In the collection De Toren van Snelson (The Needle Tower, 1983) There are six sections in the collection, the first of which comprises seven poems that he calls Reflections on Ruisdael. The entire section is available in the original language here. A analysis of poem V in the form of a dialogue between Jellema and Jan Kuijper is available (in Dutch) here. Jellema remarks that what Ruisdael’s pictures inescapably reveal is nature in all its tremendous vegetative force. The first reality, then, is Nature, but Ruisdael's presentation of it is a second reality, that of Art. The series shows the reactions of two present-day observers to this second reality. And this Jellema presents in the form of poems, of which we are readers. So we take the process one stage further. Jellema states: ‘I’m not interested in Ruisdael’s intentions with his paintings – I care about what Ruisdael’s painting (No. V) allows me to translate into my own essences.’
I REFLECTIONS ON RUISDAEL
Man denkt sich sogleich
Goethe
I AT FIRST GLANCE
Outbursts of landscape. Offset by a dearth
of portrait. A coup de soleil that lights
the bleaching field near Haarlem. It seems worth
believing in. I feel the scene is right:
Thomas, don’t touch, attendants here are solely
like park keepers in uniform, stern-faced.
You stand there, slender, ready to console me;
love-struck, on canvasses I you have placed:
Bentheim views, woodlands, ponds of water mills in
which the leg of a deer is seen reflected,
I am the roamer who turns round, alone,
to see if you draw near – thus, willy-nilly,
Ruisdael’s landscapes are ideal if selected
for our picnic – you, beautiful, unknown.
2 STATELY HOME IN PARK WITH FOUNTAINS
Facade of Dutch baroque, some spindly spruce,
an evening sun varnish has made a blur;
and we in front – almost as if we were
those living there. You only must get used
to roofs that aerials do not abuse,
a summer evening we don’t find a bore.
Right. For a while our roles were these: you wore
a dress of taffeta, I let the hound run loose.
Freed to be otherwise – art has such clout:
a mirror recognition without glass –
I hear myself ask: aren’t you feeling cold?
My hand now notes the hunting dog’s wet snout,
your dress hem shuffles through the moist tall grass –
a balance, while the symmetry still holds.
3 JEWISH CEMETERY
Like some great cope the Ruisdael skies hang still.
The threat? Lightfall destroys the travertine
of tombs. Name? Silence. The white birch an ill
omen perhaps, the stream a pre-Flood sign.
They are but ruined gravestones of themselves,
double decay from minus squared makes plus,
imagined ruins of church vaults’ high shelves,
as abstract too, they’ll soon crash over us.
unless this painting keeps them tall and grand.
Art thinks ahead: the stream, does it make haste?
Does it crash down, ice-cold, beyond the frame
and into space? Can I remain the same
as I am now? Or am I wrongly placed?
No dove with olive branch still flies as planned.
4 DEER HUNTING
His rapid thinking has moved further on
to hunting colour, oak leaf celebration,
nature as abundance, and, further down,
water brings darkness as a cool libation,
when diked and drained – ponds frequently preserve
as long as light has colour depth – the track
of game that’s suddenly thrust down and back
in high regard of dangers that unnerve:
there it stands still, an upright-lifted leg.
We can look further. Grazing light’s track
slips through between trees, striking the deer’s eye
so unmoving that the shot does not crack,
so heartless that the intended death gets
deferred – as if his thinking was a lie.
5 RIDER IN SWEEPING LANDSCAPE
Myth of nature, there’s no way back again –
we twixt spaces: matter, with a fixed past
a tension field that yields, mirror contrast
of a receding cosmos; that our brain,
the bridge, building away where two banks lack
cannot connect – which notion fits fully
what’s retreating? we who through touch can see;
and what we sense we then see from the back,
standing, moving: a rider on a horse,
in perspective, vanishing point that’s filled
with purpose, roofs, village – a place to dwell
in browns, earthy, and hoarded since the source –
you think him home now. But, while riding still,
not yet a story with nothing to tell.
6 PORTRAIT OF A TREE
I think it, when you’d seen it before me:
that tree is lovely. Fauna though too loud;
never would nature govern such a crowd;
it’s art, art’s nature’s flag for all to see.
Who’s there? this owl, branch-ossified, that finds
daytime wisdom; a golden plover near
that’s always scratching in a lake with piers.
For the brush death can tack and change its mind.
Redeemed from evil we as tree would seem,
ever united in Apollo’s dream
we’d become Daphne, who the public tricks.
Even a rotten branch is well equipped
as much-loved lies, if spirit nature shuns.
A room screen scene that’s craved by everyone.
7 EPILOGUE
Art’s the question. Side by side, though, we feel more
alone. Outside the snow. The Sunday square.
Coat on. Let’s go. Our footsteps crunch. It sure
is freezing, you say. Coffee anywhere?
We walk in the direction of the train.
What’s your reaction? Answering is waking
from some ingenious double-play. And plain
reason makes me say: nature’s not art’s making.
‘So do we live, and ever take our leave’
(Rilke). On paper that which is appears
as recollection. – Are you feeling cold?
Yes, bloody cold. And you? Me too. And we’ve
this need of spring. - Just think: we’re walking here,
together, while reality still holds.
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