They played this work with only minor abridgements in the original text. Director Joeri Vos said that the play is about what money does to relationships between people; still an important issue now in the 21st century economic crisis. Vos says that if William Shakespeare would have written this play, characters would have been killed. Heijermans’ characters stop just short of killing, though they sometimes seem to be close to it.
While many of Heijermans’ plays, like his famous The Good Hope, are about conflicts between capitalists and workers, some are about people in between these two classes. The Rising Sun is about a small shopkeeper’s family, crushed by a big department store. This is a bit similar to Heijermans’ own bad experiences in the rag trade, before he became an author. As a small businessman Heijermans got into debts, plaguing him until his death.
Prosper Bien Aimé, the main character, is the guesthouse owner. The name is sarcastic: though not poor, he is not prosperous. The guesthouse does not get many guests; according to his mother-in-law, because of Prosper’s quarrelsome character and his daughter Félicité’s noisy music. Félicité, in the original play, keeps playing Ave Maria on the piano, winding everyone up. In the 2014 version she keeps playing on a modern keyboard, with the same effect. The name Bien Aimé means ‘well loved’ in French. Prosper is not well loved either, as he quarrels with all his relatives.
He has an elder brother, Gerrit, who suddenly turns up, from Melbourne in Australia, after 37 years. On the day of his arrival, Gerrit dies. It turns out he had lots of money; 100,000 guilders in the original play; two million guilders in Oostpool’s 2014 version, after a century of inflation. The Bien Aimé family thinks now their financial worries are over.
Then, it turns out that Gerrit married a woman, Pollie, a week before his death. So, she will probably inherit all of Gerrit’s money. Prosper and his family get livid, and thoroughly hate Pollie for this. Then, Pollie says there was a prenuptial agreement that she would not be Gerrit’s heir.
Later still, Charles, the disabled teenage son of Prosper, tells Pollie how much money Gerrit’s inheritance is. Then, Pollie tells, correctly, that she is pregnant and could use the money for when her and Gerrit’s child will be born.
Prosper Bien Aimé, contrary to Heijermans, is anti-socialist. He says, as an example of absurdity, that becoming a socialist would be as inconceivable for him as Polly’s unborn child inheriting Gerrit’s money.
Prosper Bien Aimé keeps up his hopes of becoming rich by thinking that an unborn child cannot inherit. However, his lawyer kills this hope.
The title of the play Beschuit met muisjes is from this prospect of a child being born. According to a Dutch custom, after childbirth, people are treated to eating beschuit met muisjes. They are rusk with anise seed sprinkles.
In the final scene, the conflict between Pollie and the Bien Aimé family gets so emotionally out of hand that Pollie miscarries. The Bien Aimé family, after the emotional seesaw throughout the play about whether or not they will become heirs, can feel relieved: there will be no beschuit met muisjes.
A difference with the play The Rising Sun is that only disabled teenage son Charles is a sympathetic character.
After the play, the audience gave the players a deserved standing ovation.
A critical review of the Oostpool performance is here.
Another critical review, of an abridged version by another theatre company, is here.
This is a video of a rehearsal of a Herman Heijermans play, Ghetto, about Jews in late nineteenth century Amsterdam. It was played in English translation in both London and New York City.
The most famous play by early twentieth century Jewish Dutch socialist author Heijermans is Op Hoop van Zegen (The Good Hope) from 1900. In this work, Heijermans criticized capitalism by describing the conflict between capitalist shipowners and fisherfolk-workers in a coastal village.
One of his other works, De Opgaande Zon (The Rising Sun), written in 1908, criticizes a different side of capitalism: the destruction of small businesses by big business.
In 1931, the Flemish Roman Catholic daily De Standaard reviewed an Antwerp performance of this play. The reviewer “J.V.G.” said he had less objections to De Opgaande Zon than to other plays by Heijermans, as he thought Heijermans’ socialist ideas were less prominent here than in other writings.
In De Opgaande Zon the main theme of the play is not conflict between labour and capital. But this does not make the play less socialist. Socialists like Karl Marx in Das Kapital also discussed destruction of small businesses by big businesses. This is known in Marxist terminology by names like “centralisation of capital“, and “proletarization of petty bourgeois“.
As we shall see, contrary to the reviewer in De Standaard, De Opgaande Zon is not really milder in its criticism of capitalist social structures than the eight years older Op Hoop van Zegen.
This year, Toneelgroep Maastricht performs the play in various cities and towns in the Netherlands; including Heerenveen.
This is a video of De Opgaande Zon, as played in 2010 by Toneelgroep Maastricht in the Netherlands.
On 15 October, it was played at the LAK theater in Leiden.
Heijermans subtitled this work: “A play about small business”. The main character is Matthijs de Sterke, owner of a tiny mom and pop shop with just one wage worker. His opponent is the big department store De Opgaande Zon, represented by its CEO Mr Jensen. The play is not really simple as the dialogues contain much commercial jargon. Herman Heijermans knew this jargon from his own days as an unsuccessful businessman. Lack of family money had forced him into the rag trade, though he already as a teenager preferred writing to business. His fiancée then broke off the engagement because of the lack of money made in trade.
The play was translated into English as The Rising Sun in 1926 (or: in 1925), and performed in 1929. Matthijs de Sterke then was translated as Matthew Strong; and his daughter, Sonja in Dutch, as Sonia.
Things go badly for the shop; bankruptcy threatens. Then, teenage daughter Sonia (played by Jessie Wilms in the Toneelgroep Maastricht performance) suggests to her father (played by Jack Vecht) to start speculating in stock market shares. That only makes the situation worse. Matthew, usually so optimistic, has a moment of weakness when he considers suicide, during a long walk in a cold snowy night.
This greatly affects usually also optimistic Sonia. Then, something happens which breaks her spirit. While she is in the shop alone, CEO Jensen of De Opgaande Zon corporation arrives. He shows Sonia the IOU, signed by Sonia herself, for her disastrous stock market speculations. As Jensen has bought this IOU and now owns it, he uses it to blackmail her. He proposes that the De Sterke family should hand over their shop, so De Opgaande Zon can tear it down to expand their new department store building. Matthijs de Sterke then may become a worker at De Opgaande Zon. And Sonia, as Mr Jensen says in a patronizing and sexist tone, can become a clothes salesgirl, “as we need girls with pretty eyes in that department”. However, they will be exploited even more than other workers at De Opgaande Zon corporation, as their debts from Sonia’s stock market speculation will be subtracted from their wages.
Sonia indignantly refuses this proposal, though she is not sure whether her defense that she is a minor and her signature on the IOU may be invalid, will hold up in a court of law against the power of big capital.
She is devastated after the talk with Jensen. When Mr De Sterke finally arrives home in the evening, his family and the tenant family living upstairs have a merry party to celebrate. That just makes Sonia feel even more depressed. When she goes into the dark shop with a petrol lamp to fetch an extra glass, she slips. The lamp falls. The whole building catches fire; killing the epileptic daughter Margo of the family upstairs.
Sonia, in complete despair now, feels very guilty about Margo’s death. When she slipped and dropped the light, for just one second she could have grabbed the lamp to extinguish the starting fire. During that one moment, in her desperation, the split second idea of averting the bankrupcy by letting the fire destroy the building in order to get insurance money, haunted her. That prevented her from grabbing the lamp. That second turned out to be the difference between life and death for Margo.
Sonia confesses what she sees as her guilt. Which means that the insurance company (now represented by actress Anne Boeschoten, though in Heijermans’ time this was a male job) will not pay the money to save the small shop from bankruptcy. Sonia will probably have to go to jail.
Nevertheless, her father praises Sonia for her honesty. “There are no bad people” he says, “there are people who have been made bad by social circumstances”.
Matthijs de Sterke differs from other small shopkeepers. Some of them have noisy meetings against unfair competition by big department stores. Unlike them, Matthijs does not believe in fighting for survival as a small property owner against big capitalist onslaught. He does believe in fighting to survive as a decent human being. Heijermans wrote that Matthijs’ decency is “another rising sun”, more shiny than the big corporation’s name. There is a parallel in the lives between author Heijermans and character Matthew: both did not really want to become businessmen. Matthijs had to do it because his father’s shop went bankrupt and he had to break off his university studies.
A review by Vincent Kouters in Dutch daily De Volkskrant also praises the play, but for “purely artistic” reasons like the music added to the play, separating artistic form from social-political content, not mentioning the present economic crisis at all.
The director at the play, Arie de Mol, said to me that De Opgaande Zon “is very much connected to the present” of the crisis, where now millions of people who used to be homeowners, so considering themselves not really poor, lose their homes by foreclosures to bankers and other creditors. Where farmers lose their family farms. And where economic crisis forces small businesspeople into becoming workers; or becoming unemployed.
The social system has changed much since Heijermans wrote his play over a century ago. But the similarities between the defense of big business capitalism by Heijermans’ character Jensen and present day disciples of Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman are still conspicuous. And the play still makes clear that in a society where profit is king, innocent people like Margo will die again and again.
On 11 March, the play Op Hoop van Zegen by Herman Heijermans, was played by Het Toneel Speelt, in the city theatre of Utrecht. This big theatre was almost sold out. After the about two hours of the play, the audience gave the actors a standing ovation.
The socialist Herman Heijermans (1864-1924) was the best known Dutch playwright of the twentieth century.
His Op Hoop van Zegen, from 1900, translated into English as The Good Hope, about ship owners of the Dutch west coast exploiting fishermen, with lethal consequences, is probably his best known play. It has been played from New York City in New York state to Moscow in the Soviet Union.
In the play, the rich man Clemens Bos owns vessels; including the Op Hoop van Zegen, an old decrepit fishing ship, which Bos wants to sail, preferring profits to his workers’ safety and lives. As Bos can make money if the ship is lucky, and it returns with fish. And Bos can also make money if the ship is unlucky, and he will get insurance money (somewhat like in the English slave trade, as depicted by William Turner). Later in the play, the Op Hoop van Zegen sinks to the bottom of the sea, taking the fishermen aboard with her.
Cotterink’s teacher insisted that she should get Op Hoop van Zegen at the library. Probably an outdated play, she thought. However, as she started to read, she got ‘goose pimples’. Especially from the dialogue between [fisherman] Geert and shipowner Bos; in which Geert represents the workers and shipowner Bos the capitalists. The dialogue looks at both sides: the fisherman who has to work very hard and the owner who wants to cut costs. As I read that, I thought: it would be great to show that in Senegal.
In a review of the Het Toneel Speelt performance, in the economically neo-liberal Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, Wilfred Takken wrote:
Director Jaap Spijkers downplays Heijermans’ socialist tendency somewhat. Too much emphasis on that would make the play less deep than it really is. Also, the abuses described in the play do not exist any more in this country.
A few points on this.
Indeed, in the history of class societies, including the history of capitalism, the forms of oppression and exploitation change constantly. However, that is different from saying that oppression and exploitation have stopped, as NRC Handelsblad would like us to believe.
Indeed, fewer Dutch fishermen die now at sea than in 1900. Because the labour movement has managed to wrest some concessions from often unwilling bosses (Heijermans’ play, according to Dutch fishermen, also was a factor in diminishing the number of fishermen dying at sea). Concessions which bosses, in the fishing industry, as in other industries, will try to roll back; for instance today, saying there is an economic crisis, and, supposedly bosses and workers are in the same boat, so workers should give in, etc.
Fewer Dutch fishermen die now at sea, because having emptied the European seas of most fish, industrial fishing trawlers are now targeting other continents, like Africa. They prefer exploiting local fishermen to bringing, eg, Dutch workers from thousands of miles away.
Dutch theater critic Wijbrand Schaap suggested that people who feel that writing and performing about exploitation of fishermen is outdated, might think instead about twenty-first century bankers.
Concluding my argument against NRC Handelsblad: Heijermans wrote his play, inspired by the village [then, fishing village] Wijk aan Zee where he lived. Only one shipowner, his daughter, his bookkeeper, a shipyard worker and a few (ex-)fishermen and their girlfriends, wives, and widows, have roles in the play as played in Utrecht (Heijermans’ original text has a few more small roles, left out in the Utrecht performance). Yet, Heijermans intended this play, focused on one village, as a metaphor for the whole fishing industry in the Netherlands. More: the play is a metaphor for capitalism, with its exploitation and oppression, in all industries, and not just in the Netherlands; and not just in the year 1900. This exploitation and oppression have changed since 1900; but not stopped. This is why Senegalese fishing communities of the twenty-first century like the play so much.
Already at the time of the premiere in 1900, but also today, socialists, like Heijermans, have admired Op Hoop van Zegen. Also non-socialists have praised the play.
Louis de Visser from The Hague had been a herring fisherman; then, a window cleaner; later, a bakery worker; still later, chair of the Dutch communist party and its parliamentary caucus. He wrote in his autobiography about seeing Heijermans’ play (translated):
‘Not one word, not one gesture escaped my attention. I was living all this so intensely, that one might say that I forgot that I was in a theatre. I saw the social misery, I saw the dangers of the fishing industry, a hundred times more sharply and more correctly than when they had threatened myself. […] This was life, as this was reality itself.’
Not just the socialist De Visser admired Op Hoop van Zegen. So did Lodewijk van Deyssel. This art critic, literary critic, and novelist had played an important role during the 1880s literary avant-garde movement. But when in the 1890s, some people in that movement, like poet Herman Gorter and poetess Henriette Roland Holst, wanted to renew not just literature, but also society by socialism, he opposed them.
Lodewijk van Deyssel wrote, when he had seen Op Hoop van Zegen, that it was a good play, not because it was socialist, but because, according to him, it was not really socialist. As the socialist fisherman Geert boards the doomed ship Op Hoop van Zegen, and dies. Geert did not know what his teenage little brother Barend knew from a ship maintenance worker, that the ship was rotting away. Van Deyssel wrote:
… the play gives the impression, that Life is inevitably as it is played there. And, that in order to have change, Life itself would have to cease.’
That, according to Van Deyssel, was reality, making Op Hoop van Zegen great art. So, both De Visser and Van Deyssel praised Heijermans as a fellow ‘realist’. A concept originating from French painter Gustave Courbet; who was also a socialist. Today, quite some art critics take their dislike of “socialist realism” as practiced in the 1930s Soviet Union, out on different “realist” art from other times and other places. Not so in the early 1900s: both the socialists Heijermans and De Visser, and the anti-socialist Van Deyssel supported realism. They differed, however, on whether reality was essentially class society, changeable by human activity. Or whether it was determined by Fate and Nature, not changeable by human activity.
Changeless fate, and the eternally dangerous sea; not human capitalists, were supposedly the problem in Op Hoop van Zegen, according to Van Deyssel (and the 21st century Dutch language Wikipedia). Basically a religious view, though Van Deyssel no longer believed in the Roman Catholic Christianity of his youth. Christians believe in a basically good God. Van Deyssel, somewhat like Greek or Roman pagans who believed in a tychè or fatum power stronger than the Olympian gods, had a more impersonal and less optimistic religion. Ultimately, not human beings, but supernatural force is supposed to rule human society.
“I’m supposed to have written an epic of misery. You overlook that misery, you indulge in “the excellent literature” inspired by these horrible situations.
109 years later, Takken in NRC Handelsblad now echoes Van Deyssel then, in trying to detach Heijermans’ artistic value from Heijermans’ socialism. They differ in the why: NRC Handelsblad claims there has been change, eliminating exploitation and oppression. While Van Deyssel claimed that change was impossible; that exploitation and oppression cannot be eliminated. And Geert had died.
The unspoken, but real comment by Heijermans and 1900s socialist admirers of the play to Van Deyssel and Takken would have been that, now that Geert and Barend were dead, others, still alive, would have to make the change which Geert and Barend fought for. As already starts to happen in the last part of the play. As Jo, girlfriend and now widow of Geert, regrets her past of teasing Barend and flirting with shipowner Bos, and calls the Bos family “vipers”.
And Kniertje, the mother of Geert and Barend, changes. A 61-year-old very religious woman, her faith had been used by Bos to exploit her and her family. When Barend did not want to go on board, she had helped the police to get him on board forcibly. She then said that God would take care of Barend and the ship. Barend screamed, while being dragged away: “Mother, you will never see me alive again! Never!”
This is a video of a rehearsal of Op Hoop van Zegen by Het Toneel Speelt. A rehearsal of a scene between Kniertje and her youngest son Barend.
Kniertje had, years earlier, lost her husband and two older sons to the fishing industry. Now, she had lost her last two sons; as Barend had predicted. Her last words, concluding the play, are “De heren. De heren”.”The gentlemen”: a devastating judgment on not just the individual shipowner Bos, but on capitalist society as a whole.
For the 2009 performances, director Jaap Spijkers had not really changed Heijermans’ language. He did make the play a bit more compact by doing away with some of Heijermans’ minor characters, like the wives of shipowner Bos and of the burgomaster.
The booklet of Het Toneel speelt, about their Heijermans performance, does not mention the word “socialist” once (though their more extensive Internet site does).
In the media, the point is made that the director for this performance made Bos less of a villain than in Heijermans’ original. Behind that point might be (at least) two reasons:
– The idea that exploitation, oppression, capitalism, are supposed to have stopped; already discussed in earlier paragraphs; claiming that social democratic politicians are right in doing away with the anti-capitalist past of their parties. If that really is Spijkers’ reason for the change in the characterization of shipowner Bos, then that would certainly not be an improvement. That Heijermans gave the un-clement, money grabbing, character Bos, the Christian name “Clemens” is sarcasm.
Especially now, with the capitalist world crisis, the worst since the 1930s, strong criticism is needed. Not literally identical criticism as Heijermans’ criticism; but certainly not less sharp.
– The idea: “The real problem is not an individual like Bos, but the capitalist system.” That idea, as I have noted, is already in Heijermans’ text, and emphasizing it is an improvement.
Here, I make a comparison with Surinamese historical novelist Cynthia Mc Leod. In her book on the eighteenth century free black woman Elisabeth Samson, she describes many slave owners who are “evil” persons. And also some slave owners who are “good” people; like Elisabeth and her brother-in-law. However, finally, this difference is not as significant as it seems, because the problem is slavery as a system. For instance, in Mc Leod’s book Elisabeth has the chance of buying an elderly woman, who used to be her plantation slave. Soldiers have captured this ex-slave with maroons; and the old woman may get the death penalty. Elisabeth does not use that chance to save her ex-slave’s life. In literature about nineteenth century Russia, there are quite some landowners who are not really evil people; however they still play their assigned role in a society based on exploitation of peasant serfs.
Something of this question is put by Heijermans in the character Clementine, the daughter of Clemens Bos. She basically stands for the belief that hard-line capitalism can be reformed into capitalism with a human face. Unlike her father, she is more interested in art than in profit-making. She is interested in (ex) fishermen and their female relatives as subjects for her drawings. She is interested in hearing their “stories”. Kniertje, the fisherman’s widow, replies: “Ah, Miss, fisher folk lives are not stories. They are harshness”. Clementine rebels against her father by secretly bringing soup to Kniertje after the shipowner has dismissed her as cleaner because of the rebelliousness of her then still surviving two sons.
Unlike her father who uses (Roman Catholic) Christianity and “morality” as a tool to oppress workers, Clementine believes in a Christianity like in the Biblical prophecy where lions lie down with lambs; she believes in bourgeois lying down with workers. However, again and again the limits of her situation in society show. When she sits down in a fishing village hut with present and future fishermens’ widows, she alone is addressed as Miss; the others by their first names. She wears fashionable ladies’ boots; the other women wear wellingtons. When she wants to leave, she asks, unlike the others: “Who will bring me home?”
Clementine would presumably be unable to live an artist’s life without her financial dependence on her father, on her father’s exploitation. Ironically, this inability of art under capitalism to be completely free also shows in the performances of Op Hoop van Zegen. In the 1900 poster announcing the premiere of the play (see top of this blog entry), there is a commercial advertisement for a bakery patronized by higher income categories. And the 2009 performance in Utrecht was on the biggest stage of the city theatre. That biggest hall is called Douwe Egberts hall, as Douwe Egberts coffee corporation is a sponsor. The play is written in a way in which the audience more or less sees the fishing village through the eyes of Clementine Bos. This may be an ironic jab by Heijermans at his audience: in 1900, most of theater audiences were likely to be people with incomes above workers’ wages, as most workers, with exceptions like Louis de Visser, were unable to pay for a theatre ticket.
Near the end of the play, Clementine gets a test of what her criticism of her father’s system is really worth. Simon, the shipyard worker, hears that the Op Hoop van Zegen has sunk, with all people on board, from the captain to Kniertje’s last two sons to a 12-year-old boy, drowned. He angrily confronts the shipowner, saying that he had seen that the ship had been a “floating coffin” already before it sailed on its last voyage into stormy North Sea weather. Simon says that he said so then, in the presence of Mr Bos’ bookkeeper and daughter. Clemens Bos asks his bookkeeper to confirm or deny that. The bookkeeper, thinking about his job and career prospects, denies that he had heard what Simon said. Then, Bos asks his daughter. After hesitation, she too lies that she did not hear Simon say that. A central theme in the play is authority. And now, when push comes to shove, Clementine obeys her father’s authority instead of the truth. Immediately after that, Clementine feels very ashamed about her father, and about her lie, but it is too late.
Media hired critics often object to socialist works of literature as works where supposedly the characters are made shallow as they represent ideas or social classes in an abstract way; with working class characters supposedly being simple good people; and bourgeois supposedly being shallow bad people.
This criticism is certainly untrue for the characters in Op Hoop van Zegen. No-one in the play is an unblemished saint, or a 100% crook and nothing but a crook. As we have seen, maybe Clementine, though from a capitalist family, is the most sympathetic individual of all. But her position in society causes that her good intentions have no possibility of bringing about meaningful social change. Her father, though making money literally over the dead bodies of his workers, as, when a decrepit ship sinks, he will get insurance money, is also ultimately more of a prisoner of capitalism than a prime mover of social evils.
On the side of the opponents of capitalism, Simon, the shipyard worker, is not a perfect working class hero. On the one hand, he is an alcoholic. On the other hand, he tells the truth about the Hoop van Zegen ship.
The socialist Geert is also not a perfect working class hero. He had joined the navy; and got a medal in the colonial Aceh war in Indonesia. Later, he was jailed, both for beating an officer who had insulted his fiancée Jo, and for reading socialist publications. After going home after six months in jail, he describes his time as a soldier as just “murder”. These rebellious words upset his mother Kniertje much.
This brings us to the issue of “nationalism”. In the performance booklet, Hans Goedkoop, biographer of Heijermans, said that lately the question What is Dutch? has come more into the foreground in the Netherlands. Besides Rightist nationalism, Goedkoop thinks, this has also meant positive attention for Dutch cultural tradition material. “If ever there has been a play which one might call typically Dutch, it is Op Hoop van Zegen”. One should note here that Heijermans depicts the Netherlands as a country torn by class conflict; and waging colonial wars described as murderous. Maybe this is why Senegalese fishing community people today consider the play “typically Senegalese”.
When Op Hoop van Zegen played in Senegalese fishing towns, the director decided “in the spirit of Heijermans”, to have, after the performances, discussions about the play and about Senegalese fishing industry issues with fishing families, trade unionists and government representatives. This year in the Netherlands, there were no such discussions. One of the reasons for this may be that though Het Toneel Speelt performed the play in scores of Dutch towns, few if any of those performances were in (ex) fishing villages. There were only two try out performances, before the official premiere, in Ijmuiden. Ijmuiden is not far from Wijk aan Zee; and has a more militant trade union history among fishermen than Roman Catholic Wijk aan Zee.
Certainly in Utrecht, at least two people regretted that, after the show, they could not discuss the play with the director or with actors. They started discussing it among themselves. However, then they had to leave, as the theatre had to be cleaned.
The theatre company Het Toneel Speelt intends to play more work by Heijermans in the future.
These two videos are interviews with the director and actors of Het Toneel Speelt about Op Hoop van Zegen.
This video is about the burial of Heijermans in 1924.
On September 18, 2008, British television’s Channel 4 broadcast The Mona Lisa Curse, a documentary film by Mr. Hughes that offers a devastating critique of contemporary art and its over commercialization: here.
Britain: Security Service files released by the National Archive have revealed that MI5 monitored the activities of Irish playwright Brendan Behan but considered him “too drunken” to be dangerous: here.
On 11 March, the play Op Hoop van Zegen by Herman Heijermans, was played by Het Toneel Speelt, in the city theatre of Utrecht. This big theatre was almost sold out. After the about two hours of the play, the audience gave the actors a standing ovation.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 