Therapeutic tragedy: compassion, remorse, and reconciliation in the Joseph plays of Joost van den Vondel (1635–1640)1

  1. The paper presented here has benefited greatly from critical readings by Frans Willem Korsten, Bjorn Quiring, Alexander Schmidt, Márton Zászkaliczky and two anonymous referees. I wish to express my gratitude for their efforts.

Abstract

In the years 1635–1640, Vondel wrote three tragedies based on the biblical story of Joseph. Traditionally, Neostoicism has been viewed as the key to this play that, it is argued, brings Joseph onto the stage as the personification of wise, just and merciful regent. Stoic psychology, based on the axiom that passions are erroneous judgements that need to be corrected by reason, however, poses problems for the interpretation of what are, unmistakeably, deeply passionate plays. Examining Vondel's attempt to create a new biblical poetics, this paper shows how tragic knowledge is the outcome of a complex psychagogic process involving the person of the spectator in its entirety, working on the passions to effect a change of heart. Vondel harnessed the idea of tragedy as a drama of conversion into the service of his irenicist ideals, insisting on the need for the rehabilitation of the exiled statesman Grotius, as well pleading for peace among the warring factions of divided Christianity – the larger irenicist project that animates so much of his poetry in this period.

Keywords:

• Vondel, Joost van den (1587–1679)
• Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645)
• history of emotions
• Biblical tradegy
• poetics

Notes

  1. The paper presented here has benefited greatly from critical readings by Frans Willem Korsten, Bjorn Quiring, Alexander Schmidt, Márton Zászkaliczky and two anonymous referees. I wish to express my gratitude for their efforts.

  2. See for this view the introduction to Van Vollenhove, C. De Groot's Sophompaneas. Amsterdam: KNAW, 1923.More recently, see Eyffinger, “The fourth man”.

  3. Smits-Veldt, “De Nederduytsche Academie van Samuel Coster: de eerste Nederlandse Volksuniversiteit (1617–1622)”; Koopmans, P.J. “Nicolaes Biestkens en de Nederduytsche Academie.” De zeventiende Eeuw 8 (1992): 123–30. Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam. De kerk der hervorming in de Gouden Eeuw, vol. II (1967), 278–82.

  4. Smits-Veldt, Samuel Coster, ethicus-didacticus, 336. For an interpretation which highlights the Academy's role as a bulwark of Amsterdam's literary opposition, see my as yet unpublished manuscript “A Babel full of Confusion”. Politics, Literature and the Stage in the Dutch Republic, 1610–1630.” PhD thesis, European University Institute, 2009.

  5. For Bredero's sonnet on De Groot. See Bredero, Treurspel van Rodd”rick en Alphonsus, dedication to Grotius, 71–3.On the relationship between Hooft and Grotius, see Smits-Veldt, “Hooft en de Groot,” 51–68.

  6. Vondel, Opdracht van HIPPOLYTUS Aen de getrouwe Hollander, in van den Vondel (1927–1940). De werken van Joost van den Vondel, hereafter referred to as the ‘WB edition’, vol III, 200.

  7. Vondel celebrated the occasion in his Wellekomst van den Heer Huigh de Groot, t'Amsterdam, Na sijne langdurige ballingschap, in which he compared Grotius' return from exile with that of Cicero. WB III, 369–70.

  8. Sterck, Vondelbrieven uit de XVIIe eeuw aan en over den dichter. Verzameld en toegelicht door Dr. J. F.M. Sterck.

  9. In September of that year, Hooft invited his brother-in-law, Justus Baeck, for a ‘poetical dinner’, where Vondel would recite the fifth book of the Constantiniad, September 12, 1634, Hooft to Baeck, Sterck, Vondelbrieven, 77–8.

 10. Grotius to Vondel, May 28, 1638, Grotius to Vossius, undated; Sterck, Vondelbrieven, 88–9.

 11. As he acknowledged in the Dedication, Vondel had benefited from the use of Vossius' well-furnished library. Vossius' son, the Hellenist Isaac Vossius, had assisted him in translating Sophocles' Electra.

 12. Vossius, Poeticarum Institutiones, lib I, cap iv, 51.The argument is about Biblical tragedy for which Vossius establishes the rule: “in hoc [sacro arugumento FS] esse dicenda, quae sacra dicit scriptura: quae repugnant, non dicenda: quae nec dicit, nec negat scriptura, sobrie dicenda, nempe solum promenda, quae sunt verisimilia.” Vossius recalls his discussion about the topic with Vondel: “Ac fortasse non memorassem, nisi memorasset ipse praefatione ea, quam praeclare praemisit tragoediae suae de Fratribus, e Rege Saule natis. Atque eo justius id facio, quia nomini eam nostro inscripsit, &, ut υ˜περβολικωτερον vulgo nunc loqui amat, dicavit, sacravitque.” Cf. Rademaker, Life and Work of Vossius, 305–6.

 13. Vondel, “Op de Tweedraght der Christe Princen aen Iesus Christus,” WB III, 419–20.

 14. “nec sibi uni salute reperit, verum et alios plures magna industria et indefessa studio ad eam adducit. Sterck, Vondelbrieven, 100–1.

 15. Vondel, Grotius Testament, WB IV, 623–32.On Hooft's reaction see Smits-Veldt, “Hooft en De Groot,” 67–8.On the reception of the work in general, see Brandt, G. Het Leven van Joost van den Vondel, P. Leendertz, ed. (Den Haag, Nijhoff, 1932).

 16. Rademaker, Life and Work of Vossius, 306.

 17. Vondel, Poëtologisch proza. Verzameld ingeleid en toegelicht door Lieven Rens, inleiding, 7.

 18. De Dichtwerken van Hugo Grotius, vertaald en ingeleid door Dr. B.L. Meulenbroek, met medewerking van drs A.C. Eyffinger, II vols. Assen: Van Gorcum: 1978, II, pars 5a en b, 55, vss 136–42.

 19. “Ut enim ea quae ad salutem necessaria est veritate stabilita, in ceteris inter iniustum dominatum & effraenem licentiam ordinate libertate, partes ambitione, avaritia privatis denique studijs & quae per bella invecta est maledicendi faciendique impunitate plurimum incensae paulatim in fedus redeant, ad eam rem regis vestries principum Christianorum principis auctoritas, tum vero tuae ac tui similium lenitas atque moderatio spem maximā praebet….” Ibid. vss 149–61.

 20. Hooft, Reden vande waerdicheit der Poesie. Met een inleiding, hertaling en commentaar door Jeroen Jansen.

 21. Meter, The Literary Theories of Daniel Heinsius: A Study on the Development of his Views on Literary Theory and Literary Criticism in the period from1602 to 1612, 35–86.

 22. Heinsius, De tragoediae constitutione/On plot in tragedy, ch. II, 11–15.

 23. Heinsius, On plot in tragedy, ch. II, 12.

 24. Ibid.

 25. On views of the passions in seventeenth-century Dutch literature, see Konst, Woedende wraakgierigheid en vruchteloze weeklachten: de hartstochten in de Nederlandse tragedie van de zeventiende eeuw, passim.

 26. On the dialectic between Stoicism and Augustinianism in the Renaissance, see Bouwsma, “The Two Faces of Humanism. Stoicism and Augustinianism in the Renaissance Thought,” 19–73.

 27. On Renaissance praise of passion, see “In Praise of Passion,” in Kern Pastor and Rowe, eds, Reading the Early Modern Passions. Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion. For a stimulating account of the increasing importance of the passions in seventeenth-century literature, see Christopher Tilmouth's recent Passion's Triumph over Reason: A History of the Moral Imagination from Spenser to Rochester.

 28. Nellen, Hugo de Groot, 1583–1645. Een leven in strijd voor de vrede.

 29. Vondel, Joseph in Dothan, Opdracht aan Joachim de Wicquefort, WB IV, 73–6, 74.

 30. Vondel, “Joseph in Dothan,” 74.

 31. Vondel, “Elektra,” Opdracht aan Maria Tesselschade, WB III, 642.

 32. Vondel, “Elektra,” WB III, 641.

 33. Vondel, “Gebroeders,” Opdracht aan Vossius, WB III, 799– 805, 800.

 34. Vondel, “Gebroeders,” WB III, 801.

 35. Vondel, “Gebroeders,” WB III, 801–802.

 36. Joost van de Vondel, Poëtologisch proza, 40.

 37. In a poem, printed to attract more people to come and see the new play, Vondel again emphasises the heart-wrenching nature of the play, depicted this time from the perspective of one the female protagonists, Saul's widow Rispe, and concludes with the lines: ‘now will you not shed tears for that?’: ‘Hef op, hef op met naar geschreew/ aanschouwers treurt met Sauls weeuw, /die hier al't koninglijck geslacht / so deerlijk siet om hals gebracht,/ maar denkt hoe ‘t moederlijk hart/ ontstelt sij midden in dees smart die sij om hare vruchten leit/ geen mes nog vlim dat scherper snijt, / als dit haar gemoet doorvlimt,/ de son daalt neer, den avond klimt/en valt met drupplen en met douw. /maar niet een traan ontsijgt dees vrouw,/ de moeder lijd de grootste straf./ nu mach'er niet een traantjen af. I.v. V, Vondel, “Gebroeders,” WB editie III, 902.

 38. Vondel, “Joseph in Egypten,” Den Heere Ioan Vechters of Victorijn, Rechtsgeleerde, WB IV, 150–3, 150.

 39. Rademaker, Life and Work of Vossius, 304–6; Sellin, “The Last of the Renaissance Monsters: The Poetical Institutions of Gerardus Johannes Vossius and some observations on English Criticism,” 5–36.

 40. Kern, The Influence of Heinsius Vossius upon French Dramatic Theory.

 41. For the connection between admiration and the tragic experience, see: Rubidge, “Catharsis through Admiration, Corneille, Le Moyne and the Social Uses of Emotion.” Older, but still of valuable use: Levi, S.J., French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions 1585–1649, on the cult of glory, see ch. 7, 177–201.For ‘amour-estime’, idem, 184–6, 189–90, 192, 197, 200, 277–8, 302, 306. Gilby, Emma. Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature. London: Legenda, 2006, offers an interesting, though on the whole not entirely convincing analysis.

 42. Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs. Rhetorique et dramaturgie corneliennes on ‘magnanimité et sublime’, 345–9. On Longinus' influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, idem, “Rhétorique d'école et rhétorique adulte: la reception européenne du Traité du sublime au XVIe et XVIIe siècle,” 377–98.

 43. Longinus, “On the Sublime,” in: Aristotle, Poetics, ed. And trans. Halliwell, Longinus, “On the Sublime,” trans. Fyfe, Demetrius, “On Style,” trans. Innes.

 44. For a general discussion of rhetorical poetics see Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture. See especially “Poetica Rhetorica. Rhetorical Poetics in the Renaissance, 87–102.

 45. A good starting point for this discussion is Enis et al., eds, The Rhetoric of St. Augustine of Hippo. De Doctrina Christiana & the Search for a Distinctly Christian Rhetoric, especially part III, chs 5 and 6. For the transmission of Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, see Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance; Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, chs 5 and 6 gives a succinct summary of the Renaissance revival of rhetoric, as well as the baroque rhetorics of the Jesuits, Caussin, Keckermann and Vossius. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, 1450–1521 provides a good intellectual and cultural contextualisation for the revival of sacred oratory in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.

 46. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, IV, 74, 228.

 47. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, IV, 141, 271.

 48. Idem, IV, 121, 253–5.

 49. For the role of the emotions in classical rhetoric, see Mathieu-Castellani, La rhétorique des passions; on the reception of Aristotle's Rhetorica in the Renaissance, see Greene, Lawrence D. “Aristotle's Rhetoric and Renaissance views of the Emotions.” In: Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. Peter Mack. New York: St Martin's Press, 1994, 1–26.

 50. Shuger Kuller, Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance, 41–50.

 51. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, IV, 87–9, 235–7.

 52. Idem, 116.The pun is untranslatable: ‘Sed cavendum est ne divinis gravibusque sententiis, dum additur numerus, pondus detrahatur.’

 53. Idem, IV, 26–58.

 54. Longinus, “On the Sublime,” in Aristotle, Poetics, Longinus, “On the Sublime,” Demetrius,” On Style,” 9.2, cf. 36.1. “Other qualities prove their possessors men, sublimity lifts them near the mighty mind of God.”

 55. Longinus, “On the Sublime,” 9.

 56. On the seven ideas of style, see Shuger, Sacred Rhetoric, Appendix I, 259–60.

 57. Shuger, Christian Rhetoric, 259; cf. Longinus, “On the Sublime,” 17.

 58. Shuger, Christian Rhetoric, 77.

 59. Fumaroli, l'Age de l'éloquence. Rhétorique et ‘Res Litteraria’ de la Renaissance au seuil de l'époque classique, 297, 322, 325; idem, Heros et orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes, 345–6.

 60. Shuger, Christian Rhetoric, 65. But see also Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, ch. 6.

 61. Shuger, Christian Rhetoric, 83.

 62. Vossius, Commentariorum rhetoricorum sive oratorium institutionum libri sex (c.1606), libV, 493–501.

 63. Shuger, Christian Rhetoric, 109.

 64. On energia, see Adamson et al., eds, Renaissance Figures of Speech, ch. 6, Claire Preston, “Ekphrasis: Painting in Words.”

 65. For the importance of energia/evidentia in the epideictic rhetoric of Papal Rome, see O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, 1450–1521, 63–7. In Longinus, vividness is privileged over the figures of thought and speech, and it appears to constitute an altogether different category, connected to inspiration, rather than technique. Longinus, “On the Sublime,” 15.

 66. Horace, The Art of Poetry, in Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. H.R. Fairclough. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970, 179, 465: ‘Less vividly is the mind stirred by what finds entrance through the ears than what is brought before the trusty eyes, and what the spectator can see for himself.’

 67. Shuger, Christian Rhetoric, 74; O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome, 65.

 68. See for example Vossius, who, following Longinus, includes poetry in the caput on ‘oratio grande’ Commentariorum rhetoricorum, Lib VI, cap i, p 446: ‘Adhibentur in magnifico character sententiae sive propositiones graves. Quae triplices sunt. Primo quaedam sunt de Deo, ac rebus divinis. Verum hae sunt duum generum. Aliae enim poeticae sunt, quae voluptatem habent, non autem semnoteta, a eoque non usurpantur ab oratore, preaterquam in genere demonstrativum, quod omnia recipit ornamenta, Aliae vero, quae in civili oratione locum habent, vel sunt Philosophicae, ut quae desumuntur ex Timaeo Platonis; vel sunt Theologicae, ut quae e sacro hauriuntur fonte.’ In the second book of the Commentariorum, which deals with the emotions, Vossius stresses the need for the orator to be moved in order to be able to move, illustrating it with the example of the actor Polus, who, when he had to act the part of Electra, used the urn containing the ashes of his own son, who had died shortly before: ‘Hoc [ad movendos affectos haec summa est ut moveamur ipsi, FS] cum probe intelligeret Polus histrio, Electram Sophoclis acturus, pro Orestis ossibus ossa filii sumpsit, qui paucis ante diebus discesserat. Ea res cum luctum verum revocaret in memoriam; fletu adeo miserabili theatrum complevit, ut omnes eo commoti dolerent: teste Agellio lib. VII cap iv. Neque ideo affectum simulatio Oratori opus est, quia, si rerum imagines, de quibus tractat, firmiter animo conceperit; fieri nequit, ut non praeter caeteros affectos commoveatur.’ Vossius, Commentariorum, Liber II, caput, p 285.Vossius, Poeticarum institutionem, Lib i cap x, 79–80, De pulchritudo poematis § 4: Nec sufficit ad pulchritudinem justa moles, ac mensura, sed etiam requiritur συμμετρια, hoc est, partium inter se convenientia, sive debita composition. Praeterea exigitur tum dictionis elegantia, ac sublimitas; tum numerorum concentus, ac suavitas Vossius.’ Vossii, Gerardi Johannis. Poeticarum Institutionum libri tres. Amstelodami: Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1647.

 69. On rhetorical theology, see Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols, I, 126–8, 141–2, 305–7.

 70. Rhetoricae Ecclesiasticae, sive artis formandi et habendi conciones sacras, libri duo (1616), cited in Shuger, 91.

 71. Vossius, Commentariorum, lib V, 446.

 72. Heinsius, On Plot in Tragedy, ch. XVII, 121–122.

 73. Vondel, Joseph in Dothan, Opdracht aan Joachim de Wickefort, WB IV, 73–4, ll. 20–2.

 74. Vondel, Toneelschilt 36–59.

 75. Vondel, Toneelschilt, 88–121.

 76. Vondel, Joseph in Dothan, WB IV, 79–80, vss 1–32.

 77. Vondel, Joseph in Dothan, WB IV, 80–82, vss 33–94.

 78. Idem, 111–112, vss 790–814.

 79. Idem, 145–146, ll. 1539–1622; cf 74, ll. 23–28.

 80. Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs, 389.

 81. Vondel, Jeptha, of Offerbelofte. For a modern edition, N.C.H.N. Wijngaards, ed. Vondels Jeptha of Offerbelofte (Thieme, Zutphen, 1976), 46–47.

 82. Vondel, Peter en Pauwels, Opdracht aan Eusebia, WB IV, p 221.

 83. Puzzled by the apparent lack of formal coherence, W.A.P. Smit resolved to avoid the term trilogy, preferring to call it a triptych, of which the first and the last part, Joseph in Dothan and Sophompaneas deal with the higher purpose of God's disposition, while Joseph in Egypt deals with the duality of good and evil, with Joseph functioning as a “mirror of chastity” W.A.P. Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah. Een verkenning van Vondel's drama's naar continuïteit en ontwikkeling in hun grondmotief en structuur, III vols. (Tjeenk–Willink, Zwolle: 1956), vol I, p 315, 356–357, 381–383, 385.

 84. Jan Thonnis, Josephs droef en bly–eyndend” spel (Groningen, Augusteyn Eissens, 1639) University Library of Amsterdam, OTM: O 62–6697.

 85. Nellen, Hugo de Groot, 381–382, 386.

 86. Elise Oey de Vita Academie en Schouwburg. Amsterdams toneelrepertoire 1617–1665. Naar de bronnen bewerkt en ingeleid door E. Oey de Vita en M. Geesink, met medewerking van B. Albach en R. Beuse. (Amsterdam, Huis aan de Grachten, 1983).

 87. Grotius, De Dichtwerken van Hugo Grotius,

 88. Ibidem, cf Vossius Poeticarum Institutionem, lib I, caput iv, 20, p 47 “Recte vero observant melioris notae Rhetor Antonius Lullus in septimo de oration cap. V, longe elegantissmam esse περιπετειαν illam Mosaicae historiae de Josepho patriarcha, se asperiente fratribus suis: quam rem mira venustate in Sophompania suo expressit Divinis vir Hugo Grotius ó μακαριτης (“the recently deceased” FS), Suedici regni, dum viveret, ad Christianissimum Regem legatus.

 89. Huigh de Groots Joseph of Sofompaneas. Treurspel. Vertaelt door I. Van Vondel, WB III, “De vertaeler aan alle Nederlanders, 434.

 90. Vollenhoven, who cites both passages, emphasizes Joseph's mercy and forgiveness, although the passage from the first act speaks only of Joseph's own state of mind, independently of how he is going to deal with his brothers.Vollenhove, De Groot's Sophompaneas, 238.

 91. Grotius, Sophompaneas, Act IV, 59–62.

 92. Grotius, Sophompaneas, Act IV, 131–138.

 93. Nellen, Hugo de Groot, 385, see also idem 399, 549, and 578.

 94. Smit, Van Pascha to Noah, 146–149.

 95. Vondel, Joseph in Egypten, WB IV, 150–151.

 96. Vondel, Op de tweedragt der Christe Princen aen Iesus Christus, WB III, 419–420.

 97. Vondel, Joseph in Dothan, Opdracht, WB IV, 74.

 98. Idem, 75.

 99. Idem, 75–76.

100. Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah, 315–316; 318,320,321–323, 332–333.

101. Smit, Van Pascha tot Noach, 334–335.

102. Idem, 336–337.

103. Smit's explanation is that Vondel, in the fourth and fifth acts, makes Judas and Ruben change roles, to the effect that he “gives Ruben the unsympathetic and fruitless remorse of Jesus” traitor, while Judas is awarded the bitter, yet salvific repentance of Peter”. Smit, Van Pascha tot Noach, 352–253.

104. Geeraard Brandt, Het Leven van Joost van den Vondel, 46.

105. On “Het stockske van Oldenbarnevelt” as a literary relic, see Geert Janssen, Het stokje van Oldenbarnevelt, (Hilversum, Verloren, 2001), 73, 89.

106. Nellen, Hugo de Groot, 261, 393–395.