Dutch master G. D. RAMSAY Dutch Civilisation in the Seventeenth
Century and Other Essays J. H. Huizinga selected by Pieter Geyl and F. W. N. Hugenholtz translated by Arnold J. Pomerans (Collins 45s; Fontana lOs 6d)
J. H. Huizinga and Pieter Geyl are the two Dutch historians of the last generation best remembered in this country. They were very different in their approach to their craft- Geyl was selective, precise and political, while Huizinga was far-ranging, evocative and poeti- cal, with affinities that brought him close, if a comparison among British historians may be ventured, to G. M. Trevelyan. His inaugural lecture at Groningen, printed in this volume, was on 'The Aesthetic Element in History.'
Like Trevelyan, he did not doubt that Clio was a muse. But, as he confessed in the artless and revealing fragment of intellectual auto- biography that provides the tailpiece, his rela- tionship to the exacting Clio was somewhat flighty. His leanings as a student at Groningen and Leipzig were towards philology and linguistics, and when at an early age he somer- saulted into a university chair be was known primarily as a Sanskritist. Professional research among archives he tended to shun; and as he refused to tie himself down to the conventional acre of research within which he might become the recognised master, he had comparatively few doctoral students to train. His field was nothing less than the whole sweep of history.
Huizinga was by temperament a poet and an artist. This was not incompatible with the pursuit of a career as an academic historian in order to earn a living—indeed, university teaching provided an appropriate opening for the exercise of his talents. The professional world of the historian, in the Netherlands as in this country, has been enriched by the occa- sional bird of vivid plumage poised above the workaday seminars of less colourful inhabi- tants—if his qualities are indeed sufficiently„ brilliant. Huizinga passed as one of these. Such figures are not always appreciated by their fellows, and it may be guessed that Huizinga during his lifetime was not the most venerated personage in the little community of Dutch historical scholars.
But he was read far and wide—his best- known work, The Waning of the Middle Ages, has been translated into several languages and is not forgotten today. The six papers in the present volume retain their freshness although a quarter of a century has elapsed since Huizinga died. High interest attaches to his efforts to interpret history, a topic with which three of the pieces are concerned. His views were definite and controversial. He rejected all attempts to smother the personal and indi- vidual by generalised types. He did not believe in 'scientific history,' nor in the efforts of sociologists to reduce the chaos of events to some sort of pattern. His approval of the appeal to statistics and to computer-derived information, fashionable as it is at the moment, would have been tepid. In his eyes, the writing of history was a species of artistic creation.
Above all, he was sufficiently professional to insist on a full respect for facts on the part of such philosophers or 'gifted dilettantes' as might venture an interpretation of the past. The paths he selected in his own quest of his- torical truth are polemically indicated in the analytical essay entitled 'Two Wrestlers with an Angel,' by any standards a powerful piece of writing. The wrestlers were two non-profes- sionals of genius, Spengler and H. G. Wells. Huizinga evidently warmed to Spengler, whose interest in art forms he appreciated, and whose boldness and imagination in grappling with the ultimate fate of the human race he ad- mired. But he was repelled by Spengler's con- ceit, by his blowing up of an artificial contrast between the Apollonian and the Faustian soul into a gigantic thesis, by his disdain for awk- ward facts, by an apparent lack even of intellectual integrity.
The faults of Wells were different. He was palpably honest, but the prisoner of a set of beliefs common among the English radicals of his generation. These prejudices made it diffi- cult for him to be fair to kingship or priest- craft, and encouraged him to glorify the nomad and the heretic. Like other professionals, Huizinga was quick to spot how Wells some- times relied on out-of-date authorities. Himself an art historian, he was disappointed at the failure of Wells to grasp the significance of art expression in history. Most serious of all, Huizinga charged Wells with an inability to get inside the minds of men distant in time and place: instead, Wells tended either to dis- cover kindred spirits whom he refashioned and praised according to his own arbitrary canons or to poke fun at the prophets and potentates whose milieu he was simply unable to fathom.
Yet Huizinga was ready to admit that Wells had the qualities of his defects. He was not, like Spengler, a pessimist who invoked a for- bidding Destiny as arbiter of the human race: quite the reverse, he had portrayed human history as an epic of adventure—'his book may be called one great outburst of sympathy and hope: Wells pinned his faith on the spread of a new and progressive education, on a renovated legal system, and on the dissemina- tion of a technique of living that might ulti-
mately lift the weight of drudgery from human backs. Huizinga sympathised with this re- statement of the self-confident outlook of the gnlightenment. In the end, his verdict was clear. Although Wells was—as far as history was concerned—a far less learned man than Spengler, in the• opinion of Huizinga he was by far the wiser of the two.
The remaining three essays offer practical examples of how Huizinga addressed himself to the study of the past, with particular reference to the art and culture of the Dutch republic in its palmy days. They will interest not only students of seventeenth century his- tory, but also visitors to the Netherlands who would like to learn how this very individual corner of Europe came to achieve its identity.
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