Context N°13
by Louis Paul Boon
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.
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Translated from the Flemish by Adrienne Dixon.
