Can you publish conversations with people with dementia? Is that still ethically responsible? I remember that mistakes were made with Gerard Reve at the time, he was interviewed in his twilight years as if he were still in his right mind. The writer Detlev van Heest is making a new attempt these days with the booklet Tired of life (Hof van Jan edition), which contains nine dialogues with Lousje Voskuil-Haspers, the demented widow of the writer JJ Voskuil (1926-2008).
I started it with some trepidation, but in the end I was satisfied with the result. Lousje, who can turn 100 this year, is not yet in an advanced state of dementia in these conversations, she can respond and formulate reasonably adequately. The book is therefore not a report of a disappointment, but rather a final look back at life without a partner with all the disappointment that can come with it.
You can clearly tell that these are conversations between friends. This promotes intimacy and candor. Van Heest became friends with Han Voskuil in the last years of his life, after which he remained friends with Lousje. They fought side by side, as it were, as soon as there was sharp criticism of Voskuil’s oeuvre. Elsbeth Etty, who is a great admirer of Voskuil’s novel cycle, noticed this The Officewhen she wrote in a review NRC Handelsblad the posthumously published novel Within the skin van Voskuil criticized. In the booklet Poor devils – Kritik der Unvernunft – they bundled their letters sent to NRC Handelsblad and Etty.
Etty had called the main character Maarten Koning, alter ego of the author, a prisoner “in a hostile non-erotic marriage”. Lousje responded in a letter to the post: “I believe, as a wife, that I have the right to refute this. We did not have a joyless marriage. My husband had to offer me, both as a husband and as a lover, everything I needed.”
She wrote to me in those days (she responded faithfully to every piece I wrote about her husband’s work): “I think it is Han’s most beautiful book.” I would prefer to call it one of his most beautiful books.
Htired of life unfortunately turns out to be a fitting title for this booklet, which is illustrated with atmospheric photos by Michèle Baudet of the interior of the Voskuils’ canal apartment at the time.
Lousje is ninety when Van Heest says to her: “You complain that you are alone and that there is nothing left to live.”
Lousje: “Yes, it is terrible to be alone. Without Han there is nothing left to live.”
“I think you are depressed. Maybe you have depression.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are in trouble.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be ninety. Of course, I didn’t understand that either when I was as young as you.”
“I can’t understand it, but I would like to understand it. You complain that there is nothing left to your life.”
“Without Han, yes! There is nothing left to life.”
