Nog pas gisteren

by Maria Dermoût

In this bewitching story-memoir, Maria Dermout recollects the moods, the colors, the emotions, the dramas of a childhood, more than half a century ago, in Java. The East Indies of long ago, and the equally magic and faraway world of childhood, are seen through time as through a gauze curtain: the house in the walled garden, the birds like animated jewels, the deer stepping carefully through wet grass, the Dutch Colonial gentlemen driving to great gala balls at twilight -- tall white candles burning in their carriage lanterns --- to waltz on marble-floored verandas with ladies in decollete; the porcelain tea pavilion in the orchard; Papa in long batik trousers and a starched white jacket at breakfast; the artist-sorcerer natives -- and the little girl born in Java of Dutch ancestors, nurtured on magic, accustomed to being surrounded by beauty.

Genres: Fiction, Indonesian Literature, Asia

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Helena Anthonia Maria Elisabeth Dermoût-Ingerman was born in Pekalongan, Java, Indonesia, on 15 June 1888 and died in the Hague, the Netherlands, on 27 June 1962. She was a Dutch-Indonesian author.

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

How could she look so far ahead? She had to stop and look back first.
There was so much: besides the people, the things she loved--her place on earth until then--the big house with the white marble floor and the black star, and the golden birds on the screens, the green walled garden, all the trees, all the flowers, the mountain--the Lawu beyond the garden wall. All the other mountains, the whole list, she had learned them all by heart.
Java and its blue mountains, and the blue sea around it. In the north the Java Sea, in the south the Pacific; to the left the Sunda Strait, to the right the Madura Strait, as they were on the map in the schoolroom.
She needed time to lose it all.

Yesterday is the fictionalized memoir of Maria Dermoût, better known for The Ten Thousand Things. She was born in Java, now (2017) the most populous island on our planet, in 1888 on a sugar plantation. Yesterday was published in Holland in 1951, when Dermoukt was 63. If you haven't read Ten Thousand Things, do so immediately. If you have and yet are distraught that she wrote only one full-length novel, read Yesterday. It does not have the power and arc of Ten Thousand Things. What it does have is Dermout's fine prose, her love of the island, its plants and wildlife, native culture, and -most of all --a way of describing a dozen or so characters in relationship with one another, a community as a strand of pearls, where, when one breaks off, the small world of those characters is forever inevitably changed. This is not your typical Westerner's tale of plantation life amongst the lesser. Death, cruelty, murder, politics. It's all here. Nonetheless, at its core, Dermout's story is a story of love. Love of a time and place, of her uncle and his companion for one another (not a sexual relationship), of birds, trees, mountains, flowers, the sea, of all things Java. Of home.

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of Dermout's two novels, this was her first. The main character is a young girl Frederica whose father is in charge of a sugar cane processing plant in Java of the Dutch East Indies. She goes by the nickname Rick or Riek, depending on which translation you read. The story is about their household basically from her point of view: herself, her parents Anna (Mama) and Ab (Papa), uncles and aunt, and many local people for services. At one point there's a potentially dangerous uprising in the background, so that their household and themselves are threatened. But, that passes. Another episode involves the mountainous journey to visit Anna's stepfather called the 'old gentleman'. Among the many other episodes is a romantic intrigue between Aunt Nancy and Uncle Fred. The numerous household staff who provide the services (Urip, Buyung, Mangun, Rose (Roos), etc) are interesting in their own right. The structured relations between them and Riek's parents display the Dutch hegemony over the Malayan-speaking people at the time of the story. However, there still are mythical stories and modes of dress which speak of times before the Dutch--a performance of the Hindu Ramayana with music and dance, a preference among an older generation to wear traditional clothing, Hindu statuary of Ganesha and Shiva in the garden. Like Dermout's other novel The Ten Thousand Things, the narrative is full of natural scenery. An expanded survey about her novels and short stories is found in Mirror of the Indies: A History of Dutch Colonial Literature, chapter XIV "Not To Be Forgotten", 1 Maria Dermoût, pp. 255-67 .

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing showily extravagant or sensational here. Rather, a showstopping time and place, Java at the turn of the twentieth century. A million miles from civilization, a world fully unto itself, and the diary--more or less verbatim--of a colonial girl.

Describing what happens, for the purposes of the book, or for this review, is really not the issue; instead, we're concerned with the way the hours turn, the custom and culture of the colonists and the native population, the regular patterns of colonial days. And then with the contravening effects, ripples in the surface of the otherwise passive passage of time.

It doesn't spoil anything to say there are unsettling things in the shadows, and that they won't be completely revealed or solved here. What Dermoût knows, and best brings to the table, is the absolute authenticity of the telling. Although her publishers surely would have preferred some forced-narrative frame, this account flows like the life it describes, untethered to any theme, and manages still to be fascinating.

[Henri Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een roman gebaseerd op de jeugdherinneringen van Maria Dermoût aan het leven op Java aan het einde van de 19e eeuw. Tempo Doeloe, de oude tijd van vroeger waarin het dagelijks leven trager verliep, maar ook een tijdperk met verhoudingen, tussen de koloniale Nederlanders en de lokale Javaanse bevolking, die niet meer van deze tijd is.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maria Dermoût heeft echt een prachtige manier van schrijven, kan niet wachten om al haar werk te lezen.

[José Van Rosmalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maria Dermout publiceerde 'Nog pas gisteren' in 1952, toen ze reeds de zestig was gepasseerd. Ze vertelt in deze autobiografische roman over haar jeugd in Indie, op Java, aan het einde van de negentiende eeuw. Ze beschrijft het leven in een groot huis met veel inlands personeel: voor de was, voor de lampen, de kok, de koetsier, de schoonmaakster, de vrouw die haar verzorgt, de bewakers van het huis en het land. De hoofdpersoon, hier Riekje genaamd, is het enige kind van haar ouders. Ze ziet de wereld van de volwassen Hollanders en die van de inlanders, een wereld van ongelijkheid. Zo reizen zij en haar ouders eersteklas in de trein en haar verzorgster, derdeklas.
Maria Dermout weet dialogen die ze in die tijd heeft gehoord levendig weer te geven, de sfeer van toen weet ze op te roepen in deze vlot leesbare roman. Je proeft ook de spanningen tussen de Hollanders; bijvoorbeeld tussen haar ouders, maar ook met een oom van haar, die op merkwaardige wijze om het leven komt. Het jonge meisje ziet dat mensen niet gelukkig zijn, door overspel, door verveling, door isolement. Haar toekomst ligt in het verre Holland, waar ze ook weer iets zal missen: de geuren, de kleuren, het groen, de bergen, de mensen uit het land. Als oudere vrouw beschrijft Maria Dermout dit verleden, een halve eeuw na die kindertijd. Ze noemt het 'nog pas gisteren'. Dus zo nabij was het nog voor haar. Het boek werd een succes, het beleefde vele drukken en werd ook vertaald.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick read. However, Dermout's take on the big issues of tragedy and colonialism is understated rather than superficially short. Dermout's autobiographical memoir is not all idyllic or uncritical. But there are some evocative happy memories too. I loved her description of playing with her friends Assi and Neng, climbing tamarind trees, and visiting the old gentleman in his garden up in the mountains.

[Daniel Polansky]

A (presumably) fictionalized account of the author’s early youth in Dutch Indonesia, this slender volume seems to have served as practice for the more radically fictionalized account she gives in the absolutely spectacular Ten Thousand Things. There’s some fine bits in it, she does a good job of expressing the peculiar way in which children misconceive the world, but its follow up is so much better that it was hard to get real excited about this one.

[Elly Lewin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romantische, melancholieke tempo-doeloeliteratuur pur sang, vol van clichés en niet meer van deze tijd, maar toch nog wel heel mooi.

[Fifi · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Zo zijn grote mensen, zij zijn niet boos op elkaar, zij hebben verdriet om elkaar, en dan lijkt ‘t het zelfde.’
#DeZinVanHetBoek

[Arie Kok · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een klein verhaal, dat langzaam op gang komt, maar een ongekende intensiteit krijgt als er scheuren trekken in de vertrouwde wereld van de koloniale familie.

[Rein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sfeervol beeld van het familieleven op het eiland Java, geschreven vanuit de verteller en gezien vanuit de ogen van het meisje Riek, dochter van de baas van een rietsuikerfabriek.
Haar ouders wandelen met een aap, hoewel haar moeder het niet zo op heeft met het beest. Het gezin heeft een hele batterij bedienden, waaronder de oude dienster Oerip, die er haar eigen conservatieve meningen op na houdt en graag pruimt. De sociale kwestie komt terzijde aan bod in de vorm van rietbranden, die ook weer gedoofd worden. Na verwikkelingen tussen een tante en een oom en de nodige personele veranderingen in het huishouden, is haar vader het contact tussen Riek en de jonge bedienden zat en besluit om haar naar een school in Nederland te sturen. De laatste zin luidt: Zij moest tijd hebben om alles te verliezen.

[Joke Kolthoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

dromerige trage beschrijving (1951) vanuit het perspectief van een jong meisje over haar leven in indonesie.

[Jerobeam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prachtig. Lees mijn recensie op depiependemeerkoet.nl

[Darryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maria Dermoût (1888-1962) was an Indonesian writer who was born to a colonial family on Java, in the Dutch East Indies, educated in The Netherlands, and lived most of her life in Java. She did not begin writing until her sixties, and she produced two novels, "Yesterday", which was originally published in Dutch in 1951 and translated into English in 1959, and "The Ten Thousand Things", which was published in Dutch in 1955 and is currently available from New York Review Books.

"Yesterday", based on the author's life, is narrated by a young girl whose father owns a sugar cane plantation on the island of Java at the end of the 19th century. Her life is an idyllic one, with little care or responsibility, although tensions of colonial life occasionally disturb her peaceful setting. Dermoût's description of the jungle setting is evocative, and her light touch makes for a quick read, but one that this reader will soon forget.