Typing English and writing Dutch

How language and the way we write influences what we write

Literature is something very close to my heart. When I was around 8 years old I discovered my love for the written word and started reading every day. Simple fiction was at first enough to quench my thirst, but as time went on and I got older, I discovered the great works of European literature. Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Homer, Gezelle etc. I read much and still have much to read, but I also started to wonder. Where is the great literature of our age? To be sure, much has been written these last 30 years. Some of it enjoyable and might even be called good. Especially what has been written by friends in this thing of ours. But is it great? As in: will it stand the test of time and become part of the canon? I don’t think so, at least not yet.  In this essay I will reflect on why we don’t yet have any great works of literature and give some suggestions on how we might begin to change that. Important to note is that with literature of our age I don’t mean some epic high fantasy tale, but a literature dealing with our age as it is right now.

To love English is to hate what it became

First, I have a confession to make. I don’t like writing in English. But here I am, writing in English. It’s the only way I can share my thoughts with the wider world. For the native Anglo who has known no other language, it might seem a weird thing, but I think many other Europeans can understand this sentiment. It is not because I don’t like that language. I love it. Its complexity, the depth of emotion it can express. I adore how it sounds when spoken well. I’m in awe of the literature crafted by its masters. Who doesn’t love Shakespeare? Such a rich and powerful tongue and yet… and yet I also hate it. I hate how ubiquitous it is. Even when I take the train home late at night I hear it spoken by some tourist or worse a migrant begging in broken English. Every time I log on I’m greeted by that great and hated speech. Worse, many of my younger countrymen and northern brothers (especially from Randstad) often speak in something I can only really describe as an early stage Dutch-English creole. I even catch myself using English words when we have Dutch words that would do equally as well, but worst of all… I often think in English. I, a Flemish man cycling to the train station, start thinking in English. I don’t think this comes without problems.

Part of this “hatred” comes, I admit, from an ingrained Flemish parochialism. I want things to be stable and I want those who come after me to speak the language of the fathers. I love home and despise the foreign, but in this of course lies the danger of becoming too rigid and degenerating into a parody. Things do change and if a culture isn’t willing to adapt it dies. The same is true for language. Things change and that’s a healthy thing. However beyond this parochial sentiment, the main problem is that English has a stranglehold on Western thought. Everything becomes mediated through English and thus the world becomes enthralled by the particular ‘world view’ that has captured the Anglo mind.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the non-Anglo countries where the pozze is the strongest (like the Netherlands and Sweden), are those countries with the highest rate of English literacy. It was through high school English textbooks that I had my first irl experiences with the gay nonsense.

The stranglehold by English reduces what can be said in two ways. First, it limits what is being read. On the one hand this is normal; you can after all only read the languages you know, but there is another more insidious side to it. This total stranglehold English has, leads many people, especially techbros, to think that at best an often bad translation will do to capture the full meaning and nuance of the work translated. Translating well is hard and it is also easy to castrate great works deliberately in translation. The above has already been discussed somewhat in our spheres. The discussion about the Odyssey translation by that female classics “expert” I refuse to remember the name of comes to mind. And at worst to dismiss anything that isn’t written in English as useless. But I also want to point out another reason as to why the English dominance is destructive for thought, a positive feedback loop of mediocrity.

As mentioned, I love English literature and if the English that dominated was even the English of the early 20^th century, I wouldn’t mind it as much. It would still be restrictive in some ways, but there would still be enough depth to it. But this isn’t the English we are dealing with on a daily basis. What we see on our screens. What most modern ‘books’ are written in and what is spoken on TV is what some have jokingly termed ‘negerbable’. The language of yeast. A language strong enough to communicate the basics of living, but where the capacity for deep expression has been lost. It is a language without any roots to draw from and so it can only be superficial.

One of the reasons for this degeneration of English and the strong English influence on European languages is quite ironic. The dominance of English language media forces non English speakers to learn English to get more access to entertainment and knowledge in general. The result is that most people learn English just barely well enough to understand media slop. This way it expands its presence and so our own lives become even more integrated with English. To make sure this slop reaches the most people it’s imperative that the language is as barebones as possible. What makes it even worse, is that barely literate second language English speakers start producing their own English language content, because English has a wider reach and thus makes you more money. This leads to an even greater degeneration of the language and because ‘creative’ energies are being spent on English. There is less attention on the mother tongue and so there is less media and often worse media produced in the native language. And so it again encourages more English content. Thus reinforcing the feedback loop.  This downward spiral is becoming even worse with the rise of so called ‘AI’. With them the death of true literacy is at hand.

But why does this matter? We have to save our languages from this ‘negerbable’ and this very much includes true English. The language of the King James Bible, Shakespeare and Pound. To have languages that elevate us. This is at the heart of this essay. For us Europeans this means to lessen our participation into the Anglo content mill. We still have to speak and share with our friends from over the world. So translate, talk and poast in English, but don’t forget your mother tongue. And for the Anglo, it means to stop being content with just speaking English, but to learn to speak it well. Language is important, for it is through language that God, (or the Muses if you prefer) speaks through us. But He can only do that if you master your speech. Only in this way can a new work of era defining literature be made.

However I don’t think that it’s enough to break free from this degenerated English. There are other considerations we have to make. One of these is the difficulty to accurately write down the experience of our post-smartphone life.

This is the case for most modern languages

[redacting] the 90s

Something that struck me is that there is very little popular ‘literature’ written about the post 2010 world. If you pay attention, you will find that there are broadly three categories of fiction with few exceptions. The first contains high fantasy, much of science fiction and historical novels. It contains books that are set in world that isn’t ours and so escape from the difficulty of describing modern times honestly. (Though they often fail to depict that otherworld accuratly, but that’s an essay for another time). The second type are what I would call 90s slop.  These are books that pretend to be about the modern world, but are in actuality stuck in the 90s. Smartphones and the internet are often mentioned, but they never grasp its influence on life. They also rarely mention the problems dominating the here and now. Immigration, crime, the longhouse etc. are never encountered honestly and the social “issues” that do come up are the typical irrelevant leftwing talking points like  “racism” and “sexism”. And so it fails to express the reality of the 21^st century. A genre that falls in between these two categories are paranormal novels. They are mostly 90s slop, with the difference that they are coated in a thin layer of “the paranormal” to obfuscate their inability (or even refusal) to express our modern moment and so being somewhat similar to the worst books in category one. The paranormal novel leads nicely into the third category: the wish fulfillment novel. The paranormal novel often has a wish fulfillment element, but this element is most strongly encountered in both the male centered Isekai LitRPG harem novel and female focused femgooner romance novel respectively. Both are power fantasies and paradoxically the most honest expression of our modern life. Central to both is the feeling of being imprisoned in an empty modern life and to escape it to a fuller life where our true desires come to fruition. Where there is the power to truly matter. (At some point I will write an in depth exploration of both genre’s.) Even though they express a true sentiment of the modern world, by escaping they refuse to deal with the realities of that modern life and so can never become a positive literature. Instead they let those who read them fall deeper into oblivion.

The reason why it is important to have a new literature that articulate the sentiment of our time. Is so that we can finally have a common enough reference point to move beyond the now into the future. So we stop rehashing the same point over and over again. And equally as important to inspire us to overcome the problems. Now the question is how do we formulate such a literature? How do we begin to describe how we live and are in the world? The first step is, at least for us on the right, easy. We do away with the lies and illusion of GNC and show how the world truly is. How man now exists, without illusions in all its depravity and in all its glory. But in this showing we start to encounter difficulties. How do you portrait the constant looking at the phone, the 10 second attention span? The constant texting and doomscrolling? The fun of dogpiling someone in a GC? The mind numbing stupidity of ads? Even the retardation that is the dating discourse has to be considered. Some possible answers to some of these questions are found in the great work of the Zero HP Lovecraft. But I don’t think it’s enough.

Schrijven met de hand (writing by hand)

Now the time comes to explain the rather peculiar title I have chosen for this essay. I already suggested that the domination of ‘negerbable’ is partly to blame for the seeming impossibility of writing something great, both in English and in the other noble languages. This is of course also linked to the decline in education that many others have talked about. The problem of technology and its often bad effects on e.g. attention is also a factor, but few have yet talked about how our writing itself has changed. Gone are the days of writing exclusively on paper with a pen in hand. Having to start over because you made the smallest mistake. Now you type and if you don’t like what you have written or made a mistake, you simply delete it. Writing became something very different the moment it was no longer the act of the whole hand and became fingers pressing buttons. Something related and also forgotten is how the way we read has changed. Up until modern times people rarely read silently. Reading was done aloud. I would ask any of my readers to try and pick up the Bible, the Iliad or for that matter any other ancient text and read it aloud with strong voice. The text will come fully alive.

I don’t mention this to be a technology hating luddite, but to bring this into consideration. This is something we have to think about when we are writing. Thinking on how technology influences how we write. Typing on a keyboard makes writing so much faster. You have to spend less attention for making mistakes is more forgiving. In general it makes writing easier. The same is true for reading. Reading silently is much faster and more convenient. Imaging everyone on the train reading the messages from their phone aloud. The new technologies have opened up new possible ways of writing that in the end might replace the book in the same way that the book replaced the scroll. The only practical thing I’m suggesting is to try to write by hand and see how it changes your writing. To read aloud and see how it changes your interaction with the text.

And lastly this all ties in again with language. The language you write a text in changes how the text feels. It isn’t arbitrary. And so when writing great literature language has to be considered above all. Some books have to be written in English. Bronze Age Mindset by BAP is a good example. If that book had an audience. It was us poasters and so it was only natural that it was written in English. But in general, great literature should be, with few exceptions, written in your mother tongue. For it is with that language that you are able to most deeply express yourself and by extension what most strongly speaks to your people. So that that people can be formed by it into something more.

Conclusion

This essay is in no way conclusive on why there is few if any great modern literature or in how to bring such a literature into existence. Many other obvious points haven’t been stated or only mentioned. Like the general uninterestingness of today’s life and the state of education, but the goal of this reflection is to inspire you to take your language more seriously and to think about how you write, changes what you write. And so that maybe, just maybe you’ll be able to help in bringing about the birth of something new.  

Learn Dutch if you want to appreciate the beauty of this poem

Guido Gezelle