Carrots, potatoes and a dash of lard on Writers Unlimited

How do you get back home spiritually after a war? David van Reybrouck in conversation with Stefan Hertmans and Ian Buruma

Carrots, potatoes, maybe some celery and a dash of lard - this was the monotonous winter diet of the underclass in rural Flanders in the late nineteenth century. But, outlines professor and guest speaker Louise O. Fresco in her opening column, these days it is the elite who want to eat according to the seasons, because at least self-selected scarcity makes them exclusive. So the fact that fresh strawberries are available in every supermarket all year round creates a battle of people who seek self-selected poverty. Anything to stand out.

It is this tension, between the deep poverty of the nineteenth century and the meteoric rise to the self-evident prosperity of today, that kicks off the conversation between three gentlemen: the writers David van Reybrouck (table host), Stefan Hertmans and Ian Buruma. Because can you actually still imagine what it is like to live in poverty? Or to see, suffer or commit war crimes? It is impossible to know whether you would have been good or bad, and since the gentlemen, and almost all present, grew up in the longest peaceful and most prosperous period of European history, they can only speculate and reconstruct and are emphatically aware of this.

Hertmans wrote in the award-winning novel War and turpentine on how his grandfather grew up in poverty-stricken Ghent and ended up in the trenches of the First World War. Based on cahiers full of grandfather's own notes. War books by Flemish hands right after World War I are non-existent, with the exception of the poetry collection Occupied city By Paul van Ostaijen. Only the generation of grandchildren, Hertmans, Mortier and more, looks back. Buruma, whose father did forced labour in Germany, rewrites the history of just after the end of World War II, when liberators were not only heroes but also committed gross crimes.

Survivors remember, relatives commemorate

The conversation is a civilised exchange of thoughts on tough topics: war, scarcity, violence and poverty. The (grand)sons note that remembrance is something of "those who have not lived through it". Or as Stefan Hertmans puts it "to remember is to give words to a past". Survivors, especially during and immediately after a world war, need their energy to such an extent that words are not the first priority. Poverty and suffering leave little room for introspection. His grandfather wrote down the story only after 50 years, and it took Hertmans another three decades to commit to it.

For his part, Buruma recounts how his father returned after the war and still had to be hazed at a student union in Utrecht. There was no language to tell what had happened and people wanted everything to be 'normal' after the war as soon as possible, reverting to humiliating rituals as if nothing had changed. Remembering and looking back on the Second World War did not slowly take off until the 1960s.

Netherlands deportation country

Twentieth century saw not only an unprecedented rise in prosperity and life expectancy in history, but also a profound turnaround in morality. Dixit Hertmans. His good grandfather who was always the first to report for a dangerous exploration with a ' oui monsigieur' is now perceived by many readers as a docile fool. Since the 1960s, courage has been saying 'fuck you' to authority.

En passant, the discussion about a different mentality sheds new light on the question of why proportionately so many Jews were deported in the Netherlands, of all countries. Buruma blames it on the lack of natural distrust in the state. Whereas the citizens of countries like Belgium and France had already experienced what authority was capable of through World War I and developed a rebellious and critical mentality ('sadder but wiser'), the Dutch were still obediently and meekly following instructions from on high.

We are all Freudians

So how did our ancestors achieve purification or closure as we called it today? How did people feel at home again in their lives? How do you pick up the threads of everyday life and relate to a changed world? People did not yet speak Freudian, as Hertmans beautifully puts it, so 'talking about it' was difficult. People remembered in silence. Language fell short. After World War I, many men took up painting or joined a music society, an undoubtedly healing outlet. Writing, remembering, that came later. David van Reybrouck therefore ends with the words, "Everything passes, except the past."