Verhulst Sees Death as a Shared Process of Collective Decline
According to a reporter from the Iran Book News Agency (IBNA), Dimitri Verhulst’s novel ‘Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill,’ translated by Farzaneh Ghiyasi Nouei, was recently released by Aynek Publishing. In this short novel, the Belgian author Dimitri Verhulst writes with poetic prose and biting humor about love and mourning, old age and loneliness, and the inability to escape fate, narrating a bitter and brilliant story about a human caught between past and future, embarking on an inevitable journey in search of a moment of peace.
On the occasion of this work’s publication, we had an interview with Farzaneh Ghiyasi Nouei, its translator, which you can read below:
What motivated you to translate the novel ‘Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill’?
There are various motivations and criteria for a translator to choose and translate a book. When a translator encounters a text that deeply affects them, whether due to its atmosphere, language, worldview, or human sensibility, their natural inclination is to share this aesthetic and emotional experience with others. This work was proposed to me by the publisher, and I must say that initially, I had no knowledge of contemporary Dutch literature or this author. He is one of the most prominent and radical figures in Dutch-speaking literary and artistic circles; a playwright, filmmaker, poet, and writer who fearlessly delves into the hidden and sometimes unpleasant layers of the lived experience of Europeans on the margins. The cold and melancholic atmosphere of the work attracted me, as, unlike Verhulst’s other works which are set amidst the chaos of violence and poverty, this one unfolds in the silence of a foggy, remote village in a snowy, mountainous setting. It’s a concise and brilliant novel that moves between myth and reality, present and past, life and death, offering a poetic, bitter, and human portrayal of resistance against decay. In my opinion, works like Verhulst’s, with their bitter humor, candid expression, philosophical outlook on life, death, and love, or such poetic prose, are rare in our translated literature. This book, due to its miniature structure and exquisite, multi-layered narrative, holds a special place among his other works. Verhulst’s prose in this book, compared to most of his other works which are sometimes sharp in humor and irony, possesses a gentler and more musical rhythm. Verhulst narrates a simple story, yet full of emotions, sentiments, passion, and human relationships, with admirable language, intricate and pleasant sentences, and a poetic and melancholic atmosphere, so much so that many believe each image he presents in this novel is like a small painting frame. From my perspective, this is true, and translating such works can be like adding a new color to the palette of contemporary Persian literature. Furthermore, the work evokes a deep human feeling in the reader, and despite its seemingly tragic subject matter, the language, tone, and narrative form do not descend into sentimentalism.
Does the theme of death have a precedent in Dimitri Verhulst’s other works?
Death is one of the constant and recurring themes in Dimitri Verhulst’s works, although he usually does not view it from a tragic standpoint but rather as a purely human condition; a real, unpretentious, and everyday aspect. Therefore, he addresses it with a language mixed with bittersweet humor. In this novel, death is the initiator of the narrative and the emotional driver of the story, speaking of the immortality of love and how love continues after death. Verona neither wants to fill the void left by her beloved nor wishes to be freed from his love; her actions, her decision to remain in the house on the hill, even her reluctance to descend from it, all stem from a kind of continuous dialogue with absence. In this unique atmosphere created by the author, nature, humanity, time, and death are intertwined, and nothing is separate from another. Verhulst sees death not as an individual event, but as a shared process of gradual and collective decline, similar to what occurs in nature. In nature, when a tree falls, it’s not just one tree that perishes; the direction of sunlight changes, other species grow or some disappear, a bird becomes homeless, roots rot or change course underground… the silence or roar of the forest changes. Monsieur Patre’s death, like the falling of a tree in a forest, displaces relationships, spaces, and the people around him.
The author’s perspective, stating: “But perhaps humans should not have been allowed to crawl out of the water at all,” is this based on a theory of human origin, and does Verhulst have a hand in philosophy and science?
Certainly, this sentence carries philosophical weight, and it is not the only one in this novel that undoubtedly serves more than just a simple poetic interpretation, aligning with a perspective traceable in many of Verhulst’s works. Generally speaking, he is consciously influenced by the tradition of European pessimistic philosophy. It is true that he is not a philosopher, but he possesses his own narrative philosophy. In this sentence, one can see a humorous reference to the theory of evolution and a critique that evolution has ultimately led us to jeopardize life on Earth, and that perhaps the error began the very moment the first creature crawled out of the ocean onto dry land, and the path of evolution pushed us towards becoming human. In fact, we see that with his unique critical gaze, instead of glorifying evolution, he questions human destiny from its very beginning with a poetic smirk.
Why did Madame Verona’s husband hang himself?
Monsieur Patre’s death by hanging himself from a tree is one of the captivating moments in the novel and aligns with his form of empathy with nature and its laws. The novel states that Patre learns of his illness and does not want his life to end on a hospital bed, a perspective not entirely unlikely for an artist like him given the melancholic descriptions. One could say he doesn’t want an artificial death, a death, in a sense, rootless and detached from a world to which he feels he belongs. Just as for years he cut down diseased and decaying trees to help the health of the forest and the cycle of life, now he feels it’s his turn; I see this dramatic moment as a desire for identification with nature, particularly with trees; as if he too is part of that ecosystem and must, like a tree that can no longer continue, quietly be removed from the cycle. If the reference is to the act of suicide itself, one reason could be that he does not wish to impose himself in this way on the life of his beloved – Verona – signs of which we see in the novel.
Why hadn’t a girl been born in that town for some time?
The fact that no girl was born in the village could point to the prominent role of fate in the lives of its inhabitants. Men who are resigned to accepting destiny because they do nothing to change it themselves. They are more spectators than actors, and love in the minds of most of them has been reduced to the level of physical, social, and daily needs; but in contrast, Verona sees love as a living thing even after the death of her beloved, and with this description, the absence of girls’ births in the village is a metaphor for the absence of imagination, tenderness, birth, future, and the possibility of change; a village that only continues death and decay, because its people have compromised with fate and are afraid of breaking the cycle of decline.
Was the dog next to Madame Verona a symbol of her loyalty to her husband?
That’s right; a dog is a symbol of loyalty in most cultures, but it cannot be said that here it shows Verona’s loyalty to her lost beloved. Rather, the author presents this concept more broadly and generally. Even before Verona married Monsieur Patre, her emotional bond with dogs and animals was mentioned, and this companionship continued during their married life. Of course, I do not deny that the dog carries cultural and emotional meaning that reinforces the tone and theme of loyalty in the story, but it is not merely indicative of it. It is mentioned somewhere that this dog, curled at Verona’s feet, accompanying her in her chosen death, is of a rare breed whose varying colors and spots made painting it challenging for artists. In this novel, we see that Verona herself repeatedly mentions that the dog covers a certain level of her connection to the world. This connection itself is motivating for continuing life; a life about which Verona ultimately faces doubt. Such philosophical conflicts of thought are frequently seen throughout the novel, in its narrative style, unadorned and critical humor, delving into characters’ minds, addressing small details and meanings of life, and Verona’s decision to die of her own will.
Do you have any new works in publication?
I have a novel by Australian author Melanie Cheng on the verge of publication, as well as an American short story collection that recently received publishing permission.
