post-colonial_translation

Composing the other 93
of the epic, all those who dare stand against her have to be the villains
of that same epic even if they are, as is so often the case, merely acting
in self-defence.
By opting for neo-classical tragedy (then rated second, or first ex
aequo in the hierarchy of genres), van Haren was able to open a
philosophical debate about the role of the Dutch and the Maatschappij
in the East Indies. The genre gave him the opportunity to use different
mouthpieces for different philosophical and political positions.
Obviously his conceptual grid was not unthinkingly and adoringly
pro-Maatschappij and pro-Dutch. He knew what he was talking
about, even though he had never been to the East Indies, and he had
his own axe to grind. He had been one of the leading statesmen of the
Dutch Republic, who must have been privy to decisions made on the
highest level, affecting the Maatschappij and the country as a whole,
and he was brought low by an accusation of incest with two of his
daughters. That accusation, never proved or disproved, banished him
from public life and made him take up a second career as a writer. It
remains – to anticipate criticism that is not entirely without ground –
to analyse to what extent the operation of the two grids I have
postulated can be more easily detected and dissected in a historical
period in which literature was still first and foremost a craft, one that
statesmen could learn in disgrace and merchants in retirement, and
not an activity inspired by the muse, laudanum, or both, to be engaged
in only by those ‘called’ to it, preferably with their eyes in some fine
frenzy rolling.
Finally, the genre Haafner chooses to relate his Adventures gives
him ample scope to reveal the feet of clay on which the Maatschappij
walks in the East Indies. Because he is not bound to lofty tone and
diction, he is able to furnish moving descriptions and incisive
comments that reveal, perhaps more than anything else, the folly of
the colonial endeavour, Dutch or otherwise. We have discussed three
writers who composed the same reality, constrained by three different
conceptual and textual grids. I hope the part played by those grids
has become abundantly clear.
References
Haafner, J. ‘Lotgevallen en vroegere zeereizen van Jacob Haafner’, ed. C.M.
Haafner (Amsterdam, 1820). Repr. in De Werken van Jacob Haafner, vol.
1, ed. J.A. de Moor and P.G.E.I.J. van der Velde (Zutphen: De Walburg
Pers, 1992) pp. 41–160.