Uitgeleend aan Vale op 10 april 2024

Several years ago, I read Dermoût’s best-known work, The Ten Thousand Things. That book contained a series of interconnected stories about life in Indonesia in the early 20th century and I concluded that it was “astonishingly evocative of a time and place, wonderfully lyrical, (dismayingly) short, and a true pleasure to read.” Dermoût (1888-1962) was an “Indo”—a child of Dutch parents born and raised in Indonesia. She wrote The Ten Thousand Things when she was 67. Yesterday is her first work—also a thinly disguised memoir of growing up in a certain time and place—written when she was 63. This work also relies on nostalgia and, though I enjoyed it very much, it didn’t move me as much as The Ten Thousand Things. Still, both books are very successful at evoking her love of place. She is particularly good at observing plants and wildlife, local culture (both Dutch colonial and indigenous), and she has a knack for describing a way of life by painting exceptional portraits of people and their relationships. ( )

In rijke maar eenvoudige taal beschreven impressie van een jeugd in Nederlands-Indië. De weelderige natuur en mysterieuze sfeer van het land en de soms bedreigende wereld van de volwassen kolonialen gezien door de ogen van een kind. Een ontroerend relaas dat een nostalgische sfeer oproept. ( )

Maria Dermoût (1888-1962) was an Indonesian writer who was born to a colonial family on Java, in the Dutch East Indies, educated in The Netherlands, and lived most of her life in Java. She did not begin writing until her sixties, and she produced two novels, "Yesterday", which was originally published in Dutch in 1951 and translated into English in 1959, and "The Ten Thousand Things", which was published in Dutch in 1955 and is currently available from New York Review Books.

"Yesterday", based on the author's life, is narrated by a young girl whose father owns a sugar cane plantation on the island of Java at the end of the 19th century. Her life is an idyllic one, with little care or responsibility, although tensions of colonial life occasionally disturb her peaceful setting. Dermoût's description of the jungle setting is evocative, and her light touch makes for a quick read, but one that this reader will soon forget. ( )