Netherlandish Proverbs (iii)

The only Dutch aphorism I know I heard from an old friend, a preacher/philosopher who grew up on the Rosebud reservation at the turn of the 20th century. He's been gone for years, but the darling little witticism he tossed out, in Dutch, has stayed with me. 

True to human form, it's not just sinless muttering. There's a spot of envy in it, and envy is one of the Seven Deadlies. I haven't a clue about the context in which he used it, but it's not the application that's memorable; it's the image itself, the perfectly Brueghel-like picture it paints: Hij ist mit zijn gat in de boter gefallen, which, translated, means "He has fallen with his butt in the butter. (I think I've got the spelling right.) No copyright exists that I know of, so if it fits the occasion, feel free to pass it along without attribution. 

Here's three of Breughel's moralisms from the far lower left corner. 

One is a man dressed in blue and clinging to what once was (but is no more) a pillar. On first glance, I guessed something related to an eager beaver--after all, on top of the broken pillar is a hat--maybe a beaver hat, then greatly popular? What's more, he's attacking the thing, gnawing it as if to bring it down (even though it's already been brought low). 

If you're quicker than I am, you may have guessed that once upon a time that pillar stood at the entrance to a church (Brueghel's religious preferences remain a mystery, by the way). So he's clinging to something broken from a church, even taking sustenance from it (Brueghel is having fun, after all). Maybe that helps. In Dutch, the idiot was called or named "een pilaarbijter," easily translated as a "pillar biter." But what on earth does that mean? 

Real Dutch scholars claim "a pillar biter" was a religious hypocrite, someone who clung to the church perhaps, but didn't really believe or practice what the church taught? Een pilaarbijter.

At the bottom of this cut out is a woman, in red, who appears to be looking out elsewhere or asking for help in holding down what appears to be a naked man she's got wound in some kind of straight-jacket. Clearly, she's holding her own, but clearly she's not as sure as she'd like to be.

What's central to understanding this one is something most 21st century viewers would discern: the naked fellow isn't just any hapless gent--it's the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself. I'm not sure how I should have known that, but real art scholars make the claim that this little incident proclaims what 16th century Dutch and Flemish folks would have understood as "De duivel op het kussen binden."  Kussen is a pillow--that red shell she's pinned him to. So, the meaning goes something like this: She's pinned the Devil to a pillow, which suggests something impossible, something which can be accomplished only by almost inhuman obstinacy. 

I'm guessing a line like that is not necessarily spoken in sheer awe--and not necessarily in a kindly way: She's so bull-headed she can wrestle the devil. Maybe that's it, or something akin.

The woman at the top of the cut out appears to be a servant carrying out some kind of task. Whatever it is, she makes me smile. In one hand, she carries burning coal in a blacksmith's tongs, in the other a pretty significant bucket of water. Geloof niet iemand die in de ene hand water an de andere hand vuur dragt--that's what's at the heart of things here, a line which brutishly translated means "don't trust people who carry water in one hand and fire in the other," which is a warning about people who, with nary a pinch of guilt, tell two wholly different stories. 

In August of this year, the Washington Post had documented more than 12,000 from you-know-who. Just sayin'. Brueghel's Netherlandisch Proverbs was done 400 years BT (before Trump). Brueghel could not have dreamed of a man with orange hair who's taken over the world stage. 

What he knew, however, was a wisdom book of Dutch proverbs, some of which haven't lost a bit of their currency in all that time.