Context
from Summer in Termuren
Louis Paul Boon
MARCH WINDS A letter from you to
tippetotje: it’s lonely on chapel road, tippetotje, just as your studio
must be lonely now that your baron has died . . . it’s lonely here on
chapel road in these march days, when the tender blossom of the
approaching spring is already being snapped off by snow and hail and
spring storms. March is a strange month, tippetotje . . . it’s the
month I was born in, and it gave me something of its capriciousness,
its restlessness and instability—it’s the month that presages spring, a
new spring and a new sound, but that nips the life out of the first
blossoms with ice and snow. It’s the time of march winds—and as you may
remember (if you remember anything about termuren), the people of
chapel road talk incorrectly of march “swings” instead of winds. And I
assume they’re referring to the fact that the month keeps swinging
first this way then that. That’s the kind of month I was born in,
tippetotje, swinging first this way, then that—oh, my whole life has
been 1 march swing, swinging first this way, then that . . . 1 march
swing, full of expectancy about something that was always just about to
happen, but never materialized: the spring, the earthly paradise,
happiness, the golden age . . . I expected them, with my capricious
nature, and then with my bitterness snapped off the first blossoms. And
so I sit here lonely in this month of march and am writing you a letter
because I’ve nothing else at all to write about—my days used to be full
of writing . . . I wrote so much that I forgot about you, it escaped my
notice when you hooked yourself a baron. Early in the morning the sun
came from the north, and towards evening the sun came from the west,
the shadows lengthened, and finally the lights had to go on, and I
would sit there and write. And now, tippetotje, I stop and look round
for the result of all that writing. And there is no result. The only
change is that the paper that lay blank on my left now lies on my right
covered in dead letters, the corpses of words . . . full of thoughts
that are not My thoughts, or which I didn’t intend to write down. And I
don’t know how it happened—I sat there and wrote, and whenever I saw
the result afterwards I got upset, flew into a rage, stamped my feet
and my eyes filled with tears: That’s not what I meant to say! I would
cry out. And to myself I would say: that surely wasn’t what I dreamt in
my loneliest, bitterest, most painful hours! Surely it was something
quite different that I wanted to say! Why on earth is that? And the
being hidden deep inside me, the being that’s really me, stamped its
feet too and its eyes filled with tears too—and lamp in hand I’d like
to climb up into those uninhabited attics, descend into those abandoned
cellars, enter those never-visited rooms deep inside myself, would like
to return with arms piled high with treasure to be poured out over the
blank pristine pages. But lo and behold, as I write I lose everything
that I retrieved from the depths and heights of my Self—and if, as I’m
writing, I try to return to those rooms in my thoughts, I find all the
doors shut. I should have written in a completely different way,
tippetotje—and now, now it’s almost too late: now I’ve grown sick of
writing, and the march wind of writing has changed . . . now I must
tell you that I’m written out, that I don’t have a single thing left to
say. Oh, how could that happen, tippetotje? I’ve nothing more to say,
and I haven’t said anything yet: can you make sense of that? I sit here
lonely, whimsical, full of march winds . . . and I look up and realize
that you’ve left me. I’ll close my letter, just as the rooms inside of
me have always been closed. Translation by Paul Vincent
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