Bart Moeyaert - Laureate 2019 1
MESSAGES BETWEEN THE LINES A common thread in Bar
t Moeyaert’s books is human behavior. He works in shades of grey, drawing no sharp lines between good and evil, heroes and villains. Instead he places complex situations under the loupe. Motives for his characters’ actions appear around the edges of the stories: perhaps an absence, or a brokenness, or some lack we sense but never see. Nor does Moeyaert serve up happy endings. The onward path reveals itself, if at all, in an understanding of the circumstances and in the characters themselves. Most of Moeyaert’s books take place within a strictly limited time frame: a day or even a moment when everyday situations shift and change and conflicts come to a head. He sets his stories in unspecified times and places, keeping our focus on the here-and-now, and scrutinizing the conditions under which his characters live and their relationships with one another. LIFE’S MANY FACETS Bart Moeyaert has a literary language that is compressed and musical, and a suggestively charged narrative technique that conveys a filmlike sense of immediacy. Moeyaert favors images and intimations over explanations and morals. His sparing descriptions make his stories speak louder. His cinematic style and the formal perfection of his language require slow, thoughtful reading. Moeyaert trusts that readers will take their time and penetrate what he is saying, not only in the words he puts on the page, but also in between the lines. His characters are not always as they first seem. We find them in unstable relationships and emotional confusion. This year’s laureate has no interest in painting idyllic scenes or pure and innocent childhoods. He wants his books to show us life in all its many facets. CAST INTO THE MIDST OF THE ACTION Blote handen (1995, Bare Hands) opens on New Year’s Eve. A boy named Ward races through his village with a friend, trying to get away from Ward’s neighbor, Betjeman. We take a nose-dive into the action and Ward’s tumultuous emotions. Gradually we get pieces of the back story. Ward has trespassed on Betjeman’s property and killed one of his ducks, maybe on purpose, maybe not. Ward sees Betjeman, who has a prosthetic hand, as a grotesque monster. In a fit of rage, Betjeman kills Ward’s dog. A life for a life. But now both of them have gone too far. We see the terrible things people can do with their “bare hands”—things that can never be undone. Moeyaert does not tell us who to blame. It is a pulse-racing, disturbing drama. But despite the horror of the situation, we sense an opening as the story ends. Midnight approaches; something new stands on the threshold. FULL OF CONFLICTS The masterpiece Het is de liefde die we niet begrijpen (1999, It’s Love We Don’t Understand) portrays a family coming apart at the seams. Here Moeyaert excels in his ability to engineer crucibles of conflict on the verge of blowing up. In three sequences, we follow a dysfunctional family whose children are left to fulfill their own needs for love, confirmation and a structure to their daily life. The opening sequence casts us straight into a scene already at emotional bursting point. It is summer and the family is packed into a sweltering car. The teenage daughter looks on as her mother and older brother argue: brakes screech, car doors slam, shouts echo. She tries to shield her little sister by taking her away from the car as the fight exposes uncomfortable truths. In the final sequence, her brother has moved out but remains almost