De kellner en de levenden ("The waiter and the living") is a novel from 1949 by Dutch author Simon Vestdijk containing an allegory of the Last Judgment. [1]
Simon Vestdijk was a Dutch writer.
The Last Judgment or The Day of the Lord is part of the eschatological world view of the Abrahamic religions and in the Frashokereti of Zoroastrianism.
The main characters in this "novel of fantasy" [2] are eleven people who live in the same apartment building and the guest of one of them. [3] The twelve are ordinary, middle-class people (including Protestants, Catholics, and atheists) who appear to be arrested, all at one time, by the police, and loaded onto a bus without any explanation. They drive through a mostly deserted town, seeing occasional groups of people following men with banners, while trumpet music sounds. The twelve are led to a railroad station where they get to wait in a waiting room on one of the platforms. They are entertained by a friendly waiter and informed that this is Judgment Day, and that they are held separate from the other travelers (all those who died after the year 1600) because they haven't died yet. The head waiter of the waiting room is a brutal man called Leenders, but he spends much of his time outside, while inside the waiter serves water from a pitcher which turns into wine the moment it is poured into a glass. The youngest of the company, Wim Kwets, who suffers of consumption, is reunited with his dog, which had died two years before. As the twelve discuss whether the events are real or not, whether they believe in God or not, whether they think that they will indeed be judged or not, they also begin to confess and discuss their sins. All the while souls outside are being led to the trains that will take them to the place of judgment; a special train with the Archangel Michael has already passed.
One of them, a gay actor called Haack, leaves momentarily and discovers that platform 500 is filled with monsters. He is also confronted with his past—in a reenactment of the gravedigger scene from Hamlet , he is given the skull of a young actress who committed suicide because he led her to believe he loved her. When they are finally forced to leave, the monsters from 500 having been unleashed, they end up attending a grotesque parody of Christ in judgment. Leenders, now turned Satan, offers them a quick death if they will renounce God—if they deny, they are to be tortured for eternity. He explains that his armies have taken command and that everything is now Hell, God having been cast out to some remote corner of the universe. They refuse his offer, "whether from fear or real conviction", [1] and escape. They find themselves outside, in the city, and walk home through a landscape full of signs of the apocalypse, still pondering their sins. Back at the apartment building they meet the waiter again, now clearly a Christ figure, who explains that God and existence are vast but imperfect and that humans need to accept themselves in all their imperfections. [3] As he turns to leave he takes the dog with him, but young Wim, the dog's owner, wants to keep the animal; the waiter confers with Haack and in the end takes the dog as well as the boy with him.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow.
Christ in Majesty or Christ in Glory is the Western Christian image of Christ seated on a throne as ruler of the world, always seen frontally in the centre of the composition, and often flanked by other sacred figures, whose membership changes over time and according to the context. The image develops from Early Christian art, which directly borrowed the formulae of depictions of the enthroned Roman Emperor. In the Byzantine world, the image developed slightly differently into the half-length Christ Pantocrator, "Christ, Ruler of All", a usually unaccompanied figure, and the Deesis, where a full-length enthroned Christ is entreated by Mary and St. John the Baptist, and often other figures. In the West, the evolving composition remains very consistent within each period until the Renaissance, and then remains important until the end of the Baroque, in which the image is ordinarily transported to the sky.
By the time of its publication, just after World War II, Vestdijk had already acquired the status of "grand old man" of Dutch literature. [2] A contemporary review by critic Adriaan Morriën noted that many of Vestdijk's readers would have been confused or disappointed by the novel, which they could have read as "a dream, a publicity stunt, or a tremendous joke". [4] Turner Cassity, in a review of contemporary Dutch poetry published in Poetry , connects the novel to a poem of Vestdijk's, "The Dead Swans", in which dead and living swans inhabit the same pond: "The presentation of death as merely a form of life with its appetites darkened is chilling. It is the same fantasy which Vestdijk puts forward in his novel De kellner en de levenden". [5] T. W. L. Scheltema, in a review in Books Abroad , called it a "well-balanced narrative", and said, "with this novel the author has achieved a place among the world's significant contemporary authors". [1]
Allen Turner Cassity was an American poet, playwright, and short story writer.
Poetry, has been published in Chicago since 1912. It is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Founded by Harriet Monroe and now published by the Poetry Foundation, it is currently edited by Don Share. In 2007 the magazine had a circulation of 30,000, and printed 300 poems per year out of approximately 100,000 submissions. It is sometimes referred to as Poetry—Chicago.
World Literature Today is an American magazine of international literature and culture, published bimonthly at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. The magazine presents essays, poetry, fiction, and book reviews from all over the world in a format accessible to a broad audience. Its mission is to serve as an engaging, informative index to contemporary international literature. It was founded as Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, chair of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Oklahoma. In January 1977, the journal assumed its present name, World Literature Today.
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch was a Dutch writer. He wrote more than eighty novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. Mulisch's works have been translated into over thirty languages.
Gerard Kornelis van het Reve was a Dutch writer. He started writing as Simon van het Reve and adopted the shorter Gerard Reve[ˈɣeːrɑrt ˈreːvə] in 1973. Together with Willem Frederik Hermans and Harry Mulisch, he is considered one of the "Great Three" of Dutch post-war literature. His 1981 novel De vierde man was the basis for Paul Verhoeven's 1983 film.
Dutch-language literature comprises all writings of literary merit written through the ages in the Dutch language, a language which currently has around 23 million native speakers. Dutch-language literature is the produce of Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles and of formerly Dutch-speaking regions, such as French Flanders, South Africa, and Indonesia. The Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was called under Dutch colonization, spawned a separate subsection in Dutch-language literature. Conversely, Dutch-language literature sometimes was and is produced by people originally from abroad who came to live in Dutch-speaking regions, such as Anne Frank and Kader Abdolah. In its earliest stages, Dutch-language literature is defined as those pieces of literary merit written in one of the Dutch dialects of the Low Countries. Before the 17th century, there was no unified standard language; the dialects that are considered Dutch evolved from Old Frankish. A separate Afrikaans literature started to emerge during the 19th century, and it shares the same literary roots as contemporary Dutch, as Afrikaans evolved from 17th-century Dutch. The term Dutch literature may either indicate in a narrow sense literature from the Netherlands, or alteratively Dutch-language literature.
Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers.
Ferdinand Bordewijk was a Dutch author. His style, which is terse and symbolic, is considered to belong to New Objectivity and magic realism. He was awarded the P. C. Hooftprijs in 1953 and the Constantijn Huygensprijs in 1957. Character (1997), an Academy Award-winning film directed by Mike van Diem, was based on his novel Karakter (1938).
Julien Gracq was a French writer. He wrote novels, critiques, a play, and poetry. His literary works were noted for their dreamlike abstraction, elegant style and refined vocabulary. He was close to the surrealist movement, in particular its leader André Breton.
Hélène "Hella" Serafia Haasse was a Dutch writer, often referred to as "the Grand Old Lady" of Dutch literature, and whose novel Oeroeg (1948) was a staple for generations of Dutch schoolchildren. Her internationally acclaimed magnum opus is "Heren van de Thee", translated to "The Tea Lords". In 1988 Haasse was chosen to interview the Dutch Queen for her 50th birthday after which celebrated Dutch author Adriaan van Dis called Haasse "the Queen among authors".
Menno ter Braak was a Dutch modernist author.
Adriaan Koerbagh was a Dutch scholar and writer who was a critic of religion and conventional morality.
Lambertus Jozef (Bert) Bakker was a Dutch writer and publisher in the Netherlands. He wrote literary studies, two novels, poetry, and children's books. In World War II he was involved in the Dutch Resistance and assisted in the publication of Vrij Nederland. After the war he founded a publishing company under his own name; his nephew, also named Bert Bakker, ran the company until 1993. In 1953 he founded the literary magazine Maatstaf, which he edited until 1969. He was described as a "living legend" in the Dutch publishing industry, having supported and published authors such as Adriaan Roland Holst, Martinus Nijhoff, Gerrit Achterberg, and Neeltje Maria Min.
Adriaan van Dis is a Dutch author. He debuted in 1983 with the novella Nathan Sid. In 1995 his book Indische Duinen, which in its narrative is a follow up to his debut novella, was also awarded several prestigious literary awards.
Wim Verstappen was a Dutch film director and producer, television director, and screen writer.
The Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad was one of the leading and largest daily newspapers in the Dutch East Indies. It was based in Batavia on Java, but read throughout the archipelago. It was founded by the famous Dutch newspaperman and author P. A. Daum in 1885 and existed to 1957.
Hans Lodeizen, born Johannes August Frederik Lodeizen, was a Dutch poet. He was the author of one book of poems and a quantity of miscellaneous work. Despite his short life and modest output, his minimalist lyrics, which are generally constituted of short, unrhymed lines without capitals or punctuation, strongly influenced a post-war generation of Dutch poets, including Gerard Reve.
Ellen Jens is a Dutch television director and producer, best known for her collaboration with Wim T. Schippers on VPRO television. She has produced and directed a large number of other television shows, especially on literature and art, and is referred to as a "television legend".
Het spook en de schaduw is a novel by Dutch author Simon Vestdijk. One of the later novels in Vestdijk's career, it was published in 1966 by Nijgh & Van Ditmar. Hella Haasse, in a lengthy analysis in her Lezen achter de letters, calls it a "novel of conscience", and one of his most cynical ones. Agnes Andeweg notes Gothic elements in the novel.
Anton Wachter is the protagonist of eight novels by Dutch author Simon Vestdijk.
Wim Brands was a Dutch poet, journalist and TV presenter.
A. A. M. Stols was a Dutch printer and publisher, known best for his limited bibliophile editions of Dutch poetry.
Herman Leenders is a Flemish writer and poet.