Maarten ’t Hart
Psalms and Riots (Het psalmenoproer)
Life in a eighteenth-century fishing village
For years Maarten ’t Hart has been planning to write a historical novel (what he calls a documentary novel) about his birthplace Maassluis. Het psalmenoproer (Psalms and Riots) is that novel. At the macro-level the book deals with the eighteenth-century struggle between supporters and opponents of a new, faster way of singing psalms, a symptom of the conflict between Protestant factions.
At the micro-level a father-son quarrel is central. Roemer Stroombreker, a shipowner, is a typical ’t Hart hero, a lover of nature and music, with a tendency to question the Bible. Roemer’s queries when a boy are hilarious: how was Noah’s ark able to accommodate all those thousands of couples? And how did the seals manage? ‘Did they shuffle laboriously overland to the ark?’ Roemer is neutral in the argument about the psalms, but he is thought to be among the supporters and that brings him into direct conflict with his son Gilles. This son is the issue of a single sexual encounter with Anna, a red-haired net mender whom Roemer could not marry. It had been arranged that he should marry Diderica Croockewerff, an enormous woman whose dowry consisted of two ships, making Roemer the biggest ship owner of Maassluis.
Roemer may be one of the leading men of the town, but this brings him little joy. He worries about all kinds of things. Most of all he likes to be in his small office doing his accounts, or watching the birds flying above the harbour. A good relationship with his son – something that really matters to him – never develops. The son hates him.
Psalms and Riots keeps the reader spellbound from the first page to the last. ’t Hart knows exactly how to engage the reader, with lively conversations between Roemer and Spanjaard the schoolmaster, with the description of the political troubles between the Patriots and the Prince’s party, and the attempts to obtain state support for the declining fisheries. His list of sources shows how much he has tried to be historically accurate for the background of the story, and this includes the style used.
Publisher
De Arbeiderspers
Herengracht 370-372
NL - 1016 CH Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 524 75 00
FAX +31 20 622 49 37
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.arbeiderspers.nl
Rights
The Susijn Agency
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.thesusijnagency.com
Publishing details
Het psalmenoproer (2006, 288 pp)
Biography
Maarten ’t Hart (b. 1944) made his debut under the name Martin Hart with the novel Stenen voor een ransuil (Stones for a Long-Eared Owl, 1971). He studied biology in Leiden and worked as an ethologist at Leiden University. One of the most important themes in his oeuvre is his childhood in a Calvinist community and his distancing himself from it. His passions for nature and music also constantly crop up in his work. ’t Hart broke through to a wide audience with his melancholy novel about meeting his teenage love: Een vlucht regenwulpen (A Flight of Curlews, 1978). Many novels, short-story and essay collections later, ’t Hart, with his authentic tone and work which often touches upon the tension between biography and fiction, has grown to be one of the most popular and most translated of Dutch authors. In an interview he said: ‘What I like about literature is that one can show a compressed piece of one’s most intimate self.’ Some of his other novels are Het woeden der gehele wereld (The Fury of the Whole World, 1993), a Bildungsroman and a thriller in one, De zonnewijzer (The Sundial, 2002), Lotte Weeda (2004) and Het psalmenoproer (Psalms and Riots, 2006), a historical novel.
Quotes
All intrigues – regardless of how entertaining or emotive they may be – are negligible when compared to the great virtue of Maarten ’t Hart as a writer of a historical novel: he manages to make outstanding use of the decor of bygone days. Het psalmenoproer is full of marvellous details on life in that eighteenth-century fishing village. Full of atmosphere, intimate, often extremely amusing, and also threatening – this is the world that ’t Hart manages to create by making effective use of small-scale, visual perception, the play of light and shade, and penetrating observations on village and natural life. Maarten ’t Hart is a excellent craftsman, but he is more than that. He is also a great artist.
Het Parool
A magnificent novel.
Vrij Nederland
Translations
- Der Psalmenstreit. München; Zürich: Piper, 2007
- Psalmupproret. Stockholm: Atlantis, 2008
- Der Psalmenstreit. München; Zürich: Piper, 2008
- Continued...