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Mytho-Poetics at Work: A Study of the Figure of Egmont, the Dutch Revolt and its Influence in Europe by Rengenier C. Rittersma

2021; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/gyr.2021.0037

1940-9087

Simon Richter,

Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies

Reviewed by: Mytho-Poetics at Work: A Study of the Figure of Egmont, the Dutch Revolt and its Influence in Europe by Rengenier C. Rittersma Simon Richter Rengenier C. Rittersma, Mytho-Poetics at Work: A Study of the Figure of Egmont, the Dutch Revolt and its Influence in Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2018. xiv + 416 pp. Does or did Egmont—Lamoral, Count of Egmont—rise to the level of myth? And, assuming he did, what can we learn about the process of "mythogenesis" by carefully tracking the circulation of his name and narrative, beginning with eyewitness reports of his execution on June 5, 1568, moving on to historiographical representations by authors writing in at least five languages, and culminating in the occurrence of the mythical Egmont in well-known works by Goethe and Schiller, as well as the anonymously authored Beytrag zur Lebensgeschichte des berühmten Grafen von Egmond (1785) and the Brabant pamphlet Éloge du Comte Egmont, dédié aux États de Brabant à l'occasion de la Journée Glorieuse du 30 Mai 1787? These are the questions posed by Rengenier Rittersma's monograph. Rittersma approaches the concept of myth from the perspective of a trio of theorists: André Jolles, Hans Blumenberg, and Roland Barthes—simple form, linkage to history, and semiotic function. In "remarks," either "preliminary" or "concluding," that frame the three main parts of the book and the book itself, Rittersma offers lively reflections on how mythogenesis works. According to him, the myth of Egmont amounts to Egmont's "afterlife." His mythic status depends on and begins with "the swoop of the blade," which both exalted him and fixed the components of his myth to a limited and consistent set. Nonetheless, Rittersma calls the insinuating power of Egmont's myth a "cultural fungus" in comparison to the process of "mycorrhiza," referring to the way myth organizes its representation [End Page 387] within new cultural constellations. In an afterword to his final concluding remarks, Rittersma gets geological when he asserts that the Egmont myth "occasionally seems organic, like the course of a river, in which periods lacking the presence of 'Egmont' remain connected to the main stream via subterranean channels." Since Egmont's headwaters begin with his execution, unlike the "secrecy-laden beginnings of the [William] Tell and Joan of Arc myths," no matter where Egmont pops up from subterranean depths, there are limits to the myth's "capacity for variation and, while it permitted most reinterpretations and different points of emphasis, it provided no occasions for 'new constructs.'" If Egmont operates/operated as a myth, then only in a constrained and limited way. Rittersma understands Egmont as belonging to a set of "mythical companions" who share the property of martyrdom: William Tell, Joan of Arc, Arminius, and Carlo Guiliani, the young protestor shot dead by police at a G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. It's interesting company. While William Tell and Joan of Arc may still have some global currency, Arminius has largely disappeared (and I wonder about his range, in the first, place outside of certain German traditions) and, with a film and a song, the martyred Carlo Guiliani is still in the infancy of his mythogenesis. None of these rises to the level of a Gilgamesh, Jesus, or Faust, to name some of the mythical figures productively analyzed in similar ways by scholars such as Theodore Ziolkowski. As for Egmont, what diminishing currency he still has, I would argue, depends almost entirely on Goethe's play. Rittersma doesn't disagree. Were it not for Goethe's and Schiller's contributions, Egmont would hardly have an afterlife of note. For Rittersma, "the year 1787–1788 turned out to be the quintessential Egmont year"—five separate accounts of the count in a matter of merely seventeen months! And not geographically confined to Weimar-Jena. The myth of Egmont also surfaced in Rome, Naples, and the Austrian Netherlands (though all of them are linked to Goethe). Although these claims are inflationary, Rittersma is making an important point. Others such as Dieter Borchmeyer have noticed the connections between Goethe's Egmont and the political circumstances of the liberal reforms of Emperor Joseph II leading up to the Brabant Revolution...