RECURRENT THEMES IN THE WORK OF FRANK MARTINUS ARION RONALD SEVERING UNIVERSITY OF CURAÇAO; INSTITUTE FOR LANGUAGE PLANNING, FPI Introduction Frank Martinus Arion (1936) is a Dutch-Caribbean writer who has almost exclusively published in Dutch with only a few of his works being published in his native language, Papiamentu. His first Collection of Poems Stemmen uit Afrika (Voices from Africa), appeared in 1958, after which more poetry was published, spread out over quite a few years. Apart from his three collections of poetry titled Oorlog aan Edelstenen (War to the Precious Stones, 1974); In de Wolken (In the Clouds, 1970) and Ta amor so por (Only love can do it, 1968), he also penned a number of individual poems. 285 Martinus’s prose is far better known than his poetry. He is perhaps most well known for his novel Dubbelspel (Double Play, 1973). Over the years, Dubbelspel has maintained its popularity to a greater extent than his next novels Afscheid van een Koningin (Farewell from a Queen, 1975) and Nobele Wilden (Noble Savages, 1979). In this article, I will demonstrate how the key literary concepts in Martinus’s oeuvre have been apparent since his earliest work and how his latest novel De Laatste Vrijheid (The last freedom, 1995) can be compared with his most widely acclaimed masterpiece Dubbelspel on the basis of these recurring literary themes and tropes. The poems of Martinus’s Stemmen uit Afrika first appeared in the late 1950s in Antilliaanse Cahier, a magazine written for Antilleans in the Netherlands. When this collection of poetry was republished 20 years later, the by then well known author used his introduction to the volume to respond to the criticism of the Dutch newspaper reviewers, who two decades previously did not know how to rate this obscure young black poet. Just as he does in much of the rest of his written work, in this introduction Martinus presents us with a seemingly unrelated collection of names, including Christ, and a seemingly motley crew of authors, ranging from Homer and Virgil, to the Dutch Renaissance poet Vondel, to more recent authors such as the Antillean author Debrot, the Dutch authors Nordholt, Rodenko and Wolkers, and the Surinamese author Trefossa. This list seems to become even less homogeneous when he adds such names as Phil MacGee, a victim of the race riots in the south of the United States, Keita Fodeba, of African dance troupe, and the famous African-American heavy-weight champion Muhammed Ali. What do these key figures of classical European epic and poetry have to do with the spokespeople for black liberation and anti-colonial struggles and the artists associated with them? In an interview (1991) at the Scheveningen Kurhaus, Frank Martinus explains that he was fascinated by the whirlwind dances of the African dance troupe of Keita Fodeba. Ronald Severing (left) and Frank Martinus Arion (right) in front of the Kurhaus. 286 What emerges from Martinus’s commentary and his written work is that these are the names of some of the people who inspired the unique mixture of classical literary structure, focus on Africa and the African diaspora, and concern for the marginalized that has typified his work over the last half century. The young poet-student was so impressed by the spectacularly authentic West African performance of Keita Fodeba and the troupe at the Kurhaus in The Hague that he waited at the artists’ entrance of the theatre to meet them personally after the show. This performance can be considered to be one of the moments that helped to unleash his literary voice, which deftly interweaves classical and West African poetics, thematics, politics and worldviews. It is often very difficult for readers to discern as story line behind a collection of poems, but this is not at all the case with Stemmen uit Afrika. In the first stanza, we are introduced to an African guide who accompanies white tourists on a trip through Africa. The story is frequently interspersed with reflection on the leading text in the form of African-American spirituals, in a way that is reminiscent of the chorus in classical epic and drama. Just as is the case in classical writing, individual poems are not necessarily assigned individual titles, a number is sufficient to differentiate each from the rest. Poem No. III reads as follows: III Eens zijn alle negers tamtammend uitgevaren uit hun zwart-ompaalde negorijen III Once upon a time all Negroes sailed away from their by black fenced settlements, While beating their tom-toms. hun prauwen schoten over de rivieren, dwalend door 't woud. Their canoes shot Across the rivers which meandered Through the jungle. eens, maar eens is ver en eens is lang geleden. Once, but once means far away And once is long ago. nu gaan zij als karbauwen. mak-geslagen, lam. beroofd van hun tam-tam Now they go as cattle Beaten senseless And robbed of their tom-toms. en slepen stenen aan waar anderen bouwen. And they carry the stones For others to build. 287 Both the content and the form of this poem are typical of the entire collection. The writer uses few and simple words woven together according to strict classical literary formulae to convey meanings that are clear in their depiction of people who are historically marginalized and forced to construct realities in someone else’s image and someone else’s interest, with a particular focus on the African diaspora. Martinus’s work is not only inspired by the people whose lives and work he was exposed to through the media. The cultural and social context of the author and his own personal environment contribute to a richer and more accurate interpretation of his work. Martinus’ father was bario leader or district leader for the National People's Party. As a young boy in Curaçao, the author not only personally witnessed the whole grueling process of political campaigning, but also participated in it by appearing on stage during election meetings and 288 presenting a cultural interlude, for example, by doing a dramatic interpretation of Tula, the leader of one of the major slave rebellions that took place on Curaçao. Through his family’s networks, Martinus had met famous political leaders such as “Doctoor” da Costa Gomez and prominent authors such as Cola Debrot, who paid visits to his home. He spent his younger days in an ambiance of passionate discussion about social reform, ideology, democracy, freedom, and struggles against marginalization and domination. The writer and politician Amador Nita became an associate of Martinus, who sold Nita’s home-written and home-stenciled novels to the public for a pittance. According to Martinus, nothing could make him prouder of his early writing than the positive comments made about it by Nita, who never failed to impress him with his tall figure and his big cigar. Later, while doing his Greek and Latin translations at a classical Grammar School in the Netherlands, the young Martinus began to write his 'things'. This is how he refers to his early literary work in his introduction to Stemmen uit Afrika. For him, these are not really poems, but ‘things’, perhaps a label for a specific form he was searching for, but had not yet found. Meanwhile, through his contacts with the Dutch poet and historian Schulte Nord Holt1 Martinus’s awareness of the race problem in North America had grown enormously. Martinus’s political commitment to the cause of the marginalized and oppressed has not been limited to his writing. During the course of his lifetime, he has made significant practical efforts to address the abuse of power by transforming his ideas into social action. Besides founding a political party (KARA)2 and becoming a prominent voice in Caribbean politics, he established the Kolegio Erasmo, the first modern comprehensive K-12 public school on the ABC-Islands where Papiamentu has been used as the language of instruction and initial literacy. This school has served as a successful model for first language education in the Caribbean and beyond, breaking with centuries of schooling in European colonial languages which have effectively excluded the majority of the population of many nations in the Afro-Caribbean region from meaningful access to formal education. All of these artistic and political influences together created Martinus’s unique literary poetics and poetics of life which have always been intertwined in a way that run consistently through his work from Stemmen uit Afrika to the present. While classical literary structure and concern for the marginalized have remained constant throughout, a gradual shift in focus from the African diaspora in particular to the human predicament in general can be detected over the course of his literary career. Nowhere 1 During the time that Martinus wrote his poems, he was allowed to read the proofs of Het Volk dat in duisternis wandelt (The people that walks in darkness) by Schulte Nord Holt, a Protestant poet who later became professor of history at the University of Leiden. Through this book, Martinus became aware of the history of the North American oppression of people of African descent. (Severing 1995). 2 KARA (KAmbio RApido ‘Fast Change’) aimed to achieve economic autonomy in 1994 and political independence in 1998. is this continuity and gradual expansion of scope more evident than in the novels Dubbelspel and De Laatste Vrijheid (Severing, 1995). Dubbelspel focuses on four people living in the same neighborhood of the little village of Wakota who face the challenges that marginalized members of Curaçaoan society confront in their everyday lives. In the story we gradually become aware of the way these four individuals have to lead their lives, and of how they deal with the realities of grinding poverty and social hardship. Martinus has us looking over their shoulders and into their minds and hearts as they make their moves in the domino game and in the game of life. The subtle differences between the domino players Boeboe Fiel, Manchi Sanantonio, Janchi Pau and Chamon Nicolas, none of whom have had access to higher education, and the strategies and tactics that they use to make ends meet are decisive for their esteem in the eyes of the other players at the table. In the novel the domino players are prisoners of their economic and social disadvantage, but they themselves are not the cause of this situation. As time goes on, however, they become more and more trapped in it and the only thing that they can do in the end is to live from day to day. In Dubbelspel the reader is irresistibly pulled into the story and cannot help but be profoundly moved by it. Dubbelspel received critical acclaim and has become one of the modern classics in secondary education in the Antilles and, to a lesser extent, in the Netherlands. Reviews of the works of Martinus after the publication and success of Dubbelspel have not been so positive. A sudden change of his fading popularity came in 2006 when in the Netherlands book promoters started with the project “Nederland leest”’3. (Holland reads) The first book they selected was Dubbelspel. For some day the whole country read and discussed Martinus’s novel. Critical judgments about Afscheid van de koningin and Nobele Wilden were varied and generally lukewarm. After a silence of sixteen years, however, a new novel by Martinus appeared with the title De Laatste Vrijheid. With this novel, Martinus made something of a literary comeback. “Nederland leest” followed Seatle’s example called “One City one book”. As a result of this project one million copies of the novel Dubbelspel were sold. 3 289 290 In De Laatste Vrijheid a volcano on the imaginary Caribbean island of Amber is seemingly at the point of eruption. The fifty-thousand inhabitants of the village of Constance at the foot of the volcano have been evacuated. The only person who refuses to leave is Curaçao-born Daryll Guenepou. Daryll has fled the island several times in the past, but for him Amber is the paradise where he now wants to live with his two children. Despite the danger to his own life and to that of his twins Sigui and Mau, Daryll will under no circumstance leave this island. Aideline Griffith, Joan Mikolai and Arnold Brouce are the other major characters in the novel. Aideline is Daryl’s wife who leaves him and their two children behind to go to Europe to hasi su kos (‘do her own thing’). She is firmly convinced that she can realize her artistic goals only if she frees herself from her suffocating relationship with Daryll. He is caring and dedicated, but in her eyes he is unbearably dominant. In faraway Europe, she can grow and excel in her musical endeavors. Art Brouce is a geologist who succeeds after much effort to be appointed as volcano monitor on Amber. Although he pretends to be a volcano expert, he is really an expert in petroleum engineering. Joan Mikolai is a star reporter for international TV Station CIN (similar to CNN), who has traveled to the evacuated area. During her journalistic mission, she comes under the spell of Daryll and will, just like Daryll, Aideline and Brouce, have to face a critical and personal life choice keda òf no keda, to stay or not to stay. From a structural point of view, it is interesting to compare these two masterful novels with each other. It is important to base this comparison in Martinus’s earliest work Stemmen uit Afrika, where he establishes a clear link with literary classics, by mentioning the literary art of the Greeks and Romans, of the Bible, and of masters such as Dante and Petrarch. In all of his work, Martinus uses classical structures. Following Dante’s lead, Stemmen uit Afrika includes the elements of a guide in the story and the chorus of the Greek drama. Dubbelspel with its division into five sections, each with unity of time (same day), of place (the domino table) and of action (the domino game) meets the requirements of classical Greek drama. De Laatste Vrijheid is built on a biblical pattern. Daryll is a kind of Jesus figure who is in paradise (Amber) and is surrounded by his disciples Sigui and Mau. From the slope of the volcano he delivers his Speech on the Mount through CIN to the world and he is able to mobilize the masses. Eventually he survives the volcanic eruption and comes out of the cave alive, just as at the resurrection of Christ. Developing stories on underlying patterns based in wellknown classical literature is a characteristic of Martinus’s work. He assumes prior knowledge of this classical literature by the reader. Without that knowledge, the story can still be read without too much trouble, but on another level. These classical references add another dimension to the story. At first sight the two novels seem to show little in the way of similarity in a thematical sense. But upon closer examination, interesting parallels emerge. Both novels have a generally Caribbean, and specifically Curaçaoan flavor and backdrop. The story in Dubbelspel plays out in the imaginary village of Wakota on Curaçao whereas in De Laatste Vrijheid everything takes place on the fictitious but unmistakably Caribbean island of Amber, and the main characters, Daryll and his wife Aideline, hail from Curaçao. Thus, Martinus is able to integrate details from the Antilles and Aruba into both novels. The characteristically Antillean tropes, the typically Antillean comments of the characters, and the resulting “Arionistic” perspective are similar in both novels. That perspective is manifested by a general critique of influences from Europe and other hegemonic powers, by a strong dislike for everything associated with neocolonialism, by a focus and emphasis on ethnic and racial differences, by challenging the established order, by attention to the local language, and a great many other issues. Without any doubt, all of these elements play a prominent role in both novels. The use of the author’s personal experiences in fictional story is not uncommon. In Dubbelspel, Martinus uses names and events from local history mentioning teachers such as Stanley Brown and Freddy Antersijn and the Aruban Betico Croes. While in Dubbelspel we can to some extent discern what might be snapshots of real people from Martinus’s childhood, De Laatste Vrijheid is overflowing with recognizable autobiographical elements. Martinus' intense personal interest in a number of matters becomes repeatedly apparent to us as we reread these texts. It is well known that Martinus has played a pioneering role in the introduction of Papiamentu in education, and Kolegio Erasmo is actually mentioned by name in De Laatste Vrijheid, where methods of education and didactic strategies are also commented upon. The fact that reference is made to Cape Verde in West Africa has to do with visits by Martinus as director of the Instituto Lingwístiko Antiano to those islands, where the local Portuguese lexifier Creole is in many ways strikingly similar to Papiamentu. This linguistic connection has played a pivotal role in Martinus’s intellectual life, since his doctoral thesis in linguistics – to which he gave the literary title The kiss of a slave (1996) – focuses on the African roots of the Papiamentu language. 291 In 2008 Frank Martinus was appointed as professor of Linguistics at the University of Curaçao. 292 Although both novels can be said to be politically defined, Dubbelspel could be said to be more of a socially defined novel whereas De Laatste Vrijheid could be said to be more a culturally defined novel. But this perhaps reflects the evolution of political movements against marginalization over the past 60 years, which have moved from a narrow focus on socio-economic issues to include more cultural and personal issues as well. So, while in Dubbelspel the limited economic, educational and employment opportunities of the characters is in the spotlight, in De Laatste Vrijheid, the emphasis is much more on cultural and personal opportunities. For example, Daryll was not allowed to teach in the native language of the children, Papiamentu, and leaves the school system in protest. He teaches his children himself according to his own educational views. Pedantic imported ‘experts’ such as Brouce, and their neo-colonial attitudes are roundly criticized. These are all cultural issues that play a role in Caribbean, and the Dutch Caribbean politics. The shift towards social politics and challenges to patriarchy is also evident from Dubbelspel to De Laatste Vrijheid. While the former foregrounds the disadvantaged social classes rather than patriarchy, in the latter, all of the characters are not particularly disadvantaged in terms of class, and patriarchy is foregrounded instead, focusing on men who show traditionally ‘feminine’ traits and on women who show traditionally ‘masculine’ traits. Daryll is an excellent mother to his children, while Aideline has a career to pursue. The choice is between staying on Amber or leaving becomes not only an intensely personal choice but also an intensely political choice. Aideline decides to leave without the children, while Brouce decides to stay, because he does not want to go back to the East, a negative choice. Joan Mikolai considers staying because of her devotion to Daryll and his cause. In Daryll’s case, he decides to stay, making use in this way of his ultimate freedom: the choice to live as one wishes, even if death is the consequence. In summary, Dubbelspel and De Laatste Vrijheid lend themselves well to comparison, as they are both novels of equal caliber and significance. From an imagological point of view, one can say that throughout Martinus’ oeuvre a textual representation of his image of Africa and things African - mainly seen from the point of an outsider – is constantly apparent. This is evident from Stemmen uit Afrika through to De Laatste Vrijheid. In both Dubbelspel and De Laatste Vrijheid the author writes from his inner self. He does so through his personal knowledge of the AfroCaribbean population of Curaçao and through his political grasp of the persistent and shifting challenges that they have faced in their daily lives from the middle of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st. 293 Dubbelspel was translated from Dutch to Papiamentu for the first time in 2011 by Lucille Haseth. The title was Changá. REFERENCES Martinus Arion, Frank (1957). Stemmen uit Afrika. Antilliaanse Cahiers, jrg. 3, nr 1. Amsterdam. Martinus Arion, Frank (1968). Ta amor so por. Willemstad. Martinus Arion, Frank (1968 [1985]). Ser Betris. Curaçao. Martinus Arion, Frank (1970). In de Wolken. Curaçao. Martinus Arion, Frank (1973). Dubbelspel. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Martinus Arion, Frank (1974). Oorlog aan edelstenen. Gedicht, jrg. 1, nr 2, 3-7. Martinus Arion, Frank (1975). Afscheid van de koningin. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Martinus Arion, Frank (1978). Stemmen uit Afrika. Rotterdam: Flamboyant. Martinus Martinus Arion, Frank (1989). De korte e van Cola Debrot en de harmonie van mentaliteit en taal. Op eigen gronden; opstellen aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. J. J. Oversteegen ter gelegenheid van zijn afscheid als Hoogleraar Theoretische Literatuurwetenschap aan de Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht. Utrecht: 145-154. Martinus Arion, Frank (1979). Nobele wilden. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Martinus Arion, Frank (1995). De laatste vrijheid. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Martinus, Efraim Frank (1996). The kiss of a slave, Papiamentu’s West-African Connections. Amsterdam. Martinus Arion, Frank (2001). De eeuwige hond. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Martinus Arion, Frank (2006). De deserteurs. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Schulte Nordholt, Jan Willem (1960). Het volk dat in duisternis wandelt. De geschiedenis van de negers in Amerika. Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus. Severing, Ronald (1991). Nioka versus Njoka, Over Stemmen uit Afrika. Drie Curaçaose schrijvers in veelvoud, Boeli van Leeuwen, Tip Marugg, Frank Martinus Arion. Zutphen: 452-475. Severing, Ronald (1994). Een poetica in de kiem, Een bespreking van de dichtbundel 'Stemmen uit Afrika' van Frank Martinus Arion. Willemstad: UNA-cahier nr. 38, Severing, Ronald (1994). Stemmen uit Afrika. ABC-adviesrapporten in mei (nr. 69). Severing, Ronald (1995). 'De laatste vrijheid', nieuwe roman van Frank Martinus Arion. Bergrede Antilliaan op dreigende vulkaan via CIN. Diálogo.Utrecht: nr. 2. 294