Monday, 15 January 2018

Lament for Agnes

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1951, is largely set in Antwerp. The narrator and central character is an alter ego of the author: whereas many of the events described in the novel occurred in the author's life, there are also many deviations from autobiography. The narrator is the second child of his parents, his sister Agnes having died before he was born. When as an adolescent he meets at the cinema a young woman called Agnes and experiences love at first sight, he merged the two Agneses in his mind: “She was Agnes. She was my dead sister. I do not know how I worked out this transference of the dead child into the living girl within myself. Just because of the name?”



The author, Marnix Gijsen (né Jan-Albert Goris, born 20 October 1899) grew up in Antwerp. He studied at the local Jesuit school but was effectively expelled in 1917 due to his Flemish nationalist activities. He subsequently studied at universities in Leuven, Freiburg, Paris and London. He worked in the civil service, at first in his home city and then for the Belgian state in Brussels. His first publications were expressionist poems. From 1939 to 1954, he served in the Belgian diplomatic service in New York. The majority of his published writings are works of non-fiction. His first novel was published in 1947. It was followed by several novels set in America. In 1974 he was awarded the Prijs der Nederlandse Lettren, the most prestigious accolade in Dutch literature.

The first five chapters of the novel are set during the First World War. Chapter 6 opens with an account of the aftermath:
“The war had ended without having affected Agnes’s family or mine seriously. We stood together on the market square when the foreign flag came down from the tower and our national colours were run up. Old people, who had waited six years for their sons who were stationed away at the war, burst into tears... Peace to us simply meant greater freedom of movement.”




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