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De tienduizend dingen
Een Moluks eiland, in de nadagen van de Nederlandse kolonialisering. Felicia, ‘mevrouw van Kleyntjes’, woont alleen met haar bedienden op een afgelegen plantage aan een baai. Er is veel gebeurd in haar leven. Ze herinnert zich de doden en de levenden, met weemoed maar berustend in haar lot.
De tienduizend dingen werd in dertien talen vertaald. In de VS stond het wekenlang boven aan in de top tien, en Time verkoos deze roman tot het beste boek van 1958 (daarbij Truman Capote en Boris Pasternak achter zich latend).
De tienduizend dingen werd in dertien talen vertaald. In de VS stond het wekenlang boven aan in de top tien, en Time verkoos deze roman tot het beste boek van 1958 (daarbij Truman Capote en Boris Pasternak achter zich latend).
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
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8221 people want to read
About the author
Maria Dermoût
18 books38 followersHelena Anthonia Maria Elisabeth Dermoût-Ingerman was born in Pekalongan, Java, Indonesia, on 15 June 1888 and died in the Hague, the Netherlands, on 27 June 1962. She was a Dutch-Indonesian author.
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February 8, 2013
Chances are you haven’t heard of Maria Dermoût before, especially if you don’t read Dutch. She left behind a small body of work -- two novels, both published when she was in her 60s, and five short story collections. It appears that throughout most of her life, writing was something she engaged in for herself, perhaps a way to maintain a sense of stability in a life full of motion. It is fortunate for us that she finally published her work, as her writing is atmospheric, mysterious, balanced precariously between the class- and race-conscious world of Dutch colonialists, and the spiritual and traditional world of the indigenous Indonesians. As Hans Koning writes in the introduction to the NYRB edition of his English translation of the novel, "Dermoût was sui generis, a case all her own. She did not write about her Indies as a Dutch woman, or as a Javanese or an Ambonese. Hers was a near-compassionate disdain for the dividing lines, the hatreds and the fears ... She painted landscapes, still lifes and people in a world of myth and mystery." (viii-ix) Her novel The Ten Thousand Things, generally considered to be her masterpiece, is a work of memory and loss, of a world of haunted ruins, secret rituals, lapping water, and mist-shrouded forests.
Maria Dermoût (1888-1962)
Born in 1888 on a sugar plantation on Java, Dutch East Indies, Dermoût was educated in Holland, but she returned to Java afterwards and married a jurist. Her travels with her husband led her throughout Indonesia, where she lived in Java, Celebes, and the Moluccas, moving between the colonial world of plantations and towns and the indigenous communities in more remote villages. She later returned to Holland, but she appears to have carried the ghosts of Indonesia with her.
The Molucca Islands, Indonesia
The Ten Thousand Things has a simple structure. The first section, “The Island,” provides a brief but sensuous description of the Moluccan island that is the site for the story. We are immediately introduced to a sense of the distance between the present and a past when the islands were dotted with spice gardens, when grand plantation houses stood proudly. Now all that remain are ruins, collapsed walls, overgrown gardens, and traces of the past: “The remembrance of a human being, of something that happened, can remain in a place, tangible almost--perhaps there is someone left who knows about it and thinks about it sometimes.” Dermoût immediately moves to more specific ghostly images:
Did two lovers once hold each other here and whisper -- forever -- or did they let each other go between the little nutmeg trees and say -- goodbye?
Did a child play with her doll on the window sill?
Who was standing on the beach then, staring over the three little waves of the surf? and over the bay? at what?
A silence like an answer, a silence of both resignation and expectation, a past and not past.
There was not much else left.
Two of the gardens were haunted.
In a little garden at the outer bay, close to the town, a drowned man walked, but that was of not so long ago, of now, so to speak. And in another garden at the inner bay there were, from far time, three little girls. (6)
The Molucca Islands, Indonesia
As she continues through the rest of this section, Dermoût leads the reader on a virtual tour of the island. The graves of the three girls remain a landmark, but she devotes equal attention to the landscape that surrounds them:
A small straight lane--going nowhere--of cassowarinas, high firs with long drooping needles, as smooth and straight as the feathers of a cassowary, stirred by every breeze from the inner bay -- rustling, lisping, as if they were standing there whispering together. The singing trees they were called.
A water-clear brook ran through the wood, higher up part of it was led through a hollow tree trunk to a stone reservoir marked by a sculptured lion’s head with a mossy green mane. From the gaping mouth several spouts of water arched across each other, down into a dug-out stone cistern: a large yet shallow cistern with a wide edge of masonry to sit upon.
All this was in the shade: the cistern, the reservoir with its sculpture, the tree trunks, the ground, all was moist, thickly covered by moss or molded with black and dark-green spots--only the surface of the water held the light in its clarity, in the transparent ripples which swept across it. (8)
Spice garden, Bali, Indonesia
Throughout the novel, Dermoût excels at this kind of description. She drew me into the shadowy, mossy forests, the blue, clear water of the bay with proas gliding across them, ferrying people from one side of the bay to the other. Her skills at description are not limited to scenery. She also conveys the lives of the islanders from a past when they followed traditions marking life and death. One of these rituals introduces us to the meaning behind the novel’s title:
Someone sang a love song in the moonlight: “the evening is too long, beloved, and the road too far”-- others clapped their hands with it--a single bamboo flute, languishing.
A lullaby for a child, or a story sung to it, battle songs of the wild Alfuras, head-hunters of Ceram. And sometimes, very rarely, the old heathen lament (careful, don’t let the schoolteacher hear it) for one who has just died. “The hundred things” was the name of the lament--the hundred things of which the dead one is reminded, which are asked him, told him.
Not only the people in his life: this girl, this woman and that one, that child, your father, your mother, a brother or sister, the grandparents, a grandchild, a friend, a comrade-in-arms; or his possessions: your beautiful house, your china dishes hidden in the attic, the swift proa, your sharp knife, the little inlaid shield from long ago, the two silver rings on your right hand, on index finger and thumb, the tamed pigeon; but also: hear, how the wind blows!--how white-crested the waves come running from the high sea!--the fishes jump out of the water and play with each other--look how the shells gleam on the beach--remember the coral gardens under water, and how they are colored--and the bay!--the bay!--please never forget the bay! And then they said: oh soul of so-and-so, and ended with a long-held melancholy ee-ee-ee! ee-ee-ee! over the water. (13-14)
The novel itself is one prolonged song for the dead, one which connects lost loved ones to the landscape, the houses, the people, the treasures, the laments and songs of celebration that make up a life. Dermoût identifies power in trees and water, in shells and jewels, in zealously-guarded family recipes for powerful potions, used for good or for evil. In many ways, the novel also traces the deterioration of belief in these traditional means of balancing the power of the universe with the dreams and fears of humans, as islanders became more distant from these old ways under the influence of the colonial West. Dermoût does not write any explicit attacks or defences of the old ways, but she does write of them with respect, while also conveying a growing sense of skepticism on the part of some characters.
The novel next is divided into two longer sections, “At the Inner Bay” and “At the Outer Bay.” In each section, Dermoût delves deeper into the history of the ghosts she introduces in the first section. She remains focused on the family and experiences of a character she introduces in the first section, the lady of the Small Garden, who has lost all her family, and remains alone with her ghosts. Particularly in the second section, “At the Inner Bay,” Dermoût describes the childhood of the lady of the Small Garden, Felicia, and her experiences living with her grandmother as a child . Throughout this section, we are introduced to Felicia’s family, the Indonesian servants who serve as an extended family, and the myths and legends they all live with and by. Throughout, Dermoût maintains a focus on the power of things, particularly as she describes the antique cabinet full of treasures that her grandmother assembled and watched over, a tradition she passes on to Felicia.
English postcard showing an Indonesian sugar plantation, c. 1900
Throughout the rest of the novel, Dermoût weaves the stories of the dead, the legends of the island, and the personal history of Felicia and her family into a tapestry of memory, love, and loss. Vestiges of the past surround those who stop, listen carefully, and remain open to their echoes. She concludes the novel with a fourth section, again titled “The Island,” which provides a memorable conclusion to Felicia’s story, as well as to the other stories we have read.
[image error]
With her two children, Ettie and Hans, in 1912
Dermoût knew loss intimately. Her son Hans died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She does not write directly of her loss in this novel, but she uses her personal understanding of her grief for the loss of her son to create a moving picture of a mother's mourning. She tries to assuage loss and grief by recounting some of the ten thousand things that made up life on the islands she knew so well. Perhaps by writing this beautiful, strange, mysterious novel, she found some peace for herself.
Maria Dermoût in her living room in Noordwijk in 1958
Indonesia
Maria Dermoût (1888-1962)
Born in 1888 on a sugar plantation on Java, Dutch East Indies, Dermoût was educated in Holland, but she returned to Java afterwards and married a jurist. Her travels with her husband led her throughout Indonesia, where she lived in Java, Celebes, and the Moluccas, moving between the colonial world of plantations and towns and the indigenous communities in more remote villages. She later returned to Holland, but she appears to have carried the ghosts of Indonesia with her.
The Molucca Islands, Indonesia
The Ten Thousand Things has a simple structure. The first section, “The Island,” provides a brief but sensuous description of the Moluccan island that is the site for the story. We are immediately introduced to a sense of the distance between the present and a past when the islands were dotted with spice gardens, when grand plantation houses stood proudly. Now all that remain are ruins, collapsed walls, overgrown gardens, and traces of the past: “The remembrance of a human being, of something that happened, can remain in a place, tangible almost--perhaps there is someone left who knows about it and thinks about it sometimes.” Dermoût immediately moves to more specific ghostly images:
Did two lovers once hold each other here and whisper -- forever -- or did they let each other go between the little nutmeg trees and say -- goodbye?
Did a child play with her doll on the window sill?
Who was standing on the beach then, staring over the three little waves of the surf? and over the bay? at what?
A silence like an answer, a silence of both resignation and expectation, a past and not past.
There was not much else left.
Two of the gardens were haunted.
In a little garden at the outer bay, close to the town, a drowned man walked, but that was of not so long ago, of now, so to speak. And in another garden at the inner bay there were, from far time, three little girls. (6)
The Molucca Islands, Indonesia
As she continues through the rest of this section, Dermoût leads the reader on a virtual tour of the island. The graves of the three girls remain a landmark, but she devotes equal attention to the landscape that surrounds them:
A small straight lane--going nowhere--of cassowarinas, high firs with long drooping needles, as smooth and straight as the feathers of a cassowary, stirred by every breeze from the inner bay -- rustling, lisping, as if they were standing there whispering together. The singing trees they were called.
A water-clear brook ran through the wood, higher up part of it was led through a hollow tree trunk to a stone reservoir marked by a sculptured lion’s head with a mossy green mane. From the gaping mouth several spouts of water arched across each other, down into a dug-out stone cistern: a large yet shallow cistern with a wide edge of masonry to sit upon.
All this was in the shade: the cistern, the reservoir with its sculpture, the tree trunks, the ground, all was moist, thickly covered by moss or molded with black and dark-green spots--only the surface of the water held the light in its clarity, in the transparent ripples which swept across it. (8)
Spice garden, Bali, Indonesia
Throughout the novel, Dermoût excels at this kind of description. She drew me into the shadowy, mossy forests, the blue, clear water of the bay with proas gliding across them, ferrying people from one side of the bay to the other. Her skills at description are not limited to scenery. She also conveys the lives of the islanders from a past when they followed traditions marking life and death. One of these rituals introduces us to the meaning behind the novel’s title:
Someone sang a love song in the moonlight: “the evening is too long, beloved, and the road too far”-- others clapped their hands with it--a single bamboo flute, languishing.
A lullaby for a child, or a story sung to it, battle songs of the wild Alfuras, head-hunters of Ceram. And sometimes, very rarely, the old heathen lament (careful, don’t let the schoolteacher hear it) for one who has just died. “The hundred things” was the name of the lament--the hundred things of which the dead one is reminded, which are asked him, told him.
Not only the people in his life: this girl, this woman and that one, that child, your father, your mother, a brother or sister, the grandparents, a grandchild, a friend, a comrade-in-arms; or his possessions: your beautiful house, your china dishes hidden in the attic, the swift proa, your sharp knife, the little inlaid shield from long ago, the two silver rings on your right hand, on index finger and thumb, the tamed pigeon; but also: hear, how the wind blows!--how white-crested the waves come running from the high sea!--the fishes jump out of the water and play with each other--look how the shells gleam on the beach--remember the coral gardens under water, and how they are colored--and the bay!--the bay!--please never forget the bay! And then they said: oh soul of so-and-so, and ended with a long-held melancholy ee-ee-ee! ee-ee-ee! over the water. (13-14)
The novel itself is one prolonged song for the dead, one which connects lost loved ones to the landscape, the houses, the people, the treasures, the laments and songs of celebration that make up a life. Dermoût identifies power in trees and water, in shells and jewels, in zealously-guarded family recipes for powerful potions, used for good or for evil. In many ways, the novel also traces the deterioration of belief in these traditional means of balancing the power of the universe with the dreams and fears of humans, as islanders became more distant from these old ways under the influence of the colonial West. Dermoût does not write any explicit attacks or defences of the old ways, but she does write of them with respect, while also conveying a growing sense of skepticism on the part of some characters.
The novel next is divided into two longer sections, “At the Inner Bay” and “At the Outer Bay.” In each section, Dermoût delves deeper into the history of the ghosts she introduces in the first section. She remains focused on the family and experiences of a character she introduces in the first section, the lady of the Small Garden, who has lost all her family, and remains alone with her ghosts. Particularly in the second section, “At the Inner Bay,” Dermoût describes the childhood of the lady of the Small Garden, Felicia, and her experiences living with her grandmother as a child . Throughout this section, we are introduced to Felicia’s family, the Indonesian servants who serve as an extended family, and the myths and legends they all live with and by. Throughout, Dermoût maintains a focus on the power of things, particularly as she describes the antique cabinet full of treasures that her grandmother assembled and watched over, a tradition she passes on to Felicia.
English postcard showing an Indonesian sugar plantation, c. 1900
Throughout the rest of the novel, Dermoût weaves the stories of the dead, the legends of the island, and the personal history of Felicia and her family into a tapestry of memory, love, and loss. Vestiges of the past surround those who stop, listen carefully, and remain open to their echoes. She concludes the novel with a fourth section, again titled “The Island,” which provides a memorable conclusion to Felicia’s story, as well as to the other stories we have read.
[image error]
With her two children, Ettie and Hans, in 1912
Dermoût knew loss intimately. Her son Hans died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She does not write directly of her loss in this novel, but she uses her personal understanding of her grief for the loss of her son to create a moving picture of a mother's mourning. She tries to assuage loss and grief by recounting some of the ten thousand things that made up life on the islands she knew so well. Perhaps by writing this beautiful, strange, mysterious novel, she found some peace for herself.
Maria Dermoût in her living room in Noordwijk in 1958
Indonesia
June 11, 2017
Suddenly there was an almost tangible silence.
Only the sound of the surf on the coast, the steady murmur of the ocean far out, and the wind, in gusts.
The two men let out the sounding line over the edge of the proa.
The Binongko stood up (the guards let him), he spoke some words--repeated the same ones, it seemed--no one understood him except the one police guard but he paid no attention. Nobody paid attention.
Nobody listened--but they all looked at him.
The two under the roof, the rowers on each side of the proa, the two with the sounding lead worked on the line but they looked at him too, and so did the guards. All looked, all those pairs of dark eyes and the one pair of blue eyes, all looked at the shackled man standing in their midst--the murderer.
Nobody spoke.
Suprapto had the feeling of circles--concentric circles.
First the murderer: his handcuffs and chains made him seem enclosed and encircled within himself.
Then all of them around the man.
The proa again around them.
Outside--the open--water, waves, coast, trees, wind and sky--were no part of this, could not set them free from the circles. They had no link with all that any more.
No one spoke, no one moved.
. . . .
And it was over. The tightening circles had been loosened, without much effort.
Dermout's prose is breathtaking, evocative, efficient. She offers the cadence of the sea; one of the finest endings I've read; a quiet, constant awareness of her characters' surroundings and circumstances; the ability to create tension out of nothing, and then again, release it, with a word or two. She accomplishes in 208 pages what others take twice as much to say, and with less power. She gives us an Indonesia long gone, with a story that is both ancient and current. One word of advice --read the Introduction after you read the book.
March 30, 2015
Stories often begin in a garden. Gardens for the origin of our species; gardens for the childhood of our lives; or a garden to which one’s soul is bound. The garden of the Ten Thousand Things however, is not like Eden, for together with the beguiling casuarina trees of the singing branches and the long dropping needles, there are ghosts.
This is the first of the two novels written by Maria Dermoût (1888-1962). She was a Dutch woman who was born and raised in the Eastern colonies of her country, in what today is Indonesia, and remained there until she moved back with her husband to her country of origin well into adulthood. The novel was first published in 1955 and remains Dermout’s most famous work.
A novel soaking in autobiographical sap will taste of memories and the play of time. And we feel the circular rhythm of this memory, with its similar motives cropping up regularly and creating regular cadences. We are in the East. Reading her is easy to tell that Dermoût is at home in the Southern islands. Holland and Europe remain distant and abstract, and foreignness is to be Javanese if one is in one of the Moluccas. With no futile exoticism, we can scent the mystery in a phantasmagoric magic.
The structure may seem strange but one could comprehend it as musical, with its middle movements developing new themes and pulling together in a heartrending finale, but it could also seem a puzzle as disconcerting as life itself. For the uncanny remains.
If gardens are fertile ground, if they are bordered by the sea and frame the inner bays, then not just flowers, but shells from the water will colonize the earthy grounds. These nacre hulls when empty become things.
What is it with the Dutch and their love of things? Things of different uses, different colours and materials and shines. Some are precious, like pearls of the sea, or ominous like pearls of the earth. They all have their history. And all have their souls. Or take them away, like a dagger.
A garden with a Thousand Things, attended by people who could also become more things, if deprived of their soul. Following the cycles of Nature. Or may be not, may be robbed of Nature and leaving only the shell.
Would that be murder?
September 9, 2014
Slowly they had become the only ones left from the past, the only ones who knew everything, had gone through everything.
A happy coincidence greeted me when I finished reading the first part of this book, The Island. The atmosphere it portrayed was redolent of the mystifying air surrounding the narrative of Pedro Páramo and after a quick search it turned out that both of these works were first published in 1955. Apart from the thematic similarities and soulful writing, it’s the panorama of a scenic as well as a sinister place that governs the telling of various events by Rulfo and Dermoût, but as I went along it became evident that ‘The Ten Thousand Things’ had a bigger plan for me. The title certainly lives up to its name.
Can sadness be relieved, or can one only pass it by, very slowly?
The aesthetic setting of The Moluccas combined with the diversity of its way of life brings to mind the optimism of happy forevers but Dermoût hardly wastes any time in revealing the melancholic beauty of occult lore and rash ignorance of a prejudiced mankind. The kind of ignorance that cut short a healthy and ambitious living in the name of? A stamp of ownership, to darken the line of another futile discrimination, a punishment for breathing in a forbidden territory or as the manifestation of a random act resulted out of some bizarre irrationality. It’s hard to pick up a right reason under the venomous effect of so much wrong and that’s why this book discreetly maps the forested tracks around inner and outer bays and acquaint us with people they once had, the people they will always have.
She always reached the other side- she never reached the other side.
One can be never be sure if those who leave us ever reach the other side or whether such a side exist- may be they go on living or go on dying. And vacillating between this very uncertainty, all the hundreds and thousands things on these islands are alive or quietly surviving in their own unique way- The spices of the bequeathed gardens, the rare shells from the benevolent sea, the flora illustrated by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, the incessant hearsays and bitter realities, the coming and going of proas and the fascinating cabinet of curiosities. And there is Felicia, the ‘Lady of the Small Garden’ with her immediate and extended family, honoring the living and commemorating the dead by forming a revered bond between guileless spirits and flawed souls.
The garden held her, slowly enveloped her, showed her things, whispered her its secrets...
The history, as is normally the case with every place which has stories advancing from its every nook and corner, is dense here but never inaccessible. Maria Dermoût’s prose has the charm of a seasoned narrator who knows her tales by heart but never weigh them down with mawkish expressions. Among the flurry of nomadic legends and callous violence, the poignancy of her writing effortlessly surface and assert its splendor in a modest manner. She delicately holds us, slowly envelope us in her words, show us her discoveries, whisper the eternal secrets in our ears...
December 17, 2015
The trouble began with words, really.
No longer was something a thing in essence. For neither world nor time has the patience for lists of reinvention, a praxis on praxis where the slightest shift required a churning and blooming of sui generis for that one birth, that one core. World and time, so long as human muddies up the lines in hasty life and mortal unease, needs condense.
But also stretch, for both world and time are vast unknowns dripping with fragrant allurements for the passing human, all too prone to settling and all too weak in the face of fate and its realities. And when world and time carry their different settlers across one another, oh. The madness of reconciliation. Love, religion, colonialism. Death, murder, headhunting. A paradise bound in poison, sweet for the ones who suckle on the strains of sugar and blood. Too complex.
Too beautiful, you mean. Too beautiful? Beauty in the failed effort to save a life, yes yes. Beauty in the jewels and shells and cultured stone, yes yes. Beauty in the pace of living with everyone in their place, yes yes. Beauty in the mizzen sails, small and sailing jewels across in fluttered thousands, across the blue and green and boundless light of ocean bright, yes yes. But, poison in their trailing tips. Ah, so no poison. Then. Beauty in a mass-murderer crying over the unsaved death? Beauty in the cultured stone torn from graves? Beauty in the buying and selling of fellow humanity? Beauty so long as all, say, good? Then, tell, what is beauty?
Humans and their words and easy consolidations. Love the rich sheen of garnered wealth, loathe the merchant in their different faith. Feel passionate in the pursuit of knowledge in the purest form, feel uneasiness in the presence of an expert and all their foreign trappings. Cherish the murdered son bred on the gains of slavery and exploitation, condemn the murderer fulfilling the honorable traditions of their people. Incorporate with ease the culture of the outsiders around you to your liking, reject with ease the rest. Is that it?
Good with evil? Evil with good? Too mixed and murky, to go by such labels that no one can come to terms or to grips with, each breaking off with their own nature fitted with whatever nurturing comes to them by fact and fortune of birth. Too complicated when far off peoples come into contact with one another and find fascination, one with the other, but also fear. And always, always the other.
Better to stick with more concrete terms. Life, and its goings. Death, and its copings. A tiny jellyfish with its venom sting, a luscious island with its haunted grounds, a day of murdered and murderers bound by whatever attractive light led them on to their dooms. No matter the means or misconceptions, there is the end of an existence, and those who continue on. On with remembrance, on with ghosts, on with a single word that, perhaps, has some use in all these muddled and one-and-the-other of all this inexplicable happenings of such exquisite sorrow and horrendous attraction.
Grief. Yes. Avoid all reconciliation, all intersection, all encounters with something both self and other, and still the living have their dead. There, the hand is forced, the die is cast, and the rest of words fade back into incomprehensible graspings. One hundred things, ten thousand things, whatever is enough, is enough. And there, within all those number of things, lies the disparate cords of humanity and all its discordant strains across world and time, woven into, what?
What else?
No longer was something a thing in essence. For neither world nor time has the patience for lists of reinvention, a praxis on praxis where the slightest shift required a churning and blooming of sui generis for that one birth, that one core. World and time, so long as human muddies up the lines in hasty life and mortal unease, needs condense.
But also stretch, for both world and time are vast unknowns dripping with fragrant allurements for the passing human, all too prone to settling and all too weak in the face of fate and its realities. And when world and time carry their different settlers across one another, oh. The madness of reconciliation. Love, religion, colonialism. Death, murder, headhunting. A paradise bound in poison, sweet for the ones who suckle on the strains of sugar and blood. Too complex.
Too beautiful, you mean. Too beautiful? Beauty in the failed effort to save a life, yes yes. Beauty in the jewels and shells and cultured stone, yes yes. Beauty in the pace of living with everyone in their place, yes yes. Beauty in the mizzen sails, small and sailing jewels across in fluttered thousands, across the blue and green and boundless light of ocean bright, yes yes. But, poison in their trailing tips. Ah, so no poison. Then. Beauty in a mass-murderer crying over the unsaved death? Beauty in the cultured stone torn from graves? Beauty in the buying and selling of fellow humanity? Beauty so long as all, say, good? Then, tell, what is beauty?
Humans and their words and easy consolidations. Love the rich sheen of garnered wealth, loathe the merchant in their different faith. Feel passionate in the pursuit of knowledge in the purest form, feel uneasiness in the presence of an expert and all their foreign trappings. Cherish the murdered son bred on the gains of slavery and exploitation, condemn the murderer fulfilling the honorable traditions of their people. Incorporate with ease the culture of the outsiders around you to your liking, reject with ease the rest. Is that it?
Good with evil? Evil with good? Too mixed and murky, to go by such labels that no one can come to terms or to grips with, each breaking off with their own nature fitted with whatever nurturing comes to them by fact and fortune of birth. Too complicated when far off peoples come into contact with one another and find fascination, one with the other, but also fear. And always, always the other.
Better to stick with more concrete terms. Life, and its goings. Death, and its copings. A tiny jellyfish with its venom sting, a luscious island with its haunted grounds, a day of murdered and murderers bound by whatever attractive light led them on to their dooms. No matter the means or misconceptions, there is the end of an existence, and those who continue on. On with remembrance, on with ghosts, on with a single word that, perhaps, has some use in all these muddled and one-and-the-other of all this inexplicable happenings of such exquisite sorrow and horrendous attraction.
Grief. Yes. Avoid all reconciliation, all intersection, all encounters with something both self and other, and still the living have their dead. There, the hand is forced, the die is cast, and the rest of words fade back into incomprehensible graspings. One hundred things, ten thousand things, whatever is enough, is enough. And there, within all those number of things, lies the disparate cords of humanity and all its discordant strains across world and time, woven into, what?
What else?
"Rumphius says that they're quite beautiful."
"Yes," said the officer, "a strange poisonous green, with long blue streamers, and the sails are sort of transparent with a coloured edge."
"A crystal sail edged with purple or violet."
"Yes," the officer agreed, a bit astonished.
"Like a jewel, Rumphius said."
"Yes," there was a flicker of enthusiasm in the blue eyes, "yes, that's true!"
Glorious, someone said.
And Suprapto continued, " I guess the sails aren't very big–"
"Now, how could they be big? Without the streamers these jellyfish aren't big themselves–the sails aren't bigger than–" the officer looked around for something to compare them with: his own firm hand, and then the slim dark hand which the Javanese held on his knee. He didn't touch it, but he pointed at it, his fingers moving under the knuckles, "a bit larger than the width of your hand perhaps."
Suprapto looked where the other had pointed–his own thin hand.
"Yes," he said in his even, toneless voice, "I realized that those sails are small–not big,"
For a short moment it caused him an almost inhuman pain.
January 4, 2016
Wonderful, magical book, unlike anything I've read before. Set in Indonesia; peopled by Dutch and Indonesian, the living and the dead; following a narrative path of its own through the physical world, the natural world, the spiritual world to tell such stories...difficult to describe as they are truly singular. This book must be experienced.
I envisioned writing a longer review but at the moment inspiration is lacking and I will leave it here. This is highly recommended to all who are not intimidated by magical realism and a touch of the mystical. This is a wonderful book. For a more in depth discussion, I suggest reading Kris' review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
What a joy for my first completed book of 2016.
I envisioned writing a longer review but at the moment inspiration is lacking and I will leave it here. This is highly recommended to all who are not intimidated by magical realism and a touch of the mystical. This is a wonderful book. For a more in depth discussion, I suggest reading Kris' review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
What a joy for my first completed book of 2016.
August 5, 2009
It is a mess, but it is a beautiful mess. I feel the book but I don't know what it is saying exactly. That is the best kind. The structure is unconventional; reading it, I had no idea how to read it, which is a nice feeling: it is the feeling of reading the very first novel. And then there are the things from the title, the imbued significance (though, thankfully, not symbolism) of things, the aura and magic, the legends and rumors, the history and narrative: the things that compose a life. And the emotions that these things build up with each repetition, each repetition weighing more because it has soaked up more in its path.
April 17, 2023
4.5 stars
Perfect summer reading for lovers of literary novels.
It’s sad, but languidly, not violently. And it’s set in a garden in a Moluccas, full of beautiful but not overripe descriptions. There is water, there are flowers, there are shells, there are people, natives of the islands and Dutch colonists, lemon trees and turtles, the half-shell of the leviathan, the never-quite-glimpsed ghosts of three murdered girls from long ago. An old woman lives alone in a fading spice garden. Her granddaughter returns, with a young son in tow, and over time becomes an old woman in the garden herself.
It is a lovely novel because it has clearly been written by someone who wrote for herself. It does not really try to be a novel at all, structurally. The first chapter tells you what is to come, the next half lays out that story, and then there are a trio of what seem to be short stories, only tangentially related, and then a final chapter that pulls all the threads together on a moonlit night. Maria Dermoût was a Dutch woman who was born and spent the majority of her life in Indonesia, and she does not write with a colonist's eye, but as someone at home in many realities, among many people. This is a debut novel, published in 1955 when the author was in her sixties, and it is unlike anything else.
So yes, if it is hot where you are and shimmering with humidity, if you have a body of water to sit near, if you want something beautiful but not something “light,” you could do much worse than this.
Perfect summer reading for lovers of literary novels.
It’s sad, but languidly, not violently. And it’s set in a garden in a Moluccas, full of beautiful but not overripe descriptions. There is water, there are flowers, there are shells, there are people, natives of the islands and Dutch colonists, lemon trees and turtles, the half-shell of the leviathan, the never-quite-glimpsed ghosts of three murdered girls from long ago. An old woman lives alone in a fading spice garden. Her granddaughter returns, with a young son in tow, and over time becomes an old woman in the garden herself.
It is a lovely novel because it has clearly been written by someone who wrote for herself. It does not really try to be a novel at all, structurally. The first chapter tells you what is to come, the next half lays out that story, and then there are a trio of what seem to be short stories, only tangentially related, and then a final chapter that pulls all the threads together on a moonlit night. Maria Dermoût was a Dutch woman who was born and spent the majority of her life in Indonesia, and she does not write with a colonist's eye, but as someone at home in many realities, among many people. This is a debut novel, published in 1955 when the author was in her sixties, and it is unlike anything else.
So yes, if it is hot where you are and shimmering with humidity, if you have a body of water to sit near, if you want something beautiful but not something “light,” you could do much worse than this.
February 24, 2019
Ook zonder te weten dat Dermoût in Nederlands-Indië geboren is, kon ik het van de bladzijden lezen/ruiken/proeven. Die herkenning komt voort uit Louis Couperus en Hella Haasse: een tuin op een niet nader benoemd Moluks eiland is de plaats van handeling; en alleen iemand die er is opgegroeid, kan het zo zintuiglijk beschrijven.
Elk hoofdstuk in 'De tienduizend dingen' is een verhaal op zich, waarvan je ontdekt wat de band is met de 'mevrouw van Kleyntjes' (de vrouw die in de bewuste tuin leeft). Tezamen vormen ze een geheel dat je trager doet lezen, zonder haast.
Deze compacte uitgave kun je in theorie in enkele uren in de luie stoel uitlezen, maar voor mijn gevoel ben ik maandenlang op wereldreis geweest.
"Wanneer de 'tienduizend dingen' gezien zijn in hun eenheid, keren wij terug tot het begin en blijven wij waar wij altijd geweest zijn."
"Al deze dingen, en nog andere, en de hemel erbij, waren het eiland."
Elk hoofdstuk in 'De tienduizend dingen' is een verhaal op zich, waarvan je ontdekt wat de band is met de 'mevrouw van Kleyntjes' (de vrouw die in de bewuste tuin leeft). Tezamen vormen ze een geheel dat je trager doet lezen, zonder haast.
Deze compacte uitgave kun je in theorie in enkele uren in de luie stoel uitlezen, maar voor mijn gevoel ben ik maandenlang op wereldreis geweest.
"Wanneer de 'tienduizend dingen' gezien zijn in hun eenheid, keren wij terug tot het begin en blijven wij waar wij altijd geweest zijn."
"Al deze dingen, en nog andere, en de hemel erbij, waren het eiland."
February 10, 2025
It was impossible to think of anything more wonderful than a stay at the Small Garden on the inner bay.
Can you name a thousand things that you loved in your own life? Or even a hundred vistas, events, people? Maria Dermout can list all ten thousand of her ‘little’ things that made life in the Maluku Islands such a memorable, and painful experience. Presented as the fictional memoir of a woman named Felicia, raised as a lonesome child by her grandmother at the turn of the twentieth century on a former spice plantation known locally as the Small Garden.
... the Small Garden is for you, granddaughter. It isn’t that I forget my son Willem – I love my son very much,” and she enumerated the names of all those whom she had loved most during her life ...
I myself fell under the magical spell of these fabled spice islands as a teenager, reading the stories of Joseph Conrad, later those of W. Somerset Maugham or the paintings of Paul Gauguin, dreaming of the myth and mystery of these enchanted places. Maria Dermout belongs in the same category of ‘captives of the islands’ as these other artists, her portrait of this murderous yet fascinating island paradise held me spellbound. despite or maybe because the focus is not Occidental action and control, but Oriental contemplation and endurance.
Felicia is a scion of an old Dutch colonial family, heir not only of a large plantation, but also of historical abuses and prejudices. The novel acknowledges the past, but doesn’t delve on it and it doesn’t try to rewrite the history according to modern sensibilities. For Felicia skin colour, religion and political orientation are just surface details for actors playing on a much larger scene against an indifferent and often cruel natural background.
“My father said once – everyone had slaves, those were the years of the slaves, that was the evil of the time, my father said. Every time has its own evil, but a human being can still be good.”
Maybe because I was a big city child who grew up on concrete playgrounds in between high rise flats, Felicia’s childhood still has the power to inflame my imagination, like those Conrad sea faring stories, with the evocation of the extravagant diversity of plant and animal life, the colours and the scents of the secret garden that awaits the wearied traveller at the end of a very long journey.
She knew the island so well, up to the steepest mountain, down into the deepest jungle; she had sailed all the coasts in a proa. She knew where, here and there and everywhere, a never-seen tree or plant grew, a strange flower bloomed. She had so often leaned over the edge of her proa to look through a hollow bamboo at the sea garden in the outer bay – the dream vision petrified in the coral, so unreally quiet, in which only a few gaily colored little fish moved as swift as arrows, or tiny brown sea horses hung perpendicularly in the water, staring earnestly at each other. Somewhere there was also a place with nothing but the rare red coral, like a field of red clover under the blue waves.
One of the repositories of wonder in the house of the girl’s grandmother is a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ : a chest where the old lady keeps special sea shells and pieces of coral, pearls and amulets, gold and amber, masks and totems of house guardians and more. Felicia will not only inherit the cabinet, but she will add to the collection in keeping for her own son, nicknamed Himpies, and will invent stories about each item to tell to the little boy in the hope he will awaken to the same magical sense of the world around him that she experienced in her own childhood.
Young Himpies, coming back home after studies in Europe, will disappoint his mother by joining the military instead of becoming a doctor. . Family traditions and the sort of ethics that Felicia’s grandmother lived by can only be accepted and absorbed in freedom of choice. They are the result of age old wisdom passed on from one generation to the next, but only if the younger members are willing to listen. Often, for these young people it is more important to seek for their own experiences before they settle for the old lessons... if they are given the time and the patience to learn.
Everything is so relative in my mind. Of course, I see good and bad, and try to stick to the good in my own way, but I think that making judgments is very difficult. And what befalls us, life itself, I’d say, everything, long or short, nice or miserable, shouldn’t we accept it as it falls without too much examination?
Life on the island can be beautiful and gay, with echoes of the Jazz age and of F. Scott Fitzgerald once a younger generation comes to spend the summer evenings at the plantation:
In the evening there was dancing on the new verandah, and when the lemon trees were in bloom the air was drenched with the heavy sweet scent; she played the piano, Himpies was expert in leading the quadrille. There were Chinese lanterns in the trees and it was very gay at the Small Garden.
Yet, right from the start, there is an undercurrent of danger, of rot and cruelty at the secret core of the spice garden. Three little graves stand in the shade near the ruins of a formal mansion that the grandmother says must never be rebuilt. Three little ghosts are said to be roaming the grounds on special nights, three sisters that were allegedly poisoned by a slave maid. Giant mollusks wait for the unwary swimmer in the tranquil bay, and a volcano looms high over the grounds. Headhunters are restless in neighboring islands and some terrible stories are making the rounds in the nearby city : of cursed pearls and vengeful women, of knife wielding jealous sailors, of clueless yet well intended Scottish scientists falling sick from tropical illnesses, of young heirs to Java kingdoms working as government clerks and more.
Under the cliff, in a hollow in the rocks, the octopus was waiting, not a little one like so many which swim in the bay but the gigantic Octopus – the One – with all its eight terrible wriggling grasping arms full of sucking cups, glaring out of two black bulging little eyes. It saw everything, because it could see in the light and it could see in the dark; but no one could see the Octopus. Every fisher, every rower knew about it, every helmsman watched carefully at that corner.
These terrible things are also amongst the ten thousand threads that woven together will make the tapestry of life on the island. Pain and loss are lessons that one should learn side by side with the stories of wonder, and are sometimes the hardest to get through. Not for nothing did Felicia’s grandmother told her from the start:
A person must be content with what’s given, and manage with that as well as possible; and then she said again, “you must learn to be a proud girl, upright, and not cry or be scared,” and “if we can only remain proud people!”
Later Felicia understood that with proud she meant courageous; at least that is what she thought.
From a little girl to an old woman living alone on the plantation, in the company of a couple of faithful yet slightly nondescript native servants, Felicia has many reasons to remember her grandmother’s words and to reflect on their true meaning, to search for whatever solace can be salvaged from the ruins of her youthful dreams.
They couldn’t say to her, “you must try and get over it,” that made her furious, “do you think we should get over each other,” she asked, “is that what you think?”
“Without love, without loyalty, without memory – cowards! she would mutter afterwards. Cowards, that was it – it hurt them too much.
As she had tasted bitterness, more bitter than the bitter water from the bitter spring, so she now knew pain, inside and outside – and what is there to still pain?
Serenity through courage, to see beauty even in destruction, to love the people around you and to cherish their company despite the differences in upbringing and culture, is what the Small Garden has taught Felicia. One of the cherished treasures in her cabinet of curiosities is an old folio by Georg Eberhard Rumphius named Herbarium Amboinense , containing detailed descriptions and sketches of plant life on an island that many readers identified as the same one in this book: Ambon Island in the Moluccas.
And in that Rumphius album, shared by Felicia and the European professor, there is a description of a beautiful invertebrate, a fragile thing of deadly grace that might as well serve as a metaphor for life:
“Rumphius says that they’re quite beautiful.”
“Yes,” said the officer, “a strange poisonous green, with long blue streamers, and the sails are sort of transparent with a colored edge.”
“A crystal sail edged with purple or violet.”
A portuguese man-of-war can be enchanting to see floating in the Banda Sea, but it will be poisonous to touch. Yet what else can we do but to accept the bad along with the good we are offered and learn what we can from the experience. The novel opens and closes with a contemplative moment, with the old lady coming at night to the shore to converse with the ghosts in her garden, a Western eye learning some of the mysteries of Oriental thinking, enumerating once again a hundred times “a hundred things,” next to each other, separate from each other, touching here and there flowing into each other, without any link anywhere, and at the same time linked forever ...
... and bringing the whole story full circle back to the start, to that epigram on the first page attributed to T’sen Shen :
When the ten thousand things have been seen in their unity, we return to the beginning and remain where we have always been.
“Stay with me,” she suddenly whispered, frightened, closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and them looked silently out again over the inner bay.
A melancholic memoir, but never a bitter one or an angry one – just a celebration of life in all its ten thousand forms.
Can you name a thousand things that you loved in your own life? Or even a hundred vistas, events, people? Maria Dermout can list all ten thousand of her ‘little’ things that made life in the Maluku Islands such a memorable, and painful experience. Presented as the fictional memoir of a woman named Felicia, raised as a lonesome child by her grandmother at the turn of the twentieth century on a former spice plantation known locally as the Small Garden.
... the Small Garden is for you, granddaughter. It isn’t that I forget my son Willem – I love my son very much,” and she enumerated the names of all those whom she had loved most during her life ...
I myself fell under the magical spell of these fabled spice islands as a teenager, reading the stories of Joseph Conrad, later those of W. Somerset Maugham or the paintings of Paul Gauguin, dreaming of the myth and mystery of these enchanted places. Maria Dermout belongs in the same category of ‘captives of the islands’ as these other artists, her portrait of this murderous yet fascinating island paradise held me spellbound. despite or maybe because the focus is not Occidental action and control, but Oriental contemplation and endurance.
Felicia is a scion of an old Dutch colonial family, heir not only of a large plantation, but also of historical abuses and prejudices. The novel acknowledges the past, but doesn’t delve on it and it doesn’t try to rewrite the history according to modern sensibilities. For Felicia skin colour, religion and political orientation are just surface details for actors playing on a much larger scene against an indifferent and often cruel natural background.
“My father said once – everyone had slaves, those were the years of the slaves, that was the evil of the time, my father said. Every time has its own evil, but a human being can still be good.”
Maybe because I was a big city child who grew up on concrete playgrounds in between high rise flats, Felicia’s childhood still has the power to inflame my imagination, like those Conrad sea faring stories, with the evocation of the extravagant diversity of plant and animal life, the colours and the scents of the secret garden that awaits the wearied traveller at the end of a very long journey.
She knew the island so well, up to the steepest mountain, down into the deepest jungle; she had sailed all the coasts in a proa. She knew where, here and there and everywhere, a never-seen tree or plant grew, a strange flower bloomed. She had so often leaned over the edge of her proa to look through a hollow bamboo at the sea garden in the outer bay – the dream vision petrified in the coral, so unreally quiet, in which only a few gaily colored little fish moved as swift as arrows, or tiny brown sea horses hung perpendicularly in the water, staring earnestly at each other. Somewhere there was also a place with nothing but the rare red coral, like a field of red clover under the blue waves.
One of the repositories of wonder in the house of the girl’s grandmother is a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ : a chest where the old lady keeps special sea shells and pieces of coral, pearls and amulets, gold and amber, masks and totems of house guardians and more. Felicia will not only inherit the cabinet, but she will add to the collection in keeping for her own son, nicknamed Himpies, and will invent stories about each item to tell to the little boy in the hope he will awaken to the same magical sense of the world around him that she experienced in her own childhood.
Young Himpies, coming back home after studies in Europe, will disappoint his mother by joining the military instead of becoming a doctor. . Family traditions and the sort of ethics that Felicia’s grandmother lived by can only be accepted and absorbed in freedom of choice. They are the result of age old wisdom passed on from one generation to the next, but only if the younger members are willing to listen. Often, for these young people it is more important to seek for their own experiences before they settle for the old lessons... if they are given the time and the patience to learn.
Everything is so relative in my mind. Of course, I see good and bad, and try to stick to the good in my own way, but I think that making judgments is very difficult. And what befalls us, life itself, I’d say, everything, long or short, nice or miserable, shouldn’t we accept it as it falls without too much examination?
Life on the island can be beautiful and gay, with echoes of the Jazz age and of F. Scott Fitzgerald once a younger generation comes to spend the summer evenings at the plantation:
In the evening there was dancing on the new verandah, and when the lemon trees were in bloom the air was drenched with the heavy sweet scent; she played the piano, Himpies was expert in leading the quadrille. There were Chinese lanterns in the trees and it was very gay at the Small Garden.
Yet, right from the start, there is an undercurrent of danger, of rot and cruelty at the secret core of the spice garden. Three little graves stand in the shade near the ruins of a formal mansion that the grandmother says must never be rebuilt. Three little ghosts are said to be roaming the grounds on special nights, three sisters that were allegedly poisoned by a slave maid. Giant mollusks wait for the unwary swimmer in the tranquil bay, and a volcano looms high over the grounds. Headhunters are restless in neighboring islands and some terrible stories are making the rounds in the nearby city : of cursed pearls and vengeful women, of knife wielding jealous sailors, of clueless yet well intended Scottish scientists falling sick from tropical illnesses, of young heirs to Java kingdoms working as government clerks and more.
Under the cliff, in a hollow in the rocks, the octopus was waiting, not a little one like so many which swim in the bay but the gigantic Octopus – the One – with all its eight terrible wriggling grasping arms full of sucking cups, glaring out of two black bulging little eyes. It saw everything, because it could see in the light and it could see in the dark; but no one could see the Octopus. Every fisher, every rower knew about it, every helmsman watched carefully at that corner.
These terrible things are also amongst the ten thousand threads that woven together will make the tapestry of life on the island. Pain and loss are lessons that one should learn side by side with the stories of wonder, and are sometimes the hardest to get through. Not for nothing did Felicia’s grandmother told her from the start:
A person must be content with what’s given, and manage with that as well as possible; and then she said again, “you must learn to be a proud girl, upright, and not cry or be scared,” and “if we can only remain proud people!”
Later Felicia understood that with proud she meant courageous; at least that is what she thought.
From a little girl to an old woman living alone on the plantation, in the company of a couple of faithful yet slightly nondescript native servants, Felicia has many reasons to remember her grandmother’s words and to reflect on their true meaning, to search for whatever solace can be salvaged from the ruins of her youthful dreams.
They couldn’t say to her, “you must try and get over it,” that made her furious, “do you think we should get over each other,” she asked, “is that what you think?”
“Without love, without loyalty, without memory – cowards! she would mutter afterwards. Cowards, that was it – it hurt them too much.
As she had tasted bitterness, more bitter than the bitter water from the bitter spring, so she now knew pain, inside and outside – and what is there to still pain?
Serenity through courage, to see beauty even in destruction, to love the people around you and to cherish their company despite the differences in upbringing and culture, is what the Small Garden has taught Felicia. One of the cherished treasures in her cabinet of curiosities is an old folio by Georg Eberhard Rumphius named Herbarium Amboinense , containing detailed descriptions and sketches of plant life on an island that many readers identified as the same one in this book: Ambon Island in the Moluccas.
And in that Rumphius album, shared by Felicia and the European professor, there is a description of a beautiful invertebrate, a fragile thing of deadly grace that might as well serve as a metaphor for life:
“Rumphius says that they’re quite beautiful.”
“Yes,” said the officer, “a strange poisonous green, with long blue streamers, and the sails are sort of transparent with a colored edge.”
“A crystal sail edged with purple or violet.”
A portuguese man-of-war can be enchanting to see floating in the Banda Sea, but it will be poisonous to touch. Yet what else can we do but to accept the bad along with the good we are offered and learn what we can from the experience. The novel opens and closes with a contemplative moment, with the old lady coming at night to the shore to converse with the ghosts in her garden, a Western eye learning some of the mysteries of Oriental thinking, enumerating once again a hundred times “a hundred things,” next to each other, separate from each other, touching here and there flowing into each other, without any link anywhere, and at the same time linked forever ...
... and bringing the whole story full circle back to the start, to that epigram on the first page attributed to T’sen Shen :
When the ten thousand things have been seen in their unity, we return to the beginning and remain where we have always been.
“Stay with me,” she suddenly whispered, frightened, closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and them looked silently out again over the inner bay.
A melancholic memoir, but never a bitter one or an angry one – just a celebration of life in all its ten thousand forms.
Read
February 17, 2020This book was on Ted Schmeckpeper's "To-Read" shelf, one of 960 he had listed. It's about a Dutch woman living with her son on one of the Spice Islands at the beginning of the twentieth century. I struggled, perhaps, with the deeper meaning of the book, and surely didn't love it as so many others did here. Yet in the end it was about loss and the remembrance of things and people. So, if this was a convenient read for Ted, it was also appropriate.
I usually am moderately annoyed at the nyrb-classics Introductions, but this one, by the translator, was insightful. I only read it afterwards, but when I did I read what Maria Dermoût had to say about this:
As long as I can remember, we were taught that every human being has his own value, that we should be grateful that all men are not exactly alike. . . . When I write about "then" and "there," it is not in mournful remembrance but because I see it so clearly in front of me. . . .
"Is it escape literature?" my grandchild asks me.
"Perhaps," I answer. "And what if it is?"
I usually am moderately annoyed at the nyrb-classics Introductions, but this one, by the translator, was insightful. I only read it afterwards, but when I did I read what Maria Dermoût had to say about this:
As long as I can remember, we were taught that every human being has his own value, that we should be grateful that all men are not exactly alike. . . . When I write about "then" and "there," it is not in mournful remembrance but because I see it so clearly in front of me. . . .
"Is it escape literature?" my grandchild asks me.
"Perhaps," I answer. "And what if it is?"
June 1, 2024
Not bad but nowhere near great imo. I found the atmosphere to be nice but was never fully drawn in by the plot or the characters. I think the very end has some beauty to it but that’s about it
May 22, 2012
The "Small Garden" at the Inner Bay, a picturesque place where the views, the smells, sounds and colours, "held her, slowly enveloped her, showed her things, whispered her its secrets..." It is a place where time can stand still, where past and present and future, perhaps?, can fuse into one unifying image. The "lady of the Small Garden" likes to wander along its paths, or resting somewhere in the shade, letting her mind go back in time, remembering those before her who lived here and those who passed on. She feels, touches or imagines the many thousand things that have left their mark on this land over many generations. In her company we are drawn into a world that is real and imagined, that can reveal itself in intricate detail or in impressionistic apparition. We follow her exploring the woods at one end of the garden, or sit with her on the deck looking out into the bay, watching the gentle surf and the trade boats glide by... Does this sound enthralling and somewhat unreal? Indeed it is both. Yet, the place is real, with real people living on an island (Ambon) in the Moluccas in a more or less specific historical time. Dutch writer Maria Dermoût has created an extraordinary novel in which she paints landscape, atmosphere and characters so beautifully that you want to learn more about her, the people and the island. Drawing on her life experiences, while living and traveling for many years in the then Dutch East Indies, she is recognized as a prominent representative of Dutch literature, yet little known elsewhere.
Felicia, the heroine of the story, takes over the role as the lady of the Small Garden from her grandmother who in turn learned many of the island's stories from her own grandmother. The "small" Garden, which is not small at all, dominates the island. Each object, plant or animal in the garden had its own story, from the scientific name to the mysteries of the indigenous beliefs, to the traditional medicines of the islands and the spirits of those long past. Felicia is a modern young woman when she returns with her young son to her childhood place to stay with her grandmother. And slowly, very slowly she discovers the secrets of the place and learns to see and listen to its tunes.
Dermoût combines her talents of an intricate story teller with the eye of a painter. Her descriptions of places and people are delicate and imaginative. At the same time, she weaves into the fabric of her overall portrayal of Felicia and the Garden other people's stories from nearby places. We meet a Scots professor accompanied by an attractive proud Javanese assistant; a commissioner with a mysterious domestic arrangement; Felicia's son and his adventures, and others. Their stories are connected in some way, even if, initially, we may not quite see how these fit into the broader canvass… but suffice to say that they do in the end. The novel's structure is similarly subtle and initially not totally easy to follow. I actually read the first pages twice – once for their imaginary beauty and once for comprehension of the narrative flow. Once I realized that I was entering an unknown landscape, I also discovered that the understated narrative structure and impressionistic impressions eventually condensed to defined images of a rich portrait of lives lived in a real, yet magical place.
Maria Dermoût's novel was first published in 1955 in Dutch and in translated into English in 1958. During her lifetime, she died in 1962, she did not experience the respect and admiration for this novel and her other work that she achieved later. Hans Koning, whose sensitive translation and excellent introduction to this novel make the new NYRB edition a delight to read.
Felicia, the heroine of the story, takes over the role as the lady of the Small Garden from her grandmother who in turn learned many of the island's stories from her own grandmother. The "small" Garden, which is not small at all, dominates the island. Each object, plant or animal in the garden had its own story, from the scientific name to the mysteries of the indigenous beliefs, to the traditional medicines of the islands and the spirits of those long past. Felicia is a modern young woman when she returns with her young son to her childhood place to stay with her grandmother. And slowly, very slowly she discovers the secrets of the place and learns to see and listen to its tunes.
Dermoût combines her talents of an intricate story teller with the eye of a painter. Her descriptions of places and people are delicate and imaginative. At the same time, she weaves into the fabric of her overall portrayal of Felicia and the Garden other people's stories from nearby places. We meet a Scots professor accompanied by an attractive proud Javanese assistant; a commissioner with a mysterious domestic arrangement; Felicia's son and his adventures, and others. Their stories are connected in some way, even if, initially, we may not quite see how these fit into the broader canvass… but suffice to say that they do in the end. The novel's structure is similarly subtle and initially not totally easy to follow. I actually read the first pages twice – once for their imaginary beauty and once for comprehension of the narrative flow. Once I realized that I was entering an unknown landscape, I also discovered that the understated narrative structure and impressionistic impressions eventually condensed to defined images of a rich portrait of lives lived in a real, yet magical place.
Maria Dermoût's novel was first published in 1955 in Dutch and in translated into English in 1958. During her lifetime, she died in 1962, she did not experience the respect and admiration for this novel and her other work that she achieved later. Hans Koning, whose sensitive translation and excellent introduction to this novel make the new NYRB edition a delight to read.
August 6, 2017
A Vigil for All the Murdered
So it is with this unique novel by Dutch author Maria Dermoût, first published in 1958. How to describe it: a ghost story, a generation-spanning romance, a tropical idyll? It begins as a novel, then dissolves all the conventions in a series of apparently unconnected stories, only to pull it all together in a final chapter resonant with the echoes of old losses and present joy. But let's start with the beginning: "On the island in the Moluccas there were a few gardens left from the great days of spice growing…". On one of these, on the Inner Bay, lives a widow, an old Dutch settler, known as "The Lady of the Small Garden." She has a grand-daughter, Felicia, who grows up among the plants, shells, and animal life of the bay, an idyllic childhood full of discovery and imagination. Full, too, of the imagination of others: the beliefs of the island people, the visits of the old Bibi selling objects with special powers, the collections in her grandmother's curiosity cabinet, and the ghosts of three little girls in pink who died long ago on the same day.
The book's presiding spirit is the 17th-century German Dutch botanist Georg Eberhard Rumphius, who first classified the plants of the Indonesian archipelago, but also published a book of curiosities which is as speculative as his herbiary was scientific. Dermoût also shifts from objective description to inner imagination, often within a single sentence. Fact and fancy intermingle in this book, time is dissolved, the Lady of the Small Garden even morphs from grandmother to granddaughter in the book's opening section, and nobody even notices.
For Felicia, after completing her education in Europe and marrying a man who soon deserts her, comes back to the Island with her infant son Himpies. She lives in the Small Garden and grows old in her turn. Decades slip by in an eyeblink. Major happenings pass in moments; minor ones seem suspended in time. World events hardly seem to touch this outpost; it is hard even to put a date on the action, though it probably begins in the later 19th century. But Felicia is no hermit; even as an old woman, she welcomes the guests who sail their proas to her dock. One day each year, however, she keeps strictly for herself, as a vigil for all those who have been murdered on the island….
Accustomed as I now was to the unpredictable aspects of this book, I was taken by surprise when, about half-way through, Dermoût suddenly takes leave of Felicia and embarks upon three stories which seem to have no connection with each other. There is the retired Commissioner at the Outer Bay, holed up in an old house with four women and a collection of gold and pearls. There is the cook Constance, with her parade of admirers and her fondness for dancing at the rattan tug-of-war. There is the Javanese prince who takes work as a clerk to a Scottish professor, revisiting Rumphius' work on the flora and fauna of the islands. Only at the very end, when we return to Felicia's annual vigil, do we see the connections between the stories, not merely in the deaths they contain, but also in the cycle of life, a vision of wholeness that embraces shells and pearls, a fleet of jellyfish and a tame cockatoo, memories of children and young men killed in their prime, and extending even to the murderers themselves.
She knew that a bay and rocks and trees bending over the surf cannot relieve sadness—can sadness be relieved, or can one only pass it by, very slowly?In my reading over the past decade, I have really come to trust the reissues of the New York Review of Books—works of fiction, predominantly foreign, that have undeservedly slipped out of circulation. They do for older literature what the Europa Press does for contemporary: open the reader's eyes to a wide range of geographical locations, subjects, and narrative approaches. There are many hits but few misses, and even the oddball books that are hard to classify are fascinating in their oddness.
So it is with this unique novel by Dutch author Maria Dermoût, first published in 1958. How to describe it: a ghost story, a generation-spanning romance, a tropical idyll? It begins as a novel, then dissolves all the conventions in a series of apparently unconnected stories, only to pull it all together in a final chapter resonant with the echoes of old losses and present joy. But let's start with the beginning: "On the island in the Moluccas there were a few gardens left from the great days of spice growing…". On one of these, on the Inner Bay, lives a widow, an old Dutch settler, known as "The Lady of the Small Garden." She has a grand-daughter, Felicia, who grows up among the plants, shells, and animal life of the bay, an idyllic childhood full of discovery and imagination. Full, too, of the imagination of others: the beliefs of the island people, the visits of the old Bibi selling objects with special powers, the collections in her grandmother's curiosity cabinet, and the ghosts of three little girls in pink who died long ago on the same day.
The book's presiding spirit is the 17th-century German Dutch botanist Georg Eberhard Rumphius, who first classified the plants of the Indonesian archipelago, but also published a book of curiosities which is as speculative as his herbiary was scientific. Dermoût also shifts from objective description to inner imagination, often within a single sentence. Fact and fancy intermingle in this book, time is dissolved, the Lady of the Small Garden even morphs from grandmother to granddaughter in the book's opening section, and nobody even notices.
For Felicia, after completing her education in Europe and marrying a man who soon deserts her, comes back to the Island with her infant son Himpies. She lives in the Small Garden and grows old in her turn. Decades slip by in an eyeblink. Major happenings pass in moments; minor ones seem suspended in time. World events hardly seem to touch this outpost; it is hard even to put a date on the action, though it probably begins in the later 19th century. But Felicia is no hermit; even as an old woman, she welcomes the guests who sail their proas to her dock. One day each year, however, she keeps strictly for herself, as a vigil for all those who have been murdered on the island….
Accustomed as I now was to the unpredictable aspects of this book, I was taken by surprise when, about half-way through, Dermoût suddenly takes leave of Felicia and embarks upon three stories which seem to have no connection with each other. There is the retired Commissioner at the Outer Bay, holed up in an old house with four women and a collection of gold and pearls. There is the cook Constance, with her parade of admirers and her fondness for dancing at the rattan tug-of-war. There is the Javanese prince who takes work as a clerk to a Scottish professor, revisiting Rumphius' work on the flora and fauna of the islands. Only at the very end, when we return to Felicia's annual vigil, do we see the connections between the stories, not merely in the deaths they contain, but also in the cycle of life, a vision of wholeness that embraces shells and pearls, a fleet of jellyfish and a tame cockatoo, memories of children and young men killed in their prime, and extending even to the murderers themselves.
April 14, 2014
I tried very hard to love this book, but I simply don't. I kept waiting for characters to care about, the much lauded magic and description to draw me in, some sort of coherent story. I couldn't find it. It may be the fault of my reading and perhaps another time… but I think this novel just didn't work for me. Where was the "shimmering strangeness" I was promised? There are far more powerful examples of magic realism, a style I do enjoy.
Too much was missing: coherence, of course; characters I found compelling instead of merely pathetic; and history, compassion, and sense of place beyond the exotic. This is a story set in Indonesia without much (any?) agency on the part of actual Indonesians. This is a Dutch expat story set in a place where the Dutch held sway for a very long time. Such stories are always risky, in my book, unless they fully engage with the underlying reality of exploitation. This is a romanticized account of what was probably a painful history and I have read excellent histories. I would have liked to learn about this region and its culture and I found artifice and stylized mess.
Mine is a minority view, however. Most readers seem to have been completely captivated. I can't explain their passion.
Too much was missing: coherence, of course; characters I found compelling instead of merely pathetic; and history, compassion, and sense of place beyond the exotic. This is a story set in Indonesia without much (any?) agency on the part of actual Indonesians. This is a Dutch expat story set in a place where the Dutch held sway for a very long time. Such stories are always risky, in my book, unless they fully engage with the underlying reality of exploitation. This is a romanticized account of what was probably a painful history and I have read excellent histories. I would have liked to learn about this region and its culture and I found artifice and stylized mess.
Mine is a minority view, however. Most readers seem to have been completely captivated. I can't explain their passion.
January 30, 2016
First published at http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2016/01/...
In The Ten Thousand Things Maria Dermoût brought us to my birth country, Indonesia. This is the first time for me to read a Dutch Indies literature so it was truly an interesting experience. I had to look up Moluccas - the place where the book is set, and only then realized it's the islands of Maluku. In fact, I only recently discovered that pre-independent Indonesia is called Dutch East Indies. Just things you wouldn't learn in school's history books :).
I was born in the capital, and never left the island of Java for the first 17 years of my life. Weeks after my 17th birthday I left the country, and since then only go back very occasionally, each time making an effort to travel the country even if it's just for a short while, even if I couldn't go very far. I've never been to Maluku or Papua -- those places are probably as exotic to me as it is to people from outside the country.
And exotic is how I would describe The Ten Thousand Things, from the description of the places, the islands, the sea -- and the creatures of the sea! The stories were dream-like, giving you the feeling of floating in and out of a dream, in far flung places, somewhere in an obscure corner of the world, where the water is clear blue and deadly at the same time, where the islands store ten thousand stories and the spirits roam. It gave me nostalgic feelings as indeed where ever you are in Indonesia you are never far from the ocean.
The main character that holds all the stories together in the book is referred to as the Lady of the Small Garden, who is from a Dutch family but born in Moluccas. She went to Netherlands for her education, and eventually came back to the islands with her son. The "garden" has been in the family for generations and the lady's grandmother has always stayed there. She's become part of the island as much as the local people.
I have awareness that the majority of Ambon people are Christians (which is something that stands out in a country that is almost 90% Muslim), but I never quite connected it with its important role as one of the Spice Islands in the time of colonization. It all makes sense now.
I love that I'm learning so much by reading the perspective of an outsider looking in, though I have conflicting feelings about calling Dermoût an outsider. After all her family had stayed for generations (she's the 4th generation) and she might even have indigenous blood somewhere along the line.
How long does one need to stay? How many generations before you can truly belong?
Though The Ten Thousand Things is not strictly autobiographical, it's not hard to see how Dermoût drew from her life experiences. Thankful that NYRB Classics has taken her book into their line. Here's hoping that they will republish her other book, as it seems to be out of print and would be hard to get.
One interesting thing to note, if you look for the pictures of Maria Dermout, the above would be the one most widely appears. It was taken in 1907 when she was 19 years old, and somehow gave an impression of her as a young writer. But her books were not published until she's in her 60s!
In The Ten Thousand Things Maria Dermoût brought us to my birth country, Indonesia. This is the first time for me to read a Dutch Indies literature so it was truly an interesting experience. I had to look up Moluccas - the place where the book is set, and only then realized it's the islands of Maluku. In fact, I only recently discovered that pre-independent Indonesia is called Dutch East Indies. Just things you wouldn't learn in school's history books :).
I was born in the capital, and never left the island of Java for the first 17 years of my life. Weeks after my 17th birthday I left the country, and since then only go back very occasionally, each time making an effort to travel the country even if it's just for a short while, even if I couldn't go very far. I've never been to Maluku or Papua -- those places are probably as exotic to me as it is to people from outside the country.
And exotic is how I would describe The Ten Thousand Things, from the description of the places, the islands, the sea -- and the creatures of the sea! The stories were dream-like, giving you the feeling of floating in and out of a dream, in far flung places, somewhere in an obscure corner of the world, where the water is clear blue and deadly at the same time, where the islands store ten thousand stories and the spirits roam. It gave me nostalgic feelings as indeed where ever you are in Indonesia you are never far from the ocean.
The main character that holds all the stories together in the book is referred to as the Lady of the Small Garden, who is from a Dutch family but born in Moluccas. She went to Netherlands for her education, and eventually came back to the islands with her son. The "garden" has been in the family for generations and the lady's grandmother has always stayed there. She's become part of the island as much as the local people.
I have awareness that the majority of Ambon people are Christians (which is something that stands out in a country that is almost 90% Muslim), but I never quite connected it with its important role as one of the Spice Islands in the time of colonization. It all makes sense now.
I love that I'm learning so much by reading the perspective of an outsider looking in, though I have conflicting feelings about calling Dermoût an outsider. After all her family had stayed for generations (she's the 4th generation) and she might even have indigenous blood somewhere along the line.
How long does one need to stay? How many generations before you can truly belong?
Though The Ten Thousand Things is not strictly autobiographical, it's not hard to see how Dermoût drew from her life experiences. Thankful that NYRB Classics has taken her book into their line. Here's hoping that they will republish her other book, as it seems to be out of print and would be hard to get.
One interesting thing to note, if you look for the pictures of Maria Dermout, the above would be the one most widely appears. It was taken in 1907 when she was 19 years old, and somehow gave an impression of her as a young writer. But her books were not published until she's in her 60s!
March 23, 2016
Quite a beautifully sad book. Written in her 60s, Dermout is no doubt relaying herself through Felicia who returns to the small island of her birth in the Moluccas during the early 20th century.
There is great love of the land, sea and people in this story as Felicia learns and then teaches her son the ten thousand things that go to make up their island. But the sadness it through who trying to make sense of the various murders past and current that have occurred and what is meant to the people who had their lives cut short - including her own son.
There is no violence in the book, only the poetic and calm style conveying the sadness of what has been lost.
Memorising.
There is great love of the land, sea and people in this story as Felicia learns and then teaches her son the ten thousand things that go to make up their island. But the sadness it through who trying to make sense of the various murders past and current that have occurred and what is meant to the people who had their lives cut short - including her own son.
There is no violence in the book, only the poetic and calm style conveying the sadness of what has been lost.
Memorising.
August 3, 2012
This is a tiny little book and it's a bit of a muddle of beauty and strangeness. There's a lot to love, and most of what's here works. It's not a new favorite for me, but I'm glad to have read it.
Dermout's finest gift is her description. Her language is very visual and every part of this novel is easy to picture - from the various island locations, to the characters' appearances and mannerisms, to the events that take place. The most immersive moments that I found myself deep inside of were: when Pauline draws the knife, the drumbeat of the proa rowers, Felicia's thoughts on what she will teach her son, the policeman's discovery of the professor's things beneath the four men, and grandma's appearance when Felicia first arrives.
I always enjoy magical realism, and it's well-done here. I loved the linking of the murder victims together, the deep dives into folklore and storytelling, and the airy, dreamy feel of the prose.
The writing style is different (endlessly peppered with dashes and semicolons) and took some getting used to. For the most part, it keeps the story flowing gently onward though there are occasional sentences that are tough to read.
Themes: loss, grief, death, Indonesia, folklore, nature, women, colonialism, family
Dermout's finest gift is her description. Her language is very visual and every part of this novel is easy to picture - from the various island locations, to the characters' appearances and mannerisms, to the events that take place. The most immersive moments that I found myself deep inside of were: when Pauline draws the knife, the drumbeat of the proa rowers, Felicia's thoughts on what she will teach her son, the policeman's discovery of the professor's things beneath the four men, and grandma's appearance when Felicia first arrives.
I always enjoy magical realism, and it's well-done here. I loved the linking of the murder victims together, the deep dives into folklore and storytelling, and the airy, dreamy feel of the prose.
The writing style is different (endlessly peppered with dashes and semicolons) and took some getting used to. For the most part, it keeps the story flowing gently onward though there are occasional sentences that are tough to read.
Themes: loss, grief, death, Indonesia, folklore, nature, women, colonialism, family
October 14, 2021
Bijzonder boek over het leven op de Molukse eilanden in de eerste helft van de 20e eeuw, opgesplitst in verschillende delen en verhalen die wel met elkaar te maken hebben. De verhalen gaan niet over de politieke of economische geschiedenis van de Nederlandse koloniën maar over de menselijke aspecten, de verbondenheid met de locaties/de eilanden, de leefgewoonten, de magische elementen ook.
De verhalen bevatten autobiografische elementen want de schrijfster woonde zelf als kind en later als getrouwde vrouw op Java.
Het boek is met veel gevoel en liefde voor de streek en de bewoners geschreven.
Het heeft me erg geraakt.
Voor wie interesse heeft in een uitgebreide analyse van dit boek:
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/anbe001lex...
De verhalen bevatten autobiografische elementen want de schrijfster woonde zelf als kind en later als getrouwde vrouw op Java.
Het boek is met veel gevoel en liefde voor de streek en de bewoners geschreven.
Het heeft me erg geraakt.
Voor wie interesse heeft in een uitgebreide analyse van dit boek:
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/anbe001lex...
August 24, 2011
This is a strange little novel that very nearly has a plot. I had to reach the final page before I figured out that the entire book is a study of loss. It takes place in the Moluccas (Spice Islands) near the end of Dutch colonial rule. Much of what happens parallels the author's life, and the book almost feels like a cathartic exercise rather than a novel. It's slow going, relying almost entirely on expository narration, but the author's powers of description are impressive.
November 17, 2022
Many pages stood up to, and demanded, a slow, savoring reading. The opening pages, the end of Suprato's story, and parts of the conclusion were especially wonderful. Dermout can offer a precise and loving image of plants, shells, and jellyfish; evoke ghosts that are almost but not quite visible; and suggest depths of feeling with an understatement.
July 30, 2012
This is my favorite book of the year. Mostly set on one of the islands in the Maluccas, or Spice Islands, in a place called the Small Garden (not so small!) the ancient matriarch (not so old!) of a Dutch family lives alone with the most lovely things: antique cabinets full of special shells, gold pins, a "little cat's-eye for dreams" a "gold apple, carved out in fretwork, with a ball of amber inside which she had made herself," spices, and curiosities like the "snake with the carbuncle stone." Her granddaughter Felicity is the recipient of her wisdom, but she is forced to Europe by her parents, who have little attachment to the island. Eventually, Felicity returns to the Small Garden - but is not the same small girl who left.
During the first ten pages of this book, I thought I'd be reading a plotless stream of consciousness narrative for another 200 - but the story, because there is one, gripped me completely. The oddity of the book is that there are many stories within the one story, all moving within and without. As if the main plot were an impermeable membrane. This happens with the living and the dead as well, because much of the story has to do with death - and the difference between "being killed and dying." And plenty of people do both. But the book isn't just about loss - it's about the gain from that loss. I don't want to write about the plot, because that would be giving away too much; but after I finished the book, I read Hans Koning's beautiful introduction and discovered that Maria Dermout's son had died in a Japanese concentration camp. Ah. Is that "being killed or dying"? I can see the author's heart all over the pages now.
Koning also writes that Dermout's "world rises from an interlocking of animals, plants, men, women, children, pearls lucky and unlucky ('tears of the sea'), sea anemones, jellyfish with little sails they can hoist when the wind is right, crabs waving their claws at the moon; and everyone and everything in it has a role and a fate, has in a sense a soul of its own." This is exactly right.
The end of the novel moved me profoundly. I want to run my hands over some silk and put my cheek against the beating heart of something I love. To say what Felicity says at the end: "Stay with me."
During the first ten pages of this book, I thought I'd be reading a plotless stream of consciousness narrative for another 200 - but the story, because there is one, gripped me completely. The oddity of the book is that there are many stories within the one story, all moving within and without. As if the main plot were an impermeable membrane. This happens with the living and the dead as well, because much of the story has to do with death - and the difference between "being killed and dying." And plenty of people do both. But the book isn't just about loss - it's about the gain from that loss. I don't want to write about the plot, because that would be giving away too much; but after I finished the book, I read Hans Koning's beautiful introduction and discovered that Maria Dermout's son had died in a Japanese concentration camp. Ah. Is that "being killed or dying"? I can see the author's heart all over the pages now.
Koning also writes that Dermout's "world rises from an interlocking of animals, plants, men, women, children, pearls lucky and unlucky ('tears of the sea'), sea anemones, jellyfish with little sails they can hoist when the wind is right, crabs waving their claws at the moon; and everyone and everything in it has a role and a fate, has in a sense a soul of its own." This is exactly right.
The end of the novel moved me profoundly. I want to run my hands over some silk and put my cheek against the beating heart of something I love. To say what Felicity says at the end: "Stay with me."
December 31, 2015
This is a series of related stories, set on the island of Ambon (Spice Islands, Indonesia, at the time of Dutch East India). The main character Felicia has similarities with the author Maria Dermoût. That connection is visible in the murdered son Himpies. And there are several murdered people in the stories of the book. As in Tao, all things are related in the universe. The Small Garden of the setting, which goes back to at least Felicia's Grandmother in the story is in Inner Bay. It's a natural paradise of a sorts, and the people there have a belief in animism wherein plants and animals have souls and one must know what things mean for her/his own safety. Felicia turns to the historical seventeenth-century botanist Rumphius to learn about the cornucopia of natural phenomena. After the story about the Grandmother, her conveying wisdom to the granddaughter Felicia, the fate Felicia's son Himpies, and the presence of other occupants and visitors to the Small Garden, then the story turns to the Outer Bay. There a few stories follow: one about a Commissioner who hoards pearls and locks in his wife and aunts, another about a young woman attracted to a Macassar sailor, and another about a Scottish botanist professor and a Javanese amanuensis/assistant of sorts. All those stories initially seem unrelated, but Dermoût brings them together at the end as they're part of Ambon island. Thus, the story returns to the Inner Bay of the Small Garden, wherein an older Felicia imagines another of her get-togethers of several murdered characters. This book is noted for its magical realism (that's particularly evident in the final chapter) and for the realism of catalogued natural objects. This is a book I highly recommend simply for getting an idea about the Dutch East Indies and its culture and for enjoying a number of wonderfully descriptive passages.
December 28, 2013
The publisher description probably says it best:
The language is very dreamlike and somewhat vague, but beautiful. I liked getting into the more minor stories and characters, particularly the man who lived with the four women and the dangerous sailor with the very sharp knife. Kind of spooky, and difficult to discern reality from fantasy.
For someone reading a book for a feeling of a place, this is more of a Dutch-Empire Indonesia, but still very descriptive of the scenery and senses.
The Ten Thousand Things is a novel of shimmering strangeness—the story of Felicia, who returns with her baby son from Holland to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, to the house and garden that were her birthplace, over which her powerful grandmother still presides. There Felicia finds herself wedded to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present.
The language is very dreamlike and somewhat vague, but beautiful. I liked getting into the more minor stories and characters, particularly the man who lived with the four women and the dangerous sailor with the very sharp knife. Kind of spooky, and difficult to discern reality from fantasy.
For someone reading a book for a feeling of a place, this is more of a Dutch-Empire Indonesia, but still very descriptive of the scenery and senses.
August 25, 2016
A lovely book, that I think will stay with me always. The book does so much in not very many pages. There are plenty of interesting characters, well drawn with few strokes. And the natural world is so beautifully described, and such a presence. It's a character on its own. So much atmosphere, so many moments perfectly captured. I was happy to find Rumphius'
The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet
in my library. Well worth checking out if you read this book, for then you can find pictures of the Amoret Harp, the little duck crabs, a photo of Rumphius' house on Ambon, and much more.
October 20, 2023
A very peculiar story.
First a little background on the author: Maria Dermout was born in 1888 in a small town in Java (Dutch East Indies, which now is Indonesia). Dermout returned to the Netherlands for her education and after getting married, she and her husband moved back to the Dutch East Indies and lived all across Java and the Moluccas (now Maluku).
Ambon is where most of the story of "The Ten Thousand Things" is believed to have taken place. This story doesn't exactly have a definite plot - it's more about the setting, the legends that are passed between generations, towards the end of the book three separate murder stories are told. It contains elements of magical realism.
The main protagonist Felicia grew up with her grandmother and her parents in an idyllic beach house called the "Small Garden". One day, her parents decided to move back to the Netherlands and her grandmother gives Felicia a bracelet, hoping that one day Felicia will return back to the Small Garden.
Years go by and Felicia returns to the Small Garden with a baby Himpies and no husband. Life goes on; Felicia and her grandmother try to make the best out of the situation. I was particularly touched by the grandmother and how careful she was about making money off the land. After her grandmother's death, Felicia suffers another tragic loss.
I really enjoyed getting a glimpse into life in the Dutch East Indies, which has completely vanished now. Life back then was so incredibly slow-paced. Furthermore, people depended on nature, so they had a more profound respect towards the land and the sea. I'm definitely going to read this one again.
"Every time has its own evil, but a human being can still be good."
First a little background on the author: Maria Dermout was born in 1888 in a small town in Java (Dutch East Indies, which now is Indonesia). Dermout returned to the Netherlands for her education and after getting married, she and her husband moved back to the Dutch East Indies and lived all across Java and the Moluccas (now Maluku).
Ambon is where most of the story of "The Ten Thousand Things" is believed to have taken place. This story doesn't exactly have a definite plot - it's more about the setting, the legends that are passed between generations, towards the end of the book three separate murder stories are told. It contains elements of magical realism.
The main protagonist Felicia grew up with her grandmother and her parents in an idyllic beach house called the "Small Garden". One day, her parents decided to move back to the Netherlands and her grandmother gives Felicia a bracelet, hoping that one day Felicia will return back to the Small Garden.
Years go by and Felicia returns to the Small Garden with a baby Himpies and no husband. Life goes on; Felicia and her grandmother try to make the best out of the situation. I was particularly touched by the grandmother and how careful she was about making money off the land. After her grandmother's death, Felicia suffers another tragic loss.
I really enjoyed getting a glimpse into life in the Dutch East Indies, which has completely vanished now. Life back then was so incredibly slow-paced. Furthermore, people depended on nature, so they had a more profound respect towards the land and the sea. I'm definitely going to read this one again.
"Every time has its own evil, but a human being can still be good."
August 15, 2013
It is difficult to believe that “The Ten Thousand Things”, written languorously and set in a place that defines faraway, once occupied the Best Seller List alongside “Dr. Zhivago” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Rather than Pasternak and Capote, the writer who “The Ten Thousand Things” evokes most is the Faulkner of “Absalom, Absalom”, with its decaying families in decrepit mansions, its characters who destroy themselves at the intersection of ambition and illusion. In lieu of Thomas Sutpen fleeing his mixed-race wife in the French West Indies, in “The Ten Thousand Things” we meet Felicia, come home to the Dutch East Indies without either and explanation or her swindler of a husband. The title comes from a Taoist characterization of the material world, and, despite the lush prose and attentiveness to flora, the novel takes place in a transitory, impermanent realm. Those who rely on others are doomed: Felicia’s son Himpies, who reaches for love, career and friendship; the unnamed and mysterious “commissioner” with his strange household of unloving women companions; the passionate servant; the Scottish professor whose ignorance is fatal. Those who survive are those least prey to their illusions, Felicia and her tough grandmother. In this novel existence itself is tenuous, the only permanence belonging to the flowers, and to ghosts.
May 8, 2025
Wat een bijzonder boek.
Ik heb dit geluisterd op aanraden van een collega én een tip van mijn schoonvader. Dermoût's schrijfstijl vervoert je naar de Molukken, naar de tuin van mevrouw Kleyntjes, de rode draad in de verhalen. Je voelt de warme bries over het eiland, raakt verwonderd van de beeldende beschrijvingen van het eiland en de mensen, en waant je echt even aan de andere kant van de wereld tijdens het luisteren.
Het heeft een soort rust, welke je op de eilanden daar ook voelt in het dagelijkse leven. Dit boek lees je dan ook in alle rust, op een lager tempo, om het echt tot je te laten komen.
De hoofdstukken zijn losse verhalen, maar zijn wel verbonden met elkaar. Hoewel het zich afspeelt op de Molukken, en verteld wordt door een persoon die overduidelijk thuis is, is de koloniale invloed op het werk ook te merken. Niet zozeer vanwege de achterhaalde gedachtegang, maar de aanwezigheid van bovennatuurlijke elementen is niet wat ik gewend ben te vinden in een Nederlandse roman. Daarnaast voel je toch, al is het maar licht, een 'wij' en 'zij' in het boek.
Ik zou dit boek zeker aanraden. Al is het maar om je even (terug) op de Molukken te wanen.
Ik heb dit geluisterd op aanraden van een collega én een tip van mijn schoonvader. Dermoût's schrijfstijl vervoert je naar de Molukken, naar de tuin van mevrouw Kleyntjes, de rode draad in de verhalen. Je voelt de warme bries over het eiland, raakt verwonderd van de beeldende beschrijvingen van het eiland en de mensen, en waant je echt even aan de andere kant van de wereld tijdens het luisteren.
Het heeft een soort rust, welke je op de eilanden daar ook voelt in het dagelijkse leven. Dit boek lees je dan ook in alle rust, op een lager tempo, om het echt tot je te laten komen.
De hoofdstukken zijn losse verhalen, maar zijn wel verbonden met elkaar. Hoewel het zich afspeelt op de Molukken, en verteld wordt door een persoon die overduidelijk thuis is, is de koloniale invloed op het werk ook te merken. Niet zozeer vanwege de achterhaalde gedachtegang, maar de aanwezigheid van bovennatuurlijke elementen is niet wat ik gewend ben te vinden in een Nederlandse roman. Daarnaast voel je toch, al is het maar licht, een 'wij' en 'zij' in het boek.
Ik zou dit boek zeker aanraden. Al is het maar om je even (terug) op de Molukken te wanen.
November 19, 2021
More like 3.5 stars.
This is an evocative and dreamy novel that I find myself liking more and more the more I think about it after having read it. Dermoût spent much of her life in the novel's setting, the Dutch East Indies, unusual in and of itself as a locale for European fiction, but also a quiet driver behind the novel's beauty. Dermoût drenches her loose narrative in luscious detail and the landscape of the islands and bays are ever-present, in a Zola-esque way. The novel itself focuses on Felicia, granddaughter of a Dutch emigre living on a decaying, squalid plantation. Felicia raises her son on the island after returning from Europe and he eventually becomes an officer in the local gendarmerie. That's only half the novel. The other half consists of little vignettes of local, colorful characters, all of whom have stories that revolve around murder, giving the novel a dark little spin that I quite liked. In fact, the whole book has a quietly supernatural, haunted feel to it, like grazing your fingers over old bones.
This is an evocative and dreamy novel that I find myself liking more and more the more I think about it after having read it. Dermoût spent much of her life in the novel's setting, the Dutch East Indies, unusual in and of itself as a locale for European fiction, but also a quiet driver behind the novel's beauty. Dermoût drenches her loose narrative in luscious detail and the landscape of the islands and bays are ever-present, in a Zola-esque way. The novel itself focuses on Felicia, granddaughter of a Dutch emigre living on a decaying, squalid plantation. Felicia raises her son on the island after returning from Europe and he eventually becomes an officer in the local gendarmerie. That's only half the novel. The other half consists of little vignettes of local, colorful characters, all of whom have stories that revolve around murder, giving the novel a dark little spin that I quite liked. In fact, the whole book has a quietly supernatural, haunted feel to it, like grazing your fingers over old bones.
March 20, 2022
It was reading a dream. At times, I could feel the breeze in the trees in the Small Garden and hear the sea in the inner bay washing up onto the shore. Subjects so exotic and strange were brought to life and described so beautifully it almost made me ache to want to see them myself. It was simple and complex at the same time; like reading between the lines when someone was telling you what had happened to them.
It was ghostly and magical but not macabre.
It was ghostly and magical but not macabre.
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