Oorlog en terpentijn

by Stefan Hertmans

Vlak voor zijn dood in de jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw gaf de grootvader van Stefan Hertmans zijn kleinzoon een paar volgeschreven oude cahiers. Door de verhalen uit zijn jeugd vermoedde Hertmans dat de inhoud wel eens onthutsend kon zijn. Jarenlang durfde hij de schriften niet te openen. Tot hij het wél deed, en onvermoede geheimen vond. Het leven van zijn grootvader bleek getekend door armoedige kinderjaren in het Gent van voor 1900, door gruwelijke ervaringen als frontsoldaat in de Eerste Wereldoorlog en door een jonggestorven grote liefde.

Hij sublimeerde zijn verdriet in de stilte van de schilderkunst. In een poging dat leven te doorgronden schreef Hertmans zijn herinneringen aan zijn grootvader op. Hij citeert uit diens dagboeken en kijkt naar diens schilderijen,om uiteindelijk de ware toedracht te ontsluieren. Hertmans vertelt dit verhaal met een verbeeldingskracht waarover alleen grote schrijvers beschikken, en in een vorm die een onuitwisbare indruk op de lezer achterlaat.

Oorlog en Terpentijn vormt een aangrijpende zoektocht naar een leven dat samenviel met de tragiek van een eeuw – en een postume, bijna mythische poging dat leven alsnog een stem te geven.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, Belgium, Novels, Literature, World War I

334 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2013

About the author

Stefan Hertmans is a Flemish Belgian author, poet and essayist. He is the author of a literary and essayistic oeuvre - including poetry, novels, essays, plays, short stories. His poetry has been translated into various languages and he has taught at the Ghent Secondary Art Institute and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. He has given lectures at the Sorbonne University, the universities of Vienna, Berlin and Mexico City, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and University College London. His work has been published in The literary Review (Madison) The Review of contemporary fiction (Illinois) and Grand Street (New York). He was awarded the ECI Literatuurprijs and the Golden Book Owl Audience Award for War and Turpentine, a novel based on his grandfather's notebooks recollecting his time before, during and after the First World War.

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Stefan Hertmans is een Belgisch schrijver, dichter en essayist.

Hij is auteur van een literair en essayistisch oeuvre (poëzie, roman, essay, theatertekst, kortverhaal) dat hem in binnen- en buitenland bekend maakt. Zijn gedichten en verhalen verschenen in het Frans, Spaans, Italiaans, Roemeens, Kroatisch, Duits, Bulgaars. Hertmans doceerde aan het Stedelijk Secundair Kunstinstituut Gent en de Koninklijke Academie voor Schone kunsten (KASK, Hogeschool Gent) en leidde er het Studium Generale tot oktober 2010. Hij gaf lezingen aan de Sorbonne, de universiteiten van Wenen, Berlijn en Mexico City, Library of Congress (Washington), University College London. Zijn werk verscheen onder meer in The literary Review (Madison) The Review of contemporary fiction (Illinois) en Grand Street (New York). Hertmans werkte mee aan tijdschriften zoals Raster, De Revisor, Het Moment, NWT, Yang, Dietsche Warande & Belfort, Poëziekrant en Parmentier. Van 1993 tot 1996 was hij redacteur van het Nederlandse tijdschrift De Gids, hij recenseerde voor De Morgen en schreef de boekenbijlage van De Standaard. In Nederland publiceerde hij in Trouw.

In 2017 werd hij Commandeur in de Kroonorde.
Stefan Hertmans is een Vlaams schrijver, dichter en essayist.

Stefan Hertmans in de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia

Stefan Hertmans in de Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

Stefan Hertmans bij "Schrijversgewijs"


Stefan Hertmans is a Flemish writer, poet and essayist.

Stefan Hertmans in the English Wikipedia

Reviews

[Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une Beauté Douloureux en Flandres
NY TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2016

The more time passes from reading this book, the more I appreciate its dolorous beauty as a reflection on art and war, and memory and love. While I saw this as a decent 4 four years ago, I now see five stars in an iridescent visual collage of captivating and haunting splendour.

In 1981, the Belgian author Stefan Hertmans' 90-year-old Flemish maternal grandfather, Urbain Martien, gave him two large notebooks he had written in the prior several years of his memories of his Dickensian childhood growing up in Ghent, a port city of Belgium, and of his military service in World War I. Hertmans did not pull out the notebooks and begin work on the novel until after 2010 with the approach of the 100-year anniversary of WW I.


In the summer of 1914, after Germany's invasion of Belgium, Martien was conscripted. During the war he was seriously injured three times, going back into service after the first two. He describes his first return to a "mob of emaciated ghouls." He describes an early German offensive as "a moving wall of metal, smoke and gunfire" that "seemed to herald the last judgment." Viewing the Zeppellin for the first time, he said it was like a "dream-fish drifting silently over our heads." In all the degradation of war, he can still see the nuance of nature: "The earth warms up; after the chilly morning hours, vapour rises from the miry fields, which shine in the strange light. A blanket of lapwings ripples over the horizon." Yet, as The Guardian put it, "these 90 pages are some of the most distilled expression of unremitting horror."

In the final part, we see Martien's love and loss and pain (a discussion of which would be a sort of spoiler). In probably the most poignant parts of this darkly gorgeous novel, we get a portrait of the aging painter who had little respect for more modern painters:

"They muddle along with no respect for the laws of anatomy, don't even know how to glaze, never mix their own paint, use turpentine like water and are ignorant of the secrets of grinding your own pigments, of fine linseed oil and the blowing of siccatives."

He loved Rembrandt

Rembrandt's "The Slaughtered Ox," shown among pictures in the novel


and the Flemish masters:


Peter Paul Rubens, "Adam and Eve"

Jan Van Eyck, "Ghent Altarpiece"

And, as a war survivor:

His grand passions were treetops, clouds and folds in fabric. In these formless forms he could let go, lose himself in a dream world of light and dark, in clouds congealed in oil paint, chiaroscuro, a world where nobody else could intrude, because something--it was hard to say what--had broken inside him.

I always leave with visual impressions after viewing masterpiece paintings on a trip to a large gallery or museum. Some strike me, take my breath away once I've had time to contemplate them, visualize them, delight in their glory. While I wouldn't go so far as to say this novel is breathtaking, I will say its beauty has entranced me over the past month, in which time I've become enamored with it as a masterful novel of war and art and love.

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-chronological story set for the most part in Ghent, Belgium, and jumping to selected periods between the birth of the narrator's grandfather in the late 1890s up to the recent past. The unnamed narrator loves his grandfather, whose impoverished childhood and time in the trenches of World War 1 have marked his 90 years on earth irrevocably. A painter, he took his grandson, with whom he was close, everywhere.

The novel reminds me in the early going of Thomas Bernhard's phenomenal Gathering Evidence. Bernhard's grandfather was also a big influence on his world view. Like it, War and Turpentine is beautifully written, though the tone is gentler and more broadly observant of the fleeting world, whereas Bernhart's memoir is a collection of grievances against all the fools he's suffered. The two points of view couldn't be more dissimilar, yet both have at their core this adoration of a beloved grandfather.

As a child the narrator's grandfather had the good fortune to watch his own father—the great-grandfather—at work in his profession as a painter of Church murals. Naturally, the colors he used were highly toxic. This was a time before safety regulations in the same Belgium that created a living hell in Congo. Naturally, the painter-father's health suffers. Later, as a very young man, hardly out of his teens, the grandfather works in horrendous industrial conditions himself. In an iron foundry without winches, he pours molten iron from a crucible he holds in his hands. Hideous accidents are commonplace.

Hertman's writing runs along a pleasant median between summary and passages of extraordinarily vivid detail. He uses photos of things he mentions in the text in a fashion reminiscent of W.G. Sebald. (See The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, Austerlitz, etc.) But somehow the practice seems less essential here. Perhaps it is just a matter of tone. I have to think more about the matter.

Then we arrive in August 1914. The Germans have invaded Belgium. Urbain, the beloved grandfather, along with his fellow soldiers, are fantastically outgunned. The pounding of the gargantuan German howitzer Big Bertha feels like an earthquake underfoot. Everywhere they go, they march, and their destinations are invariably littered with the dead and the dying for there are no medical corpsmen. Logistical supply, too, is almost nonexistent. Urbain and his soldiers— he's in charge of a squad by this time—are starving. They're dropping like flies. Some men are so thirsty that they drink from a canal which has dead bodies in it: they end up with dysentery. Within a week the Brussels army is reduced to half its former size.

The novel until now has been deliciously rich, spilling over with vivid imagery, descriptions of architecture, town markets, neighborhoods, strange people, mother's cooking, poverty, the harsh labor of primitive industry, the work of the great-grandfather's mural painting. Then in Part 2 we are in the middle of a rather commonplace war story. The fact that it's action packed and harrowing in my view does not make up for the cliches of the genre which begin to appear. All the novelty of this part lies in its setting—Brussels—which closely follows the course of the actual war there. But the bright freshness of Part 1 is conspicuous in its absence. The narrator is now entirely Urbain, who we've only heard speak previously through letters or other writings. The grandson has stepped aside. The artifice of the fiction, to my mind, becomes more apparent. The playful non-chronological approach is abandoned for linear storytelling. This is Hertman's little structural risk. Most readers will no doubt follow him enthusiastically.

Late in Part 2 and spilling over into Part 3 is the tale of Urbain, just back from the war, and his newfound love for a neighborhood beauty. This relationship compasses the final tragedy of his life, which truly is a vale of tears most stoically borne. Quite moving and warmly recommend.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

 
A War Fresco in a Fractured Frame

War and Turpentine is the author's ostensible* attempt to write a life of his grandfather, a Belgian soldier in the First World War and an amateur painter all his life, "tossed back and forth between the soldier he had to be and the artist he'd wished to become" [emphasis mine]. But Stefan Hertmans never succeeds in defining that "and" connecting the two. In round numbers, we have Turpentine (150 pages), then War (100), then Turpentine again (50). Though intermittently interesting, and even approaching excellence in its wartime section, the result never quite coheres as a single book.

The War section is certainly the best thing in it. It is presented as the first-person account of Urbain Martien, a Flemish ironworker (and part-time painter), who was called up in 1914 and served to the bitter end. Having been to military school, he enters as a corporal; his abilities will earn him many medals and promotion to Sergeant Major. His account is unusual for three reasons: it deals with the early days when operations were confusingly fluid and the armies had not yet dug into their trenches; even in the middle years of the war, it focuses on the less well known Yser Front, between Belgium and the sea; and it details the pervasive racism in the Belgian army, where French-speaking officers discriminate against those they see as mere Flemish peasants. Martien, for instance, is continually protesting against his name being pronounced in the French way, as "Marshen," rather than the Dutch "Mar-teen." I can think of only one other novel that shows the war from this perspective: Erwin Mortier's While the Gods Were Sleeping, no stronger than this in its war scenes, but a more successful novel overall.

For here is the question I have about the War section: whose writing is it? Unlike the two framing sections, it is told in a single voice, that of Urbain Martien himself. But, at least in the smooth translation by David McKay, it reads as something far more polished than you would expect from the working-class soldier as Hertmans presents him. Had he been creating a fictional character, fine—but everything else he tells us about his grandfather seems real, even down to the grainy photographs in the framing sections. If this is a novel, then where is the fiction? I assume that this central part is his grandfather's memoir, presumably edited by the author but it is impossible to know how much. Light polishing only, or wholesale rewriting?

What I think has happened is that Hertmans came upon some materials left by his grandfather but struggled to know how best to frame them. [I have had a similar problem with my own father, also a WW1 veteran, and have repeatedly failed to find the best way to examine his story and the mysteries he left behind.] Hertmans' solution was to lead into it with a long account of his grandfather's childhood, including the life of his great-grandfather as well, a professional church painter. Then after the war memoir, he tells of his grandfather's later life, his great love, his marriage, and declining mental health, illustrated by several of the subjects he painted or copied. Contemporary interludes show Hertmans himself hunting around attics or visiting old sites now lost or built over. I thought of W. G. Sebald especially in the use of photographs, or Geoff Dyer's visits to WW1 battlefields in The Missing of the Somme. But I wondered at times whom he is really trying to understand: his grandfather or himself?

Certainly, there are the elements of a story here. But Hertmans fails, I think, to connect the painter to the soldier in any meaningful way. And the constant ambiguity of genre between family history, enhanced memoir, and outright fiction bothered me throughout.

======

*I say "ostensible," for there is always the possibility that the author has made a lot of this up, even to the extent of inventing a fictitious family tree. Which would give the book interesting metafictional qualities, if so. But it still needs greater internal unity to justify that conceit.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always sceptic when I start reading a much acclaimed book, because the high expectations usually turn out to be counterproductive. In this case I have to say that it is not too bad, although the book is certainly not the masterpiece that one makes of it.

"War and turpentine" is limping on different legs, and that is where my problem lies. In the first place it's a portrait of the author's grandfather, Urbain Martien, and a family chronicle. Hertmans reconstructs the life of his grandfather on the basis of personal memories, stories told in his family, but mainly on the basis of 2 handwritten cahiers that his grandfather gave him at the age of 90 (that is what Hertmans claims). We get a beautiful, colourful description of Urbain's childhood around the turn of the century (1900), in the city of Ghent and the surrounding area. Especially the mother bond of Urbain is highlighted, his pious queasiness and his (silent) admiration for the fierce creativity of his father, who is a restorer of paintings and sculptures in churches and monasteries.

The transition to the second part is quite abrupt: this part is the version of the war experience of Urbain, edited by Hertmans, as laid out in the 'cahiers' of his grandfather. We are presented with raw war scenes, but with a strong emphasis on the heroic deeds done by himself. And that courage and entrepreneurial spirit contrasts with the coarse image that we got in the first chapter of Urbain. The war description certainly is a strong piece of literature, really captivating. Of course, one has to ask to what extent the description is truthful (because the memories were written down 50 years after the war) and to what extent grandson Stefan Hertmans has contributed to the editing of it.

The third part covers the 70 years of Urbain's life after the war, and here again we see a queasy grandfather, who marries a woman whom he may barely touch, and who quietly undergoes his fate. From a literary-technical point of view this is the most interesting part, because here we see the author Hertmans at work to unravel the mystery of his grandfather, determining how the past is situated in a foreign country, and then constructs a story with small clues and own interpretations. This is the postmodern part of this book. In that way, I think the key to reading this book is already offered on page 27: "grandparents reveal more about your own identity than your parents (who you fight)". In other words: is this book more about Stefan Hertmans than about Urbain Martien?

In short: this is a fascinating and poignant novel, in several ways, but not convincing enough so that I could join the jubileering choirs. To me, The Convert (Hertmans' next novel) was a much more succesful book!

[Mai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Devastating

What a tragedy.

This man was forced to be a man while he was still a child. He lived a rough and unforgiving life—one where he had to work like a grown man, act like one, and earn money to pay his share in the house. When his father left the country for work, he became the man of the house. He worked in places never meant for children and went through multiple traumas, yet he just kept going. It’s not like he had any other choice—life doesn’t grant that kind of privilege to everyone.

When we see older people with dead eyes, we tend to avoid them. We forget that they were once children full of life and hope, just like us. Life simply wasn’t fair to them. They weren’t lucky or privileged enough to reach a better place, so they were forced to kill the joy inside themselves just to carry the burden of existence. That is brutal.

What fascinated me most was how little he had as a child, yet how happy his family still was in their own way. Love managed to overcome sickness and poverty. Despite his humble beginnings, he carried a noble soul. In his own quiet way, he represented what the best parts of humanity should look like. And, as always, life found every possible way to crush that fragile purity.

You can feel through his words how deeply he longed for freedom—how much he loved nature, beauty, and painting. But then war dressed him in a poor little suit and threw him into the trenches, where all he could see was the ugliest side of humanity: blood, sickness, and fear.

This was devastating by every measure. He never got to live his age. As a child, he was forced to work in factories and provide for the household; when he finally began to breathe a little, war arrived and dragged him straight into Dante’s hell. The conditions they endured are heartbreaking—the pain, the fear, the rage, the cold, the disgust. One day you have a friend; the next, you’re burying him and taking his belongings because leaving them with him is a luxury you can’t afford.
The horrors rooted themselves deep into his soul: the nightmares, the sounds, the constant terror. War stole his youth and his pure view of the world. And yet, even in his war diaries—the harshest period of his life—you can still feel the nobility of his heart. He wrote with a strange kind of dignity, even while describing hell.

There is something about Urbain that makes you feel both warm and sad at the same time. There’s something in the way he moves through life that feels calming, gentle, and quietly heartbreaking all at once. His portraits give you a strange warmth, an urge to sit with him, listen to him talk, and hear him chuckle softly.

It pains me how cruel life was to such a light and tender soul. It took away the father he loved, the dream he dreamed, the youth he never got to enjoy, the medals and recognition he truly deserved, and the one woman he loved. The cruelty of it all is overwhelming. He kept going, but you can feel in his words how much he withdrew from life, how much he carried inside himself in silence. Only nature—and turpentine—seemed to offer him relief, a way to breathe, a way to express what he could never fully say out loud, or at least hold on to a fragile glimpse of the man he once hoped to become.


As for the officers—my God. What kind of people were these? They did almost nothing, yet turned their men into fuel for a senseless war. I felt sick when he gave everything, was shot multiple times, and was then punished out of jealousy—sent away in humiliation, his medal stolen and replaced with a fake one. I was stunned. How low can someone sink, stealing a medal paid for with another man’s soul?

While soldiers froze and died in the trenches, these officers acted like spoiled children—bossing men around, mocking the cold from warm beds, firing shots out of boredom, knowing a soldier would pay the price. They were nothing but selfish, jealous, egotistical cowards. And it’s a shame that history remembers them instead of the real heroes—the ones who stayed in the trenches and endured the inhuman.

One thing I appreciated was the way the book showed the transformation of people before, during, and after war—how values and nobility collapse under cruelty. You can’t remain pure when you’re forced to live among monsters.

That said, my biggest issue with the first part of the book was the sudden shifts. One moment we’re deep in a tense scene with the grandfather, emotionally wrecked, and the next we’re abruptly pulled into the writer talking about a museum or a garden. This broke the emotional momentum for me completely.

The iron factory scene, for example, was incredibly intense—it marked a turning point in his life and character and gave me goosebumps. And then suddenly… a garden? That interruption was frustrating.

I wish we had received the diaries as they were—raw, fragmented, unfiltered. The writer’s constant interjections and fillers diluted that rawness. If the book had consisted solely of the diaries, I would’ve easily given it five stars. These additions didn’t add depth; they flattened the experience. With all due respect, I wasn’t there to read the writer’s worldview—I picked up this book for something else. His repeated intrusions pulled me out of the story instead of enriching it.

The part I loved most was the middle section—the war itself—because it felt like the true diaries. The first and last sections made me emotionally detach and disrupted the flow. I can tell the writer is talented, and I’d gladly read something else by him in the future. This just wasn’t the right space for him to insert himself.

I also wish we had seen more of the PTSD—the aftermath, the lingering trauma, the silent suffering that follows war.

Another thing about the book even though the war part was presented in a diary form and I can sense Urbain's soul in it, yet it felt heavily filtered and polished somehow as if someone reshaped it.

I would say overall this was a decent reading, but I still wish that we got the diaries with all it's true fragmentation and rawness.

[Laurence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vreemd genoeg vond ik het tweede hoofdstuk, de kern van dit boek over de Eerste Wereldoorlog, het minst interessante van de drie: misschien heb ik daarvoor al wat te veel gelezen over (de) oorlog. Gelukkig maken de meer persoonlijke eerste en derde hoofdstukken dat ruimschoots goed. Aangezien ik zelf uit het Gentse afkomstig ben, moet ik toegeven dat ik wel wat een zwak voor de beschrijving van het Gent van toen heb.
Prachtig geschreven boek, en vooral een zeer aangrijpend eerbetoon van de schrijver aan zijn grootvader.

[Nada Elshabrawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

مروعة والله فعلًا، من الروع ومن الروعة.

[Marjorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, Stefan Hertmans, is a well-known Flemish poet. Apparently there is some debate over how much of his book, “War and Turpentine”, is fictional and how much is true. Indeed, the main character in the book, Urbain Martien, is the author’s grandson and he did bequeath his memoirs to him, which took Hertmans 30 years before reading. When questioned, the author has said that he only lightly edited his grandfather’s memoir. And yet it isn’t advertised as a memoir.

The book starts out with Turpentine (his grandfather’s young days as a poor European). Part of the section is told by Hertmans as recollections of his grandfather and part is told by his grandfather and includes his recollections of his own father. I enjoyed this section the most as it dealt with the art produced by Urbain and his father. It beautifully portrays the life of the poor a century ago. I especially enjoyed the photos of the artwork referenced and the personal photos contained throughout the book. There are also essays and mediations contained in this section.

Then there is a long section, the war section, told by Urbain. This is probably the best written part of the book and I tend to think this may have been the bulk of the grandfather’s writings, though it’s written with the heart of a poet, which Hertmans is. It’s a horrific accounting of Urbain’s experiences in the war. What struck me most about this section were the parts when Urbain would recount what he was seeing in front of him and compare it to his beautiful memories of the country, lighting up the stark difference. There were parts that were difficult to read due to their nature.

The book then goes back to Turpentine and tells of Urbain’s life after the war and his marriage to Gabrielle. This section has a sad story to tell.

As well as this book is written and the beautiful poetical prose throughout, I just never really seemed to connect with the characters. In the Turpentine sections, the author jumps around quite a bit between the author, his grandfather and his great-grandfather and would sometimes lose me. There were many relatives that I couldn’t keep straight. I think if I had read it as a memoir, it would have given me a different perspective than reading it as fictional based on fact. I found it a bit disconcerting not knowing what was true and what wasn’t.

This book was given to me by the publisher through First to Read in return for an honest review.

[Krysia o książkach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Początek dość mi się dłużył, bo było dużo o malarstwie, a to nie mój konik. Mniej więcej od powrotu ojca, nie mogłam się oderwać aż do końca, przepiękna opowieść. Słowo daję, nie pamiętam żeby gdziekolwiek indziej była tak pięknie opisana miłość jak tutaj, co prawdza tragiczna, ale miłość.

[Boudewijn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een boek zoals we van Stefan Hertmans gewend zijn: schitterende haast poëtische observaties, diepgaande reflecties op de menselijke ervaring. Dit alles samengevat in een ontroerend portret van Stefan Hertmans' grootvader: iemand die zijn hele leven heen en weer werd geslingerd tussen zijn noodgedwongen bestaan als militair en de kunstenaar die hij had willen zijn. Tussen de oorlog en de terpentijn van zijn schilderijen.

Dat is denk ik de kracht van een schrijver als Hertmans - zijn kunst om zijn persoonlijke ervaringen te verweven met historische elementen. In dit geval zijn relatie tot zijn grootvader en diens bestaan als Belgische soldaat in de Eerste Wereldoorlog, iets wat we ook eerder zagen in De bekeerlinge en De opgang.

Stefan Hertmans behoort tot mijn favoriete schrijvers.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nunca imaginei que iria gostar TANTO desta leitura!!!!

Derreto com homenagens a avós e esta obra presenteou-me com a biografia de um avô flamengo, combatente na 1GM, amante da pintura e um homem extraordinário na sua retidão e amor à família!

NOTA - 9,5/10

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

War and Turpentine is simply one of the finest books to come out this decade, and I want to be an evangelist for this beautifully translated memoir/novel hybrid. It's the story of the author's grandfather, who was born in 1890, was a soldier in World War I (which provides the centerpiece for the novel), and lived into his 90s. The book is both a tribute to a now fully-expired generation that many of us remember and a meditation on exactly how we know what we know about the people who have left us. Stefan Hertmans has been compared to Paul Austerlitz - whom I have not read - but I'm most reminded of Valdimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory.

This is a must-read for lovers of finely-crafted literary fiction and meditative memoirs - as long as you can handle some pretty harrowing descriptions of trench warfare.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work of historical fiction is based on the life of the author’s grandfather, Belgian artist Urbain Martien (1891 – 1981). Martien, the son of an artist, grew up in Ghent in a poor family, fought at the battlefront in the Great War, suffered the loss of loved ones, and turned to art for healing. He meticulously copied the masters and wrote in his journals. He exhibited the values and traditions of the nineteenth century while dealing with tumultuous changes of the twentieth. He struggled with traumatic memories, family tragedies, and unfulfilled artistic ambitions.

Hertmans has a knack for portraying the atmosphere of the era, and the reader can sense the harshness of life before modern medicine and conveniences. The horrors of trench warfare are described in vivid detail. Martien was wounded, and returned to the front, only to be wounded again (and again). His grandfather adhered to a code of honor, sense of duty, and self-discipline. The accounts of Martien’s experiences on the battlefront are strikingly offset by the beauty of art.

It contains three parts – the first and third are written in third person by the grandson, who inserts his own recollections into the narrative. The second, containing memories of war, is written in first person from Martien’s perspective. The writing is elegant. Hertmans is a poet and it shows. (I read the English translation from the Dutch by David McKay.) The flow is a little choppy in places, with occasional gaps in the narrative.

I felt drawn in and transported back in time. This book is a wonderful tribute to the author’s grandfather. Hertmans has taken a fascinating life and fashioned it into a moving and memorable story.

It slowly dawns on him, as he stares into the roaring stoke hole in the iron foundry and the sparks dance around him like fireflies, that his shock of revulsion at the sight of that apocalyptic heap of rotting flesh filled with gaping dead eyes has awoken something that tugs at him, that hurts, that opens a new space inside him – that for the first time he feels a desire that seems greater than himself. It is the desire to draw and paint, and the instant he becomes aware of it. The sudden realization washes over him with overwhelming force, in which there is an element of guilt. The realization that he wants to do what his father does. It wells up inside him like a sob, like a painful, electric shock from deep within, where his unconscious has taken its time to ripen before coming to light. And he cries.

4.5

[Mohamed Samy · Rating 2 out of 5]

البداية مع ما يُكتب على أغلفة معظم الروايات الحديثة، مثل ساحقة، عاتية ،ماحقة ،مدهشة مذهلة ،مربكة، معضلة. هذه الكلمات التى تحمل دلالات مخالفة بشكل كبير لقيمة العمل الأدبى الذى تحكى عن جماليته.

روائى يعثر على مذكرات لجده، والذى خاض غمار معارك الحرب العالمية الاولى فى صفوف الجيش البلجيكى، الرواية تمضى احداثها فى خطين أولهما الحديث عن ذكريات الجد عندما كان طفلاً ، والتنقل فى حكاية هذه الذكريات بصوت الروائى الحفيد مرة وصوت الجد أحيانا اخرى، لكن لا يظهر ،لى، التمكن أبداً ، يظهر خلل ما فى طريقة السرد والتنقل . الخط الثانى هو ما كتبه الجد فى مذكراته بنفسه عن الحرب ومشاركته البطولية فيها، وهذا هو الجزء الأضعف، تقريبا لم يتدخل الروائى ستيفان هيرتمانس لاضفاء ناحية ادبية جمالية على مذكرات جده، وحتى عندما كان هو الكاتب الحقيقى لسرده الشخصى للذكريات والاحداث كانت لغته الادبية لغة عادية جدا، لغة باردة؛ كلمات كأنها قد أخرجت للتو من ثلاجة وقد تم ترتيب الكلمات لتكون جملاً توصل المعنى ولا توصل الشعور والاحساس .

كان الوصف أحيانا كثيرة باهتا وشاحبا، من الواضح انه ليست هناك صنعة أدبية روائية احترافية، لكن مجرد مشاعر اراد الكاتب ضخها على شكل كلمات لم يفلح فى صقلها.

النجمتان للجزء الاول وهو ذكريات الطفولة للجد وتفاصيل حياته مع اسرته، وللحديث عن الرسم واللوحات حديثا شيقا، ويا للعجب فالجزء الاول افضل بكثير من الجزء الثانى الخاص بالحرب بشكل ملاحظ جدا.

قد تروق الرواية للبعض، فأدب الحروب وادب الانعزالية والوحدة والسجون، انواع من فنون الرواية سيلاقى اقلها صنعة، رواجاً وتأثيرا ولكن هناك أدباء عمالقة سيجعلونك مشاركا فى الحرب بعقلك وقلبك.
ليس الأدب بالسهل خوض غماره، وصنع رواية " قوية ومروعة" بالتأكيد يحتاج موهبة فذة وجهد جهيد للروائى.

الرواية هنا ذكريات بها شجن ومسحات من حزن ونضال وحرب، لكن ليست بالتأثير المطلوب -على الأقل -لشخصى.

[Bob Brinkmeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous book--complex, rich, wise, and beautifully written and translated. It's not a page turner in terms of plot and pacing; it's more like a single malt that one savors and later calls to mind in quiet, thoughtful moments. Put simply, War and Turpentine is the real deal, a masterpiece.

[Michał Michalski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pierwsza połowa jako osobie zainteresowanej malarstwem dość nieprzesadnie, troche mi się nużyła. Ale w drugiej jak jebło to już zostało do końca. Wspaniała powieść.

[Olha · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Війна і терпентина» Стефана Гертманса – це та непопулярна книжка, яку варто прочитати.

Помітила за собою, що тепер частіше беруся за тонші чи просто легші книжки, які обіцяють прочитатися на одному подиху. Стільки всього хочеться прочитати, тож треба швидше і більше! В жодному разі не кажу, що є щось у цьому погане. Але особисто я б пройшла повз «Війни і терпентини», якби не мала геть інші уявлення про книжку, беручись її читати. Та все ж я не залишилась розчарованою.

Бельгієць Стефан Гертманс успадкував від свого дідуся Урбана Мартіна мемуари. Книжка ділиться на три частини: І – дитинство Урбана, гарування на заводах, споглядання за роботою його батька-маляра у церквах, відвідування уроків малювання і, можливо не така важлива для хроніки життя, та все ж дуже яскраво описана подія: відвідування заводу, на якому виробляють желатин; ІІ – Перша світова війна, Урбан йде воювати, градієнтний перехід з героїчного настрою до усвідомлення безглуздості усіх цих смертей і самої війни; ІІІ – життя Урбана після війни, про його кохання і його дружину (тут навіть трохи детективна історія), а також про любов до мистецтва.

Книжка читається повільно. Всотувала усі ті описи, історії, ніби прозріла і зрозуміла, що мої батьки і тим більше дідусі та бабусі жили з геть іншими цінностями та, банально, з геть іншими побутовими предметами навколо. Місцями у житті Урбана бачила життя мого дідуся, який так само був побожним і воював у Другій світовій. Читаючи «Війну і терпентину» боліло, що не говорила більше зі своїм дідусем.

Стефан Гертманс їздив по тих містах і місцях, які були ключовими у мемуарах його дідуся. Розповідав, як виглядають ті вулиці чи будівлі зараз та якими вони були у роки Урбана. Важко уявити, що все могло змінитися (чи геть ні) за якусь сотню років.
⠀
«Війна і терпентина» – історія про щиру і просту людину, зі своїми болями і своїми радощами. Та й сам стиль Гертманса дуже чіпляв: спокійний і приємно-тягучий, відривалася від історії, аби заглибитися у власні подібні спогади чи досвіди. Книжка після себе залишає ще багато емоцій, однозначно думками буду повертатися до неї ще не один раз. Дуже раджу не оминати цієї книжки.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my most distant memory of my grandfather, he is on the beach at Ostend
[...]
What he sees is something like a James Ensor painting set in motion, although he despises true work of that Ostend blasphemer with the English name. Ensor is a 'dauber', and along with 'toss-pot' and 'riff-raff', 'dauber' is the worst accusation he can make. They're all daubers today painters; they've completely lost touch with the classical tradition, the subtle, novel craft of the old masters. They muddle along with no respect for the laws of anatomy, don't even know how to glaze, never mix their own paint, use turpentine like water, and are ignorant of the secrets of grinding your own pigments, of fine linseed oil and the blowing of siccatives - no wonder there are no more great painters.

An Ensor painting of Ostend beach:


Book 9 from 13 on the 2017 Man Booker International, and (while certainly not the worst book) the biggest disappointment so far, at least versus my high expectations of it based on reviews I had read and also its status as the only book also on the 2017 Best Translated Book Award shortlist.

War and Turpentine is based on the real-life story of Hertmans grandfather, Urbain Martien, a retired veteran from World War 1. Indeed it is arguable whether this is a fictional novel at all, since it is is more reconstructed biography.

Martien was born in 1891 into relative poverty, as his father Franciscus worked as a poorly remunerated painter and restorer of church murals. Urbain completed 4 years of military training before WW1 and served in the Belgian army with distinction during the war, surviving three serious injuries. Franciscus had no desire to pass his vocation on to his son, but he did inherit his father's love of and skills in painting.

Urbain wrote his life story, at least up till the end of the war, in three notebooks that he bequeathed to his grandson Stefan, who was at a loss what to do with them, until the approach of 2014 made him realise:

the hundredth anniversary of the cataclysm would release a flood of books – a new barrage alongside the almost unscaleable mountain of existing historical material, books as innumerable as the sandbags on the Yser front, thoroughly documented, historically accurate, made-up novels and stories - while I held the privilege of his memoirs but was too scared to open them, didn't dare to open the first page, in the knowledge that this story would be a farewell to a piece of my childhood; this story, which, if I didn't hurry, would be published just when readers turned away with a yawn from yet another book on the First World War.

Hertmans also discovered some further family secrets in his grandfather's papers, during this time, the clues to which were buried in some of his grandfather's paintings, such as a reproduction of Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, but with a different face on the reclining nude, as well as some of his grandfather's anecdotes where memories of the War seemed to bleed into his tales of famous geniuses of the Romantic period:

The things he wished to forget kept coming back, in shards of stories or absurd details, and whether heaven or hell was the subject, shards and details like these were the puzzle pieces I had to fit together before I could begin to understand what had gone on inside him all his life: the battle between the transcendent, which he yearned for, and the memory of death and destruction, which held him in its clutches.

Hertmans explains his approach in this radio interview:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcas...

The result was this book, in three sections. The first explaining Hertman's quest and providing an imaginative reconstruction of his grandfather's family history and pre-life war based on the notebooks; the second an account of Urbain's first world war written in the first person (presumably lifted mostly direct from the notebooks, with authorial editing) and a third section that wraps up the story, with the first and third sections illustrated with family photos, scenes from the places described and paintings both famous and, increasingly, Urbain's own.

This is a very creative and literary approach to the subject matter. So why my disappointment?

Ultimately Hertmans been hoist by his own epigraphs. If you are going to write a novel whose first section is ostensibly fiction, but with elements of fact, history and travelogue, all illustrated with occasional black and white photos, then if you quote W.G. Sebald you are setting yourself a high standard, and it is one of which Hertmans falls well short.

Dušan Šarotar's Panorama, which was also eligible for the 2017 MBI did the whole Sebald tribute thing, including more evocative descriptions of Belgium, so much better.

And if your second section is a detailed personal account of the 1st world war, and you reference Erich Maria Remarque, you have the same issue. The here was relatively mundane (albeit the terrible events described need no embellishment). And while the story is obviously true, it did still seem a tad Hollywood, with Urbain surviving miraculously unscathed despite heroically flinging himself into dangerous situations, with all about him falling dead. There is also an interesting undercurrent of Walloon-Flemish tension is this part, with the French-speaking officers disdaining the Flemish NCOs, but this waried a little with repetition, particularly Urbain's repeated insistence that his name is pronounced the Flemish way (closer to Maarten, not Marshen) - which even forms the last line of the book as an admonition to St Peter at Heaven's gates.

It's a cheap shot I know but when Urbain's account acknowledged my story is growing monotonous, just as the war grew monotonous, death grew monotonous, our hatred of the Huns monotonous, just as life itself grew monotonous and finally began to turn our stomachs, I couldn't help but agree.

To be fair, the 3rd section, which pieces together some of the clues and provides some interesting revelations, explaining details of my own world that never offered up their historical secrets until I read his memoirs from the 1st section. But even here, there was too much sentimentality for my taste: ultimately family biography tends to be of disproportionate interest to those in the family.

Ultimately, I realise I have been far too harsh on this book. I would actually be surprised if the judges don't put it through to the MBI and BTBA shortlists. But it wasn't for me.

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ben çok sevdiğim kitapları anlatmakta; haklarında bir şeyler yazmak ya da söylemekte çok zorlanıyorum. Bu kitabı da aslında nisan ayının sonunda okumama rağmen hiçbir şey söylememiş olmamın sebebi bu. Bir noktada “ okusanıza işte ya” deyip bırakmaktan korkuyorum.

Savaş ve Terebentin benim sadece arka kapak yazısını okuyup, hakkında başka hiçbir şey bilmeden aldığım kitaplardan birisi, muhtemelen bu beklentisizlikle okumam da çok hazırlıksız yakaladı beni, tarif demediğim bir hayranlığın içine düştüm. Kitap aslında Stefan Hertmans’ın dedesi Urbain Martien’in hayatının son yıllarında kaleme aldığı anılarının hikayesi. İlk önce yazarın, dedesini hatırladığı küçük anılarla, aileden dedesine dair dinledikleriyle açılıyor kitap. Sonrasında Urbaib Martien’in ölümüyle torununa bıraktığı iki defterin şahitliğine geçiyoruz. O defterlere geçtiğiniz anda gerek yazarın anıları, gerekse dedenin sert mizacı katmer katmer açılıyor önünüze. 1891 yılında imkansız bir aşkın kurduğu yoksul bir aileye doğup, oldukça kültürlü ve seçkin bir anne ile sanatçı bir babanın ellerinden, demirhanede, dökümhanede ve sonunda savaşla sertleşen ve bütün bu cehennemlerin ortasında sanatçı ruhunu ayakta tutmaya çalışan, cephede bile bir şekilde resim yapan acıyla, kayıpla, kayıp giden mutluluklarla dolu bir hayat. Kitap her ne kadar Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın 100. yılında bir belgesel konumunda yayınlanmış olsa da saf bir savaş anlatısı beklentiniz olmasın. Çünkü Urbain Martien’in gerisinde bıraktığı iki defterin sadece bir kısmı savaşa dair ki o kısmı okumaya başladığınızda zaten neden hayatının anlatısında bu kısma bu kadar az yer vermek istediğini anlıyorsunuz. Zira bazen bu kısımları okumak dahi dayanılmazken bu süreci yaşayıp sonrasında bu döneme - zihnen de olsa- yeniden dönmek çok da kolay olmasa gerek. Tabii savaş süreci sahne sahne kitabı ele geçirmiyor olsa da aslında bir hayatı nasıl ele geçirdiği PTSDnin henüz keşfedilmediği dönemlerde bir nesli nasıl yok ettiğini de Martine’in hayatı üzerinden çok net bir şekilde görüyorsunuz. Bir asırda “çocuk olmak” kavramının nasıl değiştiğini, sınıf kavramının aileden üstün olduğunu, savaş ortamında dahi Flamanlar ve Volanlar arasındaki ayrımın sürdüğünü, her ne kadar edebiyat ve sinema İkinci Dünya Savaşı’na daha ilgili olsa da aslında Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın ne boyutta bir yıkımı olduğunu görmek adına mutlaka okuyun derim. Urbain Martien’in içine yoksulluk, ayrımcılık, Sanayi Devrimi, iki tane dünya savaşı, İspanyol gribi salgını, soğuk savaş ve büyük ideolojilerin savaşının sığdığı belki de dünyanın en zorlu yüzyılına sıkışmış hayatının her döneminde hak ettiği hayalin nasıl son anda elinden alındığını görmek paramparça etse de dünya üzerinde ne çok düştüğümüz adalet yanılgısını insanın yüzüne tokat gibi vuran bir tarih. Diğer yandan tam bir kişisel gelişim kitabına indirgemek gibi olmayacaksa, yirmilerin sonun geldiğinizde artık geç kaldınızı düşündüğünüz hayata ne ömürler, ne acılar, ne savaşlar ve ne galibiyetler sığdırabileceğinizi de - amacı bu olmasa da- görmenize yardımcı olan çok özel bir hayat. Anlatması kolay değil, açıkcası boğazım düğümlenmeden, nefeslenmeden okuması da kolay değildi zaten. Anlatımdaki bazı zaman atlamaları, bazen de hiç uyarı vermeden değişen anlatıcı kişi de okuma sürecinizi kolaylaştırmıyor. Ama bütün bu çabaya kesinlikle değen kitaplardan. Son olarak arka kapağın sonlarına doğru bir yerde yazardan “W.G. Sebald’la aynı kulvarda yürüyen..” olarak bahsediliyor. Normalde bu tip arka kapak övgülerine pek inanmam açıkcası. Ancak bu sefer -tabii ki Sebald ile aynı keyfi alacaksınız diyemesem de- gayet yerinde bir övgü olmuş. Bu kitaptan sonra Sebald okuma isteğinizin canlanması oldukça normal. En başta söylediğim gibi keşke herkes okusa.

[Gözde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uzunca bir rüyadan uyanmış gibiyim, gözlerim dolu dolu bitirdim.

[Bu üstteki satırı kitabın son paragrafında vurgun yemiş gibi olup gözlerim dolunca yazdım, kitabı kapatırken kayda geçsin diye. Mükemmel bir kitaptı.]

Daha birkaç ay önce okuduğum Birinci Dünya Savaşı Tarihi'nde söz konusu edilen cephelerden biri olan Belçika cephesinde savaşmış ve savaş konulu hiçbir belgeselde, dokümanda, kurgudışı kitapta ne kadar anlatılsa hakkı verilemeyecek kadar acı şeyler yaşamış Urbain Martien'in, savaşın üstünden yıllar geçince yazabildiği anı defterlerinin torunu Stefan Hertmans tarafından bir araya getirilmesiyle yazılmış bir kitap Savaş ve Terebentin.

Adından da anlaşılacağı gibi, bir yanda savaşın iç kaldıran, okuması bu kadar dehşet vericiyse yaşaması, hele sonra tekrar hatırlayarak yazması ne kadar zordur kimsenin anlayamayacağı korkunçluğu, diğer yanda resim sanatı gibi renkli, nahif bir uğraşın bir araya getirdiği bir hayat Martien'in hayatı.

Büyükbaba-torun hikayesi olarak beni çok sarstığı gibi, Stefan Hertmans'ın ilk bölümde büyükbabasının yoksullukla çevrelenmiş; kilise ressamı olan babası ve zengin bir çiftçinin kızı olan annesi arasındaki inatçı ve zor koşullarda hep diri duran aşklarının meyvesi olan, hastalık, fakirlik, soğukla geçen ve çocukluğundan beri çalışmasını gerektiren, sonra da 1914'te cepheye çağrılmasıyla artık sonlanan çocukluğunu anlattığı bölüm de çok etkiledi. Hayatta bir daha herhangi bir ürünün içindeki "sığır jelatini" kelimelerine aynı şekilde bakamayacağım - cephe savaşının korkunçluğundan bile fazla etkilendim o bölümden.

Kitap hakkında söylenecek çok şey var tabii fakat ben büyükbabanın kaleminden okuduğumuz cephede geçen 4 yılı, sonrasında da savaş sonrasında resme sığınarak iyileşmeye çalıştığı, torununun bulabildiği her izi sürdüğü kısmı okurken şunu düşündüm: 80 yıllık bir insan hayatı, aslında kısa olmakla beraber, bir o kadar da uzun ve ne acılarla, aşklarla, kayıplarla ve güzelliklerle dolu. Bir insan bu kadar acıya dayanamaz, sonunda ölür, dense de insan öyle bir varlık ki, işte, cephede kafasına kurşunlar yağıp etrafı ölü askerlerle çevriliyken de, babasını veremden kaybettiğinde de, hayatının aşkına doyamadan onu kollarında ölüme bıraktığında da acıdan ölmüyor. Tam tersi, o acıyla hayatta kalmayı öğrenmek zorunda kalıyor ki, insan olmanın en zor yanı da herhalde bu.

Hikâyem giderek tekdüzeleşiyor, tıpkı savaşın monotonlaştığı gibi, ölümün tekdüzeleştiği gibi, Almanlara duyduğumuz nefretin yeknesaklaştığı, yaşamın kendisinin monotonlaştığı gibi ve bu durum bizi en sonunda hasta etmeye başlıyor.

Zulümler ve katliamlar bu kuşağın ahlak anlayışını, yaşam biçimini, zihniyetini ve görgü kurallarını sonsuza kadar değiştirdi. Ezilmiş ot kokan savaş alanları, ölüm anlarında bile selam vermekten vazgeçmeyen askerler, tepelerdeki ağaçsız alanlar gibi sahnelerin yer aldığı on sekizinci yüzyıl askerî resimlerindeki manzaralar yerini hardal gazıyla boğulmuş bir ruhsal harabeye bıraktı, tarlalar parçalanmış uzuvlarla doldu, eski zaman insanları kelimenin gerçek anlamıyla imha edilmiş oldu.

… Il ne se passe toujours rien au front belge. (Belçika cephesinde hâlâ hiçbir şey olmuyor).

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Belgium

This book is a poetic novelisation by Flemish Belgian author Stefan Hertmans, of the life of his grandfather, Urbain Martien, who lived from 1891 to 1981. The book has been translated from Dutch, and is based on two notebooks Stefan’s grandfather gave him, containing Urbain’s written recollections of his life especially the time serving in WWI.

Urbain grew up in Ghent at the end of the 19th Century in a poor family, his father working as a church mural painter. Urbain worked as an ironworker, his body scarred by the molten sparks, and painted passionately in his spare time, reproducing works of the masters.

The book shifts between a third person account narrated by Stefan, including his own recollections of his grandfather, then the middle section of the book is a first person account supposedly from Urbain’s diary accounts of the war. The final part shifts back to a third person account of his post-war life, romance, tragic losses, family life and struggles. It is hard to know how much of the account is Urbain’s and how much has been fictionalised, but the writing is beautiful and descriptive. I found the war section most engrossing. It describes the racism of the French officers towards the Flemish soldiers, the muddy horrific life in the trenches, and Urbain’s courage in volunteering for missions no-one else wanted.

The third person sections felt rather jumpy and more awkward. I’m not fond of books with an intrusive narrator, it tends to take me out of the story itself. Nevertheless this was a good read, I liked Urbain as a character, and I enjoyed the contrast between beautiful descriptions of artworks and the ugliness of the war.

[Ratko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Сјајна књига! Аутор нам предочава дневнике/мемоаре свога деде, човека уметничког сензибилитета, али огрубелог и суздржаног, обликованог сиромаштвом и оскудицом у детињству и, потом, ратним страхотама Првог светског рата у младићком добу. Највећи део чине управо описи бесмисленим ратовањем исцрпљене војске и ужасима који се око њих и у њима дешавају. Можда то и није најоригиналнија тема, али ионако је сваки рат исти - најдубљи кал, морални суноврат и смрт.
Уосталом, следећа реченица из романа то потврђује:
"Моја прича постаје монотона, као што и рат постаје монотон, као што и смрт постаје монотона, као што наша мржња према Немцима постаје монотона, као што сам живот постаје монотон и на крају нам се згади."
Све препоруке.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know many of us have family members who went to war and lost parts of themselves there, leaving us only with letters or journals to try to piece those years together.
While sections of the book are disjointed and didn't flow well, overall it was an interesting & touching tribute to the author' grandfather and his great grandparents.
The WW1 section written in the first person was vivid and powerful. Urbain's relationships with his parents and the role of art & music in their lives was also beautifully written. I think this is a book I will remember.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bailed a fifth of the way in. This is not really a novel at all – it's a rather dry memoir with sections that go on and on that are more like essayistic musings on Belgian history and culture with little about the main characters at all. What little there was of an actual story was moderately interesting, about a grandfather who'd been a painter of sorts. What I couldn't endure was the feeling of watching paint dry while reading this.

[Kelly Eeckhaut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stefan Hertmans deelt in dit boek het complete levensverhaal, een portret in woorden van zijn grootvader. Zijn grootvader, zijn echte grootvader, die de eerste wereldoorlog meegemaakt heeft en die die vier verschrikkelijke jaren van zijn leven had neergeschreven voor hij stierf. Oorlog en terpentijn bevat dat (bewerkte) verhaal, voorafgegaan door een inleiding over het hoe en waarom van zijn boek en de armoedige jeugd van zijn grootvader, gevolgd door wat er na 1918 gebeurde met zijn grootvader. Er volgt ook nog een deel waarin Stefan reist naar de Westhoek, naar de plaatsen waar de loopgraven waren waar zijn grootvader zo veel uren doorbracht.

Ik blijf met ongeveer hetzelfde gevoel achter als bij Sprakeloos van Tom Lanoye en Tonio van A.F.Th. van der Heijden. Enerzijds vond ik de inleiding overbodig en absoluut veel te langdradig. Stefan Hertmans schrijft waarom hij de schrijfsels van zijn grootvader wilde delen, waarom hij eraan getwijfeld heeft, hoe en waarom hij er zich toch uiteindelijk toe bewogen heeft om het te doen. Die hele, wat ik noem, inleiding omvat vijftig procent van het boek, waarbij ik vaak dacht "komaan zeg, begin er nu eindelijk eens aan!".

Anderzijds vind ik het, net omdat het geen fictie is, heel moeilijk om dit boek te beoordelen. Ik bedoel, die man heeft echt bestaan, dit boek werd geschreven door zijn kleinzoon (toen ook al vijftigplusser) om het verhaal van zijn grootvader te delen, wie ben ik om dit stukje familiegeschiedenis te beoordelen? Het voelt een beetje alsof ik die grootvader, die zo al een miserabel leven heeft gehad, oneer aandoe als ik zeg dat ik dit portret niet zo’n meesterwerk vond.

Maar ik zeg het toch: ik vond dit geen meesterwerk. Ik hield van de schrijfstijl, maar ik heb er even aan moeten wennen. Stefan Hertmans leek me door zijn taalgebruik en schrijfstijl het soort persoon waarmee ik nooit overeen zou komen: snobistisch, afkomstig uit de Gentse bourgeoisie, een beetje uit de hoogte … Maar na een tijd kon ik dat beeld dat ik gecreëerd had terug op de achtergrond schuiven en zonder negatief beeld van de auteur genieten van (de meeste van) zijn zinnen.

Het is een en al drama, dit boek. Het leven van Hertmans grootvader is alles behalve benijdenswaardig. En toch werd ik nooit meegesleept, ontroerd of aangegrepen. Ik vond het soms zelfs wat stuntelig overkomen. De uitgebreide stukken over zijn schilderkunst wilde ik het liefste overslaan omdat de inhoud mij niet interesseerde, maar ik las ze wel omdat ze mooi geschreven waren. Van sommige stukken begreep ik de toegevoegde waarde dan weer niet.

Kort: ik begrijp maar half waarom het zo veel lof ontving (de taal, over het algemeen) en ben dan ook ietwat teleurgesteld. Ik heb al veel betere boeken gelezen en ik zal het boek wellicht ook niet te snel aanraden aan anderen.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The "battle between the transcendent" and the "memory of death and destruction" is eloquently shared through the life of Urbain Martien, the author's grandfather, in War and Turpentine, a book called a "future classic" by the Guardian.

Thirty years after inheriting his grandfather's papers Stefan Hertmans finally read the memoirs. Urbain's early life in poverty drove him into the Ghent steel mills as a teenager. Then came the sudden epiphany that he, like his father who restored church murals, must be an artist. Urbain joins the Flemish Military Academy and is called up to service and into the horror of The Great War.

"How far I have strayed from what I once hoped to become."

Germany wanted a quick route to Paris, and neutral Belgium was in the way. When Belgium resisted, the German army invaded, murdering whole villages. The Rape of Belgium left 6,000 civilians dead, 1.5 million refugees, and 120,000 civilians used as forced labor. The military lost 100,000 or more dead.

Hertmans' retelling of his grandfather's story is in three sections: the author's personal memories and his grandfather's early life; the brutal war years; the post-war years as Urbain cobbles together a life. The war section, for me, was most powerful with its vivid descriptions of death and suffering, the piles of human waste in the trenches, Urbain's honorable bravery and multiple injuries, the absurd carnage of human lives.

"We're all cannon fodder together."

And yet there are moments when Urbain sees nature's beauty, the artist's eye still seeking out the inspiration of color and form and association.

After the war Urbain cobbles together a life: love, loss, and loneliness; the frailty of the body; and the accomplishment of one great original painting.

"What mattered most to him was something he could not share with other. So he painted trees, clouds, peacocks, the Ostend beach, a poultry yard, still lifes on half-cleared tables--an immense, silent, devoted labour of grief, to put the world's weeping to rest in the most everyday things. he never painted a single war scene."

The novel is an international best seller.

I received a free ebook through Penguin First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Ishbel · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Kiedy patrzę na starą toaletkę stojącą tu za mną, widzę niską, krępą postać, z której bije niesamowita siła. Jasnoniebieskie oczy, teraz już ponad trzydzieści lat od jego śmierci, błyszczą w głowie okolonej rzadkimi białymi włosami, trochę jak na tym słynnym wizerunku starego Arthura Schopenhauera – niezłomne, wielkie osobowości, o których mówimy, że już nie istnieją, ponieważ życie utraciło spartańską powściągliwość konieczną, by takie temperamenty mogły dojrzewać i się rozwijać. Słyszę go, jak w zaraźliwy sposób podnosi głos, słyszę tessiturę jego opowieści, lecz specyficznych słów ani zdań już nie ma. Są zapachy, które go otaczały, zapachy staroświeckiego malarza i coś nieokreślonego, jego zapach, jego kiedyś cielesna obecność w świecie, daleko od chwili, w której to piszę. Kiedy odszedł w czasie jak postaci w starych mitach i opowieściach, ukonkretnił się w zupełnie inny sposób, a mianowicie poprzez intymną przeszłość“.

Stefan Hertmans, „Wojna i terpentyna“

Brawurowe tłumaczenie Alicji Oczko, która płynnie przechodzi od nostalgicznych rozważań wnuka i impresji o malarstwie do krótkich, rzeczowych zdań – pogłosu oficerskich rozkazów, świszczących pocisków, namacalności gówna i błota w okopach I wojny światowej.

Znakomita decyzja Wydawnictwa Artrage, żeby tę powieść wznowić (bo wydanie z wydawnictwa Marginesy, które wyszło 10 lat temu jakoś totalnie mi umknęło, nie wiem dlaczego, ale nie kojarzę nawet okładki).

A książka?
Może to będzie pachnieć przesadą. Może to górnolotne, ale w sumie wali mnie to.

Otóż książka wybitna.
WY-BIT-NA

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Com grande pena minha, mas este livro desiludiu-me imenso.
Vinha com grandes expectativas e altas recomendações, mas acabou por não se revelar nada do que esperava.
A começar pela identificação do livro como um romance, quando se trata obviamente de uma obra de não ficção. É a biografia do avô do autor. Ponto. Que poderia ter tido uma vida muito interessante e cheia de acontecimentos marcantes, mas para além da participação na Primeira Grande Guerra, e ter sobrevivido a esta, não encontrei outras marcas dignas de grande nota.
A primeira parte da obra relata a infância e juventude de Urbain, a vida da mãe, a pobreza, o trabalho numa fundição, o gosto pelo trabalho do pai que era pintor e que morre muito cedo deixando a família desamparada.
A segunda parte, apesar de ser a parte que efetivamente mais me interessava, a parte da guerra, foi a que se revelou mais pequena e que foi relatada sem grandes episódios. Gostaria de ter sabido mais sobre a participação belga na guerra e sobre as impressões que está causava nos soldados em geral. E, aí da que algumas coisas nos sejam relatadas, é tudo muito superficial e é descrito sem grande emoção. Sem dúvida porque, se tratando de uma transcrição de acontecimentos que o autor descobriu nos diários do avô, é compreensível que estes assuntos não fossem muito desenvolvidos, numa tentativa de esquecer os próprios acontecimentos traumáticos vividos.
Reconheço a qualidade da escrita e percebo a nomeação da obra para inúmeros prémios literários europeus.
E para quem gosta de história e sobretudo de arte, penso que poderá apreciar mais este livro. Simplesmente, para mim, não funcionou.

[ميرنا المهدي · Rating 4 out of 5]

#ليستة_ميرنا 📖
أنهيتُ رواية الحرب والتربنتين للروائي ستيفان هيرتمانس بترجمتها البديعة عن الأستاذ أمينة عابد التي نقلت إلينا بالعربية ولأول مرة بالشرق الأوسط، واحدة من أقوى الروايات الهولندية والتي تُرجِمَت لأكثر من ٣٠ لغة.

📚 نبذة عن الرواية بدون حرق:
تدور الأحداث حول روائي ورث عن جده دفتري مذكراته يتناولا حقبة اشتراكه كجندي بالحرب العالمية الأولى، آملاً أن يجد بهما ما يكفي من الإلهام لإتمام مشروع روايته التي خطط لصدورها تزامناً مع الذكرى المئوية لتلك الحرب العصيبة ولكنه يتفاجأ بغوص جده في تفاصيل أخرى تكشف له عن خبايا طفولته الفقيرة وزمن مراهقته القاسية وفترة رشده المروعة.

📚 رأيي الشخصي:
- تزامن صدور رواية (الحرب والتربنتين) مع الذكرى المئوية للحرب العالمية الأولى، فظننتُ أنني سأقرأ رواية دموية تصف بشاعة وويلات الحرب ولكن الأمر كان عكس توقعاتي فهى أقرب ما يكون لرواية اجتماعية/نفسية تأخذك في رحلة زمنية لحقبة ودولة لم يتم تقديمهما أدبياً للقارئ العربي بما يكفي.
- الرواية ممتعة وثرية فأنا لم أفقه الكثير عن تاريخ هولندا أو ما عانته بالحرب العالمية الأولى لأن التركيز دائماً ما يكون على فرنسا وإنجلترا ولكن تلك البلد بثقافتها وظروفها وحكاياتها فتحت عيني على أفاق جديدة.
- اللغة سلسة وممتعة وترجمة الأستاذة أمينة مبهرة.
- أحببتُ وجود صور تذكارية لمعظم الأماكن والأشخاص الذين تم وصفهم فهذا أضاف الكثير من الثراء لتجربتي وساعدني على التعرف أكثر على هولندا ومعالمها.
- أنصح بها كل محبي القراءات التاريخية ومن لديهم فضول للتعرف على هولندا بتلك الفترة من الزمن.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often, I find myself profoundly affected by a novel. This is one of those instances.
The imagery Stefan Hertmans conjures up in War and Turpentine left an indelible impression upon me.

When I read of the grandson dropping the gold watch, I cried aloud in dismay; when reading of the heartless, severe treatment, the grandfather received at the hands of French officers, I was at once reminded of Cobb’s Paths of Glory.
The tradition, respect and altruism of a bygone age struck a chord with me. The attempts at reconciling polar opposites of both the warrior and the artist were heart-wrenching, and I confess to having shed a tear more than once.

Expertly translated by David McKay, this captivating, poignant work is deserving of its many plaudits.