Max Havelaar; Or, The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company

Voorkant
A.A. Knopf, 1927 - 312 pagina's
 

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Populaire passages

Pagina vii - ... it were the Bible. To my thinking, the critic, like a good beadle, should rap the public on the knuckles and make it attend during divine service. And any good book is divine service. The critic, having dated Max Havelaar a back number, hits him on the head if he dares look up, and says: Down! Revere the awesome modernity of the holy public! I say: Not at all! The thing in Max that the public once loved, the tract, is really a back number. But there is so very little of the tract, actually, and...
Pagina ix - ... only. The bird of hate hatches the chick of pity. The great dynamic force in Multatuli is as it was, really, in Jean Paul and in Swift and Gogol and in Mark Twain, hate, a passionate, honourable hate. It is honourable to hate Drystubble, and Multatuli hated him. It is honourable to hate cowardly officialdom, and Multatuli hated that. Sometimes, it is even honourable, and necessary, to hate society, as Swift did, or to hate mankind altogether, as often Voltaire did. For man tends to deteriorate...
Pagina v - Which is curious, considering the esteem in which it was held by men whom we might call the pre-Fabians, both in England and in America, sixty years ago. But then Max Havelaar, when it appeared, was hailed as a book with a purpose. And the Anglo-Saxon mind loves to hail such books. They are so obviously in the right. The Anglo-Saxon mind also loves to forget completely, in a very short time, any book with a purpose. It is a bore, with its insistency. So we have forgotten, with our usual completeness,...
Pagina ix - Swift did, or to hate mankind altogether, as often Voltaire did. For man tends to deteriorate into that which Drystubble was, and the Governor-General and Slimering, something hateful, which must be destroyed. Then in comes Multatuli, like Jack and the Beanstalk, to fight the giant. And when Jack fights the giant, he must have recourse to a trick. David thought of a sling and stone. Multatuli took a sort of missionary disguise. The gross public accepted the disguise, and David's stone went home....
Pagina vii - Because he knew missionaries were, and are, listened to ! And the Javanese were a good stick with which to beat the dog. The successful public being the dog. Which dog he longed to beat. To give it the trouncing of its life ! He did it, in missionary guise, in Max Havelaar. The book isn't really a tract, it is a satire. Multatuli isn't really a preacher, he's a satirical humourist. Straight on in the life of Jean Paul Richter the same bitter, almost mad-dog aversion from humanity that appeared in...
Pagina ix - Havelaar, swims with pity for the poor and oppressed, but only because he hates the powers-that-be so intensely. He doesn't hate the powers because he loves the oppressed. The boot is on the other leg. The chick of pity comes out of the egg of hate. It is perhaps always so, with pity. But here we have to distinguish compassion from pity. Surely, when Saidyah sets off into the world, or is defended by the buffalo, it is compassion Multatuli feels for him, not pity. But the end is pity only. The bird...
Pagina 56 - For, if anyone should ask whether the man who grows the products receives a reward proportionate to the yields, the answer must be in the negative. The Government compels him to grow on his land what pleases it; and it fixes the price it pays him. The cost of transport to Europe, via a privileged trading company, is high. The money given to the Chiefs to encourage them swells the purchase price...
Pagina 56 - Chiefs to encourage them swells the purchase price further, and ... since, after all, the entire business must yield a profit, this profit can be made in no other way than by paying the Javanese just enough to keep him from starving, which would decrease the producing power of the nation.
Pagina vi - Hollander for a really good Dutch novelist he refers you to the man who wrote: Old People and the Things that Pass, (Louis Couperus)— or else to somebody you know nothing about. As regards the Dutch somebody I know nothing about, I am speechless. But as regards Old People and the Things that Pass I still think Max Havelaar a far more real book. And since Old People etc. is quite a good contemporary novel, one needs to find out why Max Havelaar is better.

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