
who distributed them and sold
them,
most
unusually,
in an
unbelievably
short
space
of time.
They
were in demand to such a
degree
that I was unable to
keep
a
copy myself,
in order to have it
reprinted
at some
later time. Yet some
people printed
it at Amsterdam for
a second time without
letting
me
know, along
with
several
unseemly
and lascivious
songs-which
all
go
under
my
name. But the honor which was
thereby
done
to
me,
and the
gratitude
which I owe to them for
it,
I
will in due course
repay
with a
friendly deed,
which
will
please
them.
Indeed,
all
pure-hearted
and noble-
minded
people
will from now on be on their
guard
before
they publish something
which
gives pleasure,
now that unlawfulness is so
great
that one can strew
about one's filth under someone else's name.
You
rhymers
and
you good poetry
writers of these
fine little
things,
I thank
you,
and
pray
you henceforward
not to mix
my
words with
yours-I
don't mind if you
make all
you fancy,
but I don't want
you
to
couple
and
chain
my
little
songs
to
yours.
I don't want to
bring
dishonor to
anyone,
and
being
a
good heart,
I
grant
you
the
praise
that is
your due; although you
are
greedy
of
honor,
show
your
noble
spirit
and
your perspicacity,
and write such
things
as shock and disturb
everybody,
and let me
stay
with
my
sweet
follies,
and bestow
your
sympathy
and misdirected
charity
on the
poverty
of
someone else. For
myself,
I'm still for the time
being
unneedful of
your help,
thank
God,
since I take
pride
in the
thought-even though
it sounds a little conceited
-that I could have
brought
out much more of this sort
if I'd wanted
to,
as I've shown with the few new little
ones added here. But what's this? I'm
talking nonsense,
I'm
jumping
from one
thing
to another. Dear maids
and
merry youths,
I send
you
this little foretaste in
I43
I44
voorlopertje vooruit,
hetwelke u komt waar-
180
schuwen,
dat ik u
eerlang
mene toe te
eigenen
een
groter Liedboek, genaamd
Bron der
Minne,
waarinne ik het meestendeel van alle
mijn Jammertjes, Klachten, Lijden
en Ver-
makelijkheid
aan den
dag
zal
brengen,
indien
185
gij
dit naar uwe oude
goedheid
in dank ont-
vangen
en aanvaarden
zult,
daar ik niet aan
en
twijfel,
vermits ik daar nu tot tweemaal
toe zo
openbare proeven
hebbe af
gezien. Op
dit vertrouwen
dan,
zo werdt
u,
o
zangerige
190
keeltjes!
van
gantsen gemoede toegeheiligd
en
toegewijd
de meer dartele als
treffelijke
kinderen van de
blijde geest,
van uwen alle
advance,
to advise
you
that before
long
I
propose
to
devote a
bigger songbook
to
you,
to be named Source
of love,
in
which,
for the most
part,
I will
bring
to
light
all
my
little
sorrows, complaints, sufferings,
and diver-
sions-provided,
with all
your
old
kindness, you grate-
fully
receive and
accept
it. That I don't
doubt,
since
I've twice refrained from such
public testimony.
Trust-
ing
in this
therefore, O singing
little
throats,
I whole-
heartedly
dedicate and devote to
you
these
frisky
rather
than
outstanding
children of
your
Honor and service-bound friend and
servant,
G.A. BREDERO.
Eer,
en
dienst-schuldige
vrund en dienaar
G.A. BREDERO.