Out of Mind is a story of encroaching senility, seen through the eyes of a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The disease is described from the inside, as readers we sit inside a mind that becomes smaller and smaller, which has a suffocating effect. J. Bernlef (1937-2012, pseudonym of Hendrik Jan Marsman) was a poet, novelist, essayist and translator of Scandinavian poetry. He also edited several literary magazines. He was seen as an intellectual author, removed from the general public, until the publication of Out of Mind in 1984.
[Good Harbor Beach, Gloucester, Mass.]
Maarten Klein is a Dutchman who has worked as secretary for the Boston office of the International Maritime Consultative organization, part of the United Nations. After retirement, he and his wife have stayed on in their coastal house in Gloucester in Massachusetts, although Maarten dislikes the severe winters. During one hopelessly long winter, Maarten quickly loses his memory. Just as the snow falls outside and covers all traces, so the snow also falls on Maarten’s mind.
Maarten starts as a logical I-narrator, who outlines his current existence and brings back memories, but soon incidents start to happen, becoming more and more serious. Maarten forgets things, confuses names, and does not notice that himself. The symptoms get worse, his wife Vera becomes worried. Maarten, however, stubbornly refuses to face the decline in his clear moments. He remains a passive victim, who only registers the utterances of decay (incidentally often in a strange manner), but does not really make the problem explicit. He suffers from an increasing disorientation in time and space, as a result of which he loses control over his world. This process ultimately leads to physical and psychological decline, because he loses control over his physical functioning, his ability to remember and use language.
Past and present, appearance and reality become one. He confuses his wife Vera with his first love, Karen, then with a whore he once had a fling with, and then with his mother. While out for a walk he breaks into a deserted building thinking it is his office where he has to join a meeting of the IMCO. Slowly but surely he loses grip on his final mainstay: his language ability. His sentences become shorter, he can no longer come up with the right words and finally even the voice in his head falls silent.
The novel by J. Bernlef is a phenomenon. The book saw 50 printings between 1984 and 2010, and literary critics reacted very positively. Popularity and quality of the novel were related to the accurate and nuanced description of this case of dementia.
Translated by Adrienne Dixon (1988)
Photo: ThePlatypusofDoom, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Maarten starts as a logical I-narrator, who outlines his current existence and brings back memories, but soon incidents start to happen, becoming more and more serious. Maarten forgets things, confuses names, and does not notice that himself. The symptoms get worse, his wife Vera becomes worried. Maarten, however, stubbornly refuses to face the decline in his clear moments. He remains a passive victim, who only registers the utterances of decay (incidentally often in a strange manner), but does not really make the problem explicit. He suffers from an increasing disorientation in time and space, as a result of which he loses control over his world. This process ultimately leads to physical and psychological decline, because he loses control over his physical functioning, his ability to remember and use language.
Past and present, appearance and reality become one. He confuses his wife Vera with his first love, Karen, then with a whore he once had a fling with, and then with his mother. While out for a walk he breaks into a deserted building thinking it is his office where he has to join a meeting of the IMCO. Slowly but surely he loses grip on his final mainstay: his language ability. His sentences become shorter, he can no longer come up with the right words and finally even the voice in his head falls silent.
The novel by J. Bernlef is a phenomenon. The book saw 50 printings between 1984 and 2010, and literary critics reacted very positively. Popularity and quality of the novel were related to the accurate and nuanced description of this case of dementia.
Translated by Adrienne Dixon (1988)
Photo: ThePlatypusofDoom, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
