The 'weird life' of all-rounder Jef Last is not over

Better to die standing than to live kneeling. The statement is fresh in memory after the murder in the Lange Leidse Dwarsstraat, as a mantra in praise of Peter R de Vries, his fearlessness, non-conformism, straightforwardness and honesty. This same statement jumps out even from the first paragraphs of the introduction to the biography of poet Jef Last, written by Rudi Wester.1 The topicality of this biography could not be more aptly illustrated. Rudy Wester started it in 1986, but then abandoned it due to work pressure (she was director of the Dutch Institute in Paris, among other things). Now, more than 30 years later, the similarities with the present only seem greater.

Many lives in one.

On first reading, I was touched by Jef Last's multifaceted life, but the biography itself did not make me super enthusiastic. After second reading, the admiration broke through. Jef Last lived his life widely and deeply. He lived chaotically and globally. His personality showed many different facets. Not only is the title "Is there a weirder life than mine?" (quote from himself) tangentially chosen, but it is a miracle that it still resulted in such a relatively well-organised book of almost 600 pages.

Here I focus on the artistic and cultural aspects. I leave out the political, personal and so many other angles. A pity, of course, because his political career alone, with social democrats, left-wing revolutionaries, communists and provo's, is fascinating. As is his militant world citizenship: captain in the republican army during the Spanish civil war, resistance fighter in the Netherlands, committed lecturer and journalist in Indonesia. And there was his active commitment to gay emancipation as co-founder of the COC.

All-rounder

Nor are we going to talk here about the incredible array of people he met on his life path. Some became his friends. Think of Willy Brandt, André Gide, Mohammed Hatta, Soekarno, JP Sartre, Bertolt Brecht, Willem Drees.

Last wrote novels, poems, plays and radio plays, travelogues and journalistic documentaries and made translations directly from French, Spanish and Chinese, among others. He was a connoisseur of Asian culture and philosophy. He created paintings and drawings that he exhibited in serious places. He made work of cultural participation when cultural elevation of workers was still a socialist item. With film education as a surprising component. He toured around with ('silent') films that he would explain to workers. He also devised and produced films, in which he also acted himself.

Intellectual worker

Although Last was an intellectual, lived in intellectual circles and even obtained a PhD in Chinese philosophy later in life, he had a lot of direct contact with workers throughout his life. Last himself rolled up his sleeves in coal mines, on land and on fishing boats, had erotic adventures with young workers. Above all, he was very passionate about their social, economic and cultural emancipation. From Chinese philosophy, he followed the principle of linking deeds to beliefs.

Writing down political thoughts alone was insufficient. Writing them down was necessary, though. Quote: "we owe the relative height of our Dutch position not to the activity of social democracy, but to the exploitation of 62 million slaves in the colonies, to the fantastic war profits we made between '14 and '15, to the raids and wars the Dutch bourgeoisie waged in earlier centuries ". 2 Both this focus on slavery and the commitment he expected from art are very much of this time.

Potemkin

Jobs and jobs Last has always had only a short time. They always ended in conflict or disappointment. His job, at the beginning of his working life, as film director at the Institute for Workers' Development seemed promising. The institute was a joint project of SDAP and NVV.

Imagine if, in 2021, the SP, the Labour Party and the FNV joined forces to promote cultural and intellectual education. The big van that Last used to tour the country to show films became a great success. Even though they were not blockbusters he showed, but avant-garde films with a social slant. Last had a good nose for it. He bought films in Paris if necessary and personally brought Eisenstein's film Armoured Cruiser Potemkin from Moscow. He discovered and showed the power of Joris Ivens' films. The film season alternated with sales from the same van ("the Red Car") of serious literature , published by the social-democratic publisher Ontwikkeling (later the Arbeiderspers) .

Political art

Having already actively agitated against colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s, published 'agitprop poems' and otherwise shown himself as an active member of the Socialist Artists' Circle, he wrote the screenplay for the film De Branding, which he made with Joris Ivens. It cost him money. The film was not successful in the Netherlands, but it was successful abroad.

His incendiary collections of poems, such as "Liedjes op de maat van de rottan", " Kameraden" and "De wind speelt op het galgetouw" were difficult fare for reviewers. Was it possible: so much politics in poetry? So Last thought so and in 1930 founded the "union of workers and writers to produce revolutionary literature", the union "Links Richten". (Think here of Bonies and Van Bommel's Union of Fine Art Workers, in the 1970s). Less pamphleteering were his novels with a realistic, documentary slant. Nevertheless, also a hybrid that critics often found difficult.

Stalin

Fitting into this 'weird' life was the episode in the 1930s when he stayed in Stalinist Russia as a guest of the Russian Writers' Union. His travelling companions included the French surrealist Louis Aragon. 'Fellow travellers' were called such sympathisers of Russia, which also included JP Sartre, Heinrich Mann and Joris Ivens. It was a similar idealistic, naive support as that of Harry Mulish, Peter Schat and other prominent Dutch artists to Mao's China in the 1970s.

For Last, travelling through Russia was the best way to lose his love for communism. The scales gradually fell from his eyes. Meanwhile, he did not remain blind to Dutch colonial politics. He allied himself with Anton de Kom to draw attention to the situation in Suriname.

International solidarity

Rudi Wester regularly turns the spotlight on Ida Last-Ter Haar, Jef's wife. She was a firm, autonomous personality, but always loyal, supportive and guiding towards Jef. She had her own work. She founded De Vrolijke Brigade, children's theatre in Amsterdam with the aim of giving children a free education through drama. This was intended for children from the Jordaan rather than Amsterdam South. Karel and Gerard van het Reve were members of the children's company, which also performed outside Amsterdam, even abroad. Later, Ida Last started the famous children's circus Elleboog. Her husband supported her when he was there, but Jef was abroad at least as much as in Amsterdam.

Few Dutch writers have entered the international artistic milieu as easily as Jef Last. The friendship he formed with André Gide in Paris in 1934 lasted until the end of Gide's life. They corresponded, commented on each other's work, travelled together, discussed politics. Whereas Last tried to combine thinking and acting as much as possible, Gide was primarily a writer and theoretical thinker.

Defence of culture

At the 1935 'international writers' congress in defence of culture' in Paris, Last, along with Eduard du Perron and Menno ter Braak, acted on behalf of the Netherlands. Among those at that congress were Andre Malraux, JP Sartre, Boris Pasternak, Aldous Huxley and Isaak Babel. Not only that: some 3,000 listeners attended daily. About this congress, Last wrote: "for me, defending culture at the moment means fighting for the soul of youth that threatens to flee us ".

In the same year, he spoke, again in Paris, at the founding meeting of the Association Internationale pour la Defense de la Culture. I was involuntarily reminded of the founding in Paris, by Claude Lelouch, Ariane Mnouchnkine and Patrice Chereau, among others, of the Association Internationale de Defense des artistes victimes de la repression dans le Monde (AIDA), of which we set up a Dutch section in 1981. I remembered the meetings at Mnouchkine's place in the attic of the Cartoucherie of the Theatre du Soleil. The imprisoned writer Vaclav Havel was one of AIDA's first adopters. Again, history kept repeating itself.

When Last and Gide visited the Soviet Union again in 1936, they discovered how several active members of the Russian writers' union had now disappeared without a trace. He remained critically loyal, but eventually Last had no choice but to bid farewell to communism. This 'betrayal' cost him dearly. For the rest of his life, he was criticised, besieged and slandered by communist faithful at home and abroad.

Not class, but man

The episode in which he took part in the Spanish Civil War alone makes this biography worth reading. Last fought at the front with great dedication and courage, and at the cost of his Dutch nationality, but also had to defend himself against hardcore Stalinists. "Fortunately, I am not afraid either of bullets at the front or those that would come from behind." Like many of his experiences, he also translated the Spanish adventure literarily: in "Letters from Spain "(1936)/ "The Spanish Tragedy" (1938).

Although Last did not give up his political commitment, there was a turning point in his life: "I regard the year 1938 as a breaking point in my life. I wrote my book The Flying Dutchman as a conclusion to the time when I saw art mainly as a weapon in the class struggle. Now I understood: it is not about classes, but about human beings. "3 Rudi Wester quotes the text with which he concludes Spanish Tragedy. It could just be a topical appeal in these polarised times of woke and non-woke: "Let us regain the right to love, the right to our own convictions, the right to respect even the enemy, when we are convinced of his honesty. Let us become outlaws, in the sense in which the bird is free. "

Wester writes extensively about the performances of the new Jef Last in Scandinavia and then about his life in the Dutch underground, a life that could just as easily make another film. Last put his life on the line for, among others, De Vonk, one of the most prominent and effective resistance newspapers along with Vrij Nederland. Remarkable: not directed against the Germans, but against Nazi Germany.

Chinese spectacle

It was a crazy life, permanently on the run, always under the roof of yet other friends and acquaintances. It did not stop him from continuing to write: novels, poems, even children's books. Also a penetrating autobiographical and philosophical work: "Diary of a Convict". His Chinese life motto: "the way it is fitting to go is not the ordinary way ".

This unusual path continued after the war. He worked on a grand Chinese spectacle as part of the liberation celebrations that attracted a lot of attention. Prime Minister Schermerhorn came to watch and later appointed him as 'eye and ear' to create a journalistic picture of the liberated Netherlands. Meanwhile, he campaigned for the emancipation of homosexuals and asked for sex education in schools including the topic of homosexuality. There are countries in Europe where such a thing is still not appreciated.

Joining the honour committee for his fiftieth birthday were such notable figures as Camus, Sartre, Gide, Martinus Nijhoff, Jan Sluyters and Ed Hoornik. Not very much later, Mohammed Hatta asked him to come to Indonesia and be a kind of 'eye and ear' there too. There he enthusiastically described what he observed in young Indonesia, but the Netherlands turned out not to be interested.

Indonesia, Asia

Last's Indonesian period is also worth a book in itself. His conversations with Sukarno, the discreet contact with Willem Drees, his adventures and adventures, the resistance to his person among the communists. The assignment he carried out for Sukarno to survey and advise on the cultural life of Bali. ("... the government did have to encourage artist's craftsmanship with financial resources.") How he was taken in hand as a teacher. And meanwhile, his novel 'The Red and the White Lotus' was published in the Netherlands to a remarkably positive reception.

In late 1953, the threats against the Dutch and against his person became too serious and Last had to be put on a boat back to the Netherlands. How the Willem Ruis was full of disillusioned, frightened people, neatly divided by class across the various decks: his description rhymes strongly with that in Van Reybroek's Revolusi4.

Djajaprana

In the next chapter, the rollercoaster continues. The Willem Ruis arrives, wife and children await him, as do the police who arrest him for a' sex offence' before his departure. Shortly afterwards, however, Last was already playing again, together with his daughter Mieke who had become an actress, his play Djajaprana, written in Indonesia. Being on stage was still missing from his list.

This is followed by the period when he earns his PhD in Hamburg from the Chinese philosopher Lu Hsün, acts as a mentor to the Balinese prince Udeyana and writes two striking, well-received, children's books with this future surgeon. Last goes on to travel extensively and at length through Asia, publishing and lecturing about it. Last becomes an esteemed figure on radio and television, what we would now call talk show guest. On the occasion of the Olympic Games in Tokyo (1964), he also briefly translated some Japanese no-spells for television.

Finally, his political commitment translated into friendship with the provo movement; for the Amsterdam city council, he was a list-duster. It apparently did not harm his reputation: the honour committee for his seventieth birthday included Willem Drees, Wim Schermerhorn, Mohammed Hatta, Mayor Samkalden and poet Adriaan Roland Holst. At his jubilee exhibition, Simon Carmiggelt, Ramses Shaffy and Simon Vinkenoog performed. Jef Last's life ended at the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren in February 1972. His death made many foreign newspapers.

Continuity

Was this life weird? No, rather extremely multifaceted, intense, kaleidoscopic, chaotic. The life of an insecure, vain, social, enthusiastic, paradoxical man. So my admiration for Rudi Wester grew more and more: after all, she managed to put his many lives somewhat neatly in one book. With notes, personal index and the impressive bibliography of more than 250 titles, if you only count the Dutch-language oeuvre.

It turns out that even now, we can still relate to, mirror and be annoyed by Last's person. Let art be meaningful to ordinary people instead of just stroking our own vanity. Not thinking in boundaries, neither between countries nor between disciplines or genres. And continuing to make work, appreciated or unappreciated, in comfortable circumstances or in poverty, in peace and chaos, commissioned and unsolicited.

Tinkebell

I wondered who the Jef Last of today might be and didn't have an immediate answer. Impulsively, associatively, a few names came to mind. Cees Nooteboom with a partly similar oeuvre in terms of content and also much more respected abroad than at home, but without the strong direct political layering. Merlijn Twaalfhoven who uses his music activistically, also far beyond national borders, but is less broad as an artist. Tinkebell, the equally combative visual artist, but not with similar intellectual baggage, (which would not be easy in comparison with Last anyway).

I don't know who would really fit n the profile, but that doesn't matter. It comes down to seeing the common threads. Popular uplift, cultural participation, international cultural solidarity, we are not inventing these now, they have been worked on before. We don't need to invent wheels. We need to keep them turning.

Good to know

Rudi Wester, Is there a weirder life than mine, Jef Last 1898-1972, Prometheus 2021

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