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31 March 2008
Thus spoke the Burkean conservative to the Dutch liberal
"De politieke tegenstander moet je zakelijk en feitelijk behandelen of bestrijden. Haat verblindt de mens, zelfs de meest liefderijke mens." Ashin Ellian, 28 March 2008
Belgian Hugo Claus, one of the Low Countries most celebrated poets, put himself to death on Wednesday 19 March 2008 at nine minutes after three o'clock - and nine minutes after the hour the New Testament says Jesus Christ died on the cross. The timing is ironic.
Claus was suffering from Alzheimer disease and because he did not want the indignity of baring the inner-self to the leering crowds inevitably witnessing his mental deterioration 'decided the moment that he would end his life.' Claus and his mates would say that ending his life was a brave political action. Indeed, it was partisan political, as most of his writing seems to have been, but whether or not it was brave, I rather doubt, judging his conceit and his bigoted nihilism.
Before I go any further I have to own up to knowing practically nothing about Hugo Claus until I was subjected to the gushing grief of his many admirers in the media. It is enough, though, to provide the basis for this comment.
Ashin Ellian of Leiden University fame wrote the first piece to come under my eyes. It was a blog on the Elsevier website. The title was reminiscent of the book by Christianity-hating Nietzsche:
Thus spoke Hugo Claus to the Pope and Mohammed
There can be no doubt that the association with Thus Spoke Zarathustra was deliberate. It is as much approved by me as by Nietzsche's and Claus's abject admirers. Needless to say I am not an admirer Nietzsche whose insanity eventually put an end to his nightmarish mental world. With the Nietzschian cue, Ellian's blog pays homage to Claus and his literary achievement. So we know from the start that the pieces he chooses to showcase Claus's literary ability are determining of that poet's stature.
The first selection is simply a statement in verse that there is nothing after death - and I need not reproduce it here. It is a straightforward materialist reflection of Claus's nihilism in rhyming verse. Nicely put but nothing spectacular. The thoughts are rather platitudinous for those of us who have heard this sort thing ad nauseam over the last fifty years. No doubt it puts Ellian in a wistful and soulful mood because it reflects his own loss of confidence in life. His second selection brings us to the heart of the matter and the reason for the title of the blog.
Ellian selects from Claus's volume of verse entitled A Repugnant Visit (Een weerzinwekkend bezoek) and writes that the verses 'were, according to Claus, vulgar poems about a vulgar religion.' You guessed it: the vulgar religion is again Catholicism. It appears that Claus had a sick and demented fascination for the Catholic Church - as Ellian shows every sign of having. The poems were written at the time of Pope John Paul II's visit to Belgium and Holland in the 1980s. The Pope's visit was the 'repugnant' visit.
Ellian has signalled at this point that the faithful Catholic is going to be confronted by a crude mocking attack on a distorted collective PC fantasy that bears little resemblance to the religion he follows. Indeed, the poems celebrate one of the most disgusting and shameful episodes in the history of the Low Countries. While the people of other countries around the world warmly welcomed the philosopher Pope, whether they were Catholic or not, the dominant political class in Holland and Belgium welcomed him in a flourish of vilification, mockery, and rioting.
Ellian has a purpose in pointing out that at the time "freedom of speech and criticising religion were not at issue, nor threats, persecution and hate speech." I will come back to that in a moment. The reason why freedom of speech etc was not an issue was that the PC-class had, and still has, an unbreakable hold over the media in Holland and Belgium. There are examples of PC-class abuse of the media in Holland that would never be tolerated in an English-speaking country, despite the overwhelming influence of the politically correct. But that is a story for another time. Let's have a look at verses Ellian says the following about:
De vaginal lordship of the prophets is verbalized in an inimitable way in simple but forever indestructible verses.*
Putting aside the embarrassing shameless adulation and florid expression, we know the PC boot is going to be put into ministers of religion, all of whom Ellian squeezes into the same box. This is important for him because he wants to smear all religions, particularly Catholicism, with the excesses and violence of Islam - even though we have to go back centuries to a time when you would have to strenuously argue a violence in the same category as today's Islamic barbarity. These are the forever indestructible verses (translated, of course):
When and
how I have sex with her?
Before or after the sacrament?
Down, Pope, in your corner, in your tent!
What are you interfering with?
Centuries
ago said a freak of a Greek:
"Only a prick is allowed in heaven,
A c---t just dies."
Sometime later said Paul the Seventh:
"Only virgins go to heaven."
Yesterday said Rome's Pole:
"Those not married may not screw."
For how long still will these rotten god-lickers
Rule
Over the tender muscle
In the moist crack?**
Forever indestructible verses? Give me a break! This is a literal translation that naturally loses some fluidity of expression, but the meaning and effect carries over into the English. Certainly the crudities have equivalent value in both languages - and will be flushed down the toilet when this age of vulgarity, nastiness and coarseness passes, and the dominant political class loses its power in the West, either to an alien culture or to a people who have woken up and retrieved the conviction of their own culture.
Poetry, if it does anything, should penetrate and reveal reality in a subtle juxtaposition of images that surprises and pleases, leaving one pondering and savouring its effect. Take the opening lines of Keats's Ode to Melancholy:
No,
no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfsbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer they pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine
The richness of the images and the penetration of Keats's odes are unsurpassed in the English language. Indeed, in the short Ode to Melancholy the reader is led without the fetters of keen partisanship to where melancholy truly resides:
Aye, in
the very temple of Delight
Veiled melancholy has her sov'reign Shrine
This is poetry. The verses above cited as an example of Hugo Claus's poetic powers are nothing more than unimaginative abuse, vilification, and deep partisan political hatred where love is reduced to the grimy glorification of the sex organs. They represent the worst type of distortion of an opponent's moral and political views, aimed to incite others to an unrestrained hatred of that opponent. They are word weapons aimed to remove an opponent from the public square, whose crude phrasing belongs in the category of emails on penis enlargement and invitations to pornographic websites.
There is something deeply destructive to the human environment when a well-known literary figure like Hugo Claus can turn himself inside out in the effort to project such hatred and contempt for a man who enjoyed the love and respect from people the world over - for a man whose intellectual and artistic works are a heaven above the dark grubby enmity of Claus's demented scribblings.
Ellian recognises the extreme, abusive political nature of the verses whose content he has so glowingly approved of. As I say, he has a purpose in parading Claus's and his own political hatreds. You see, Ellian, as the liberal, has issues with his brother lefties over their ignorant inconsistency in denouncing Geert Wilders as racist for his film about Islam. Replace, he says, the Catholic wording and designations with the equivalent Islamic wording and designations and see the hypocrisy and inconsistency of Geert Wilder's denouncers in all their nakedness.
Now replace the Catholic wording and Catholic designations in Claus's verses with the same colourful contemptuous language about homosexuals and see liberal Ashin Ellian's hypocrisy and inconsistency in all its nakedness. And see all hell break loose across the Low Countries, as the PC-class scratches around for single-purpose anti-vilification legislation.
Ellian's fellow admirers of Hugo Claus could not let the opportunity go by to crank up their anti-Catholic bigotry. NOS bulletin reported on the memorial gathering in Antwerp: Saying goodbye to Hugo Claus. It was an illustrious gathering of Dutch language authors for whom too much praise could never be enough and who were ever ready to silence those who had the audacity to criticise Claus's grand unashamed political demonstration in support of euthanasia. Those who who have moral and legal concerns about euthanasia are to be damned. One such critic was Belgian Cardinal Daneels. His standing up and articulating the concerns of many people, not only the official Church, was not to be tolerated. Writer Erwin Mortier assigned himself to kick heads. Before the glare of the television lights and the crowd of like-minded authors he said:
Purely and only because the choice of ending his [Claus] life is not theirs, the princes of the Church again come crawling from under the paving stones to spew their cowardly bile.
Celebrating their own moral superiority over the body of a beloved is not the action of a hero. Mister Cardinal, shame on you!
It's cowardly to stand up and maintain your moral convictions in the defiance of the dominant political class whose spewing hatred, so competently demonstrated by Mortier, will be given headline status by a compliant media? You have to wonder at the collective delusion and unabashed intolerance of the class Mortier represents. As for creeping and crawling, that would seem better matched with the venomous verses of Mortier's hero.
Heading this comment is a quote from Ashin Ellian's most recent blog on Elsevier Online. Here's the translation:
One is obligated to deal and contend with one's political opponent factually and in a business-like manner. Hates blinds one, even the most charitable person.
.
*De vaginale heerschappij van profeten wordt op een onnavolgbare wijze verwoord in simpele maar dwars door de tijd heen onverwoestbare dichtregels.
**Wanneer en hoe ik met haar vree?
Vóór of na je sacrament?
Koest, Paus, in je hoek! In je tent!
Waar bemoei jij je mee?
Eeuwen geleden zei een freak van een Griek:
‘Alleen een lul mag in de hemel,
een kut gaat zo maar dood.’
Iets later zei paus Paulus de Zevende:
‘Alleen maagden geraken in de hemel.’
Gisteren zei de Pool van Rome :
‘Wie niet getrouwd is mag niet neuken.’
Hoe lang zullen die gore godlikkers
Nog regeren
over de tedere spier
in de vochtige kier?
Comments: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com