Lente 2006 no. 56
TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY
OF
CHARLES JOHN HUFHAM DICKENS
door Leonard Jacobs
Potatoes, poultry, prunes, Mr. President,
Mr. Hornback, my dear Harlem-Fellows!
I did some practice, and I hope I'll be able
to pronounce my proposal to you, with not
too much stammer. Being an incorrigible
backbencher of this incredibly-achieving,
and yet, very lenient Branch, I would like to
manage at least so much.
Some of you know Anatole France's Le Jongleur
de Notre Dame about a monk, who had little
learning, but who was a very able jongleur, and
whose private prayer to the Holy Virgin consisted
just in dancing for her while the other monks were
asleep. My dance for Charles Dickens, the next 15-
or-so minutes, may be too abstract an argument to
keep your ears pricked up, and more fit for a doze,
but during my talking you could also admire
Marian Andriessen's last decorative-opus-
number, or the attire of Mr. Hornback or that of
the ladies.
Once in a while, adults are praised for certain
achievements. Sometimes, when they reach an
elevated level of performance, they will be
honored. Glory is only sung when they are
dead.
We know how magnificently C.D. was glorified
at his funeral; his burial was a resurrection-
veiled-in-shining-black. That took place in
1870. But now, six score and fifteen years later,
there still is the yearly wreath laying on the spot
where his body was buried; and all over the
globe people assemble at his birthday or at
some other date-in-December to commemorate
him.
And also in the Harlem-Branch, off-course! that
small lively Fellowship-Branch, in which,
because it was founded by great men, there has
always been a sufficient number of apostolic
followers to entertain Dickensian fellowship,
and to maintain familiarity with the literary
phenomenon Dickens.
What then constituted his success, then and
now, with the public? The answer methinks is:
that his texts and his characters-in-particular,
had life in them, and that there has been no
doubt about it.
He did not tell stories, i.e. he did not gossip,
but, pretending to "report their histories" he
told tales about alleged, not invented, beings, in
the way -since 1812- parents in Germany would
tell Kinder- und Hausmarchen, from the
Grzmm-collection: as if they had known them
personally. Dickens even let the young people
David Copperfield, Esther Summersont, Pip, tell
their histories themsèlves, I think, because he
regarded himself too old-an-author to be a
sufficiently-credible "tale-telling"-source for
them. This "tale-telling"-attitude strikes one
particularly in the introductions of the dramatis
personae.
Usually, there is a threefold introduction: He
gives a name (a syn-aesthetic name: you always
think that, if you had been keener, you could
decode that name and find out what exactly the
character of the bearer of the name is);
secondly, he mentions the sociological sub
species (let us not forget that he is of the
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