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Written in the 1950s and first
translated into English in the early ‘70s, Chapel Road is a major work
of Flemish literature that has been unjustly ignored in this country
for its alleged pessimism, vulgarity, and structural incoherence. It is
the story of Louis Paul Boon’s attempt to write a novel (also entitled
"Chapel Road") about a young girl named Ondine, her brother Valeer, the
rise and fall of Socialism, and anything else he decides to include. In
between sections of the novel, Boon and his friends discuss the nature
and purpose of literature and art. Collected below are three of these
sections, in which Boon compares his writing to a simple game, reflects
ironically on the use of art, and presents his theory of the novel as a
type of "illegal writing" where digressions are far more important than
a carefully constructed plot.
A GAME LIKE ANY OTHER
It’s
a fact that all created things—that means, according to the bible: all
things made out of nothing—end up by growing over the creator’s head;
so: man has grown over god’s head, and technology and economics have
grown over man’s head . . . and so your heroes, the music master and
journalist johan janssens grow over your head. Look at what they just
brought out of their quiver! Nothing less than that our book is a
symphony. You reply with a protesting smile that it’s just a simple
game, a game like any other.
Like that man on the train the other day of whom you made a note in
your notebook . . . but all you wrote down was: ‘odd hat’ and now you
find you can’t describe that hat any more because you’ve forgotten what
was so odd about it . . . you tormented yourself with the question what
he might do for a living, until he took a catalogue out of his pocket:
le palais du lévrier . . . and like little pros, with tight lips, he
started telling you about dog racing; that it’s an honest game, a game
like any other . . . you looked at his hand which he had learnt to use
without making it look conspicuous: a leather bag with 2 fingers and a
thumb.
It suddenly reminded you so much of odine’s brother, valeer, that
you conjured him up and made him help build the 4 villas; you wrote
that it was pathetic to see how he tried in vain to drive a nail
through the wood with his maimed hand. The wound also reminded you
of little pros’ mouth, which is a stripe, a notch cut by a sharp knife
in a block of wood . . . and it reminded you of how little pros used to
push words out of this groove which you only half understood, but which
for all their unintelligibility would have been worth collecting and
publishing as THE NARRATIONS OF LITTLE PROS . . .
***
THE USE OF ART
So now you see that
writing is useful . . . kramiek suddenly bursts out. Everyone looks in
surprise at the mongrel figure who has just joined, rubbing his hands
together as soon as the tiniest cloud of an easy solution appears on
the horizon. So now you see that writing is useful. He explains himself
by means of his hands and feet, that you had doubted the use of writing
and the use of the novel, that you had expressed yourself
contemptuously about that usefulness, after veenman’s death, but that
you can now see that there are people to whom the novel means
something: for instance to the musician who compared your work with a
symphony, even though he only knew it from hearsay . . . so what will
he say when he actually READS it . . . and for instance to msieu colson
of the ministry who wants to dedicate his poems, which aren’t poems, to
you and who calls them an anthology after the example of your novel . .
. and for instance to me, kramiek, whose wish it is to live and die in
literature . . . rubbing my hands together I, kramiek, can imagine you
coming home in the evening and kicking off your shoes and throwing
aside your collar and flinging yourself on ondine . . . figuratively
speaking, of course, as you yourself said so beautifully . . . very
figuratively speaking . . .
And as if he does it on purpose to give kramiek a stab under water and
a kick in the pants, msieu colson of the ministry opens his anthology
and reads out a poem: about the Use of Art: at a table in the ministry
restaurant, sit 2 gentlemen, silently eating their soup, but then
opposite them at the same table, there sits a very attractive
lady—attractive in the eyes of the soup-eating ministry gentlemen—and
they start talking and talking about something which is VERY difficult
to understand: modern art. They utter words of which they haven’t the
faintest understanding and which, frankly, they’re merely flinging
against the wall. Then the lady leaves and the 2 gentlemen stop talking
and finish their meal in silence, because what’s the use? The
attractive lady—in the eyes of the ministry gentlemen—has gone.
When he’s finished, kramiek begins to speak again, using words which he
has read and properly remembered, but not understood, about the Use of
Art.
***
ALL SAINTS
Again it’s all saints
and the white chrysanthemums bloom in your little garden . . . again
the stove burns and your wife is knitting, although knitting isn’t good
for her nerves . . . but what else can she do? She’s knitting something
without name or shape, which she calls perhaps, deep down in her mind,
her illegal knitting, like you write and write away at something
without name or shape which you call your illegal book. As you’re
writing you look out of the window now and again, at no-man’s wood with
its trees in their late autumn attire, where the bells of all saints
chase away the last leaves with their bim-bom. Because it’s all saints’
day again, the white chrysanthemums are in flower and the girl with the
fat behind has come back in her rolling camper, and stands by the
roadside beside the autumn leaves, beside the castle brook, beside the
place where the people from the 1st dirty houses throw their empty
vegetable tins. She stands there with her camper to let the winter of
termuren descend on her, like the bats hanging from a beam in the
darkest corner of the barn . . . termuren is the darkest corner of the
barn, to the girl with the fat behind . . . with your pen raised in
your hand you look at the steps of her camper, longing to see her come
out; the door opens but it isn’t her . . . it’s a wild boar, a tall,
lean man . . . his name is woelus . . . woelus wildboar . . . he’s the
husband of the girl with the fat behind who made the blood of jaspers,
the commercial traveller, race through his veins, who made tippetotje
reach for her sketch book, made boon write columns full of poignant
nostalgia . . . you got married somewhere in the land of the sun and
the fairs and the shooting tents . . . now that it has become winter
and the weather is getting bad, now that it’s all saints’ day and the
death bells toll, you come to the darkest beam in the barn: termuren .
. . to hibernate beside woelus wildboar . . . you will rest your fat
buttocks in his bony lap, while it’s raining and snowing and freezing
and it is dark outside . . . and you’ll say: listen to that, outside,
woelus wildboar, and here I’m lying so snugly against your hard belly.
But just as you’re writing this down the doorbell rings, your wife puts
down her illegal knitting and goes to see who’s there; it’s woelus
wildboar himself . . . but he’s not wild, he’s subdued and turns his
cap nervously in his hard fingers, and says that the girl with the fat
behind is ill, she’s got something in her tummy, she’s sweating and has
a fever . . . your wife says it’s probably flu, flu in her intestines,
she gives woelus wildboar some aspirin and the advice to tuck his wife
in warmly. Woelus returns to the camper reassured, but you, picking up
your pen once more, know better: it’s all saints’ day and the death
bells toll and even the girl with the fat behind marries and grows old
and gets something wrong with her belly and dies. Bim bom.
———————
Translated from the Flemish by Adrienne Dixon.
