{"id":139366,"date":"2026-10-04T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/?p=139366"},"modified":"2026-09-17T14:24:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:24:58","slug":"een-uitdaging-in-vorm-en-verbeeldingskracht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/2026\/10\/een-uitdaging-in-vorm-en-verbeeldingskracht\/","title":{"rendered":"A challenge in form and imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dieuwertje Mertens, Kiefer\u2019s hand<\/em> | 350 pp. | Querido, \u20ac21.99<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

With her second book Kiefer\u2019s hand<\/em> Dieuwertje Mertens once again demonstrates her talent for storytelling and her imagination. Like a tree whose leaves unfold slowly, this novel, too, reveals its beauty slowly but surely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Precisely because I know how many books are published, I felt that my book had to be distinctive enough \u2013 not just another run-of-the-mill story,\u2019 he said Parole<\/em>-critic Dieuwertje Mertens on the publication of her debut novel Mothers, saints<\/em>. And her book, for which she was awarded a C.C.S. Cronestipendium for literary talent, was indeed anything but run-of-the-mill. In a sultry novel, Mertens brought together faith, cultural history and feminism, and also gave a voice to (an image of) the Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These themes also feature in Mertens\u2019 new novel, and the imagination reaches beyond the boundaries of life and death in a completely new and original way. \u2018This book is a work of fiction,\u2019 writes Dione, the \u2018author\u2019 of this story, who weaves her own life story together with that of her grandmother, Johanna Dewitt-Melief. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first part of the book is about Dione, who, as a young art critic, meets the Jewish artist Abraham Kiefer. He has created an installation featuring an inverted Tree of Life at the Jewish Historical Museum, \u2018which in Kabbalah is the symbol of the serifot<\/em>, \u2019the ten divine powers through which the infinite God manifests Himself\u2019, as Dione is told during the presentation. She becomes fascinated by the Tree of Life \u2013 which may well be the same tree as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil \u2013 and, above all, by Kiefer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time later, she is invited to report on Kiefer\u2019s new installation in Paris, and when he offers her his hand, she cannot resist the temptation to go with him: \u2018It is a large hand, a hand in which the world fits, and her hand\u2014that, too, turns out to fit just fine.\u2019 Although Dione is in a relationship with Homme, and goes on to have a daughter with him, Kiefer remains her lover for years. Leading a double life is nothing new to Dione; even as a child, she kept a secret diary. A neat diary in her desk drawer, which she knew her mother and sister would snoop through when she was away from home, and a secret diary hidden beneath that drawer, in which she wrote down all her true desires and thoughts. \u2018Upper world, underworld. Outer world, inner world\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she opens her desk drawer as an adult, her grandmother\u2019s funeral card falls out \u2013 a cold-hearted woman with whom she shares more than just physical similarities. For just as Dione is having an affair with the Jewish Abraham Kiefer, her grandmother Johanna had a long-standing relationship with a former SS officer, Rudolf Eyckman. Both women also have a child who may, or even probably, be fathered by someone other than the \u2018official\u2019 father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Part 2, \u2018Voices, or: In Search of Johanna\u2019, Dione sets out to find this grandmother, whom she has always disliked. \u2018All family life is organised around the most damaged person within it,\u2019 she quotes Freud as saying. In this fragmentary section, which is at times somewhat difficult to follow due to all the family members who suddenly make an appearance, Dione attempts to gain an understanding of her family background, Johanna\u2019s background and life story, and, through this, of herself. Johanna, too, turns out to have been touched by Rudi\u2019s hands: \u2018Oh, and his hands. He had very beautiful hands, very refined.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On seeing a little poem by Johanna in her autograph book, she thinks: \u2018A graphologist would say of Johanna\u2019s handwriting: too much space between the words: aloof, detached, isolated\u2019. That is precisely the feeling the story has evoked up to that point: as a reader, one feels the relationship with the characters is somewhat cool and distant. But in the third part, in which the former lovers Johanna and Rudi \u2013 both now deceased \u2013 sit under a tree sharing their story with one another \u2013 Johanna knows nothing of Rudi\u2019s past as an SS officer \u2013 the blood begins to flow in the book, both literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiefer\u2019s hand<\/em> is a remarkable book, rich in themes: love, adultery, family relationships, motherhood, the life of a writer and an artist, imagination, life and death. Although the dialogue and shifts in perspective feel a little jarring here and there, Mertens treats her readers to delightful metaphors, such as words tumbling over one another \u2018like an exuberant pack of beagles on the hunt\u2019 or sagging buttocks that contain \u2018all the sadness in the world\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiefer\u2019s hand<\/em> It\u2019s a bit like a Pointillist painting. \u2018All those little dots side by side create an enchanting play of light,\u2019 explains Johanna\u2019s friend upon seeing a canvas by the painter Paul Signac. If you stand right up close to it, you see dots, but take a step back and the dots start to connect with one another, and the scene almost comes to life. Something similar happens towards the end of this novel. Only when the final full stop has been placed do you realise just how much Mertens has challenged himself in terms of form, expression and imagination.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dieuwertje Mertens, Kiefers hand | 350 p. | Querido, \u20ac 21,99 Met haar tweede boek Kiefers hand bewijst Dieuwertje Mertens opnieuw haar verteltalent en verbeeldingskracht. Als een boom wiens bladeren traag ontluiken ontvouwt ook deze roman langzaam maar zeker zijn schoonheid. \u2018Juist omdat ik weet hoeveel er verschijnt, vond ik dat mijn boek onderscheidend genoeg […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16518,4763,11687],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-139366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-literatuur-2","category-donatie-gevraagd","tag-recensie"],"featured_image_url":[],"post_author":"Vivian de Gier","assigned_categories":"featured, LITERAIR, WAARDEER & DONEER!","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":91965,"url":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/2023\/10\/de-heilige-maagd-maria-als-vrouw-van-vlees-en-bloed-knap-romandebuut-van-dieuwertje-mertens\/","url_meta":{"origin":139366,"position":0},"title":"The Virgin Mary as a woman of flesh and blood. 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