Discord Consensus

the political setting of the novel. No one relates to the postcolonial perspective
of Oeroeg himself, who moves independently of the wishful,
naïve narrative of the I-​figure.
The author Haasse, however, had recently moved from the Indies and
was now witnessing the independence wars from afar, from Amsterdam.
She must have been acutely aware of what Bhabha described as the colonial
‘split’. She turned ‘colonial wishful​ness’ into a theme of Oeroeg, by
complicating the naïve nostalgia of the narrator and making him ask this
final question: ‘Ben ik voorgoed een vreemde in het land van mijn geboorte,
op de grond waarvan ik niet verplant wil zijn?’ (Oeroeg, p. 79) (‘Am
I forever to be a stranger in the country of my birth, to the soil from which
I am loath to be uprooted?’ (TBL, p. 114)). 17 This is a question ignored in
contemporary reception: not one reviewer attempts to articulate answers
to the narrator’s expressed doubt about colonial relations with the Indies/​
Indonesia.
Haasse often hints at the dreamlike, ‘split’ perspective of the narrator.
For instance, when Oeroeg and the Dutch narrator, now adolescents,
are bathing in the river they used to swim in as children:
Honderden malen hadden wij ons zo verfrist [. ..] Met iets als teleurgestelde
verbazing merkten Oeroeg en ik echter bij deze gelegenheid
dat wij van het baden in de rivier niet meer onverdeeld genoten.
Misschien is dat te sterk uitgedrukt. Beter zou ik het zo kunnen zeggen:
het baden was op dat moment –​ en zou in de toekomst blijven –​
niet meer dan een verfrissende onderdompeling, een handeling
[. ..] Verdwenen was het toverrijk waar wij helden en ontdekkingsreizigers
waren geweest [. ..] Ik keek naar Oeroeg en zag dezelfde
ontdekking. Wij waren geen kinderen meer. (pp. 51, 52)
We had done this hundreds of times when we were small [. ..] This
time, however, Oeroeg and I felt a twinge of disappointment. Bathing
in the river had lost its blissfulness. [We did not take undivided
pleasure in our river baths anymore.] Perhaps that is putting it too
strongly, better to say that from that moment on bathing in the river
would be no more than a refreshing dip, an activity [. ..] Gone was
the magical kingdom in which we were heroes and explorers. [. ..]
I glanced [looked] at Oeroeg, and saw the same discovery in his eyes.
[In Haasse’s original it does not say: ‘a sense of finality’; this is the
translator’s addition – SvG] We were children no longer. (TBL, p. 69)
The paragraph just quoted underlines many intimate, shared childhood
moments between the boys. At the same time, it hints at the underlying
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DISCORD AND CONSENSUS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1700–​2000