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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300450395 Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831) and the science of language Chapter · January 1999 DOI: 10.1075/sihols.95.26noo CITATIONS 0 READS 77 1 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Nederlanders in Baskenland View project Study of Low Dutch View project Jan Noordegraaf Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 105 PUBLICATIONS 99 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Jan Noordegraaf on 06 May 2019. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. This paper was also presented at the 8th Biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic 1 Studies 12-15 June 1996, Columbia University and City University of New York Graduate Center, New York City. Quotations in Dutch have been rendered into English. 1 From: David Cram, Andrew Linn & Elke Nowak (eds), History of Linguistics 1996. Volume 2: From Classical to Contemporary Linguistics. Selected Papers from the Seventh International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHOLS VII) Oxford, 12-17 September 1996. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 95). Amsterdam: John Benjamins 1999, 193-204. ISBN 9027245835. WILLEM BILDERDIJK (1756-1831) AND THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE A Dutch linguist between two worlds Jan Noordegraaf VU University Amsterdam 0. Introduction In 1944, concluding his address about "the mystery of human language", the notorious Dutch linguist, Jac. van Ginneken, S.J., argued that "what the more recent conception of language only now begins to comprehend" had been felt and grasped much earlier by, among others, his compatriot Willem Bilderdijk. In his paper, van Ginneken (1946:33) argued that "the most 1 comprehensive miracle of the mind", language", had become "the richest and most venerable image of God on earth". Creation, then, had originated from Logos, the Eternal Word of the Father, as van Ginneken said. It was Willem Bilderdijk, van Ginneken continued, who, with similar hesitation to ours, had sensed the mystery of human language: on the dim boundaries between heaven and earth, as Bilderdijk had described it in one of his poems, matter and mind blend into each other. Thus van Ginneken Anno Domini 1944. At first sight it seems an odd couple, the Nijmegen Jesuit on the one hand and Bilderdijk, the Calvinist poet, on the other. Willem Bilderdijk, however, was not only a poet, but also a linguist, and what is more, a controversial personality. His life and works, characterized by great paradoxes, have continued to intrigue Dutch scholars, both his contemporaries as well as later contemplators. In this paper I would like to discuss some of Bilderdijk's linguistic ideas against the background of the ongoing debate on the transition which took place in the study of language in the early decades of the 19th century. The case of Bilderdijk is the more interesting because scholars have been pointing at his apparent split personality. In this connection linguists have identified two distinct elements, etymology and mysticism. I will deal with both of them, but first I will provide some biographical data concerning this much debated Dutch linguist. 1. Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831) Bilderdijk was one of the most remarkable Dutch poets of the 19th century. He was a supporter of the House of Orange, and as a consequence, in 1795 when the Stadtholder William V fled to 2 England and the 'Batavian Republic' was founded, Bilderdijk refused to pledge his loyalty to the new régime and accept the ideas of the French Revolution. Forced to go into exile, he left his wife, children, and debts behind. When in England, he fell head over heels in love with a young girl, with whom he lived until his death in a 'Gewissensehe'. In 1797, they left for Germany, remaining there until 1806, the year in which Bilderdijk was allowed to return to Holland. In 1815, King William I tried to have him appointed Professor of Dutch at the University of Amsterdam, but in vain, as the opposition was too strong. Bilderdijk was one of the last great Dutch polyhistors, publishing on subjects such as geology, national history, perspective and architecture, and writing three hundred thousand lines of poetry. As a linguist Bilderdijk lived between two worlds. His formative period was the last quarter of the 18th century, and he witnessed the rise of historical grammar in the 19th century. A prolific author, he published some thirty volumes on linguistics. Bilderdijk was familiar with some twenty-five to thirty languages: not only the modern Western languages, but also Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and various exotic languages. He was acquainted with the methods of the Schola Hemsterhusiana which had a certain impact on early comparative historical grammar. Furthermore, he owned the works of Lambert ten Kate; and on his shelves he had a copy of Schlegel's Über die Weisheit und Sprache der Indier (1808) and a few other books on Sanskrit. He received a copy of the Deutsche Grammatik from Jacob Grimm himself. Thus, Bilderdijk was well- equipped for promoting the new historical study of language in 19th-century Holland. Yet, he never did. Here, I shall discuss this case by comparing Bilderdijk's linguistic views with those held by some other 18th and 19th-century scholars, inevitably in a concise manner. 3 2. Bilderdijk and 18th and 19th-century linguistics 2.1. Ten Kate. It is a well-established fact that the Dutchman Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731) enjoys a place of honour as one of the founding fathers of Germanic linguistics. His Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche ('Common grounds of the Gothic and Dutch languages') appeared in 1710, and the remarkable Aenleiding tot de Kennisse van het Verhevene Deel der Nederduitsche Sprake ('Introduction to the Exalted Part of the Dutch Language') was published in 1723. Ten Kate is considered to be a pioneer of an empirical, inductive method and a worthy predecessor of Jacob Grimm. In the first and second decades of the 18th century, ten Kate discovered the phenomenon of Ablaut in the strong verb system. Although Bilderdijk is known to be a proponent of an empirical approach, his opinion on ten Kate differed greatly from the positive assessment by other critics. Conceding that Ten Kate was "the oracle of many a student of language", Bilderdijk stated that one would have to be blind not to observe the stupid ignorance of this "digger" who claimed to have searched Antiquity, but who failed to understand its language, "knowing little about its past or that of other languages". To Bilderdijk's mind, following the publication of ten Kate's works it had become a sort of frenzy to deduce each Dutch word from Gothic or Anglo-Saxon. But our language, Dutch, did not originate from Gothic or Anglo-Saxon, it was older and of an Eastern origin (1822,I:9-10), and there was no need to analyse it with the help of language comparison: it was a "système complet" in itself (1810:97). Bilderdijk reminds us of his notorious compatriot Goropius Becanus (1519-1572/3). In 1810, he submitted a Mémoire to the government of the Batavian Republic pointing out that the study of Dutch was "du plus grand intérêt pour la science universelle des langues" because of its "ancienneté et sa pureté". D'après cet apperçu l'on se flatte, que [...] le Hollandais sera toujours envisagé par les vrais savans comme une des langues qui doivent inspirer le plus d'intérêt, et dont il n'est pas indifférent pour la véritable érudition de conserver et de protéger l'étude methodique et scientifique, surtout relativement à l'Etymologie universelle et comparative (1810:101). Elsewhere Bilderdijk reproached "the scholars of so many countries and so many ages" for not having been able to find the 'general language' "which was sought so far away but which, in fact, is so close to us". Thus he claimed that the Dutch language had a privileged position when searching for the original language. Note that although Bilderdijk regarded Kate as an incompetent scholar, he did borrow quite a few ideas from ten Kate in his Nederlandsche Spraakleer ('Dutch Grammar') of 1826. 2.2. Schola Hemsterhusiana. The Schola Hemsterhusiana, a group of Dutch 18th-century classical scholars, gained its reputation by its etymological method of investigating language based on principles of reconstruction. Tiberius Hemsterhuis cum suis sought to explain the form and meaning of existing words by postulating hypothetical primitive verbs of two, three and four letters using all possible vowel-consonant combinations. In 1765, Lodewijk C. Valckenaer became Hemsterhuis's successor as Professor of Greek at Leiden, and after Hemsterhuis's demise he became the head of the Schola. Bilderdijk read law at Leiden University in the years 1780-1782, when Valckenaer was still 4 teaching Greek there. Bilderdijk "absorbed" Valckenaer's ideas on etymology in general and on Greek in particular. In other words, Valckenaer's principle, to explain and deduce the Greek language from itself was accepted by Bilderdijk and applied to his mother tongue. To Bilderdijk's mind, among the Germanic languages the Dutch language was privileged as it could be fully deduced and explained from itself. As Bilderdijk saw it in 1812, the science of etymology "en est encore à former". He told Jacob Grimm: uploads/Litterature/ bilderdijk-scienceoflanguage.pdf