‘Happiness is possible’, the poet, writer and columnist Remco Campert once wrote. If anyone proved that it was indeed possible, it was him. As a writer and poet, he brought light-heartedness and humor at a time when literature was still dominated by dealing with the war and at a time when young writers rebelled against previous generations by symbolically killing their predecessors. Such as the harshness of Willem Frederik Hermans, who dismissed the writers Menno ter Braak or Edgar du Perron with ‘aggressive compassion’, or Lucebert who wrote the previous generations of poets to their death by stating: ‘I report that the poets of velvet / shy and humanist die. / henceforth the hot iron throat / of the troubled executioners will open musically’.
Campert was the last of the Vijftigers, the group of poets of which Lucebert had proclaimed himself emperor with some irony, but Campert proceeded differently from the rest of the group of poets. Where Lucebert brought the poet generations after him the possibilities of ‘gibberish’, Campert put things into perspective and showed the beauty of simplicity.
In his novels he advocated language renewal, if only in the spelling of a word like delightful, which sounds much more delightful when you write it as ‘vurrukkuluk’. He also included the daily current affairs in his columns de Volkskrant on the heel, for example with his drs. Mallebrootje, who was invariably supported by ‘the young thing from the rank and file’. Even in those columns he managed to find a tone between melancholy and light irony.
Also read the obituary: Remco Campert: master of light-footed perception
That daring to be light-hearted is therefore an important reason that Campert’s work will continue to be read for a long time. This will probably apply especially to his poetry. He did not dare to adhere to the conventions of the time, to always rejuvenate and be witty in a country where pastors and writers with a heavy burden are taken most seriously.
Not that Campert had no reason to be melancholy. Raised as an only child of divorced parents and a father who was murdered in the Neuengamme concentration camp, he, like many novelists, had been able to cope with his traumas. Campert hardly did that. The echoes of the loss can be found in his work, but on a more modest scale. Many readers are familiar with the rules ‘Resistance does not start with big words / but with small deeds’. Or in other words: ‘Poetry is an act / of affirmation. I affirm / that I’m alive, that I’m not just living’, a poem in which he also gives a brilliant, if impossible, definition of poetry: ‘Voltaire had smallpox, but / cured himself by drinking, among other things, / 120 liters of lemonade: that’s poetry’ .
Campert processed his own youth by mainly continuing to live, and to continue to face the world cheerfully with that past. That was not only an act of resistance, but a view that we can all take to heart. The credo ‘whoever writes, who stays’ has long since ceased to apply, but the idea that anyone who dares to deviate from what is usual, desired or customary and does not make the seriousness of life greater than it sometimes already is will hopefully be continued now that the grand master of light-footedness is no longer there. And in doing so, let’s take this advice to heart: ‘That’s why guys! / don’t complain / just play marbles / and something else’.
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