Issue 2 - O

Interview
Busschbach
After getting tea and taking a seat on
his sofa in his office I started to ask my
questions. After the first, it immediately
became clear that English Literature is
not his only academic ‘love’, but that
that developed alongside his love of
Classical Languages and Literatures
which he studied in Utrecht. Originally
from the South and fresh from
secondary school his choice to go and
study in Utrecht in the late ‘70s was
quite obvious for him. Simply, because
he wanted to do something different,
and not go and study in Nijmegen or
Maastricht, where most of his
classmates decided to go.
When I asked: ‘Where did you live
during your student years in Utrecht?’
he made himself comfortable in his
desk chair and started reminiscing
fondly about his days as a student
which started as he explains in his
own words in Bilthoven, which is near
Utrecht in an ‘very, very, very tiny
(attic) room which was about 2.5 by
2.5 m. It also had a slant roof! But, the
first year I spent every weekend back
home; because most of my friends
actually stayed there and then slowly I
got more involved in Utrecht’s social
life. After the 3rd year I moved to
Utrecht city itself and I shared a whole
floor with a (rather rich) fellow student
of mine’. An interesting detail that
Professor Liebregts tells me slightly
later is that even though he did not
have to pay for it, the room that he
shared came with its own
housekeeper! So apart from now
being able to stand up straight in his
new room and even probably being
able to run a marathon from one side
to the other, he also did not have to
worry about breadcrumbs on the floor
or a sticky stove in the kitchen. I have
to admit not bad if you are still a
student.
Nonetheless, before rooms were
getting bigger and graduation was in
sight Professor Liebregts worked all
kinds of part time jobs. In his first
academic year (’79) (before studying
Classical Languages & Literatures) he
took a job as a gardener of a dental
practice which most of all meant
raking leaves. Soon after he took an
administrative job at a transport
company called Van Gent and Loos.
This first academic year was more a
sabbatical year where he dropped out
of university, but got acquainted with
James Joyce’s Ulysses and worked
long hours in order to save money to
go to Dublin to make sense of the text
that, in his words, he had ‘wrestled
with’, ‘for weeks on end!’. This text
would later prove to be one of his most
favourite texts and most influential
texts on his road to becoming a
professor of English Literature.
Then I asked: ’How would other
people have described you as a
student back then?’ He did not have to
think for a second and gave me a
surprising answer: ‘Rebellious!’ He
explains to me that when he was a
student in the late 1970s nothing
seemed to have changed in the
curriculum and the way students dealt
with one another since the 1950s. His
way of rejecting the ‘old ways’ was
reflected in his controversial choice of
clothes, listening to pop music, having
long red hair, and going quite often to
the cinema, which were all seen as
signs of ‘low’ culture. Thus he went to
see the film Apocalypse Now (which is
still one of his favourites) TWICE in the
Tuschinski theatre in Amsterdam
immediately when it came out (See
link to view trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikrh
kUeDCdQ ). But when I asked him ‘Do
you recall a funny anecdote from your
student time?’ I was in for an even
bigger surprise. Apparently in the early
’80s the government chose to abolish
the Classical Languages and
Literatures department in Utrecht.
The rest is best read in Professor
Liebregts’ own words: ‘Of course we
did not agree with this, and protested.
So what we did do? For instance,
somewhere in the winter 1982/83, we
made these posters which we then
wanted to hang up everywhere in the
city centre of Utrecht to call attention
The Angler – Year 8 – Issue 2 12