insult to the truth

[Otto]

"In Kongo was ik het gewoon de baas te spelen. (...) Ik was dat op zo'n
manier dat men hier geen idee van heeft."
Paul de Wispelaere: `Open brief aan Jef Geeraerts', in: Nieuw Vlaams
Tijdschrift, Jrg. 23 (1970), p. 162.

"Je mag niet vergeten, ik kwam daar in die jaren als een absoluut heerser
(...). Om b.v. met vierhonderd negers een weg door het oerwoud te hakken mag
je geen halfzacht ei zijn, je moet er voortdurend op kloppen (...). Als ik
dit nu overdenk, had de bevolking overschot van gelijk. Maar toen! Ik sloeg
er op los om ze aan het werk te krijgen." (p. 81)
Julien Weverbergh: `Interview met Jef Geeraerts', in: Yang, Jrg. 9, Nr.
49/50 (Juni 1973), p. 79-91.

He's been trying to write like Miller or Hemingway against the
"frusto-purito-christo-racistisch syndroom" (p. 82). The title of his cyclus
comes from a Hemingway-quote: "Since the gangrene started in his right leg
he had no pain and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was
a great tiredness and anger..." (The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1938, p. 5).

Colonial History
What is this very own sound of Dutch language literature? It would be
impossible of course to say precisely what this is for all our authors at
one and the same time. They are far too individual and differentiated for
that. Often our authors have taken their nations' histories as the point of
departure, or they have written strongly autobiographical novels. The
colonial past of the Dutch East Indies and the Belgian Congo sometimes plays
an important role. Jef Geeraerts wrote a series of novels about his time as
a soldier in the Belgian Congo. He described the truth of this experience so
pitilessly that the books had a shattering impact when they were published.
Hugo Claus shows in his books how our society struggles with its own past
and has difficulty in facing the truth. In his latest books he allows this
dark past to run its course within in our present society with all the
virulence of a tropical disease. His stories are built up from gossip and
bits of scandal the inhabitants of the small village of Alegem tell each
other at the tables of the café De Doofpot (The Extinguisher) . The stories
take on such strange twists and turns that any idea of probing to the
reality behind them has long since been abandoned. The history of the Dutch
East Indies plays a role in the works of some Dutch writers, and can be
found for instance in the personally coloured and very wry stories of
Adriaan van Dis.
http://www.minocw.nl/toespraken/1999/011.html

regards

Otto

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