To sympathise with the pains of love, you must share in its feelings.
Belle van Zuylen to James Boswell, 15 June 1764
‘Have you forgotten our last night’, she sighed,
‘when I allowed your tears to censor me
And slipped out of the world so silently?’
Martinus Nijhoff, Awater
(‘In clear weather, the tower is visible from a distance of 50 kilometres.’)
All and Nothing is one of the citybooks set in the city of Utrecht. All and Nothing consists of nine poems woven together, which each consist of two ‘chapters’: a narrative part and a commentary.
Central to the poem is the creation of the landscape from which Utrecht was to emerge, and the foundation and development of the city and its environment. We follow Utrecht from Roman times via the 17th century storm, 18th century love and the city expansion of the 19th century, through to the present day. A vision also grants us a glance into the future, more precisely the year 2108, when the suburb of Ondiep has become a paradise and the tallest skyscraper of the Netherlands, the Belle van Zuylen, has nevertheless been built.
Characters in All and Nothing are the city itself and Martinus Nijhoff’s Utrecht hero Awater from the eponymous poem, published in 1934. The main roles are taken up by the writer Belle van Zuylen and the Scottish biographer James Boswell, who made each other’s acquaintance in Utrecht, in 1764. They formed a relationship, the exact nature of which remains unknown. One can surmise from the correspondence between the two that, at least one of the two, Boswell, was in love. This was never quite requited by Belle van Zuylen (whom Boswell also called ‘Zélide’). All and Nothing quotes the French correspondence between the two and brings them to life in both present, past and future.
It All Begins with Water
The Darkness
The City in Thought
(2108)
Navigation De-activated
A Day in the Life
Trans, Kromme Nieuwegracht. Drift
To Dust
The Keep
It All Begins with Water
It all begins with water, from the dust
surging up inside to the air up above (skyline
in sight), to the fallow land seen from the air.
And the water also keeps beginning with water,
water that is a house and stands solid like one, proves
prerequisite, is stamped as the beginning,
looks for a travel companion; itself;
flows where it may go, blood
without platelets, beats where it strikes,
a lowest point.
(Refuse bin, then drain flow
for a southern garrison
at the chilly northern border
of an empire finding the earth too small.)
And the dust and the air and the water,
the light in the darkness and then
the darkness that stands stupidly around
the light at the end of the journey,
around the dust and the air that settle here,
lunettes shining in the water
(the future in brackets,
the embankments give way).
Water, dust, air. Earth.
As you well know. A Genesis
unfit for beginners.
That it returns unto itself. For now:
marshland, willows, reeds,
mace, stalks, ashes, poplars,
dragonflies, a butterfly, two spiders,
embittered flowers and mud,
foolish bees and sludge,
saturated branches
forest completely underwater, drowning,
turns to peat at the heart of the land.
Water birds. Mayflies. Cave dwellers:
foxes, woodpeckers, swallows casting
(already provided for that forceful sweep
across the city of the hourglass figure
reducing the building’s footprint) shadows.
There’s that army wading in
downstream, through
the water rising up their leg guards.
..
It all begins with water.
All it says (and said).
The Darkness
Once there came a storm in the form of a girl
And blew to pieces my snug little world
Sometimes I swear I can still hear it howl
Down through the wreckage and the ruins
I had a dream, but was it really a dream.
The end was near when it began;
I groped and there it came, the storm,
a terryble thunder rose;
God’s lightning trumpet sounded out,
and heaven stood o’er the dust
in ceaseless fire and flame, and trembling,
so it seemed, the Northern lights,
but it was lightning flashing,
and it was terryble to hear the thunder
and orrible winds, and when the nave
did finally settle, swifted pilers and all,
which gave folk cause to speak of an upheaval,
the turmoil of the clouds died down,
I then awoke, and it was done.
..
Lying under the rubble then, averse to a clean sweep,
about a century-and-a-half, enticing, leaden,
the emptiness with its own, fresh graves –
in which her own pain’s hidden.
Scars with which you, July evening,
playing with your finger-thin fingers by the Utrecht Dome,
make me dream of us, in a supporting role
but will for many years storm me to unbridled sleep.
The City in Thought
I’m made of housing blocks, of street plans.
I began as an embankment, humble,
primitive; and that inception reaches,
visibly unflinching backbone,
from bishopric to Oudegracht –
which slightly billows, giving hold,
both question and riddle: towards the water
things get higher, not lower.
Where cyclists and pedestrians let their tracks
dissolve into the emptiness, not looking back,
these are for their part
dents in my back. As many
scars as bicycle racks
are written into the first dike’s core.
Thus broken down in advance
as once I began I now lie here,
see stand what once stood there:
Palace of Lofen (quench and drench me),
the Vredenburg (free me then),
Mariakerk (and marry me).
Ghostly buildings. Shadowy premises. Spectral city.
Green fumes of iron-clad rules
where earlier the castellum stood.
I hear the mercenaries go past,
they go about, still go about, these phantoms
with their bones numbed by
an unfamiliar cold, in their frontier tunics
unpicked by expanding time, which rustle softly
passing through my surface level.
Nobody sees them, the dead,
first citizens, first walkers
past the arch here by the water
that unearthed me then,
brought me about.
I’m now made of street plans,
of ink stains of suggestions and decisions.
(Two hundred and sixty-two metres
of vertical mix Belle van Zuylen.
..
I stretch myself out – that highlight
rushes through my network to yours;
from the tower I construct from my words,
from your words, light spatters into day
and I let its shadow reach the Trans,
my love you too, my darkling Lichte Gaard.
Hourglass figure
reducing the building’s footprint.)
(2108)
There is a map of the city
on which she spreads her wings,
attached to her head
a stubborn hooked beak
that faces left, her tail
now ready to go.
Nineteenth century, her
nineteenth century, too.
But when we state the day today,
it’s twenty-one-o-eight.
The city this book’s intended for:
suspended in visions of the future.
Take Ondiep that
despite the ‘undeep’ name,
yet in a spot-on analysis,
contested my poetic heights:
The Ondiep population
is stubborn, nobody
needs to tell them what is what.
That stubbornness is built on
a materially-speaking
far from prosperous situation
of ‘being happy with precious little.’
Ondiep is characterised
by an Atlantic attitude to life.
Ondiep folk turn tragedy
into honour
through strength,
take up the confrontation.
Mediterranean folk
would sooner use irony, humour and play.
Behold these furrowed brows,
their bodies marked with industry,
lonely together:
don’t you patronise me.
Take Leidsche Rijn; its lowest point
the cloud buster Belle van Zuylen,
a dynamic mix
of home life, work,
recreation and shopping.
Complementary functions, enhancing each other
and sometimes completely merging.
Its multifunctional nature forms the basis
for the underlying concept
‘The world of the Belle van Zuylen’.
How are the various communities
embedded within the future city mosaic?
How do they flesh out community spirit?
..
Take you, my city, which I,
with the land remaining
where the monuments for ground up
swans and mills and cows arose,
espouse, which I, because you’re here
fan with my breath –
you who aren’t here
but in my naughty dreams,
you, dragging me downstream,
my calloused soul, my heart on your sleeve,
you, still seeing me
whenever I close my eyes,
who, wherever I look in your creation,
embraces my persistence. Beheads it.
Navigation De-activated
Beyond the queue
Amersfoort-Utrecht
No road markings
not a cloud in sight
to spot – no Arafat,
reindeer, trolls or dwarves;
beyond the queue
no sign of silence
New conditions
or storm, beyond the queue
nothing at all,
just a tin can – mine.
All taut and abstract,
New conditions
Rietveld-Schröder,
Mondrian was here,
but with a lot more colour.
Rows of tin cans, tin can rows,
No road markings
neo-Dutch tableau,
Amersfoort-Utrecht
snake all the way from Rijnsweerd
Merge from this point
Roadwork access only
biting into the low-traffic city centre.
Beyond the queue
past Nieuwegein,
No road markings
in the ashen-grey
of the exhaust fume daze,
asphalt haze,
my eyes glide,
brusquely, coolly
New conditions
across the Lek bridge,
I draw a line,
New conditions
and another,
from you to me,
below you and me,
above you, above me,
I wrap us up,
and carry on,
Give way to mergers
we take our own high roads
that keep converging,
as the ring-road waits.
Lay-by accessible
Beyond the queue
at Lage Weide, the coffee factory,
New conditions
slip-road Leidsche Rijn
I see pipe layers everywhere,
and diggers, hauling machines,
rigid dump trucks standing there.
No road markings.
The cow has been chased off.
Along with the green patch where it
bemoaned its age, it’s now gone over.
Merge from this point
Ploughed, condensed,
steamrolled and rotated,
space that was abolished
for the sake of yet more space.
New conditions
These are the rivers
of mobile life
for struggle; see who matters,
the noise screen of leased cars
and Megastores, No road markings
the market’s on its way to you
and the stand is buttressed
by local, provincial,
national councils; here is the
geared perpetuum mobile,
even if it’s as per usual
standing – Beware
new surface
longer brake path
still, marking
time.
New conditions
After what passed I no longer
wish to be a bird in flight.
New conditions
I fly; my flight beyond it:
let’s call it quits.
New conditions
..
Serves you right. So you got told.
Navigation activated Try to make a U-turn
A Day in the Life
I promise you that the bottom of my heart
will always be the same towards you. I hope,
all your life, you will be glad of it and
it will never be an enigma towards you.
City watered down, city intersected,
torn to shreds, by water, city
that is this crocheting of streets, canals,
and cycle paths, that lets the past sing
under its clinkers. Vanished buildings:
palaces, abbeys, castles.
City where the one true love resides.
Capital. Brainpan. Skeleton.
City of quays without water: Royaards
van der Ham; city of fortifications:
City Campus Max, city that was keep
in its forest behind closed doors.
City that beckons, keeps mum,
city spreading out to all sides
wraps around your arms around you,
takes your breath away, then lets you live.
Demarcated, encapsulated, out for the count,
tissue that you only manage to scrape off
of your beaten body after many years.
City that strikes hard, streets, alleys, views
and pigeons in the blue sky,
cooing to liven things up, the storm hole
that was the nave, where the buses stop,
a festival that bids you welcome,
city that shrugs its shoulders,
fortress round a convent garden, doesn’t mind
the fenced-off emptiness that abides.
City that repels, city that surrounds
and is surrounded: location by the water.
..
Water that flows through me, that flows through you,
storms itself open, unpicks us and stays open,
door ajar which doesn’t keep mum,
and bids you welcome, makes believe
you’re truly, finally there;
house where you then prove invisible.
Door that you then close
– or seem to
Trans, Kromme Nieuwegracht. Drift
The road outside is paved with dark grey asphalt.
I notice that the echo that followed me through
The white-tiled hall falls silent at the door.
The town endows my feet with noiselessness,
then leads me into a trench, a guesthouse
offers science a crutch, a fall-back position:
keep a watchful eye nevertheless, look
over both shoulders at once:
where are they, the head-butt on the sly,
the laptop held high: to whom
do I give up my life, O Zélide?
I believed you to be without
the weaknesses of your sex.
To you. To your hourglass figure,
your waist the landmark
that summons my hands
and when I waltz you away
to create some space
slips through them like light.
You bid me write whatever I think.
Will it be Achter de Dom or Pausdam?
No, Kromme Nieuwegracht is where I’ll live,
where in midwinter Belle lives,
my lust assaults the ice-cold Drift.
..
A city walk, slow courtship
which you quietly observe, share,
then break down again, seek out,
take from us, accept,
confirm in texts and letters –
I beg you not to accuse my heart
– dance from which you finally flee
before you take to the sky at night.
My friendship is yours for ever: count on it,
however much you may think me fickle.
With which you let your shadow, slender as
your finger, brush across Utrecht.
To Dust
Write, if it were only to say,
‘I shall never write to you again.
It all ends in surrender.
It all ends in surrender, puppy
that I adopt, rolls over, stroke me,
on its back, weak and helpless belly
towards the sun, nose and feet up in the air,
snout and eyes: beggar’s posture, stroke me.
I wag myself into captivity, stroke me,
in a garden where things bloom and bellow
with desire – convent garden: bulwarked.
It doesn’t revolve around the city,
it revolves around one occupant at a time. She,
shield bearer, turnstile,
water body transporting me, buoys this up,
from Ledig Erf to Miffy’s Square, she,
axis, whom this spins round until I fall, no longer
stand up – will fall no longer.
Embracing more than reality,
between the Dome and De Gagel, between the Dome
and Rijnsweerd, between the Dome and Campus Max,
between the Dome and Leidsche Rijn she rides me
with her body’s water; masterplan that was never
tendered, surrendered, expanded.
Achieved.
So this is once again a blueprint,
a city centre never at a standstill,
a calque against the plain,
its back running west of the hills,
north of Nieuw Wulven,
south of pools and moors,
east of old Oudenrijn,
where even in ‘Oog in Al’
O, I do so wish to join with her.
..
But it’s not your absence,
the phantom pain you give me,
it is how I sink my topsy-turvy
puppy teeth into precisely that,
all which I possess, keep losing,
again and again,
not letting anything go since it
all turned from water to dust.
The Keep
She sits on the edge of her bed in the keep.
She thinks of that man from the city – of that
Scot with his doubts, of herself with her
doubts wrapped up in her smile. In front of her the seat,
to her left the night already enclosing the city.
If you were a butterfly and I the only spider,
then I’d catch you now, your fitful flutter
the sunset on the Dome and
groping about I’d taste your warmth,
you’d merge with my lengthening shadow,
you would be mine, muse, here in the keep.
Behind her, behind the wall,
her little desk, the view (the cars), the lamp.
(Her Samsung starts to glow, awaits an answer.)
She sits on the edge of her bed in the keep
and thinks of the Scot she spoke to in the forest
on the wall between her and the city,
the forest wall around her and the Scot
with his doubts, his plans, his asking
for pain, his letters and thoughts, his tears, desire
to be rid of her.
I sit on the edge of my bed in the city, on Queen’s Eve.
Dealing Dutchmen clean out canals,
lager cans, alcopops, student brawls.
Utrecht by night dazzles the sky over Utrecht,
the city glows, my head lows.
Keep me and let me congeal in what I write – I say – to you.
..
Be my fountain, my cloister, my quadrangle;
give me your scars, dream, your darkness, storm.
(There they sit, developed, revealed
in the hourglass figure reducing the footprint,
beginning the city.)
The water, the dust. It’s a start.
General quotations
http://www.bellevanzuylen.info/english/index.php: ‘The Belle van Zuylen development: a unique project.
The Belle van Zuylen project is a uniquely styled high-rise building that will astound everybody. The tower will rise up above the A2 motorway in Utrecht in a few years. A dynamic statement that combines residential space with offices and leisure facilities in an innovative, high tech and energy-efficient design. At a height of 262 metres above the ground, the Belle van Zuylen tower is the new major landmark in Utrecht and the Netherlands.’
http://www.bellevanzuylen.info/english/belle-van-zuylen-de-toekomst-is-nu.php: ‘What effect will known future trends have on the way of life and daily schedules of the people who live, work, shop and satisfy their leisure needs in the Belle van Zuylen tower in Utrecht? What kind of people will the building attract? How will they use this multifunctional building? How will all these different communities interact with each other in this mosaic city of the future? What sense of community spirit will they have? How important will work be in their lives? A picture of the Belle van Zuylen tower resident in 2015.’
http://www1.cie.nl/projects/projects---partners/branimir-medic/belle-van-zuylen,-utrecht.aspx: ‘With a height of 262 metres, the Belle van Zuylen Tower is Utrecht’s definitive new landmark. Besides ensuring as much ground-level retail space as possible, the tower’s hourglass plan provides a substantial surface area for penthouses. The space in between accommodates a vertical mix of offices, a hotel, a concert hall, a cinema, a gym with swimming pool and a generous car park. The stepped structure means there is sufficient terrace space and incidence of natural light, while the tremendous height reduces the building’s footprint considerably. In clear weather, it is visible from a distance of 50 kilometres.’
http://www.hetutrechtsarchief.nl/english: This website contains many documents from Utrecht’s municipal archives, Belle van Zuylen’s letters in manuscript among them, plus stories such as the fable about a butterfly and two spiders. The italicised phrases about the terrible thunderstorm on page 3 of the poem, ‘The Darkness’, are taken from a newspaper article from the Oprechte Haerlemse Saterdaegse Courant, dating back to 4 August 1674. Unfortunately, none of these sources are available in English.
Specific quotations and notes
In general, the capitalised Dutch words are streets and places of note in Utrecht, which can be found on any city map. Special cases and certain quotations are highlighted below.
Motto’s and ‘Trans, Kromme Nieuwegracht. Drift’: tercet and quatrain respectively, are from David Colmer’s recently published translation of Nijhoff’s epic poem Awater. Martinus Nijhoff, Awater, ed. Thomas Möhlmann, with an essay by Wiljan van den Akker, translations by David Colmer, James S. Holmes, Daan van der Vat. London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2010.
‘The Darkness’ and ‘The Keep’: Belle van Zuylen wrote a fable about a butterfly and two spiders.
‘The Darkness’: quatrain quotation: from a lyric by Nick Cave, Ain’t Gonna Rain Anymore.
‘A Day in the Life’: quatrain quotation: from a letter by Belle van Zuylen to James Boswell. Frederick Pottle, ed., Boswell in Holland 1763-1764, Including His Correspondence with Belle van Zuylen (Zélide). Heinemann, 1952.
‘To Dust’: Miffy’s Square, known in Dutch as ‘Nijntje Pleintje’, is named after Nijntje, the famous Dutch children’s book character of a rabbit, created by author and illustrator Dick Bruna. The rabbit character is known in English as Miffy. The Oog in Al (lit. ‘Eye in All’) is a Utrecht suburb, close to the A2 motorway and a coffee factory.
‘The Keep’: Queen’s Eve, the ‘koninginnenacht’, precedes Queen’s Day, ‘koninginnedag’. While the latter celebrates the love of a nation for its Queen, the former tends to be a raucous affair with disturbances in both city centre and suburbs.
With thanks to
Bertram Mourits
bureau Real Time Branding
Han van der Vegt
Hans van Wetering
Matthijs Uyterlinde
Veerle Kosters
Translated by Willem Groenewegen
Willem Groenewegen (1971) had a bilingual upbringing in Surrey (UK). He studied English Literature in Groningen (NL) and Manchester (UK). He began translating Dutch literature professionally in 2000 and has translated three selections of poetry of Arjen Duinker, Nick J. Swarth and Rutger Kopland. The latter, entitled What Water Left Behind, got him shortlisted for The Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation (The Poetry Society) in 2007. He also translates short prose and art-related texts. www.willem-groenewegen.nl
Podcast read by Willem Groenewegen
