A stone’s throw from the Chapel of Our Lady Teruren where Ondine, the heroine from Louis Paul Boon’s classic The chapel track If the offering block was opened, the hungry literature lover can without violence access the treasures of the mini library De Lezende Kip in the Flemish Erembodegem. Although we are in the heart of Boonland, the work of Aalst’s greatest son is missing. Well, it does Separate from the world (2006) by Hella de Jonge er, which, according to stamps in the front, previously found shelter around the corner in the bookcase on Alfons van de Maelestraat. Before that it was in the Public Library in Lede, just on the other side of Aalst.
De Jonge’s memory book (1949) is one for the dark days. Immediately an icy wind arises in the tone in which De Jonge’s sister tells by telephone that their mother is in a coma in the hospital: “Your mother is dead and then again she is not. It’s just an announcement.” Ten pages further, De Jonge hears the same sister say in her funeral speech: “You killed your mother.” This takes her back to the moment when her father, the lyricist Eli Asser (1922-2019), hit her hard against the edge of a radiator as a child because she refused to eat. “’You killed my sister, you killed my sister,’ he screamed.”
So we are up to our lips in the misery of the second generation. Eli and Eva Asser-Croiset survived the occupation in hiding, but almost their entire family was murdered. “We were the children who had to make everything right,” De Jonge paraphrases Ischa Meijer, a man who also grew up in the madness of parents irreparably damaged by the war. The injuries the Assers suffered made it impossible to show warmth to their own children, or at least to Hella. In her book she strings together parental lovelessness. When she wants to snuggle up to her parents on the couch, she is sent to her room. “Declaring food through a serving hatch was already a drama in advance. If someone wasn’t ready in time to handle the hot, heavy bowl, a screaming head would come through the hatch. Drama.” When she has a hole in her head while on holiday (pushed by her sister, she remembers), people are furious: “They had to go to the doctor because of me.” After returning to the campsite, Hella is locked in the tent. There is also a lot of unhappiness that cannot, or not only, be attributed to the trauma of the parents: a series of physical disorders and accidents, a serious eating disorder, the death of De Jonge’s son Jork, a few months after his birth. Whatever happens, everything confirms the coldness between De Jonge and her parents.
After appearing Separate from the world criticized because De Jonge does not really rise above her subject matter. Later there was a conflict about a documentary she made and a subsequent counter-documentary by her sister, in which De Jonge’s image of the events was challenged. Undoubtedly other versions of many stories in the book can be told. But in the end the power lies Separate from the world precisely in that the despair and powerlessness of two generations of war victims are not explained to you, but that you are immersed in it. You can mentally add to that all the new traumas from the 2023 annual reviews.
Would you like to have the reviewed copy of Los van de Wereld? Send an email to boekuitdekast@ nrc.nl. The book will be raffled among entrants and the winner will be notified.