Nothing But Good: Florette Dijkstra / Henri Beyle

Saturday, 31 October 2020

Florette Dijkstra / Henri Beyle

Stendhal

Pages from Het leven van Henry Brulard (The Life of Henry Brulard)

1980

Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij

translation: C.N. Lijsen

The French writer Henri Beyle (1783-1842) became known as Stendhal, but used even more pseudonyms during his lifetime, such as Henry Brulard. His book 'The Life of Henry Brulard' (written in 1835-1836, but published much later, in 1890) is a pseudo-autobiography in which Beyle describes his life in great detail. He substantiates his text with maps and all kinds of notes to make the story even more credible. Beyle wrote bare and dry, without using fancy words, because they would only distract from reality. The sole purpose of his writing was to gain self-awareness and understand the meaning of his life. Beyle's realistic writing was not really understood by his contemporaries, except by a few other writers, such as Balzac.

Beyle's goal-oriented, almost businesslike approach, which was necessary to dissect his own life and understand his actions, moves me. If you engage in such a search, you can actually always continue, because everything you discover offers room for further research. I can imagine that Beyle found more and more data while writing and drawing, making the search endless. Fortunately, he regularly collected his discoveries in the form of books – novels or whatever you should call them. Regrettably they were hardly read.

My projects often also arise from quests: usually for the work and life of forgotten people. Making drawings helps me to visualize a piece of history or a story and thus to say something about it. In some projects I look back at my own work and try to discover the logic of what I did: does my graduation work has anything to do with what I am doing now? Can I bring back together the paintings I have made and sold by drawing them all? Perhaps it is a desire to keep seeing the drifting, fragmenting life as a natural whole. But perhaps by drawing about it, I always put a layer over reality and get a little further away from it.

Florette Dijkstra, 2020