Internationale Neerlandistiek - Volume 49, Issue 2, 2011

The relationship between Dutch and German philology as well as between Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and the scientific institutions in the Low Countries have scarcely been a subject of research during the last few decades. However, the correspondence – known and recently found letters – between Jacob Grimm and the Dutch Institute of Science, Literature and the Fine Arts (the predecessor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science) shows that they held each other in great esteem. Especially the correspondence between Wil„lem Bilderdijk as the former secretary and Jacob Grimm was very friendly. Besides, because of his efforts for Dutch literature and language, Jacob Grimm even became the first foreign scholar the Institute appointed as an associate member in 1816. The article is intended as a step towards more research on the relationship between the two neighboring philologies in the nineteenth century.

The South African health organisation loveLife tries to provoke youths to talk about HIV/AIDS by presenting them with billboards and radio advertisements with messages that include complicated rhetorical figures that will supposedly puzzle them. In order to test the assumption that puzzlement about health messages is related to willingness to talk about these messages, two studies were carried out in Limpopo Province, South Africa. In the first study five loveLife billboards, together with a questionnaire, were presented to 149 freshmen. In the second study structured interviews were conducted with thirty secondary schools learners about six HIV/AIDS posters and six HIV/AIDS radio advertisements from loveLife and other South African health organisations. Neither in the first, nor in the second study was support found for the expectation that presenting youths with a puzzling health message will contribute to engaging them in discussions about the theme addressed in the message. By contrast, a positive correlation was found between the participants’ perceived comprehension of a message and their self-reported inclination to dialogue. No clear relations were found between the use of rhetorical figures (tropes or schemes) and the effects of the billboards and the radio messages. Participants indicated that they were willing to discuss the themes addressed in either a poster or radio advertisement because they appreciated the message and felt that its content was relevant to them, rather than because the message was puzzling or difficult to understand. The participants’ overall actual comprehension of the messages, however, proved to be strikingly low.

This article offers an interpretation of three poems that in their title refer to Paul Celan. This evokes a theoretical reflection on the question who is responsible for the intertextuality: the author, the text or the reader. With Eco’s notion of the intentio operis it is argued that the text itself contains signals that legitimize an intertextual reading. Then, with Riffaterre, the question is answered how to discover less explicite references and architexts. In the analysis of the poems of J. Bernlef, Jan Kuijper and Peter Theunynck I will indicate which verses of Celan they are referring to and how these verses function in the new text. In addition to this it is investigated how these poems fit into the poetics of their authors. Finally the different images of Celan that these poems create are discussed. In the conclusion I will return to the theoretical starting point of the article to determine the role of the reader in the intertextual reading.

De Prins Hendriklaan in Utrecht is een typisch vooroorlogse Nederlandse straat met aan weerszijden ietwat sombere, keurige rijtjeshuizen. De meeste woningen hebben erkers om zo veel mogelijk zon in de woonkamers toe te laten. Op de eerste verdieping hebben sommige huizen een kneuterig balkon, meer een soort borstwering, en de dakrand boven de tweede verdieping steekt zo ver uit dat er nauwelijks licht binnenkomt in de ‘bodekamertjes’ onder het schuine dak. Van achter de vitrages zal men met de nodige argwaan naar buiten hebben geloerd, toen tussen 1923 en 1924 op de open kavel ernaast een vreemdsoortig bouwwerk verrees als woonhuis voor de eigenzinnige mevrouw Schröder-Schräder (1889- 1985).