Vondel: His Life and Times
"Vondel! thousand thousand voices
Echo answer—grandly sing
Praises to our greatest poet,
Hailing him the poets' king."
Dr. Schaepman.
THE DUTCH RENAISSANCE
"Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a nation that it get an articulate voice—that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means."
Profounder truth, that keen aphorist, the Sage of Chelsea, never cast into heroic mould.
The consciousness of a great literature is a grander basis for national exaltation than the possession of victorious fleets and invincible battalions. The nation whose highest aspiration and most glorious impulse, whose noblest action and deepest thought, have been crystallized into fadeless beauty by the soul of native genius, has surely more lasting cause for pride than she whose proudest boast is a superiority in mere material achievement.
The everlasting shall always have precedence over the momentary; the time-serving heroics of to-day are the laughter-compelling travesties of to-morrow; the golden colossus of one age is the brazen pigmy of the next. Beauty alone is unfading; art alone is eternal.
"All passes: art alone
Enduring—stays to us;
The bust outlasts the throne;
The coin, Tiberius.
"Even the gods must go;
Only the lofty rime,
Not countless years o'erflow,
Not long array of time."
Happy the country blest with a heritage of noble deeds! Thrice happy she whose glory is a treasury of noble words! Only from great actions can gigantic thoughts be born.
Nowhere was the Revival of Learning more joyfully received than in the Netherlands. At the bidding of the Renaissance, the monasteries, those storehouses of the knowledge of the past, unlocked their precious lore. The classics were now for the first time conscientiously studied; not so much for themselves, as to shed the light of the past upon the present, to furnish suggestions for new discoveries.
Erasmus was but the pioneer of a host of scholars and philosophers. Thomas-à-Kempis was but the forerunner of a race of distinguished literati. The following generation also studied the moderns; and the wonderful genius of Italy, as well as the brilliant talent of France, now lighted up the dark recesses of the Cathedral of Gothic art.
The Reformation, like a tiny acorn, first pierced the rich mould of civil life. Then bursting into the sunshine, it towered into the sky of religious life an imperious oak. The dormant energies of the Low Germans were now kindled into a blaze of creative activity. As in Italy, this first revealed itself in the increased power of the cities, the Tradesmen's Guilds, the Chambers of Rhetoric, and the growing privileges of the citizens; for example, the burghers of Utrecht and of Amsterdam. It next manifested itself in the Universities and in the Church.
Hand in hand with this extraordinary intellectual development went the sturdy manliness of a vigorous national life. It was the era of enterprise and adventure; of invention and discovery. Daring was the spirit, attainment the achievement, of this age—this age that dared all.
Proud in the philosophy wrested from experience, the race sought to extend its intellectual empire even in the domain of transcendentalism. Knowledge, like Prometheus, bound for centuries to the gloomy cliff of superstition, suddenly rent its bonds and stood forth in all of its tremendous strength, gigantic and unshackled; a god, flaming to conquer the benighted realms of ignorance! Imagination, like a fire-plumed steed, preened for revelries, soared to the stars, and roamed unbridled through the boundless deep of space.
The world ran riot for truth. In England, Italy, France, and Spain, as well as in Holland, arose a race of explorers that gave to the earth another hemisphere, and discovered another solar system in the universe of thought.
The world called loud for blood. Truth was not to be attained without sacrifice; freedom was not to be won without battle. Universal struggle was to precede universal achievement. A whirlwind of death now swept over the earth, leaving in its wake carnage and disaster. The passions of men burst asunder the chains of duty and religion, and swooped on the nations with desolating rage.
The world was in travail. Hope was born, error vanquished, tyranny dethroned. The dawn of a new life had come. The night was over. The sparks of war became the seeds of art. The Netherland imagination was suddenly quickened into creative rapture by the contemplation of the heroism of the great Orange and the founders of the Republic.
A generation of fighters is always the precursor of an epoch of singers. The panegyrist and the historian ever follow in the train of the soldier and the statesman; the epic and the eulogy as surely in the path of great deeds as the polemic and the satire in the track of wickedness and folly.
The sculptor and the painter are evoked from obscurity only by the call of heroes. The musician and the poet—the voice of the ideal—stand ever ready to blazon forth the glory of the real. Unworthy actions alone are unsung.
The foundations of the Dutch Republic had been laid by a race of Cyclops, in whose battle-scarred forehead glowed the single eye of freedom. A race of Titans followed, and built upon this firm foundation a magnificent temple of art and science, above whose four golden portals were emblazoned, chiselled in "deathless diamond," the names, Vondel, Rembrandt, Grotius, and Spinoza, the high-priests of its worship.
It is of Vondel, the one articulate voice of Holland, whose heart ever kept time with the larger pulse of his nation, that we would now speak.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Justus van den Vondel was the son of Dutch parents, and was born at Cologne, November 17, 1587. It is curious to note that above the door of the house where the greatest bard of the Low Germans first saw the light hung the sign of a viol, a maker of that instrument having at one time lived there. The poet used to point to this fact as having been prophetic of his poetic future; and it was, surely, not an uninspiring coincidence.
The elder Vondel was a hatter, and had fled to Cologne from his native city, Antwerp, to escape the persecution then raging against the Anabaptists, of which church he was a zealous and devout member.
In Cologne he had courted and married Sarah Kranen, whose father, Peter Kranen, also an Anabaptist, had likewise been driven from Antwerp by the fury of the Romanists. Peter Kranen was not without reputation in his native city as a poet, and had won some distinction in the public contests of the literary guilds, of one of which he was a shining ornament. So it seems that our poet drank in the divine afflatus, as it were, with his mother's milk.
It is related that Kranen's wife, being pregnant, was unable to accompany her husband in his hurried flight; and, being left behind, was confined in the city prison, where her severe fright prematurely brought on the crisis. Being strongly importuned by a cousin of the young woman, who was required to furnish security for her re-appearance, the magistrates finally permitted her to complete her travail at her home.
After the birth of her child, when her cousin again delivered her, sorrowful and heavy at heart, into the custody of the jailer, he whispered comfortingly in her ear, "With this hand I have brought you here; but with the other I shall take you away again."
The time of her execution drew nigh. It was intended that she should be burnt at the stake with a certain preacher of her sect. When this became known, the cousin went to the dignitaries of the Church and asked if, in case one of her children be baptized by a Catholic priest, the mother would have a chance for her life. The clergy, ever anxious to welcome an addition to the fold, and more desirous to save a soul than to burn a body, replied that it might be so arranged.
One of the children, a daughter, who was already with the father at Cologne, was then hastily summoned. Upon her arrival, accordingly, she was baptized after the manner of the Catholic ritual, and received into the Church.
The mother, now free, hastened to the arms of her joyful spouse, and the daughter who thus saved her mother's life afterwards became the mother of Vondel.
So even Vondel's Romanism, of which much will be said farther on, might thus be considered as foreshadowed and inherited.
The year of Vondel's birth was also the year of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, whose tragic end he was destined to celebrate. Shakespeare, the most illustrious poet of the hereditary enemies of Vondel's countrymen, was just twenty-three years old, and had already been married four years to Anne Hathaway. William the Silent, "the Father of his Country," had only three years before, in the flower of his age, been cut off by the red hand of the assassin.
The early childhood of the poet was spent at Cologne. He never forgot the town of his birth, and, after the manner of the poets of antiquity, sang its glories in many an eloquent rime.
After the storm of persecution had spent its fury, the Vondels slowly returned by way of Bremen and Frankfort to the Netherlands. They rode in a rustic wagon, across which were fastened two strong sticks. From these was suspended a cradle, in which lay their youngest child. This simplicity and their modest demeanor and unaffected piety so impressed the wagoner that he was heard to say: "It is just as if I were journeying with Joseph and Mary."
The family first stopped at Utrecht, where the young "Joost" went to school. His early education, however, was very meagre, ending with his tenth year; so that he whose attainments were afterwards the admiration of his scholarly contemporaries, and the wonder of posterity, commenced life with the most threadbare equipment of learning.
Surely the plastic imagination of the boy must have been wonderfully impressed by the grandeur of that gigantic Gothic pile, the Utrecht Cathedral, and its tremendous campanile, pointing like a huge index finger unerringly to God, and towering so sublimely above the beautiful old town and the fertile meadows all around!
In 1597 we find the family in Amsterdam, of which flourishing city the elder Vondel had recently become a citizen, and where he had opened a hosiery shop.
This business must have proved remunerative, as one of his younger children, his son William, afterwards studied law at Orleans, and then travelled to Rome, where he applied himself to theology and letters, a course of study which in that age, even more than to-day, must have been beyond the means of even the ordinary well-to-do citizen.
Though the subject of our sketch was not so fortunate in this respect as his younger brother, yet he made good use of his opportunities; and it is recorded that, even before he had reached his teens, his rimes attracted considerable attention among the friends of the family.
When only thirteen years old, we find his verses complimented as showing unusual promise. It was Peter Cornelius Hooft, the talented young poet, son of the burgomaster of the city, who was at that time pursuing a course of study in Italy, who incidentally made this passing reference in an interesting rimed epistle to the Chamber of the Eglantine at Amsterdam.
This Chamber was one of the literary guilds founded in imitation of the French Collèges de Rhétorique; and it played so important a part in the literary history of the city and in the life of our poet that we ask indulgence if an account of it cause what may seem a little digression.
Under the rule of the House of Burgundy, the French feeling for dramatic poetry had been introduced into the Netherlands. This was fostered, not only by the exhibitions of the travelling minstrels, but also by the impressive and often gorgeous Miracle and Mystery Plays of the clergy. In the wake of these followed the more artistic Morality Plays. These allegorical representations did much to create a purer taste and to waken a greater demand for the drama.
The people suddenly began to take unusual interest in declamation and in dramatic exhibitions; and Chambers of Rhetoric, for the indulgence of this new taste, were soon established in all of the prominent cities of the country.
These societies also began sedulously to cultivate rhetorica, or literature, and soon became nothing less than an association of literary guilds, bound together in a sort of social Hanseatic league, designed for their own defence and for the fostering of their beloved art.
Each was distinguished by some device, and usually bore the name of some flower. They were wont also to compete against each other in rhetorical contests called "land-jewels," to which they would march, costumed in glorious masquerade, and to the sound of pealing trumpets and of shrill, melodious airs.
As was natural, the follies of the Church were too tempting a subject for these Chambers to resist; and many of them, long before the thundering polemics of Luther were heard, had dramatized a stinging satire on the clergy, revealing their vices in all of their hideous coarseness, and making their follies the butt of their unsparing mockery.
When the Reformation, therefore, trumped her battle-cry, there throbbed a responsive echo in the hearts of the Netherlanders, long disgusted, as they were, with the excesses of a dissolute priesthood.
These societies, therefore, exerted no little influence on the social, religious, and intellectual life of the country, and became a powerful aid to the awakening of a national consciousness and to the up-building of the language and the literature.
Among them all, no other attained the distinction of the Chamber of the Eglantine at Amsterdam. This Chamber, whose device was "Blossoming in Love," was founded by Charles V., and to it belonged many of the most prominent citizens of that opulent city. All religious discussions were forbidden within its walls; and there, in that age of religious discord and rabid intolerance, both Catholic and Protestant met together in the worship of Apollo. It was to this honored body that the name of the young Vondel was introduced, and upon him, therefore, its members kept an attentive eye.
We next hear of Vondel as a youth of seventeen. He had, it seems, all the while been assisting his father in the cares of the little hosiery shop; but his mind was with his books, and he employed every spare moment in reading or in study.
About this period a friend of the family was married, and the young poet must needs try his wings. Accordingly, he wrote an epithalamium, which, unfortunately for the poet, still survives. As might have been expected, the too-aspiring youth soared on Icarian wings. However, he was not conscious of this at the time; and lame and faulty as these first efforts are, it may yet be surmised that he felt the thrill of inspiration and the rapture of creating no less than when, in later life, he forged those Olympian thunderbolts that fulmined over Holland, causing tyrants to shake and multitudes to tremble.
Soon after the wedding-verses, Vondel wrote a threnody on the assassination of Henry IV. of France, which was but little better than his former effort.
We hear no more of our young poet till, like the deer-stealing youth, Shakespeare, he stands, in his young and vigorous manhood, blushing at the altar. Maria de Wolff was the name of the bride that the twenty-three-year-old husband had won to share his destiny.
History does not record the circumstances nor the incidents of his wooing; but from what we know of his character, we will venture to say that it was ardently done.
Of the sonnets and the love-verses that this passion must have inspired in the soul of the young poet nothing, unfortunately, seems to be known. He who had, as a boy, written tolerable verses at the marriage of another must surely, as a man, have done something better at his own.
"All the world loves a lover," be he ever so humble. But the loves of the poets are of especial interest.
We therefore confess our disappointment that no record exists wherein we could see the poet in the sweet throes of that heart-consuming passion. But, for all that, we feel that he loved like a poet, and we know that his marriage proved to be a most happy one.
His wife was in full sympathy with his every thought and aspiration, and wisely left her star-gazing husband to write verses while she stayed behind the counter and sold stockings. She was the daughter of a prosperous linen-merchant of Cologne, and was fortunately of a practical turn of mind.
Thus, when Vondel succeeded to the business of his father, she took upon herself not only the management of the shop, but attended to the house-keeping as well.
ASPIRATION
In 1612 appeared Vondel's first drama, "The Passover." It was the first of that splendid series of Bible tragedies to which, in the field of the sacred drama, neither ancient nor modern times furnish a parallel. This play, which covertly celebrated the recent escape of the Hollanders from the yoke of Spain, was played in the Brabantian Chamber of the Lavender, to which Vondel, whose family came from Brabant, naturally belonged.
This poem showed the results of his years of study, and was far superior to his earlier efforts, indeed, it gave such promise that Vondel was immediately invited to become a member of the Chamber of the Eglantine, and thus at once stood on an equality with the most distinguished literati of the day.
Among these was Roemer Visscher, "the round Roemer," as he was known among his intimates. Visscher was celebrated for his epigrams, and was called "the Dutch Martial." He was a good type of the Dutch merchant of his time, and on account of his wit and jollity was very popular with the other members of the society.
With his friends Coornhert and Spieghel he had taken upon himself the serious task of purifying and enriching his native tongue.
And it is in the works of these three men, who at this time were all well advanced in years, that we first see the promise of a literature and the consciousness of a national destiny.
The stilted and artificial phraseology of the Rhetoricians was soon succeeded by a natural, flowing style. Originality once more asserted its right to a hearing. Nature was studied with enthusiastic contemplation. Art was once more set on her high pedestal and worshipped.
Visscher looked with a philosophic eye on the follies of the day, and his keenest epigrams were pointed with a honied humor that deprived them of their sharpest sting.
But it was more as a patron of letters than as a poet that he deserves to be remembered. At his house all of the young Bohemians of the day were wont to gather, and many the contests of wit and many the battles in verse that took place in this, the first literary salon of the Netherlands.
But there was another attraction at the house of this worthy burgher. The jovial Roemer had two daughters, the blooming but sober Anna and the beautiful and vivacious Tesselschade.
These young women, on account of their many personal charms and numerous accomplishments, furnished a glowing theme to a generation of poets. It is related that they could each play sweetly on several instruments, sing, paint, engrave on glass, cut emblems, embroider, and converse brilliantly.
They were by no means prigs, however, for they also excelled in healthful bodily exercise, as swimming, rowing, and skating; and they were no less discreet and modest than accomplished and refined. Nor must it be forgotten that they themselves also wrote verses full of sweetness and tenderness; verses, too, not without lofty and noble sentiment, that are yet treasured among the brightest gems in Holland's diadem of song.
It was into this charming patrician circle that our middle-class poet was now introduced, and he manfully continued his attempts to remedy the defects in his education, that he might meet the many talented and learned men who came there, on an equal footing.
Vondel was now twenty-six years old, and began to apply himself assiduously to the study of the languages. He took lessons in Latin from an Englishman, and through his great industry he was soon able to read Virgil and Ovid. He also began the study of French, and translated "The Glory of Solomon" of Du Bartas, which he considered a most admirable poem. About the same time he wrote his second tragedy, the "Jerusalem Desolate," which, on account of its severe simplicity and elevated style, was the theme of much favorable comment.
At the house of the Visschers, Vondel was wont to meet, on terms of easy comradery, among other rising young men of the day, the erratic but brilliant Gerard Brederoo, the greatest writer of comedies that Holland has ever produced.
Brederoo was the son of a poor shoemaker of Amsterdam, and on account of his extraordinary talents was eagerly welcomed into the most select circles.
Quite a contrast was the young aristocrat, Peter Cornelius Hooft, of whom we have already spoken. Hooft was a patrician of the patricians, and was the most accomplished and elegant man of his day, the first gentleman of his age.
He had already distinguished himself by several remarkable poems, a superb pastoral, and one or two powerful tragedies.
It was in the field of history and biography, however, that he was to win his greenest laurels. His history of the Netherlands and his biography of Henry IV. of France, written in a terse, forcible, epigrammatic style, have gained for him the appellation of the "Dutch Tacitus." Motley calls him one of the great historians of the world.
Then there was Jan Starter, the son of an English Brownist, who was destined to be one of the sweetest lyrists of his adopted country; and Laurens Reael, another scion of aristocracy, a handsome young man of some poetic power and considerable learning, fated to become the friend of the great Oldenbarneveldt, and, after a splendid career as a soldier, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.
Another visitor to this hospitable house was Dr. Samuel Coster, a dramatist of no mean ability, who is now chiefly remembered as the founder of Coster's Academy, an institution founded in imitation of the Accademia della Crusca of Florence.
Anna and Tesselschade were, of course, the centre of this constellation of literary stars, and few of the young men who met at their home left it with heart unscorched by the fierce blaze of love. Vondel was already married; but to the passion that these two beautiful women excited in most of the others, Dutch literature owes its most exquisite love lyrics.
The ardent Hooft wooed the staid Anna only to be rejected. However, the young knight sought and soon obtained consolation elsewhere. Brederoo, with all the fervor of his romantic nature, poured out his soul in a cycle of burning love poems at the feet of the golden-haired and dark-eyed Tesselschade. To her, too, he dedicated his tragedy "Lucelle," calling the object of his adoration "the honor of our city, the glory of our age."
Few women in any epoch have exerted such wonderful influence upon the literature of their time. Not a poet of the day who was not inspired by their beauty and character; not one, furthermore, who did not dedicate to them some production of his genius. And yet they do not seem to have been the least spoiled by such excessive notice. Their good sense and modesty only heightened the excellent impression excited by their beauty and their talents.
How incomplete a sketch of Vondel's life and age would be without a more than passing reference to these accomplished sisters will be better appreciated when we see the poet himself paying court to one of them, charmed not only into a passion of the heart, but also into taking a step which exerted a powerful influence on his life and works.
At the Visschers', in the circle of his friends, the aspiring poet was wont to read the latest effusions of his pen; that he was much benefited by the criticism to which his verses were there subjected cannot be doubted.
His friendship with the most noted men of the day warmed his ambition into a fever of aspiration, and, like Milton, he early determined to devote his whole life to the cultivation of his beloved art.
With the aid of Hooft and Reael he translated the "Troades" of Seneca, which he then sublimated into a tragedy of his own, the "Hecuba of Amsterdam." This evoked considerable praise from the critics of the day. At this time, also, he showed his advancement in technique and his improvement in style by several lyrics of extraordinary merit.
It was thus in the midst of an admiring circle of distinguished friends that we find Vondel cultivating his art. There, in the bosom of that Catholic family, the Visschers, the poets of that age found rest from the storm of religious discord that raged without.
Arminian and Gomarist, Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, were waging that fierce battle of the creeds that is yet the foulest blot upon the fair name of the heroic and tolerant Republic.
Thus the Visscher mansion was the temple of the Muses, where beauty alone was worshipped. Religion was left by the visitor at the threshold. Art alone was the garment that gave admittance to this wedding-feast of poetry and philosophy.
"STORM AND STRESS."
Whether through the contemplation of the fierce dissensions that then raged in the little Republic, or through a natural melancholy of temperament, Vondel now became subject to the most distressing depression.
Occasionally he would flash from his gloom into one of those firebrands of invective that, thrown into the ranks of his enemies, created a blaze of discord from one end of the country to the other; occasionally, also, he was inspired for loftier themes, as his "Ode to St. Agnes," which first showed his tendency towards Catholicism.
Then he would relapse into his melancholy. He lost his appetite and became afflicted with various bodily ills. He seemed hastening into a decline. This lasted several years, during which several important changes had taken place, not only among his friends, but also in the ruling powers of the state.
On the 13th of May, 1618, John van Oldenbarneveldt, the aged Advocate of the States-General, the greatest statesman of his time, and the fiery patriot upon whom had fallen the sacred mantle of William the Silent, was beheaded. He had watched the destinies of the infant Republic with the tender solicitude of a loving shepherd; he was now devoured by the wolves who, in the guise of religion and of patriotism, had crept into the fold. He had given eighty years of devotion to the up-building of his country; he was now to seal that devotion with his blood. He had made his native land a theme of glory among the nations of the earth; he was now accused of selling that glory for the gold which he had always despised.
A thankless generation had, under the cloak of virtue, committed one of the most infamous and revolting crimes in human annals. Where shall we find a parallel? The gray hairs of the man, his learning, his ability, his unsullied life, his splendid achievements in behalf of his native land, his grand renown, his unselfish devotion, his patriotism—all this must be considered when we compare his sad end with the fate of the other political martyrs of history, too many of whom have been unduly exalted by the manner of their death.
Is it to be wondered at that such an important event caused the deep-thinking poet the revulsion that only comes to high-born souls?
Is it surprising, furthermore, that that revulsion found its expression in what is perhaps the finest satirical drama of modern times?
This period was the crisis in our poet's life. The Contra-Remonstrants, or Gomarists, as the extreme Calvinists were called, having disposed of their hated enemy Oldenbarneveldt, had now begun to play havoc with the liberties of the people. Art and literature next suffered through the blasting censorship of their fanatical clergy.
The religious tolerance that had formed the glory of the country only a decade before was now succeeded by a rabid bigotry that with insensate fury cut at the vitals of all that was healthful and inspiring. Life, property, and freedom were in peril. Nothing was safe.
Grotius, "the father of international law," and also so distinguished as a scholar that he was called the "wonder of the age," was imprisoned, with the fate of his friend the great Advocate staring him in the face. From this fate, moreover, he was only saved by the diplomatic ingenuity of his devoted wife, who aided him to escape from his prison at Loevestein, ensconced in an empty book-chest which the unsuspecting warden of the castle thought full of books. Others of note were in hiding or in exile.
The boasted freedom of the freed Netherlands had turned to the direst form of oppression—the tyranny of a religious oligarchy.
And yet it was not an easy victory for the Contra-Remonstrants. Every inch was bitterly contested by their foes in Christ, the moderate Calvinists, or Remonstrants.
This struggle, like the conflicts of the Florentine factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, divided the country into two hostile camps. Even those of other religions allied themselves with the one or other of these sects; for sect had now come to mean party. Vondel, with whom religion and patriotism were fused into one white heat, was not long in choosing the party of the Remonstrants—the side of freedom.
We shall hereafter view this remarkable man as the poet militant. For having once taken the sword in hand, he did not let it fall until his arm was palsied by death.
Much as he loved peace, his enemies hereafter took good care that he should never want occasion to defend himself. It must be added, however, that the poet was even more renowned for attack than for defence. He was ever at the head of the onset, ever in the thickest of the fray.
The sword of this crusader for the liberties of his country—the most formidable and dreaded weapon of the age—was a pen; and the production that fell like a bombshell into the Gomarist camp was the allegorical tragedy of "Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence."