(1756-1831)
Willem Bilderdijk's personality, even more than his genius, exerted so
powerful an influence over his time that it has been said that to think
of a Dutchman of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was to
think of Bilderdijk. He stands as the representative of the great
literary and intellectual awakening which took place in Holland
immediately after that country became part of the French empire. The
history of literature has many examples of how, under political
disturbances, the agitated mind has sought refuge in literary and
scientific pursuits, and it seemed at that time as if Dutch literature
was entering a new Golden Age. The country had never known better poets;
but it was the poetry of the eighteenth century, to quote Ten Brink,
"ceremonious and stagy."
In 'Herinnering van mijne Kindheit' (Reminiscences of My Childhood), a
book which is not altogether to be relied upon, Bilderdijk gives a
charming picture of his father, a physician in Amsterdam, but speaks of
his mother in less flattering terms. He was born in Amsterdam in 1756.
At an early age he suffered an injury to his foot, a peasant boy having
carelessly stepped on it; attempts were made to cure him by continued
bleedings, and the result was that he was confined to his bed for twelve
years. These years laid the foundation of a character lacking in power
to love and to call forth love, and developing into an almost fierce
hypochondria, full of complaints and fears of death. In these years,
however, he acquired the information and the wonderful power of language
which appear in his sinewy verse.
One of his poems, dated 1770, has been preserved, but is principally
interesting as a first attempt. Others, written in his twentieth year,
were prize poems, and are sufficiently characterized by their
titles:--'Kunst wordt door Arbeid verkregen' (Art came through Toil),
and 'Inloed der Dichthunst op het Staets bestuur' (Influence of Poetry
on Statesmanship). When he went to Leyden in 1780 to study law, he was
already famous. His examinations passed, he settled at the Hague to
practice, and in 1785 married Katharina Rebekka Woesthoven. The
following year he published his romance, 'Elius,' in seven songs. The
romance ultimately became his favorite form of verse; but this was not
the form now called romance. It was the rhymed narrative of the
eighteenth century, written with endless care and reflection, and in
his case with so superior a treatment of language that no Dutch poet
since Huygens had approached it.
The year 1795 was the turning-point in Bilderdijk's life. He had been
brought up in unswerving faith in the cause of the house of Orange, was
a fanatic monarchist and Calvinist, "anti-revolutionary,
anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevesteinisch, anti-liberal" (thus Da Costa),
a warm supporter of William the Fifth, and at the entrance of the French
in 1795 he refused to give his oath of allegiance to the cause of the
citizens and the sovereignty of the people. He was exiled, left the
Hague, and went to London, and later to Brunswick. This was not
altogether a misfortune for him, nor an unrelieved sorrow. He had been
more successful as poet than as husband or financier, and by his
compulsory banishment escaped his financial difficulties and what he
considered the chains of his married life. In London Bilderdijk met his
countryman the painter Schweikhardt; and with this meeting begins a
period of his life over which his admirers would fain draw a veil. With
Schweikhardt were his two daughters, of whom the younger, Katherina
Wilhelmina, became Bilderdijk's first pupil, and, excepting his
"intellectual son," Isaak da Costa, probably his only one. Besides her
great poetic gifts she possessed beauty and charm. She fell in love with
her teacher and followed him to Brunswick, where she lived in his house
under the name of Frau van Heusden. In spite of this arrangement, the
poet seems to have considered himself a most faithful husband; and he
did his best to persuade his wife to join him with their children, but
naturally without success. In 1802 the marriage was legally annulled,
and Frau van Heusden took his name. She did her best to atone for the
blot on her repute by a self-sacrificing lovableness, and was in close
sympathy with Bilderdijk on the intellectual side. Like him she was
familiar with all the resources of the art of poetry. Most famous of her
poems are the long one 'Rodrigo de Goth,' and her touching, graceful
'Gedichten voor Kinderen' (Poems for Children). Bilderdijk's verses show
what she was to him:--
In the shadow of my verdure, firmly on my trunk depending,
Grew the tender branch of cedar, never longing once to leave me;
Faithfully through rain and tempest, modest at my side it rested,
Bearing to my honor solely the first twig it might its own call;
Fair the wreath thy flowers made me for my knotted trunk fast withering,
And my soul with pride was swelling at the crown of thy young blossoms;
Straight and strong and firmly rooted, tall and green thy head arises,
Bright the glory of its freshness; never yet by aught bedimmed.
Lo! my crown to thine now bending, only thine the radiant freshness,
And my soul finds rest and comfort in thy sheltering foliage.
Meanwhile he was no better off materially. The Duke of Brunswick, who
had known him previously, received the famous Dutch exile with open
arms, and granted him a pension; but it never sufficed. Many efforts
were made to have his decree of exile annulled; but they failed through
his own peevish insolence and his boundless ingratitude. King Louis
(Bonaparte) of Holland extended his protection to the dissatisfied old
poet; and all these royal gentlemen were most generous. When the house
of Orange returned to Holland, William I. continued the favor already
shown him, obtained a high pension for him, and when it proved
insufficient, supplemented it with gifts. In this way Bilderdijk's
income in the year 1816 amounted to twenty thousand gold pieces. That
this should be sufficient to keep the wolf from the door in a city like
Amsterdam, Bilderdijk thought too much to expect, and consequently left
in great indignation and went to Leyden in 1817.
But these personal troubles in no way interfered with his talent. On the
contrary, the history of literature has seldom known so great an
activity and productiveness; all in all, his works amounted to almost a
hundred volumes. What he accomplished during his stay in Germany was
almost incredible. He gave lessons to exiled Dutch in a great variety of
branches, he saw volume upon volume through print; he wrote his famous
'Het Buitenleven' (Country Life) after Delille, he translated Fingal
after Ossian, he wrote 'Vaderlandsche Orangezucht' (Patriotic Love for
Orange). After his return to Holland he wrote 'De Ziekte der Geleerden'
(The Disease of Genius: 1817), 'Leyden's Kamp' (Leyden's Battle: 1808),
and the first five songs of 'De Ondergang der eerste Wereld'
(Destruction of the First World: 1809), probably his masterpiece;
moreover, the dramas 'Floris V.,' 'Willem van Holland,' and 'Kounak.'
The volumes published between 1815 and 1819 bore the double signature
Willem and Wilhelmina Katherina Bilderdijk.
But it was as though time had left him behind. The younger Holland shook
its head over the old gentleman of the past century, with his antagonism
for the poetry of the day and his rage against Shakespeare and the
latter's "puerile" 'King Lear.' For to Bilderdijk even more than to
Voltaire, Shakespeare was an abomination. Then in 1830 he received the
severest blow of his life: Katherina Wilhelmina died. This happened in
Haarlem, whither he had gone in 1827. With this calamity his strength
was broken and his life at an end. He followed her in 1831.
He was in every way a son of the eighteenth century; he began as a
didactic and patriotic poet, and might at first be considered a follower
of Jakob Cats. He became principally a lyric poet, but his lyric knew no
deep sentiment, no suppressed feeling; its greatness lay in its
rhetorical power. His ode to Napoleon may therefore be one of the best
to characterize his genius. When he returned to his native country after
eleven years' exile, with heart and mind full of Holland, it was old
Holland he sought and did not find. He did not understand young Holland.
In spite of this, his fame and powerful personality had an attraction
for the young; but it was the attraction of a past time, the fascination
of the glorious ruin. Young Holland wanted freedom, individual
independence, and this Bilderdijk considered a misfortune. "One should
not let children, women, and nations know that they possess other rights
than those naturally theirs. This matter must be a secret between the
prince and his heart and reason,--to the masses it ought always to be
kept as hidden as possible." The new age which had made its entry with
the cry of Liberty would not tolerate such sentiments, and he stood
alone, a powerful, demonic, but incomprehensible spirit.
Aside from his fame as a poet, he deserves to be mentioned as Jacob
Grimm's correspondent, as philologist, philosopher, and theologian.