As an adolescent I discovered world literature not only thanks to publisher Johan Polak, who revealed writers such as Italo Svevo, Marguerite Yourcenar, Robert Musil and Witold Gombrowicz to me with his Great Bellettrie Series, but also by reading literary magazines such as Bzzlletin and The Eye in the Sail. The successor to those magazines that were closed down years ago, The Pearl Diveris still a literary treasure trove, which I explore from A to Z and lets me discover new writers.
For example, the last issue of 2024 contains a beautiful essay by Bart Slijper about the pacifist writers Heinrich Mann and Romain Rolland, who turned against the fanatical war nationalism of Thomas Mann during the First World War. It clearly shows why in imperial Germany conservative writers, intellectuals and artists such as Thomas Mann were the French Zivilisation considered inferior compared to them Kultur and found democracy a dirty word.
I also enjoyed the article about the commotion when Marguerite Yourcenaar was the first woman admitted to the Académie française in 1980, which was still a sexist male stronghold in those days. The fact that the aristocratic Yourcenar subsequently grew into a feminist figurehead, against her will, only increased my admiration for her.
That issue also contained an article by Gerdien Verschoor about the Polish-Jewish poet Wladyslaw Szlengel, completely unknown to me, of whom nothing has yet been translated, but whose satirical songs and poems in the Warsaw ghetto still gave many people some zest for life. That war was also the subject of Paul Gellings’ revelation that Harry Mulisch was fired upon by German soldiers in May 1945, which is said to have been reflected in his descriptions of the agony of the characters in his books.
Previous issues of 2024 discussed, among other things, whether or not Lucebert had left for Germany voluntarily and why Hella Haasse was so fascinated by Tolkien. A highlight of the past year was Jan Paul Hinrichs’ travel report to Georgi Gospodinov’s Bulgaria, who received the International Booker Prize in 2023 for his novel Shelter for other times. Hinrichs made a tour d’horizon along all kinds of other Bulgarian writers and poets and thus opened a new world for me.
I was shocked when this became known shortly before Christmas The Pearl Diver will no longer receive a subsidy from the Dutch Literature Fund from this year onwards and will suffer the same fate as before Bzzlletin and The Eye in the Sail. The motivation for that decision will follow, but this reader is certainly very disappointed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the decision was motivated by the historical nature of the magazine. After all, most of the writers it covers are dead, although the pearl divers keep unearthing interesting news about them and regularly catch unjustly forgotten writers in their nets. That is the added value of their magazine. It encourages you to read the greats of yesteryear and hardly anyone can compete with them.