Two prose poems by the Dutch writer René Huigen

A MARRIAGE

1. AGNES FREY

Your Reverence, what are eight stivers for a confession compared with

the price a penitent must pay for his shameful acts? Envy is what I feel

towards the man I married and and who to the abhorrence of the Lord has

made images of the Great Designer’s hands. I curse his pride and affliction,

the lover of rest and shadow, that conceited fool, from whom he

learned to be a world citizen and to belong to everyone. Nemesis

he drew on a cloud of moderation above Chiusa, but vengeance

was mine in Emmerich, where, tormented by thunderstorms I tore up three

of his portraits. Jealous am I of all those that he has immortalised,

towards the nameless just as much as his friends. They belong to the intimate

world of his hands, whose proportions reflect the musical intervals

of the harmony of the spheres. Brought to life in so masterly

a manner with velvet touch, they comprise mountains, valleys

and rivers, all herbs, all wood, all quartz and pebble stones, and everything

that has lines, veins and furrows. But it is the selfsame mountains,

valleys and rivers that now divide us. Since the time he sketched my dear

Agnes and later, with coarser strokes, had depicted me as a farmer’s wife

he has never touched me again. I am fallowland to him.

He portrayed himself as an effeminate coxcomb in a low shirt trimmed

with gold. In his fingers, as a token of his power, in both elevated

and down-to-earth fashion, to jeer at all that he loves, a prickly thistle,

with a purple crown, with which to crown the Son that he could not

give me, the Eryngium, also known as man’s faith. Amen

2. ALBRECHT DÜRER, A SELF-PORTRAIT

I have dared look the world straight in the eye, a fur collar

and veiled look have little changed that, for he is only vain

to those who do not fear God. And besides: no matter who I drew –

Lucas van Leyden in silverpoint or Nicholas, the jeweller, or little

Bernard of Brussels, Florent Nepotis, the organist of Lady Margaret

and secretary Peter, the angelic face of Johann or my dear

dear Agnes in charcoal – I portrayed them with equal devotion,

as I did you, my dear Saint Hieronymus. Man has always been

central to me, his complete, round form at the middle point of His

magnificent edifice – the firmament. Thus did the Ancients classify

their temples, public buildings and other structures according to the

construction of the human body, and no limbs exist that do not

refer to a constellation, a star, an intelligence or a divine name.

I realise that for many people this can be a leaden burden,

that only few are able to bear. Therefore, on Melancholia, I placed

compasses in the hands of a Genius who connects all that

surrounds us with the unmoved core of love and justice. His gaze

he has turned aside, composedly deferred looking, no longer vain

in the eyes of Him whom he fears, but become a man in his

own right. Amongst the symbols of the ancient science the tools

of such finite art lie idle – a plane, a hammer, a saw,

lost at his feet. Now that grace is no longer poured down on him

from above, that which gleams on the horizon makes him feel dejected,

and, above a nimbus of sunlight, he sees, on a spot that it cannot

illuminate, in black and white, a rainbow rent the welkin, he thinks thus

to weigh up the world, but feels only the immense weight of his head!