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circumstances of the expedition, the narrator's focus is continuously on himself. During his quest for what he is and can be, he inspects himself almost without interruption. As the narrator recognizes, his geological research in fact comes down to soul-searching. According to scholar G.F.H Raat, this habit of incessant self-observing resembles looking in the mirror, and this fundamental disposition of Alfred finds its equivalent in the use of first-person present-tense narration. To narrate the events simultaneously with their unfolding, with a narrator focused on his own position, is remarkably analogous to the situation of someone who watches his own mirror image.
308:, and these are symmetrical. The third stage begins with the invention of photography and this hands out the final blow of the truth, for a picture is an objective fixation of the image the outside world holds of a person. The image that man loves (his self-image or ideal image) and the circulating photographs of him (the different images of him that the outside world develops) are at odds with each other. The problematic nature of this third stage is a theme in many of the author's novels and stories, and essentially it is the problem of Osewoudt of the war novel
318:
looks in the little mirror in his compass. The image that is supposed to lead him on his way is incomplete, because the mirror is so small that even when held at arm's length it cannot project his full face. Only after his separation from Arne does he become symmetrical to his mirror image, as borne out by his own description of his baffled face in the mirror when he discovers he must have read the compass wrong. At this point, with his mouth open in shock, his face is perfectly in tune with how he feels. Here, says Raat,
245:, the four set out for the interior, a rather bleak, uninhabited, and mosquito-infested area. One of their camps is under the mountain Vuorje, at a lake where they fish for trout. Issendorf, who does not get along with Qvigstad and Mikkelsen, sleeps poorly and spends much of his time in gloomy thoughts, feeling unable to measure up to his father and even to Arne, and wondering whether ancient resentment between Sibbelee, Oftedahl, and Nummedal is to blame for making his mission impossible.
369:
himself of a big rock in an otherwise empty landscape, with a backpacker far in the background. Major revisions were introduced in the eleventh printing (1973), and the fifteenth printing (1979) introduced more than 250 revisions, in addition to another new cover photograph, again by the author, this time of a stream of water with stones and little rocks in it. Hereafter no more revisions were introduced. During the author's life the number of printings totalled twenty-five.
435:: "In the original Dutch, Hermans's prose is bracingly lucid and straightforward, justifying his reputation as a champion of unadorned style. Ina Rilke's translation is fluent and finds clever solutions to tough challenges (such as preserving the comic effect of conversations in which English is the foreign language), but overall the tone is more formal, more prim than it should be. ...
201:, northern Norway, to verify his dissertation director's theory that craters in the local landscape were formed by meteor impacts rather than by Ice Age glaciers. Initially he is accompanied by a group of three Norwegian students of geology, but soon after he is isolated from his companions wandering on his own in a land where the sun never sets.
220:, Norway, attempting to verify his professor's theory that meteors have impacted the area, leaving telltale craters. His professor, Sibbelee, has written the Norwegian professor Nummedal (his own former dissertation director) to ask for aerial photographs of the area, but when Issendorf meets Nummedal in
228:, with a Professor Hvalbiff. In Trondheim, however, no Hvalbiff is present, and the unfinished office buildings are in disarray—quickly it turns out that no aerial photographs are here, and later Issendorf discovers that Hvalbiff ("whale meat") was probably a derogatory name for the director, Oftedahl.
377:
Some of the first reviewers criticized the construction of the novel, taking the death of Arne as its climax and considering the subsequent pages superfluous. Within a few years the book was widely accepted as a masterpiece. In 1967 the Jan
Campert Foundation (Jan Campertstichting) awarded the author
329:
This regression goes even further when Alfred's compass, and the mirror in it, disappears in a crack in a rock of stone. Alfred now enters the subjectivity characteristic of the first stage, also indicated by his use of his native language for the first time in weeks. Appropriately, he has to live in
295:
Hermans scholar G.F.H. Raat relates the narrative technique to the theory of the three stages in the history of mankind described some thirty pages into the book. In the first stage man does not know his mirror image. At this point he is fully subjective and has no self-image. Inaugurating the second
368:
The first edition was published in
February 1966 by publisher De Bezige Bij in 19,400 paperback copies and 490 hardbound copies. Revisions were introduced as soon as the second printing, issued in the same year. From the sixth printing (1969) on, the cover illustration was a photograph by the author
342:
The writing style, with short phrases and paragraphs full of catchy oneliners, gives the impression of someone jotting down notes. The only correction to the inherently unreliable first-person point of view and prejudiced, limited perception of Alfred
Issendorf lies in Arne's diary. In the difficult
334:
was looking up to Arne's easy, self-confident way of handling such obstacles in the terrain. Now Alfred is his equal. An ominous side to this identification is that Alfred will offer to
Professor Nummedal to finish Arne's project, and by doing so he puts himself again in the position of a dependent.
333:
Eventually, as the circular structure of the novel suggests, Alfred will make it back to his point of departure. The discovery of Arne's dead body brings Alfred to a state of confusion in which he climbs and descends the very mountain ridge that caused Arne's fatal fall. Earlier in the novel, Alfred
248:
Issendorf's efforts at locating meteor impact craters are eminently unsuccessful. One morning he finds
Qvigstad and Mikkelsen gone, and he continues to another location with Arne. After crossing a deep ravine, he differs with Arne on what direction to take and charges on without waiting for him, but
317:
Similarly, Alfred fights for his identity, as he attempts to become symmetrical to his ideal self-image and next to find confirmation for this image from others. The implication is that he finds himself in the third stage, yet his view of himself is far from complete, which becomes evident when he
351:
Two geographical expeditions, in 1960 to Sweden and in 1961 to Norway, undertaken by the author serve as the basis for the book. The 1960 visit entailed attending a geographical congress on glacial morphology. Hermans started writing the book in 1962, during a period where he wrote exclusively
287:
According to
Hermans scholar Frans A. Janssen, the novel can be read at three levels: as the report of a geological expedition, as a psychological story of a young man with the urge to supersede his father's achievement, and as a philosophical story in which the search for meteorites must be
249:
soon discovers he had misread his beautiful new compass, which he promptly loses. By orienting himself toward Vuorje he is able to backtrack to the ravine, a journey of several days; as it turns out, Arne had set up camp there to wait for him, but then fallen to his death.
27:
393:
The novel is a staple for generations of Dutch high school students, and is praised for its prose style as well, the opening sentence ("The porter is disabled.") hailed as one of the best opening sentences in Dutch literature. In a 2002 poll, members of the
207:
is one of the canonical novels of the Dutch postwar period, and a prime example of what is perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the author's work, the intense cohesion between theme and narrative strategy.
330:
primitive circumstances until he reaches inhabited territory again. Surviving like the first prehistoric people, he ponders and worries less than before and finds himself in harmony with nature for the first time.
288:
interpreted as a "holy grail quest", one that leads the protagonist to the insight that no understanding of the fundamental mystery of life is possible. With regard to the last level
Janssen speaks of an "inverted
314:(1958), driven to despair by the discrepancies between his own view of himself and the images that others have of him. Unable to find acceptance for his view of himself, he loses his identity as well as his life.
239:, in Finnmark. There, he meets up with Arne, an old geology acquaintance who is also there for fieldwork, and then with two more students, Qvigstad and Mikkelsen. With two tents, tinned meat, and boxes of
352:
first-person narratives, mostly in the present tense. This narrative technique intrigued him throughout the decade: his only other work of fiction from this decade is the 1967 short story-collection
382:. In characteristic sarcastic fashion, Hermans wrote a letter requesting the jury "to be so good to donate this small sum to Food for India", adding: "I will write a novel about entitled
326:
are one. Apparently he has entered the second stage, because not long before this episode he discovered that his camera, which symbolizes the third stage, was no longer working.
869:
828:
390:
would go to the
Netherlands. The German translation of 1982 led critic Joseph Quack to praise the abundance of "sparkling observations" and "a compelling story".
395:
224:
the latter knows nothing of any photographs (and scoffs at the meteor theory); if they exist, he says, they may be at the
Geological Survey in
672:
864:
275:Ørnulf Nummedal, Norwegian professor of geology at Oslo, very old and almost blind, unable to help Alfred access aerial photographs.
231:
Without photographs, and now sleep-deprived because of his anxieties and the lack of darkness at night, Issendorf travels on to
439:
is an engaging yarn once it hits its stride, intermittently thought-provoking, frequently funny, well worth investigating."
774:. Tweede, herziene en uitgebreide versie in samenwerking met Peter Kegel, Willem Frederik Hermans Instituut, 2005, 122–134.
726:
874:
145:
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Verboden toegang. Essays over het werk van Willem
Frederik Hermans gevolgd door een vraaggesprek met de schrijver
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Oftedahl, Norwegian professor of geology at Trondheim, unable or unwilling to hand aerial photographs to Alfred.
404:
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197:, Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf, has a geology dissertation in preparation, and embarks on an expedition to
468:
186:
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Mikkelsen, Norwegian geologist, in possession of aerial photographs, principal companion of Qvigstadt.
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reported that the movie rights for an international, English-language production to be directed by
190:
822:
The Dutch and Flemish Authors from Medieval Times to the Present, Including the Frisian Authors
602:
386:." The Swedish translation of 1977 led literary critic Rolf Yrlid to wonder out loud when the
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216:
Alfred Issendorf, a geology student from Amsterdam, has received a grant to do field work in
183:
156:
641:
26:
731:
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463:) had been sold. On January 27, 2016, the English language film version, under the title
360:), which consists of four first-person narratives, three of them in the present tense.
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Qvigstadt, Norwegian geologist, joins the two before he leaves together with Mikkelsen.
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839:. De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1989, p. 204-228. Retrieved 1 September 2014.
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Het bibliografische universum van Willem Frederik Hermans
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Janssen, Frans A. en Sonja van Stek (in Dutch). (2005).
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ranked fifth), and third in the canon since 1900 (with
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ninth in the Dutch canon of literary works (Hermans's
300:'s discovery of the mirror image. Now there exists an
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Textual History, Adopted Readings and Emendations in
727:"Derde serieuze boekverfilming W.F. Hermans op komst"
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Alfred Issendorf, Dutch Ph.D. candidate in geology.
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471:. The film was directed by Boudewijn Koole, with
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764:Bibliographical Description of all Editions of
844:Hermans: Het grootste gelijk buiten Nederland
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794:Boef, August Hans den (in Dutch). (1984).
725:Nieuwenhuis, Roderick (13 September 2013).
378:the Vijverberg Prize of 2,500 guilders for
182:, "Nevermore to Sleep") is a novel by the
560:Janssen en Van Stek (2005), edition JS 229
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870:Literary works by Willem Frederik Hermans
642:"Interview: Boudewijn Koole en Bob Polak"
842:Valk, Arno van der (in Dutch). (2002).
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634:
475:in the lead. It received mixed reviews.
777:Editors of the Huygens ING (in Dutch),
601:Nieuwenhuis, Roderick (16 April 2012).
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816:Janssen, Frans A (in Dutch). (1985).
805:Haasse, Hella S. (in Dutch). (2000).
668:"De Nederlandse klassieken anno 2002"
16:1966 novel by Willem Frederik Hermans
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820:G.J. van Bork and P.J. Verkruijsse,
813:, Querido, Amsterdam, 2000, 153–182.
770:Frans A. Janssen en Sonja van Stek,
673:Digital Library for Dutch Literature
700:"A pioneer from the domain of fish"
827:Raat, G.F.H. (in Dutch). (1989).
425:Reviewing the English translation
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846:. Soesterberg: UItgeverij Aspekt.
807:'Lethal Ice and Heavenly Stones.'
666:Stipriaan, René van (June 2002).
358:Een wonderkind of een total loss
835:. In: Wilbert Smulders (red.),
354:A Miracle Child or a Total Loss
802:. Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers.
1:
396:Society for Dutch Literature
818:"Hermans, Willem Frederik."
800:van Willem Frederik Hermans
611:: 'Alfred was mijn Aeneas'"
473:Reinout Scholten van Aschat
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569:Janssen en Van Stek (2005)
388:Nobel Prize for Literature
865:20th-century Dutch novels
646:Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam
551:Van der Valk (2002), 28-9
113:Published in English
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405:The Darkroom of Damocles
311:The Darkroom of Damocles
189:, published in February
811:Lezen achter de letters
469:Rotterdam Film Festival
384:Good Night, Sleep Tight
187:Willem Frederik Hermans
41:Willem Frederik Hermans
412:ranking second, after
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809:In: Hella S. Haasse,
591:Den Boef (1984), 81.
542:Raat (1989), 221-222
875:De Bezige Bij books
491:Janssen (1985), 266
467:, premiered at the
364:Publication history
47:Original title
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798:Nooit meer slapen
524:Raat (1989), 225-6
447:In September 2013
271:Minor characters.
824:. Weesp: De Haan.
609:Nooit meer slapen
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180:Nooit meer slapen
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419:De Avonden
347:Background
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242:knekkebrød
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789:Criticism
578:Cited in
429:wrote in
373:Reception
298:Narcissus
296:stage is
226:Trondheim
151:839.31364
138:891839183
84:Publisher
79:, c. 1961
60:Ina Rilke
410:Darkroom
218:Finnmark
199:Finnmark
65:Language
752:Sources
607:) over
460:Kauwboy
398:ranked
783:(1966)
283:Themes
233:Tromsø
193:. The
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37:Author
739:1 May
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176:Dutch
122:Pages
68:Dutch
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324:self
322:and
306:self
237:Alta
222:Oslo
212:Plot
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