Netherlandisch Proverbs--(vii)

This detail from Brueghel's Netherlandisch Proverbs, like every other square inch of the work, ist overladen mit visdom, wisdom we're meant surely to take to heart. (Look for this space on the top and in the center.) 

Upper left there's a poor man with a inflamed bottom, who appears to be waving madly toward that Dutch house at the top left, while three long-snouted animals (pigs?) are madly running into a wall that marks whatever kind of enclosure they're intended to be in. Atop the tower to the right, one man waves what appears to be a black flag, while another gent, armed with a huge basket, either catches or heaves away things that look to be coins.

Meanwhile, a sad sack in a white cap looks out the tower's window as some kind of bird--a goose perhaps--flies off. 

That's about all I know, so let's have a look at the answer sheet.

The sad sack with the white cap--he looks imprisoned, don't you think?--is watching the white bird, a stork--and nothing more. The Dutch proverb goes like this: De ooievaar nakijken: "gazing at the stork." I don't know why, and the Dutch would likely say neither does he. He's contemplating his naval--wasting time, staring at something totally unworthy of his time or yours or mine. Remember, Calvinists gifted all of us with capitalism. The guy in the window is doing absolutely nothing worth while. He needs to be told to get a job.

Poor guy above him isn't much better. That wide basket he's carrying is emptying as he's tossing out everything it carried--not coins but feathers. He may be working up a sweat, but what he gets done doesn't total a whole lot more than what the sad sack in the white cap has done. He's tossing feathers into the wind--pluimen in de wind waaien, doing nothing that'll get him anywhere, which is another way of saying he's wasting time, and, as Poor Richard told Americans, haste makes waste. This is real Calvinist stuff moral suasion.

The guy in the purple blouse is sitting on the corner of the ramparts waving what long-gone Flemish folks would have recognized as his own coat, waving his cloak in the wind.

The truth? I'm still in the dark. Zijn huik in de wind hangen--his coat hangs in the wind, a description which suggests his spinelessness. He'll wave his coat wherever, a man without principles. I think he's a politician.

That leaves us with the man with the inflamed butt, which happens to be my favorite, maybe because its got that sweet Dutch earthiness. The guy appears to be reaching for fire with his right hand--maybe even having eating it. Not smart. The result?--eat fire, you crap fire. Toy with horror and if you don't watch out, you'll get yourself in trouble.

That may be it, but there's another option. The guy is going wild up there, in sheer distress--look at him. Hij loopd alsof hij het vuur in zijn aars heft, simply translated: he runs as if his ass is burning, which suggests he's in a hurry and well should be. Right now, I might well be led to say that Ambassador Sondland, who faces a grilling from House Oversight Committee members today, in fact, loopt alsof hij het vuur in zijn aars heft, which is to say in all likelihood, tonight, he's in some considerable distress.

Finally, you're going to have to trust me. When we come up close, it's clear there aren't three pigs in the painting, there are six, three of whom have already escaped into the wheat field, and it's their having escaped that's the big deal. Zondra het hek van de dam is, lopende varkens in het koren--that's a mouthful: if you leave the gate open, the pigs, sure as heck, will get in the corn.

You know, a ton of these things sound vaguely parental. Somehow, when I reared my own kids, I missed 'em. Rats.