Emants, Marcellus 1848-1923

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EMANTS, Marcellus 1848-1923

PERSONAL: Born August 12, 1848, in Voorburg, Netherlands; died October 14, 1923, in Baden, Switzerland. Education: Studied law at University of Leiden.

CAREER: Writer. Cofounder of literary magazines Quatuor, Spar en Hulst, and De Banier; also founded a theater company.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

Juliaan de Afvallige (title means "Julian the Apostate"), 1874.

Een drietal novellen (title means "A Trio of Novellas"), De Graaff (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1879.

Jong Holland (title means "Young Holland"), two volumes, 1881.

Véleda, 1883.

Langs den Nijl, 1884.

Goudakker's illusiën, 1885.

Uit Spanje, 1886.

Juffrouw Lina, een portret (title means "Miss Lina, a Portrait"), W. Gosler (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1886.

Monaco. Drie Typen, W. Gosler (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1886.

Lichte kost, 1892.

Dood (title means "Death"), H. D. T. Willink, 1892.

Argwaan (originally published in Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift, 1892), Goossens (Tricht, Netherlands), 1988.

Hij, 1894.

Een nagelaten bekentenis, Prometheus/Bert Bakker (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1894, translation published as A Posthumous Confession, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1975.

Artiest, 1895.

Van heinde en verre, Uitgevers Maatschappij (The Hague, Netherlands), 1897.

Lövesteijn, 1898.

Vijftig, Uitgevers Maatschappij (The Hague, Netherlands), 1899.

Op zee, 1899.

Inwijding (title means "Initiation"), Uitgevers Maatschappij (The Hague, Netherlands), 1901.

Een nieuwe leus, 1902.

In de praktijk, 1903.

Waan (title means "Illusion"), Van Holkema & Warendorf (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1905.

Liefdeleven (title means "Love Life"), Van Holkema & Warendorf (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1916.

Mensen, Van Holkema & Warendorf (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1920.

Afgestorven. Een tweetal novellen, De Maatschappij voor Goede en Goedkope Lectuur (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1921.

Geuren, 1924.

Huwelkjksgeluk en andere verhalen, Cadans (Nijmegen, Netherlands), 1989.

POETRY

Lilith, H.D. Tjeenk Willink (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1879.

Godenschemering (title means "Twilight of the Gods"), H.D. Tjeenk Willink (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1883.

Loki, Van Holkema & Warendorf (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1906.

PLAYS

Fatsoen, L.J. Veen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1881.

Adolf van Gelrè, W. Cremer (The Hague, Netherlands), 1881.

Jonge harten (title means "Young Hearts"), published in Spar en Hulst, Volume 2, 1888.

Haar zuster, W. Cremer (The Hague, Netherlands), 1890.

Onder ons, Van Holkems (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1894.

Een kriezis, Uitgevers Maatschappij (The Hague, Netherlands), 1897.

Domheidsmacht (title means "The Power of Stupidity"), Van Holkema & Warendorf (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1907.

Om de mensen (title means "Because of People"), Van Holkema & Warendorf (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1917.

NONFICTION

Op reis door Zweden (title means "Traveling through Sweden"), De Graaff (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1877.

Schetsen uit spanje, W. Cremer (The Hague, Netherlands), 1886.

Brieven aan Frits Smith Kleine (correspondence), edited by P.H. Dubois, 1962.

Voor mij blijft het leven een krankzinnigheid: een portret in brieven (correspondence), selected by Nop Maas, Veen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1995.

Also author of Frisse lucht: reizen rond de Middellandse Zee (travel), Cadans.

SIDELIGHTS: Dutch poet, novelist, and playwright Marcellus Emants was a naturalist writer who was set apart from his contemporaries by a belief that truth, not beauty, was the essence of art. After his father's death left him independently wealthy at the age of twenty-three, he broke off his law studies and devoted himself exclusively to literature and travel. While he was still attending the University of Leiden, he cofounded the literary magazines Quatuor and Spar en Hulst. It is in those magazines that his first poems and plays were published. Many of his plays were performed by a theatrical company he also founded. In those productions, Emants acted as director and actor as well.

Influenced by Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, Emants became a representative of pessimistic realism. He looked at the world around him and concluded that human existence is miserable, and the little happiness we do find always turns out to be illusory. One of his famous quotes was "Isn't everything an illusion, and isn't illusion everything?" Although not strictly a naturalist, he did share their view that life is meaningless and human beings are powerless—yet forever struggling—against forces like their innate abilities and sexual desire. This theme recurs in many of his novels and novellas, including Dood, Op zee, Inwijding, and Liefdeleven. His descriptions of sexual desire and pleasure were ahead of their time, and not all readers were ready for his openness. In fact, Emants's fellow founders of the periodical De Banier persuaded him not to publish his Een avontuur in the magazine in 1879 because they were concerned by the novel's theme about a woman who enters into an illicit love affair with no thought of anything other than her own feelings of love.

In all his writings, Emants rejected romantic unreality, and he searched for truth rather than beauty. This was a departure from the "Tachtigers," his contemporaries of the "Generation of Eighty," who strove for beauty and embraced the decadent notion of "art for art's sake." He had little contact with these Dutch contem-poraries and was a renewing force through his original tone and ideas. His early epic poems Lilith and Godenschemering are radically innovative for the late nineteenth-century literary environment because of their emotionally charged language, expansive vision, and daring subject matter. Lilith was considered very scandalous at the time, because its protagonist essentially blames God for humanity's problems. The figure of Lilith was the embodiment of sexual desire, which humans are unable to resist. Emants reasoned that this powerlessness can be attributed to God, as he endowed us with the urge to procreate.

In his prose Emants used an increasingly sober and direct tone, culminating in the grim psychological novel Een nagelaten bekentenis, the first-person story of Willem Termeer. At an early age, Willem thinks of himself as cowardly, egotistical, and dishonest. At age thirty he marries, motivated by nothing more than his fear of being alone in old age and his wife's belief that one ought to be married. When their only child dies at a young age, the protagonist feels nothing besides a vague sense of relief; his lack of emotion ends any love there had been in his marriage. He takes a mistress, who is unfaithful and dissatisfied at the allowance he pays her; nevertheless, one drunken night he decides to cash in his stocks and leave the country with her. When he comes home, he feeds his wife an overdose of her sleeping medication, making her death look like a suicide. At her funeral, Willem hopes that if he were to tell his mistress of his deed, and made his entire fortune available to her, she might love him for it.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, fall, 1983, "The Antichristian Views of Marcellus Emants," pp. 63-70.

De Gids, Volume 126, number 7, Pierre H. Dubois, "Een vermeend autobiografie van Marcellus Emants," pp. 144-153.

De nieuwe taalgids, May, 1986, "De plaats van Monaco in het oeuvre van M. Emants," pp. 256-265.

Dutch Crossing: A Journal of Low Countries Studies, spring, 1992, Jaap Harskamp, "Madonna or Magdalen: The Female Image in the Work of Emants, Van Deyssel, and Van Eeden," pp. 47-61.

Maatstaf, Volume 9, 1962, "Marcellus Emants en Toergenjew," pp. 922-930; Volume 30, number 6, 1982, "Jonkheer Ram, luitenant Siria, Taco Quaerts," pp. 76-83; Volume 36, numbers 9-10, 1988, "Op reis en toch thuis: De reisverhalen van Marcellus Emants," pp. 50-60.

Merlijn, Volume 2, number 2, 1964, "Uit de donkere dagen van voor Freud," pp. 1-22.

Ons erfdeel, March-April, 1981, Anneke Reitsma, "De heilige courtisane van Marcellus Emants," pp. 245-254.

Spiegel der Letteren, Volume 25, number 2, 1983, Philip Vermoortel, "In Margine," pp. 114-121.

Tirade, Volume 11, 1967, "Marcellus Emants en zijn een nagelaten bekentenis," pp. 246-257; March-April, 1985, "Waarom vermoordde Willeam Termeer zijn vrouw?," pp. 181-197.