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Language and
Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the most enigmatic mental disorders, and language is one
of its most essential and distinctive traits. Language and Schizophrenia provides a
complete overview of schizophrenic language, utilising both psychological and
philosophical perspectives to explore the unique way language impacts on this
mental disorder.
Language and Schizophrenia investigates specific features of schizophrenic lan-
guage using cognitive psychology alongside the opposing field of phenomeno-
logical psychiatry, concluding that neither of these approaches fully succeeds in
explaining the linguistic features unique to schizophrenia. Cardella’s innovative
approach of combining psychological perspectives with philosophy offers a direct
alternative to traditional cognitive perspectives, emphasising the fundamental
role that language plays in the disorder.
This book provides a thorough analysis of the deep link between language
and schizophrenia and will be of great value to researchers and postgraduates
studying schizophrenia, phenomenology, neuropsychology and philosophy of
language.

Valentina Cardella is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Language at the

University of Messina, Italy.
Language and
Schizophrenia
Perspectives from Psychology
and Philosophy

Valentina Cardella
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Valentina Cardella
The right of Valentina Cardella to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-56590-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-56591-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-12323-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
This book is dedicated to Gabriele and Emma.
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 The enigma of schizophrenia 5

Schizophrenia in history 5
Patients with neither desires nor fear 9
Different portraits, one disease 12

2 Language in schizophrenia 18
Grammar and syntax 18
Semantics 22
Speech disorganisation 26
Pragmatics 31
Non-literal use of language 34

3 The cognitive perspective on schizophrenic language 39

The cognitive approach 39
Explaining schizophrenic language—attempt one:
semantic memory 41
Attempt two: working memory and other
executive functions 46
Attempt three: Crow and the deictic frame 50
Attempt four: the theory of mind 53
viii Contents

4 The philosophical perspective on

schizophrenic language 64
Having schizophrenia or being schizophrenic? 64
Delusions and language: a world full of meaning 68
Language and forms of life 71

5 An alternative view: schizophrenia as a

disease of language 77
What’s wrong with schizophrenic language, then? 77
Language in schizophrenia: a natural fuel 80
Conclusion: can we imagine schizophrenia without language? 84

References 89
Index 105
Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the many colleagues and friends who have
helped me along.
Thanks to Antonino Pennisi, my mentor, who introduced me to the intrigu-
ing world of psychopathology of language. Special thanks to Alessandra Falzone,
Amelia Gangemi, and Francesco Paolo Tocco for their priceless support, and
most of all for their precious friendship. Thanks also to Franco Lo Piparo, with-
out whom I would never have developed a passion for the philosophy of lan-
guage. I am also grateful to all the colleagues of the Department of Cognitive
Sciences, who make my job at the University of Messina a very pleasant one.
Special thanks to Ceri McLardy for her interest in my book, and to Anna
Cuthbert, Hannah Kingerlee, and the crew at Routledge. Two anonymous ref-
erees made helpful comments on my proposal and have been supportive of the
project; I am grateful to them.
Last and most important: thanks to my husband, my parents, and my brother
for their constant support and encouragement in any aspect of my life.
Introduction

This book is an enquiry about language and schizophrenia and aims to show how
language contributes to the unique features of this mental disorder. In order to
investigate the specific features of schizophrenic language, I compare two differ-
ent approaches: cognitive psychology, on one hand, and phenomenological psy-
chiatry, on the other. My opinion is that, even if these theories can account for
some specific features of this kind of language, they are not able to identify single
impairments that can explain the entire schizophrenic language. Moreover, the
two approaches, admittedly very different, agree in considering schizophrenic
language as something that is not important per se, but as a simple reflection
of what happens to other levels (the broader cognitive one for the cognitive
­approach, or the Lebensform for the philosophical one).
Yet, when we give voice to schizophrenic patients, they have a completely
­d ifferent opinion of the role of language in their mental disorder. They seem to be
perfectly aware that language is a sort of natural fuel for their disease. Adam, for
example, is a paranoid schizophrenic who tells his story in the First Person ­section
of the American journal, Schizophrenia Bulletin. According to him, in order to un-
derstand what it is like to be a schizophrenic, the reference to W­ ittgenstein’s no-
tion of a linguistic game can be useful (Wittgenstein, 1953). This notion means
very different things: for example, telling a joke, asking, begging, promising,
and so on are different linguistic games because they are distinct ways to use a
proposition. Teaching the meaning of a term by the ostensive definition is a kind
of linguistic game too: while saying a word, I point at the c­ orresponding object,
so that the person listening to me can understand the reference of that term.
Wittgenstein remarks that linguistic games can only have sense in the context
of a common life form. In other words, to speak one language implies someone
to talk to (a social net) and also implies a background of shared actions, activ-
ities, and habits; this background is essential for every linguistic game and for
2 Introduction

the whole language. The specific Wittgensteinian ­example Adam refers to is an

imaginary linguistic game where a builder points at specific building ­m aterials
(stones, bricks, etc.), showing them to his assistant and saying the corresponding
word at the same time, and little by little the assistant learns to hand out the re-
quested material. Wittgenstein uses this example to show how linguistic games
can allow us, among other things, to institute the meaning of words of one
language. Adam, after quoting this example, finds some remarkable similarities
with his personal experience and states that ‘my paranoia consisted of the idea
that everyone was playing language games and that the object that people were
referring to for certain words was me’ (Timlett, 2011: 1099). I will report here
his words to clarify what he means when he talks of language games.

What I found was that my perception of how people conversed became

r­ educed to the simple rules of a language game, and I was an ­unwilling
­participant in this game. The problem was that these games were not
­harmless communication but used as a way of persecuting me. One reason
that I may have had the perception that this was happening was that at some
point I began to feel that what people meant could not be accounted for in
the usual sense. So I resorted to analyzing people’s conversations in terms
of a language game. It is possible that my emotional fear of being singled
out is what caused me to no longer understand things in their normal way.
(Timlett, 2011: 1099)

What we have here is a peculiar characteristic of schizophrenia that we will describe

ahead (see Chapter 4 p. 68), the so-called suspension of meaning; without going
into a detailed description of this phenomenon, which certainly deserves more
space, I can point out in the meantime that this suspension specifically concerns
the meaning of the words that cannot be interpreted ‘in their normal way’. Thus,
given that Adam feels that something is hiding behind the words, he starts to think
that people around him are playing a linguistic game he needs to decode in order
to understand what they really mean. An activity of interpretation (which is well
known by anyone who deals with paranoids) thus begins, a chain of associations
that ensures that whatever is said by others has a personal reference. For example, if
someone said ‘America’ to Adam, this was interpreted as ‘Am Erika’ or as a coded
reference to someone who is actually a woman; through the analysis of gestures,
smiles, and nods used by people involved in this conversation, Adam persuaded
himself that he was the intended reference and reacted in a certain way (e.g., by
staring at a man). He then took it that this staring was accepted as his response, and
then another series of linguistic games began. In other words, as Adam states,

I found myself an unwilling participant in a language game, and soon

­became immersed in a world of language games that I could not resist par-
ticipating in, despite the anger that I would feel at being given these names
and referred to in this way.
(Timlett, 2011: 1099)
 Introduction 3

It seems an efficient portrayal of the famous pragmatic paradox according to

which it is impossible to not communicate (Watzlawick et al., 1967); as it is well
known, each behaviour communicates something, even when the intention is to
communicate nothing. So, Adam finds himself involved in linguistic games he
cannot avoid because each of his reactions can be interpreted as a message. He
thus starts becoming obsessed with language.

It seems to me that what paranoia does is tap in to this reservoir of p­ otential

meaning and interpretation, with potentially devastating results. Given
that I was an adult with a decent vocabulary, and a reasonable sensitiv-
ity to metaphor, the possibility of people playing language games opened
up a whole vista of experience and interpretation that I seemed to find
­irresistible. Effectively, I became addicted to thinking about how words
could be used to make coded references. I became obsessed with playing
language games instead of using language primarily as it is normally used.
(Timlett, 2011: 1099)

Adam is like a child discovering language for the first time: a whole world of
potential meanings opens up, but since he is an adult already full of language,
this opening has dangerous effects, because everything can be seen as a coded
message once the conversations are examined in terms of linguistic games.
­Moreover, in this case, language really hurts: it is through the conversations
that Adam’s persecution is committed. Language is what makes him feel alone,
derided, humiliated, and unhappy.
I want to report here another passage of Adam’s story that I think is ­particularly
important.

I have tended to respond quickly to the medication, and therefore s­ everal

times I have had the experience of staying on a mental ward while my
senses were relatively intact. During these times, I have been able to
observe and converse with my fellow patients, and I have come to the
­conclusion that the overwhelming majority of the patients are also lost in a
world of language games.
(Timlett 2011: 1099)

Thanks to his experience and to what he learned talking with other people
­suffering from mental illness, Adam comes to the conclusion that being obsessed
with language is a common problem. People that are mentally ill are all lost in a
world of language games, as if they were locked up by language, together fasci-
nated and paralyzed by its infinite possibilities of signification (see the idea of the
limitless noetic field in Pennisi, 1998).
This book is in line with Adam’s thesis. The basic idea is that language plays a
fundamental role in the schizophrenic Lebensform. The analysis of schizophrenic
language cannot reduce to a simple description of how language changes in this
mental disorder, but implies questioning the deep link between language and
4 Introduction

existence, and the inseparable connection between language and human ­sociality.
The specific features of schizophrenic language have been highlighted for their
oddity since the first descriptions of schizophrenia as a separate ­syndrome, and
they keep on challenging psychiatrists and psychologists. Even if schizophrenic
speech is so peculiar that it can be considered the grounds for that early feeling
that allows also non-experts to perceive schizophrenia (Rümke, 1941), the actual
nature of the impairment underlying schizophrenic language has not been dis-
covered yet. The hypotheses, as we will see throughout the book, are varied and
single out very different capacities, like semantic memory, mentalising abilities,
and executive functions. But, the results of this kind of research appear to be
absolutely unsatisfactory; none of these theories seem able to identify the core
deficit that explains all the peculiarities of schizophrenic language.
Yet, language is one of the most important fields to understand s­ chizophrenia.
We cannot explain this complex and enigmatic mental disorder by ­putting
aside the peculiar way it affects and modifies language. People who, despite be-
ing schizophrenic, preserve the clarity of mind to analyse the disease from the
­inside—people like Adam—testify to the linguistic nature of schizophrenia.
This is the reason why, even if the schizophrenic semantics and pragmatics’ core
is still unclear, it is still worth trying to explore this issue.
1
The enigma of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia in history
Is it possible to trace a history of schizophrenia? The answer to this question, as we
are going to see, depends on what we intend for both ‘history’ and ‘schizophrenia’.
Let us start by saying that if we want to know who was the first patient universally
recognised as schizophrenic, we have to look to Illustrations of Madness, by Haslam
(1810). Here we can find Patient Zero of modern psychiatry: James Tilly Matthews
(Jay, 2003). His case, described in detail by J. Haslam, the resident apothecary at
Bethlem (the London psychiatric hospital), can be considered the first genuine
example of schizophrenia in history.

Mr Matthews insists that in some apartment near London Wall there is a

gang of villains profoundly skilled in Pneumatic Chemistry, who assail
him by means of an Air Loom. [...] The effects which are produced on
Mr. Matthews by the skilful manipulation of these ingredients are accord-
ing to his relation dreadful in the extreme. [Among these we find] the
cutting soul from senses, so that the sentiments of the heart can have no
communication with the operations of the intellect; the fluid locking, a
locking or constriction of the fibres of the root of the tongue, by which the
readiness of speech is impeded; thought-making, where one of the gang
will force into his mind a train of ideas very different from the real object
of his thoughts. [The members of the gang] impart their voices to him by
voice-sayings. This is an immediate conveyance of articulate sound to the
auditory nerves, without producing the ordinary vibration of air; so that
the communication is intelligibly lodged in the cavity of the ear, whilst the
bystander is not sensible of any impression.
(Haslam, 1810: 19–40)
6 The enigma of schizophrenia

Matthew’s delusion presents many features now considered peculiar to schizo-

phrenia. The references to voices, to different kinds of persecutors, to bizarre
machines like the air loom, and to thought insertion make the diagnosis of
­paranoid schizophrenia very likely.
After a few decades, a new attestation of schizophrenia appears, but this time
it is in first person: that of John Thomas Perceval. His story begins with these
words:

In the year 1830, I was unfortunately deprived of the use of reason. This
calamity befell me about Christmas. I was then in Dublin. The Almighty
allowed my mind to become a ruin under sickness delusions of a religious
nature, and treatment contrary to nature. My soul survived that ruin.
(Perceval, 1840: 3)

In this case too, the self-description of the disease leaves no room for doubt. A
world dominated by voices and hallucinations, like that of Perceval, is undoubt-
edly a real portrait of schizophrenia.

Only a short time before I was confined to my bed I began to hear voices,
at first only close to my ear, afterwards in my head, or as if one was
­whispering in my ear, or in various parts of the room. These voices I
obeyed or endeavoured to obey, and believed almost implicitly. [...] These
voices commanded me to do, and made me believe a number of false and
terrible things.
(Perceval, 1840: 265)

Yet, why do we begin a history of schizophrenia starting from such recent cases?
Must one infer that this mental disorder is a modern invention, a sort of by-­
product of our society? Actually, we have no reason to cast doubt to the fact that
schizophrenia (a ubiquitous disease, present with the same prevalence all over the
world) always existed. However, writing a history of schizophrenia seems to be
really hard work for a number of reasons.
First of all, many attestations preceding those reported here are indirect,
and this makes the diagnosis much harder. On what grounds could we say
without a doubt that Joan of Arc or Henry VI were schizophrenic? Second,
­schizophrenic symptoms are so different and sometimes so subtle that they are
much more ­d ifficult to find in the descriptions by ancient authors. The same is
not valid for depression or mania, for example: disorders characterised by symp-
toms that are homogeneous and clearly recognisable (Stone, 2006). Moreover,
as claimed by the same Stone, ‘observers in earlier times seldom paid attention
to characteristics that are now considered crucial to the diagnosis of schizophre-
nia, and they often paid close attention to details that we regard as irrelevant’
(Stone, 2006: 2). S­ chizophrenia is a very complex disorder that not only e­ xhibits
very ­d ifferent symptoms, but that also changed some of its expressions over
 The enigma of schizophrenia 7

the years. As highlighted by Gilman (2008), some ‘versions’ of ­schizophrenia

­behaved like hysteria, which was well known to be extensively widespread in
the ­Viennese society in the nineteenth century and has now become a clinical
rarity. For ­example, waxy flexibility, regarded as one of the most common forms
of ­schizophrenia in the 1800s, has now almost disappeared. Finally, as I already
pointed out, ­symptoms of mood disorders (like wild motions or pressured speech
in mania, or apathy and affective indifference in depression) are more noticeable,
while the schizophrenic ones are not always that easy to identify. For example,
what is the difference between a bizarre belief and a delusion? How can we dis-
cern, without a further analysis, between strong jealousy and delusional jealousy,
or between inflated suspiciousness and persecutory delusion?
Actually, if we take a look at the psychiatric literature, we can find some
attempts to retrace a history of schizophrenia. References to possible cases of
schizophrenia in the Egyptian world, ancient Greece, the medieval era, the
­Renaissance, and the modern era are shown by those authors who were faced with
the hard problem of tracing a history of psychiatry (see Hunter and M ­ acalpine,
1963; Macdonald, 1981; Howells, 1993; Sedler, 1993; Berrios and Porter, 1995;
Carlsson, 2003; Stone, 2006). However, for the reasons I mentioned before, such
a history, when faced with schizophrenia, runs the risk to be only a projection
on past of the actual diagnostic criteria.
Thus, the best way to proceed is probably by trying to retrace a history of the
concept of schizophrenia, rather than a history of schizophrenia. This seems to be a
much easier task, because there is no doubt that the concept of schizophrenia was
born in the twentieth century, grounded in the psychopathological categories of
the 1800s. In the next paragraphs, I will trace a brief history of ideas, underlining
the role of those authors who tried to delimitate the notion of schizophrenia.
Yet, before doing this, I have to make a premise: when dealing with
­schizophrenia, it is important to separate myth from reality. There are a number
of myths surrounding schizophrenia. As we will see, despite the huge amount of
studies about its symptoms, diagnosis, and possible causes, this mental disorder
is hard to catch in its essence. There are many ways to interpret this difficulty.
According to some, the impossibility to grasp the essence of schizophrenia de-
scends from the fact that this disorder would actually be a convenient cultural
construct, because its symptoms are so different from case to case that claiming
we have before us the same disease is a stretch (Szasz, 1961). How can we consider
as affected by the same disorder a boy who accuses his parents of poisoning him,
a woman who suffers from emotive indifference, and a girl dominated by a sense
of unreality who feels that her body does not belong to her? Can we use the same
term for such different manifestations? In his book, Shean claims that ‘we do not
presently know what causes schizophrenia, nor do we know that the term refers
to a single disorder. We continue to use the term for lack of a better or widely
acceptable alternative’ (2004: 95). Additionally, some authors go beyond this,
claiming that schizophrenia is a myth, in the sense that we talk of it as it actually
exists, but this is not true (Hammersley and McLaughlin, 2010). According to
8 The enigma of schizophrenia

this view, schizophrenia would be a sort of ‘sublime’ of the psychiatry, a complex

object representing the limits of this discipline, used many times to characterise
different aspects of contemporary society rather than a mental disorder—in other
words, an ‘awash’ concept whose representation deeply depends on the cultural
theory of reference (Woods, 2011).
On the other hand, the fact that schizophrenia affected ‘gifted’ people (like
Hölderlin or John Nash, just to give two impressive examples) nurtures this
myth. This is the reason why people can consider schizophrenia as a sort of price
for genius, a disease the human species suffers from because it makes humans
more creative (see, for example, Eysenck, 1995; Nettle and Clegg, 2006). This is
the romantic view of schizophrenia, according to which madness and genius are
intertwined. Yet, it is a state of fact that the schizophrenic subjects who reached
unimaginable peaks of creativity are very few, compared to all those who have
to fight every day against a devastating disease that affects many aspects of their
social lives. Also, in many cases, creativity and genius survived in spite of the
disease rather than thanks to it; one can think of the way schizophrenia leaked
in Artaud’s poetry so that it completely destroyed its meaning (Pennisi, 1998).
Thus, we must resist the temptation to make schizophrenia romantic without
ceding to the opposite temptation, that of considering it something terrifying
and beyond comprehension.
In fact, the label ‘schizophrenia’ seems to be weak from a diagnostic and
scientific point of view, but very strong from a social and moral point of view.
The label of ‘mentally ill’ (and, above all, that of schizophrenic) has the effect
of taking away every meaning from the actions and the words of the labelled
subject, and for this reason it becomes a sentence: the more implacable, the more
schizophrenia is seen as something obscure, disturbing, and hard to define. In his
classic experiment, David Rosenhan showed the effect of psychiatric labels and
the way they affect the global perception of someone’s behaviour ­( Rosenhan,
1973). The aim of the experiment was to insert some pseudo-patients (normal
people who never suffered from mental disorders) in different American hospital
units, where they claimed to suffer from auditory hallucinations, and to verify
when and how they would be recognised as normal subjects. What actually hap-
pened was that all the pseudo-patients (except one) were declared schizophrenic,
and at the moment they left the hospital they were diagnosed as s­ chizophrenics
in remission (clearly because they did not show symptoms of any kind). This
experiment showed the stability and endurance of schizophrenia’s label. As
­Rosenhan declares, ‘once being labelled as schizophrenic, there is nothing that
the ­pseudo-patient can do to release from this label’ (Rosenhan, 1973: 253).
Each behaviour, each word, and each emotion were considered a product of the
disease: if a patient walked up and down the aisle, he was clearly nervous; if he
lined up too early in the coffee bar, he showed the oral nature of his disorder;
if he admitted that his relationship with his mother had highs and lows, he re-
vealed the typical schizophrenic ambivalence. Given that it is in general hard to
get rid of any kind of label shared by a social group, how careful should we have
 The enigma of schizophrenia 9

to be when we deal with schizophrenia, the symbol par excellence of mental illness,
which in ­addiction is difficult to define in an objective and unambiguous way?
By underlying these caveats, I do not mean to deny the existence of
­schizophrenia. Though it seems a disease very hard to comprehend, it is a fact
that one per cent of the world’s population shows symptoms that appear the
same all over the world and that affect quality of life in a crucial way, even
with cultural differences taken into account. For this reason, it is now time to
take a closer look at this disease, beginning from its history (in the meaning
we ­specified at the beginning of this paragraph) and starting from nineteenth-­
century psychopathology.

Patients with neither desires nor fear

During the nineteenth century, psychiatry found its place inside the medical
discipline. The explosion of interest towards mental disorders concurs in fact
with increasing studies on the human brain and on the way brain injuries a­ ffect
how people think and behave. The idea that mental disorders were actually brain
disorders begins to spread, and with it the belief that in the near future a clear
aetiology of each mental illness will be founded. However, this increasing op-
timism about the possibility to identify the organic causes of mental disorders
combines with a similar increasing discontent, which refers to questions that are
still wide open: How many kinds of mental disorders can be identified? How can
we classify them and on what basis?
Actually, in this period, there were essentially two positions on that ­m atter.
The first one is well documented by the following quotation, based on the
­Textbook of Psychiatry by Neumann: ‘there is only one type of mental disor-
der. We call it madness’ (Neumann, 1859: 67). Others, on the other hand, as
shown by Jaspers, claim that psychiatry’s purpose must be to find some natural
morbid entities with characteristic symptomatology, course, and somatics, and
among which there are no passages ( Jaspers, 1959). According to these authors,
there are distinct nosological entities with different symptoms and that need to
be ­investigated separately. Yet, this perspective raises a new question: how can we
classify these morbid entities? In fact, an inaccurate analysis risks increasing the
number of single mental disorders, producing chaos rather than order. Heinroth,
for ­example, identifies an impressive 48 types of mental disorders, and he con-
cludes that the criteria adopted so far in order to distinguish mental disorders are
totally unreliable (see Kyziridis, 2005).
As it is well known, it is Kraepelin (1896) who organises the different types
of mental disorders, grounding his classification in a series of elements that all
need to be taken into account if one wants to avoid an excessive increasing of the
different morbid entities. According to Kraepelin, in order to obtain an a­ ccurate
classification, we must consider not only the symptoms (that c­ onstitute the psy-
chological form of each disorder), but also the triad of onset-course-­outcome.
Mental disorders with similar symptoms but different outcomes must be
10 The enigma of schizophrenia

considered as two different disorders (for example, schizophrenia and p­ aranoia,

which share many symptoms, are actually two different diseases for their differ-
ent outcomes, because the former implies a progressive deterioration, while the
latter does not), whereas disorders with different symptoms, when following the
same course, have to be considered as different forms of the same disorder (as in
the different subgroups of schizophrenia).
Kraepelin also has the merit to give a well-defined picture of ­schizophrenia.
In order to clearly separate it from the other forms of mental disorder, he refers,
on one hand, to the huge amount of clinical cases he had the chance to observe
(some directly, but the majority through the analysis of medical r­ ecords—the
so-called Zählkarten) and, on the other, to previous studies by other researchers
like Morel, Kahlbaum, and Hecker. Kraepelin adopts Morel’s name, dementia
praecox, to identify schizophrenia. With this term, Morel referred to a s­ pecific
mental disorder deriving from some hereditary defect that affected young
­patients and involved the loss of coherence and unity in different fields of in-
telligence, behaviour, and affect (Morel, 1860; Stone, 2006). Morel illustrated
this expression’s meaning by referring to one of his patients:

This youth of 14 years of age progressively forgot all he had learned at

school; his brilliant intellectual faculties underwent a very disquieting
­interruption. A kind of torpor close to hebetude took over from his earlier
activities, and when I saw him again I felt that the fatal transition to the
state of premature dementia was underway.
(Morel, 1860: 566)

At first, Kraepelin (1883) uses the expression dementia praecox to define a

­schizophrenic subtype, the one Hecker (1871) had called hebephrenia, with
main features including a rapid form of cognitive degeneration and a final
outcome characterised by extreme dementia and inappropriate thoughts and
feelings. In this first classification, the other two schizophrenic subgroups,
catatonia and paranoia, are still considered two independent entities. It is
only in 1896 that Kraepelin groups the separate categories of hebephrenia,
catatonia, and paranoia into one cluster, that of dementia praecox. The he-
bephrenic ­subgroup remains quite the same, and two additional forms of de-
mentia praecox (the catatonic and the paranoid ones) are added to it. In detail,
Kraepelin uses Kahlbaum’s term catatonia (Kahlbaum, 1874), which in the
original meaning referred to a form of mental deterioration associated with
muscular rigidity, stupor, peculiar postures and manners, and verbigeration.
Kraepelin adds to these symptoms the so-called negativism, where voluntary
impulses are repeatedly overcome by contrary impulses (for example, a patient
can move his hand to grasp an object and stop himself in the middle of the
action, putting his hand in the original ­position) or where there is an obsti-
nate refusal of ­c arrying out any action. Finally, according to Kraepelin, para-
noid ­dementia’s features are delusional ideas associated with hallucinations and
 The enigma of schizophrenia 11

mood disorders; in this form, both delusions and hallucinations remain more
or less unchanged during the illness’s course, while in the other subgroups
they tend to disappear with time.
Beyond each subgroup’s specific features, the German psychiatrist sees
a basic unity grounded in the outcome that is, for all three forms, mental
­deterioration. This unity of course and outcome brings Kraepelin to believe
that there is a unique underlying process of a cerebral kind (‘the disease appar-
ently develops on the basis of a severe disease process in the cerebral cortex’;
­K raepelin, 1902: 219); thus, dementia praecox, as highlighted by Stone (2006),
is still considered a degenerative pathology, and the term used by Morel to
indicate an organic disease seems appropriated to identify it. The ­degenerative
outcome of dementia praecox also helps Kraepelin to separate this syndrome
from manic-depressive psychosis. Despite some overlap in symptoms between
the two psychoses, the outcome of manic-depressive psychosis is b­ elieved
favourable, while Kraepelin points out several times that schizophrenia is a
chronic illness. In 1902, Kraepelin says that ‘dementia praecox is the name
provisionally applied to a large group of cases which are characterised in com-
mon by a pronounced tendency to mental deterioration of varying grades’
(Kraepelin, 1902: 219). In 1905, he restates that ‘experience shows that an
incurable mental infirmity is by far the most frequent result of dementia
­praecox’ (Kraepelin, 1905: 28). As noted by Woods (2011), the striking image
that Kraepelin uses when he talks about schizophrenia is that of a ‘mental
shipwreck’ (Kraepelin, 1902: 241, 275), some sort of catastrophe that tears
the subject down and inexorably obscures feelings, understanding, and acting.
There is no doubt that this catastrophist view of dementia praecox alimented
schizophrenia’s negative myth that under some respects endures to the present
day, because it characterised this disorder since its first identification in terms
of incurability and progressive and fatal deterioration.
In the successive editions of his Textbook of Psychiatry, Kraepelin often refers
to four groups of symptoms in order to identify schizophrenia. According to
the German author, these symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, disturbances
in thought, and disturbances in behaviour. Actually, in addition to the symp-
toms’ descriptions, Kraepelin also tries to distinguish between main symptoms
and secondary ones. As we will see later, subsequent psychiatrists will move
away from Kraepelin, not for the identification of schizophrenia’s characteristic
features, but for the importance given to some symptoms rather than others.
According to Kraepelin, the main symptoms of dementia praecox are emotional
deterioration, disorders of attention and will, and disturbed flow of thoughts.
The first symptom, which belongs to the disorders of behaviour, according to the
German psychiatrist, dominates schizophrenic emotional life and is the so-called
negativism, characterised by emotional indifference, detachment from relatives
and friends, loss of interest for activities once considered pleasant, and anhedonia.
In many cases, subjects considered friendly and sociable gradually become more
and more introverted, closed, and isolated:
12 The enigma of schizophrenia

As the disease progresses the absence of emotion becomes more marked.

The patients express neither joy nor sorrow, have neither desire nor fears, but
live from one day to another quite unconcerned and apathetic, sometimes
silently gazing into the distance, at others regarding their ­surroundings
with a vacant stare.
(Kraepelin, 1902: 226)

Disturbed attention and will have the same importance for Kraepelin, because
they contribute to dramatically isolating the schizophrenic. In the most severe
cases, patients can be totally indifferent towards surroundings, and to draw their
attention can become an impossible task. Finally, Kraepelin focuses on the lin-
guistic features intimately related to schizophrenia, which will be one of the
most studied areas from this time on. The flow of thoughts in schizophrenia is
altered in many ways; this flow can be completely lost, stray towards unexpected
directions, be overwhelmed by accessory information, and turn around the same
topic. In every case, incoherent speech in its different forms is, according to
Kraepelin, one of the most important aspects of schizophrenia.
Kraepelin does not pay much attention to schizophrenia’s other typical
­symptoms, like delusions and hallucinations. Or better, he investigates them from
a formal point of view and regards them as common symptoms of dementia prae-
cox, but considers them of secondary importance. As for the delusions, K ­ raepelin
often states that this kind of false belief (like claiming to be persecuted or to have
special powers) naturally descends from a lack of judgement and therefore from
a weakness of intellect (Kraepelin, 1905, 1907). Regarding hallucinations, the
German psychiatrist underlines the frequency of auditory ones, observes that
many patients complain of hearing strange noises or voices, and notices that in
some cases visual hallucinations are also present. Yet, in his opinion, one does
not need to deeply investigate the meaning of this kind of symptom, because
their topics are absolutely irrelevant. It will be successive authors, like Bleuler
and ­Schneider, who will focus on schizophrenic delusions and hallucinations,
and restore the meaning that Kraepelin had taken away from these symptoms.

Different portraits, one disease

Not all researchers who deal with schizophrenia share the idea that this disease is a
mental shipwreck that leaves no way out. Actually, if we take a closer look, Krae-
pelin’s claim that schizophrenia is essentially an incurable illness is grounded in
circular reasoning. Kraepelin (1905) observes that patients sometimes seem to get
better and that these improvements can appear as forms of healing; but even if they
get better, they are in any case destined, sooner or later, to fall back into the disease.
And if they do not fall back, then they are not really schizophrenic. So, in other
words, he who gets better is not schizophrenic, so the only remaining are those
who do not get better, who in turn are considered the evidence for the incurability
of schizophrenia. Here lies the circularity of this kind of reasoning (Read, 2004).
 The enigma of schizophrenia 13

Bleuler is one of the first authors who rejects such a pessimistic view of schiz-
ophrenia. Being for many years the director of the mental asylum of Rheinau,
he has the chance to be in contact with the patients, talk with them, and ­observe
them, and he pays much attention to what they say and do (he always has a
notebook and a pen with him, as recalled by some of his contemporaries [see
Moskowitz and Heim, 2011]). Thanks to this, he can get an idea of the essence of
this mental disorder. First of all, he decides to abandon the expression dementia
praecox and rebaptises the disorder schizophrenia, using the term later adopted
all over the world. He prefers this term for a number of reasons; first of all, it
does not refer to dementia anymore, and for this reason it loses every allusion
to degeneration and chronicity; second, it can be used as an adjective (schizo-
phrenic); and finally, this term is particularly suitable for identifying the funda-
mental ­symptom—for Bleuler, that is Spaltung, a kind of split in psychic functions
(Bleuler, 1950). In detail, Bleuler divides primary symptoms (part of the basic
illness process, which he still considers of an organic nature) and secondary ones
(reactions of the subjects to the illness) from basic symptoms (which are the most
typical of a specific mental disorder) and accessory ones (shared with other dis-
orders). According to Bleuler, schizophrenia’s primary symptom is Spaltung, the
loosening of associative links in the different areas of affect, logic, and behaviour.
This impairment, besides being considered the primary symptom, is part of the
‘four A’s’, regarded by the Swiss psychiatrist as the fundamental symptoms: Autism
(detachment from reality and social isolation), Ambivalence (the ­simultaneous
presence of contradictory ideas and emotions), Affective disturbances, and im-
paired Associations. On the other hand, symptoms Kraepelin regarded as ­t ypical
of schizophrenia, like hallucinations and delusions, are c­ onsidered secondary by
Bleuler, that is, as something that does not stem from the disease ­process itself
but that only operates ‘when the sick psyche reacts to some internal or external
process’ (Bleuler, 1950: 348). Since secondary ­symptoms originate from the sick
psyche’s reactions, one has to focus on their meaning and trust the fact that they
can be understood; so, their contents have to be investigated rather than being
excluded by any attempt to interpret them.
As we are beginning to notice, and it will be clearer later in this paragraph,
the schizophrenic symptoms identified by Kraepelin will stay the same in the
successive classifications by other psychiatrists. Bleuler, though stressing the
­importance of a symptom Kraepelin regarded as secondary (that is, the splitting),
stays nevertheless inside Kraepelin’s paradigm. We can say the same for another
German psychiatrist specifically interested in schizophrenia—Schneider. He also
refers to Kraepelin’s symptoms and moves from him only for the relevance given
to some symptoms as opposed to others. More precisely, Schneider pays close
attention to one specific symptom that is one of the most studied in the cognitive
and neuroscientific area today: auditory hallucinations.
The diagnostic criteria suggested by Schneider (1954) are grounded in
the ­d ichotomy between first-rank and second-rank symptoms. This dichot-
omy does not overlap with the other between fundamental and accessory;
14 The enigma of schizophrenia

Schneider considers some symptoms as first rank not because they are pathogno-
monic of schizophrenia (that is, for being particularly indicative of this disease),
but because they have a great diagnostic value. In other words, from clinical
psychiatry’s perspective, first-rank symptoms can be particularly useful in order
to suggest a diagnosis of schizophrenia (Cancro and Lehmann, 2000). Schneider
does not claim to get to the core of schizophrenia (the core that Bleuler searched
for), but tries to make the diagnosis easier and more consistent through the indi-
viduation of symptoms usually present in schizophrenia. Among those, Schneider
emphasises the role of auditory hallucinations, on one hand, and some kind of
delusions, on the other. Regarding the former, according to S­ chneider, voices
have to be considered symptoms of first rank, especially in some cases—for ex-
ample, when they argue or comment on what the patient does, or repeat the
patient’s thoughts. Among delusions, he calls attention to the bizarre ones, like
those of thought insertion (‘The thoughts I’m thinking are not mine’), broadcast-
ing (‘I can send my thoughts telepathically’), or withdrawal (‘They robbed me of
my thoughts’). More generally, the German psychiatrist stresses the importance
of the experience of passivity typical of schizophrenia, where what the schiz-
ophrenic says, thinks, does, feels, or wants is actually controlled or influenced
by external forces. We can find other symptoms in schizophrenia, like different
kinds of hallucinations (e.g., visual ones) or mood disturbances, but Schneider
does not regard them as having a high diagnostic value for schizophrenia and
judges them as second-rank symptoms.
The diagnostic criteria adopted by schizophrenia’s founding fathers give us
quite different pictures of this mental disorder. Which one is true? Is the schiz-
ophrenic a patient with different impairments fatally destined to a severe mental
deterioration, a subject with a split mind who is enclosed in an inner world, or
someone dominated by experiences of passivity and bizarre delusions? There is
no answer to this question yet, and the different versions of schizophrenia given
by the various authors must be viewed as the consequence of schizophrenia’s
mentioned resistance to any attempt to be fully understood. In other words,
none of these paradigms have been definitely validated. For example, there is
no symptom that we can find in all cases of schizophrenia and that could be
­accounted for as its ultimate essence: neither Bleuler’s autism nor Kraepelin’s neg-
ative ­symptoms are restricted to schizophrenia (which shares them with autism
disorder and mood disorders like major depression), while Schneider’s first-rank
symptoms can be found in affective disorders. Finally, some schizophrenics do
not show splitting, regarded as a fundamental symptom by Bleuler, or i­ntellectual
deterioration, that Kraepelin judged the fatal outcome of the disorder. This is the
reason why researchers recently have focused on a more reliable description of
schizophrenia rather than on the identification of some fundamental core symp-
tom of this mental disorder. The possibility to identify this schizophrenia’s es-
sential core will become a challenge accepted by another, and radically different,
­perspective—that is, phenomenological psychiatry (which I will fully d­ iscuss
further in Chapter 4). Traditional psychiatry, on the contrary, will claim to be
 The enigma of schizophrenia 15

a descriptive and neutral paradigm that eliminated every distinction between

primary and secondary symptoms.
In the 1980s, we have an attempt to put together the different pictures of
schizophrenia encountered so far. This first attempt is made by Crow (1980),
who introduces the distinction between two forms of schizophrenia, type I,
or positive, and type II, or negative. He uses the two terms not in the ordinary
meaning, but in the sense intended, among the others, by Strauss et al. (1974),
according to which positive implies the presence of abnormal functions and nega-
tive the reduction or the absence of normal functions. Thus, type I ­schizophrenia
is characterised by so-called positive symptoms, that is, those symptoms that
correspond to an excess of functions, like hallucinations or delusions. Patients
suffering from this kind of schizophrenia usually have an acute onset with a
florid production of hallucinatory and delusionary experiences, and present
­d isorganised language and behaviour. The disease’s evolution is characterised
by acute crisis and remissions, and in the remission periods patients can regain a
good social functioning; moreover, subjects suffering from type I schizophrenia
usually respond well to pharmacologic treatment and have a more favourable
prognosis. In contrast, negative symptoms are characteristic of type II schizo-
phrenia; patients show emotional flattening, apathy, anhedonia, social isolation,
poverty of language, and disturbances of attention and volition. The onset is
much slower and more insidious, the evolution is negative and chronic, and social
functioning tends to be more and more compromised.
Even if Crow’s approach has a high value from the aetiopathological point of
view (according to Crow, the two types of schizophrenia would be grounded
in different cognitive and neurologic impairments), it does not seem to account
for schizophrenia’s real complexity. Crow claims that the two forms of schizo-
phrenia are two distinct syndromes, probably caused by different factors, but he
seems to ignore the fact that the vast majority of schizophrenics present mixed
forms where both negative and positive symptoms are present. For this reason,
Andreasen (1985) modifies Crow’s classification in a dimensional perspective:
the two types of schizophrenia, to which she adds the mixed one, would not be
­d ifferent syndromes, but subtypes of one disorder. For Andreasen, this distinc-
tion, though keeping a high value from the aetiopathological point of view, is
more consistent from the diagnostic and therapeutic point of view.
The Crow-Andreasen model has been widely criticised. For example, some
authors (Peralta et al., 1992; Klimidis et al., 1993), using both reviews of ­previous
analyses and new studies on psychotic patients, showed that in the vast ­majority
of cases the positive-negative dichotomy does not match up with the actual
structure of patients’ symptoms (which would be better represented by three
independent groups of symptoms: hallucinations/delusions, positive thought
disorder, and negative symptoms). Various studies include other factors inside
the original model; for example, the PANSS (Positive and Negative Syndrome
Scale, Kay et al., 1987) has five factors, while the scale proposed by Emsley
et al. (2003), also including catatonia, depression, and anxious disorders, takes
16 The enigma of schizophrenia

account of seven factors. Regardless of the factor cluster included in the ­d ifferent
scales of evaluation, it is important to stress that in some cases a patient can be
­schizophrenic without showing any positive or negative symptom, like in schiz-
ophrenia simplex (which we deal with later, in Chapter 4). This implies that the
­positive-negative dichotomy, no matter how reliable from the diagnostic point of
view, does not catch every possible mode of being schizophrenic.
And so, we arrive at the most recent attempt to describe s­ chizophrenia, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American
­Psychiatric Association, 2013). This manual, which adopts a descriptive para-
digm, pretends to be free from theoretical assumptions and tries to ­delineate
those qualitative and quantitative criteria that make a diagnosis possible.
­Regarding ­schizophrenia, the DSM-5 states that to be diagnosed as schizo-
phrenic, one has to show, for at least one month, two or more of the follow-
ing symptoms: hallucinations, delusions, disorganised thought, catatonic or
­d isorganised ­behaviour, or negative symptoms; at least one of the symptoms
must be one of the first three. All symptoms perfectly overlap with those
identified by Kraepelin, even if symptom definitions are clearly changed.
For example, delusions are no more described as a defect of intellect, but as
‘fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence’
(American Psychiatric Association, 2013: 87). However, apart from these
changes linked to a different cultural paradigm, one can say that schizophre-
nia’s description we use today is definitely Kraepelinian.
It is worth noting that this newest edition of the DSM still attempts to i­dentify,
among the different symptoms of schizophrenia, something that typifies it in a
more specific way. As we already noticed, it is specified that the patient has to
show one of three symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, or disorganised thought.
These symptoms would have a higher diagnostic value than others; that is to
say, they would be schizophrenia’s most typical aspects, but only with regard
to the diagnosis. Thus, we can say that in some sense, the DSM-5 surrendered
to schizophrenia, in that it quit the attempt to catch its essence, preferring to
adopt a completely descriptive point of view. After all, this text should only
be a ­practical instrument to diagnose mental disorders. However, I did not write
‘should’ accidentally, because the DSM-5 is actually far from being objective and
neutral; it is committed to that medical conception of mental disorder that is typ-
ical of modern Western countries. DSM-5’s different aspects have been criticised,
from the cut-off rigidity (i.e., the minimum number of symptoms, for example,
two symptoms are enough to diagnose schizophrenia, and there is no difference
between a person who presents two symptoms and another one who presents
six of them), to the huge discretionality left to the single psychiatrist (who, for
example, can judge the bizarreness of a delusion basing on his reference culture,
rather than on the patient’s one), to the tendency to consider abnormal some
behaviours that are only deviations from normality or ways to express suffering
(one can think of categories that are sometimes too abused, such as childhood
bipolar disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity d­ isorder). But, investigating
 The enigma of schizophrenia 17

the critiques of the DSM-5’s structure or the medical conception of madness,

with the role it keeps on playing on psychiatry and on the way mental disorder is
treated and stigmatised, is not the aim of this book. I will only touch this topic
in Chapter 5, where I will address the issue of normativism associated to mental
disorders.
It is now time to look closer at the real object of this book: the schizophrenic
language.
2
Language in schizophrenia

Grammar and syntax

In this chapter, I will present the way schizophrenia radically changes the
­language of people affected. As we will see, language is one of the domains
where schizophrenia reveals itself in its essence, where it shows its alterity in such
a clear way that even people who never heard about schizophrenia can sense that
something is terribly wrong. Schizophrenic language is the election field for a
psychopathology of language, that is, for a perspective aware that what mental
disorders affect in language is not located at the biological level, but involves the
way language is semantically and existentially situated (Pennisi, 1998).
Language plays such an important role in schizophrenia that the studies
on schizophrenic language begin as soon as the category of schizophrenia is
­‘discovered’. Kraepelin immediately focuses on schizophrenic language. He states
that a peculiar language alteration is worth noting in this mental disorder, a sort of
derailment of the ideation process that makes schizophrenic discourse incoherent
and often incomprehensible. He identifies what is called desultoriness of thought,
a form of incoherent speech where ‘the train of thought does not progress at all in
any one direction, but only wanders with numerous and bewildering d­ igressions
in the same general paths’ (Kraepelin, 1913: 40). Patients complain that their
thoughts garble, that it is too hard to keep a coherent thought, and that there are
too many associations that bring a derailment of thought. In the most severe cases,
the speech results in a mere series of letters, words, or sounds, while the content of
thought is completely destroyed. As we can notice, in this first phase of reflections
about schizophrenic language, psychiatrists refer to it using expressions that be-
long both to language and thought (Kraepelin talks of both ­derailment of thought
and derailment of speech). I will show in Chapter 3 that, despite the very different
cultural paradigm, the exact nature—cognitive or linguistic—of schizophrenic
language disorganisation still remains an open question.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 —Daa’s net! t’jonge … doar lait ’n lekker hoekie wind
hier! Sel d’r bloase hebbe f’murge, toen Ant d’r hier
plukt hept. Se waa’s d’r ook soo meroakels koud, dat ’t
waif hep stoan bibbere aa’s ’n koors hee? Se hep d’r
de heule murrege mit main jas anloope! Op ’t pad
hebbe se d’r aige naskraiuwt: Lamme Krelis! làmme
Krelis!

Kees zweeg. Z’n wijf kon ’m geen zier schelen. Woest

was ie op ’r dikke buik. Hij had ’r wel plat willen
trappen, want telkens zag ie ’r z’n eigen stomheid in,
z’n vuile stomheid. Stom nijdig plukte ie door, maar
Piet wou praten.

—Nou, da’ sel main ’n godsliefeheer skele! of je àchter

of veur ’n singel lait.… lait mi plukke.. En dan mi’ soo’n
guur end wailand veur je lampies! daa’s alle-jesis-
koud! En aa’s [257]je vaif uur achter mekoar plukt hep,
mò’ je rais kaike wa’ je hep.… puur niks meer aa’s ’n
poar mandjes!

—Joa … aa’s je soafes stopt, soek je vast noà wá’ je

daan hep!

—Nou, je bint t’r nou op kommende waige hee?.…

Moar ikke mot d’r nog ’n dot plukke! de Ouë is d’r puur
tuureluurs van, nou die soo feul kwait kèn aa’s tie wil!

Stil ’n poos bleven de kerels doorkruipen, ritselend in

de struiken, afknijpend de zwartgloeiende vruchtjes,
ze bij trossen smakkend in groote blanke sloffen voor
hen uit, op ’t stovende reuk-bedrenkte gras. Rond ze
heen, in struik en teelt onder vruchtboomen en hagen,
gloeide middagzon. ’t Groen stroomde lichtglans af,
 zilverig, goudvlammig en fijn beschaduwdoezeld in al
andren gloei, tegen ’t licht. Onder de dichtgegroepte
vruchtboomen lommerde ’t koel als in ’n
kreupelboschje. Enkele in hoogen uitgroei waaierden
wat kronkeltakken uit, betrost met appeltjes, zacht
rose blozend als warm gestoeide kinderkopjes. Overal
onder getwijg, groen en rozerood, vlekte vruchtglans
tegen doorschemerend luchtblauw, takkenprieel in
zware dracht van vruchten, die vergoudden in vloed
van zonnevuur. Kleintjes zwollen de vruchtjes áán,
dof, tintwarm en pastelteer. Vlak bij den mossigen
stam verdrongen ze elkaar om licht en lucht. Wat
takken, harpig uitgebogen, goud-groenden in
zonnejool en appeltjes gloeiden dáár in glanzenden
wasem. In wilderen uitgroei stonden de pereboomen,
bronzig-dof bevrucht en de pruimen, donker
voldragen, groen als groote olijven. Op naakten hoek
tegen luchtblauw in, stronkigde vlak vóór Kees, op
woest onkruid-plekje, één appelboompje, smal en
tenger-rank voorover gebogen, luisterend naar de
zoemende zomer-geruchten.

En rondom vervloeide de geur van doorstoofde

gouden vruchtenhofjes, zèlf behageld van rozeroode
wang-appeltjes, nog gesmoord in groeigloed.
Afgevallen peertjes en appeltjes verwurmden
bleekgroen en gelig, overal verwaaid en uitgestrooid
onder de boompjes in ’t heet-geschroeide gras en
onkruid, tusschen koolen en zoete fransjes. [258]

Piet, met triestig gebaar wees naar ’n pruimeboom.

—Kaik Kees, wà vol die stoan hee? aa’s t’ie moar nie
’t weggetje naimt van sàin doar op ’t hoekie! die
gladekker! bai de biete main ik! die hep tug puur sain
aige dood draigt hee! snó’f’rjenne! da hai je d’r puur
nooit sien! die hep ’r sóó veul had dá’ tie nie raip hep
kenne worde hee? t’jong ’n skoon sicht da’ waa’s.. da
hep je d’r vast nooit sien!

Er ruischte weer stilte in den tuin en boomblaren

windsuizelden golf-zacht.—

Kees plukte door, sjouwde de volle bakken naar den

dorsch, waar al ’t marktgoed, buiten zonnebroei
opgestapeld stond. Op elkaar tegen stal áán, op groep
en voorgang, dromden de kisten met versche sla,
dopperszakken, aardbei-vrucht, frambozen, roode en
gouden bessen; één feest van kleur, saamgebroeid
met zweet, ùit zonnelaai naar koelenschouw en
dorsch gedragen.—Door den tuin klonk zangerig
gejoel en jeugd-jubel van kinderstemmen; meisjes die
meeplukten en meesjouwden. Dirk was van ’t
peenbossen naar de snijboonen gesjòkt, hurkte
tusschen d’enge wanden van hoog goud-groen, die
poortten als ’n hal van lommerlicht op ’t pad, waar de
zon goud schroot over uitgescherfd had, rijzen en
latten in gloei verglinsterend.—

—Aa’s wai dá’ weertje nou d’r moar houê, riep ouë
Gerrit in ’t voorbij gaan tegen Dirk.

—Nou op haide smoor je van de hitte en strak-en-an

bibber je van de kou.… hee.. Ouë!.. set rais ’n kerel an
de andaifie hee! Mot nou skoffele! Sel’k d’r sellefers
wel de bolletjes opknappè!
 Gewroet van laat-zomersche drukte woelde rond in
Wiereland en Duinkijk. Het haventje, op marktdagen,
daverde en mokerde vol van woel en klank. In alle
hoeken schreeuwden en sjacherden de koopers weer
met duizenden kilo’s roode bessen, zwarte, gouden en
paarse; frambozen en aardbei, in zoetrookige geuren,
verwasemend door de groenten. De Haven lag
volgestort van nieuwen kleurbrand en vruchten.—De
groentekarren, [259]in d’r frisschen uitbouw van sla en
wortelen, bakken en manden, ratelden áán, hortten
weg, als steeg er weer razernij van mid-zomerschen
uitvoer en pluk. Vóórklank van boonentijd weerschalde
er, boonentijd die in den helleroes van kermis had
moeten vallen. Maar van alle kant werd er geraasd op
de Haven, dat ’t leelijke weer van half Juli den boel
had bedorven, dat ’t gek-laat zou worden, nou met de
boonepluk.

Wiereland koortste weer in fellen zomerbrand en

zonnelaai. Zeegasten stormden áán, iederen dag
meer, en ’n woelige kinderbende, meisjes, prachtig
bekleurd met roode en blanke japonnetjes, cier- en
stroo-hoeden stoeiden rond. Moedertjes jong, met
bloei-bloemige mousselientjes, teêre krepjes en
neteldoek-blank, in dartele cier, kuierden met parasols
statig tusschen de schooierige plukkertjes van
Wiereland; stedeke-kinders, die stil afgunstig ’t
vakantie-jolende stadsvolkje van rijkaards begluurde.
’n Por van moeders en broers in hun ribben en gauw
hurkten ze weer neer, de verbrande tronietjes naar de
heete aarde gebukt, plukkend van knie op knie, in
beestigen zwoeg, àl voort.—
Langs hun akkers strooide de tingelingende bellezang
van tramkoetsiers vroolijke jubel-klanken rond,
vergalmend over de zwoegkoppen, als een trillend
zomersch vreugdgeluid door de zonnige lucht en ’t
landgroen.—Rijtuigen stoften áán en wèg in
zandorkaan; fietsen snorden voorbij, in spakenfonkel.
En heel de brandende ploeterstreek drukte en raasde
van zomergenot, omtooverde met hittekleur en licht,
de gasten en ’t joelend vakantiebezoek. Dwars door
den zwoeg van ’t land joeg de zeetram de menschen
en kinders, met kleurig speelgoed, spaden en
emmertjes, scheepjes en harken. Wierelands
notabelen zwierden mee in zomerpronk; nuffige
dametjes met blank spel van felle kleuren òpzengende
parasols, kleur-zonnen in ’t helle groen, in den
zonneregen van licht en vlam.—Zomerkostuumpjes
lichtten en blankten tusschen de stille lommerlaantjes,
overal drentelden dametjes en heertjes, met
kraakschoen-gestap, rijkelui’s-lekker op de zand-
zachte paadjes.—Zoo, met den dag, [260]stroomden
meer gasten aan, door de groote beukenlaan, die als
’n wondre goud-groene poort lommerig den weg naar
zee opende. En langs heel den weg van Duin- naar
Zeekijk, gloeide en zand-koekte het heete gruis,
brandde en zengde ’t zomerleven, omschroeiend in
stuifselwolken boerenkarren, rijtuigen en trams, dat de
landwerkers, achter de hagen, vlak aan de straat,
onder zuilen van stofwarrel verstikten. Loom
passeerden de tuinders ’t zomergewoel. In hùn
ploeter, voelden ze ’t dwaas, ’n gang naar zee, voor
hùn zelf. De zee, waar ze vaagjes, in teisterenden
winterstorm en schal, alleen ’t gerucht van hoorden
aandruischen achter veréénzaamde duinen. Ze
verroerden geen stap voor ’t pronkende, schreeuwige
stadsvolkje, dat brutaal zich nestelde in hùn streek; de
verhuur-kamertjes van verdiengrage luitjes bejoelden,
de wegen bestoften in stikzand. Ze wisten van geen
zeelucht de zwoegers; van geen zilte zouten
ademhaal, geen frisschen stoei van strandstorm. En
Zondag’s, als ze vrij hadden, rookten ze liever hun
pijp, wandelden ze met de meiden naar den
Lemperweg, of bleven hokvast broeien binnen de
mikken, in zaligen luier.—Dàt veel liever, dan op stap,
op den gloeizandweg naar zee, ’n uur gaans. En de
ouderen, vol van zorg en moeheid en weekzwoeg,
hokten in hun naar lucht-snakkende, behorde duffe
kamertjes, slurpten d’r koffie, koffie en weer koffie,
smakten d’r pijp, d’r pruim; besabbelden d’r sigaar en
loerden rustigjes naar ’t gewas. En ’s avonds de zuip,
stillekens de warme kroeg in, met ’t Zondaggegons
van alderlei spreeksel nog in d’ooren. Door de week,
ging van zelf voort hun zwoeg en zonnebrand, hun
sjouw en pluk, dat ze ’t bloed onder de nagels vuurde.
Niet meer keken ze òp, naar ’t vakantiegewoel op de
paadjes, langs hun akkers, bang voor ’n minuut
verlies, vóórt tot laat-avond, naar havenkant. En daar
nog zweet-doordropen van ’t gloeiende land, met ’n
afzakkertje, zogen ze in, ’t heete vocht, als zalige
lafenis voor dichtgebrande van stof verstikte kelen.—
[261]

[Inhoud]
 IV.

Twee weken vóór de kermis was de lucht weer

gedraaid. De roode kolen stonden verkwijnd, met rot-
doorvreten bladeren. Angstige drukte en onrust joeg
er onder de tuinders.

—Daa’s t’met ’t lekkerstje weertje da je hebbe kèn,

zeurde Klaas Koome, voor ’n akker van Ouë Gerrit;—
ik konstesteer van daa’tje nou t’minste loope ken, en
d’r nie je aige f’rsmelt.. enne de boonebeweging goan
tog s’n gangetje.. want moànd blaift moànd … op dá’
terrain merkeere de boontjes de paàs …

—Hoor hemmis, hoor hemmis! hoonde Dirk bij de

andijvie gehurkt,—skoenmoaker hou je bai je leest
hee? bi jài besuikerd?—

Ouë Gerrit bromde wat mee, gejaagd en kramperig als

ie zich voelde in ’t onweer-zwoelige grauwe weer. Die
dreigluchten maakten ’m soms stikken, of ’r wurgangst
op z’n strot drukte, in vaaglijk onbestemde benauwing
’t bloed ’m naar den kop jagend.—Angst die ’m aan ’t
fantazeeren bracht, doorhollend hallucineeren, in al
erger benauwing om dingen die gebeuren kònden.
Angst die ’m zelf folterde, z’n brein martelde, hèm
allerlei dingen liet zien, die nièt bestonden, z’n oogen
in donkeren floèrs legden, waarin lichtende
sterrendans vonkte. En dan maar brommen en klagen
luid, luid, om iets ’r tègen te doen.

—Nou, da sel d’r ’n mooie worde, mit de boone!.…

hoho! d’r is gain son.. wá’ sit dá’ ding! aa’s tie moàr nie
wegblaift hee? ’t is te dol.. en.. en.. tug.. vier en vaif en
nie g’nog!.. daa’s één raige al raige! enn hoho!.. ’s
aofus hep je dâ dolle onwair, sonder daa’t hiet waa’s
hee?

Koome lummelde nog wat voor de haag, lolde met

Dirk over de kermis, waar heel Wiereland al vol van
was; slenterde eindelijk verder.

Drukker werd er geschoffeld tusschen de selderie.

Kees plantte andijvie uit en zette op regels.—Laat-
gezaaide sla werd weer in bakken uitgedragen naar
de markt. Tot schemer doken en verbukten de kerels
en kinders op de duisterende akkers. Wisselend [262]in
gang, trokken de werkers drie maal òp naar de groote
stad. Het groote kargerucht, de hos van ’t landvolk,—
één in hun epischen samengroei van man-paard en
kar-en-koopwààr, verklonk als onweer al over de
bekeide straatjes. De Haven daverde van herrie en
hartstocht-koop der venters.

Op ’t land trapten de kinders, nu vaders en bazen naar

stad waren, de verdorde erwtenranken òp, de goud-
gele slepende haarbossen. In alle tuinderijen nu,
schemerden tusschen jong-groeiend boomgroen en
boerenkool, de goud-verrotte leeggeplukte
erwtenranken, soms èven zonnig overgloeid, als
brandende braam, vlam-roerloos. In enkele dagen
fladderden de bossen op de rijzenpunten, harige
kopgedrochten op pieken, hóóg tegen donkere lucht.
—Aan voet van rijzen, waar ’t stroo opgehokt stond,
bloeiden al weer late sperzie- en snijboonen.
Ouë Gerrit wou niet drogen op rijzen, in dat vuile weer;
smakte de ranken op hoopen bij modder-greppeltje
achter ’t erf, toch zuinig ze bewarend voor
koestrooisel. Kees was druk in de weer, rankte nieuwe
aardbeibedden in, en zuiverde ze van vuil.—Elk half
uurtje, tusschen marktgang, werd gewied. Heele
akkers met leege rijzen bleven nog naakt de lucht
inpieken, om dat er geen tijd was ze op hok te
smakken. Toch waren ze blij, dat de aardbeipluk
gedaan leek, al kopten ze nog wat mandjes. Van de
vroeg-soorten begonnen de blaadjes al rood te
gloeien, bloedrood en meloen-goudheet bezoomd,
sterfzang van ’t loof in den zonnezomer. Andere
bedden kwijnden met roest op ’t blad, door plotsen
guren omdraai van weer, wind en regen, in ’t hart van
groei en bloei geslagen.—

Ouë Gerrit gromde van ’s morgens tot ’s avonds.—

Het was geen làvende zomerregen meer, die als ’n

koele dronk neersuisde op ’t land, en tegen den
avond, over de akkers zangerige regenruisch verzong
door de donkere boomen en ’t loof, en dán zuchtte als
ademhaal van orgelregisters; dan droomerig tikkelde
en zacht knetterde heel fijn en weemoedig,—maar ’t
bleef ’n nattige wind-wilde regenzwalp, ’n modderig
plassende, dorrend-vernielende grauwe nattigheid.—
Ouë Gerrit vloekte, vloekte, onder ’t inranken van de
beplaste aardbeibedden. Wàt ie aanraakte
[263]klefferde, was bemodderd. Z’n klompen zogen in ’t
natte zand, kledderden en smakten zuigend onder z’n
hielen. Rechts en links de bedden, rankte ie tegelijk de
jonge stekjes. Wrevelig groef ie de plantjes in, keilde
 ie verrotte voor zich uit. Toch was ie dolblij dat ie
dezen zomer niet alles op één worp had gegooid met
de aardbeien, zooals die stomme dokter Troost dat
wilde. En lol had ie ’r om, dat ie die beroerde grimmige
Ant had gebonjourd.

Voor Kees nou nog alleen wat bij de boonen, en dan

die ook òpgemarcheerd. Die paar mandjes aardbei en
bessen kon d’r Guurt zelf nog wel halen, die toch ook
’t land had an Ant. Gister had z’n meid nog veertig
mandjes geplukt.… Toch ’n rakker die Guurt. Als ie
maar wist wat of ze vóór had, met d’r vrijers..

En die Piet! hep d’r nog acht sint moakt! Waa’s d’r
puur ’n meroakel! hoho! aa’s die noar stad gong.…
waa’s ’t alletait ’n kwart meer aa’s Dirk, die krek vaif
sint hoalt!

Ouë Gerrit wist zich niet goed meer te roeren. Dirk gaf
’m eerst na den grootsten worstel, de ontvangen
guldens uit den zak. De Ouë kromp van angst, als ie
’m dronken van den marktdag zag den dorsch
inschommelen, angst dat ie den heelen boel zou
verzopen hebben, of verspeeld. En als ie dan maar ’n
kik gaf, blafte Dirk hem nijdig tegen z’n hielen, dat ie
schrok, en afgebluft loenschte. Piet gaf alles dadelijk,
al gapte ie ’r later weer van weg voor de zuip, maar
Dirk hield de duiten in z’n ijzeren knuisten heet
gevangen.—Dan eindelijk, moest ie na z’n verbluffing
opspelen, schreeuwen, stompen en beuken in
bloedspuw van nijd, en traag ging de klepzak dan
eindelijk open, klefferden de morsige dubbeltjes,
kwartjes en centen naar buiten, naar hèm toe, onder
één grom en snauw. Ging hij natellen dan vloekte Dirk.
„Tel aa’s je je koarsies uitbloast”, hoonde die, en
sarrend liet ie ’m zien de notities, wel wetend, dat ouë
Gerrit toch niet lezen kon, ’n letter zoo groot als ’n
paardekop niet.—

Smartelijker, gejaagder voelde ie z’n onmacht, ouë

Gerrit, omdat ie zelf niet meer de stad inventen kon.
Soms, als ie wat beet had weer, kon ’m de heele boel
niet meer schelen; zag ie heel klaar z’n ondergang in,
hij op ’n hokkie, de kerels op ’t [264]land als knechten.
Dan weer bedacht ie, dat zoo iets toch maar niet in
een ging, hij z’n meeste geld toch bij de fabrieken,
vast liet liggen, tot hij November zelf betalen moest.
Soms, drensde ’m door z’n kop dat Dirk vroeger veel
beter voor ’m geweest was, toegevender en niet zoo
snauwend, maar dan zag ie later Dirk weer goeiiger
tegenover hem.—Als de vent maar geen geld zag,
want dàn wier ie dol.—

Vandaag had ie nog ’n bak bessen geplukt, ’n

dubbeltje per mandje. En nog ’n prachtig dotje
frambozen! Dat klein goed gaf toch nog heel wat.…
Hoho!.… dá’ beskouwde ie nog wel ’n vaiftien pop
veur.… hai most d’r vast meer van tele, al há’ je d’r
tuinders die d’r niks mee van doen wille hewwe.. Da
klain goed.. want aldegoar benne se tug doodarreme
poerders. Van murrege, van vaif tot ses op ’t ploatsie,
had ie ’t nog uitrekend.… veur de feule framboosies
moakte ie nog twoalef sint ’t mandje.. hoho! wa’ skol
’t? Nou hoalde ie di joàr an sain vruchies.… frank … ’t
hooi uut! Ommendebai honderdvaiftien pop veur twai
koebeeste.…
 Maar angstiger iederen avond, nà z’n stil gemijmer,
keek ie òp naar de lucht, angst-verwurgd voor onweer
en regen. Tegen iedereen klaagde ie.… ’t werd ’m te
benauwd.—

—De boone groeie d’r wel in ’t gewas hoho! moar de

frucht set nie! mi die raige! Wa binne dá’ nou weer
suinige weertjes.. in ’t hart van ’t somer, je sit d’r puur
te rille.… en soàfus omwair!

—Jaò buurman, f’rlaije jair satte wai op haide

hardstikke in ’t drukst van de boonetait hèe?

—Hoho.… vier- en vaif en nie g’nog.… suinige

weertjes …

En iederen dag, dat ’t guur-winderige weer aanhield

werd Ouë Gerrit banger en grimmiger. Er zat angst in
z’n keel. De zware onweerswolken voelde ie pletten
op z’n borst. Dan weer wreef ie zich aan z’n strot als
zat ’r ’n wurgklauw die telkens z’n luchtpijp zachtjes
toekneep, en hem nog maar uit ’n spleetje ademen
liet! Angst voor z’n boonen groeide. Nu en dan zag ie
z’n wijf verdwaald rondzoeken in de tuinderij. Hoe ze’r
heengestapt was wist ze zelf niet meer, en waar ze
terug moest nog minder. [265]Ze drentelde maar wat en
sufte. Plots ’n woesten snauw, greep ie ’r bij den arm,
bracht ’r in huis.—

—Jou stommeling, je loopt d’r t’met hardstikke in main

seldrie mi je klaufe.… hoho! jai geep! dwarrel! moak
jai d’r gain kapsies hee?—
 Woest had ie ’r thuis op ’n stoel geduwd, waar ze
versuft neerblokte, en grommend sprong ouë Gerrit ’t
achterend uit.

—Dâ sal d’r ’n mooie sain.… Net had ie sain seldrielap

f’rkocht, veur vier sint ’t kilo! Waa’s d’r in sint meer
aa’s verlaije joar!.… Hoho!… sel je dá’ lamme dooie
waif d’r mi d’r blinde klaufe instappe … Wá’ gong die
seldrie nou hain?.. noa febriek?… had die dàor nie
meer moake kenne?.. of noar Amsterdam? da lamme
waif!.… Moar s’n spersie en snaiboone … da gong d’r
noar Noord-Skarrefou.. en Aiselmonde.. of ie ’t nie
wist! Da stomme waif.. sel d’r f’rduufeld soo p’rdoes op
sain duute trappe!.… Moar de boone … mostte ’t tug
dâ joar goed moake … most de loodpot vulle.. aers
waa’s die d’r gloeiend bai.… gaf de seldrie en vruchies
tùg nies.. nies.…

In regen en plassende nattigheid werd op de akkers

gewied, gekerfd met spa, geplukt in bakken. Seldrie
verwasemend door regengeur, stond gesneden en de
aardappels werden voor eigen maal wat gerooid hier
en daar.

Op de bollenakkers, wijd-om de tuinderijen en

gaarden gecirkeld, rookten blauwige wolkzwierselen.
In de greppels, volgeschoffeld met rot loof, hadden de
werkers ’n brandje gestoken, dat niet vlamde, maar
smeulde, en zwaar hei-brandig dampte over de
velden. Soms, als achter regengrauwe lucht en
wolkzilverend grijs, nattig en bleek, even de zon kwam
koekeloeren, met bewaterde gelige tronie, strooide ’t
licht wat nattig goud, schijnselig en blas, door de
blauw-dampende in rook stikkende akkers. De rooiers
dáár, in den ijl-blauwen smeulnevel, die glansde in
bleek zongoud, gebaarden in rokigen gloed, in mist-
blauw en zacht zonnevuur aangegloeid, stralend en
omsluierend tegelijk. Zoo, ’n uur lang, de bollenakkers
trilden in ’t waas-blauwe, zacht begloeide rooklicht, als
welfde zich een dampige [266]reuzengrot boven ’t land,
waar kleurige nevel doorheen woei, in stoei en spel,
van grotgeesten, in-en-uit. En rond ’t rookende loof
verschuifelden de glansen van dag-goud en
grasgroen, onder de werkende luchten, vol
regengrauw en paars-duister onweergedreig.

Na ’n uur dook zon weer wèg, vertraande z’n bleek-

gele waterige tronie achter droef-grauwe
wolkburchten, stortte regen weer neer bij hoozen. En
over de avond-akkers bleef ’t donker ruischen, soms
kletteren door bladloover, heel vèr en snaterend-
monotoon.

Ouë Gerrit beefde, snikte van angst als in wolkdonker,

’n vuurflits ’t fosforesceerende zwerk vlammig
doorzeisde, zònder dat donderslag nadreunde.—

’s Morgens, zóó uit angst-doorschokten korten slaap

wakker gejaagd, keek ie ’t eerst naar z’n boonen. Dit
jaar had ie moffenboonen bijgeplant, waarvan ie ook
nog heel wat mocht verwachten. Maar ook dàt gewas
stond hoe langer hoe slechter. Met angst in z’n oogen
keek ie schuw naar den bloesem van de hooge stok-
boonen, of ’r niet te véél verdorden en afvielen. De
paadjes dáár, schemerden wit van bloesem. En in z’n
angst zag ie ’t al erger sneeuwen, vol afgewaaide
dorrende bloesems. ’n Paar dagen had ie achtereen in
huis, wat bollen gesorteerd. Maar nou, met de rooi van
wat narcissen moest ie eruit, sorteeren op den
klefferigen modderig verzogen grond, omdat zulk
goedje altijd buiten liggen bleef. En de kerels, achter ’t
erf, en op de Beek, tusschen de aardappels en
koolen, stonden verzopen en verflodderd van regen
en nattigheid, te wroeten in de vunzige aarde. Soms
zóó doorzogen tot op ’t hemd, dat ze zich iederen
avond d’r regen-stinkende kleeren uit te wringen en te
verdrogen hadden boven vuur. En voort over de
zomerlanden joegen de grauwe wolkensteden, laag,
bang-dreigend, vol duister-paarse ontzetting.

Soms kon Ouë Gerrit de heele boel geen drommel

meer schelen, al bralde en rotsblokkig-roffelde en
stortte ’t onweer in, boven z’n kop, al flitste ’t vuur zig-
zag vizioen-snel door den hemel, al had ie z’n centen
voor pacht en hypotheek nog voor [267]’n kwart deel
niet bij elkaar, al rotten z’n boonenbloesems ’m zóó,
voor de oogen weg. Die uurtjes leefden er zalig voor
’m, als ie pas wat gegapt had, en met heerlijk-woest
voluptueus steelgenot, met nog jeuk-brandende
knuisten van grijp-verlangen, naar z’n kelderhoek
holde. Vloeken kòn ie, als ie daar niet dikwijls genoeg
vrij mocht afzakken. Guurt in haar dralende
onnoozelheid, had in den voorhoek allerlei rommel
neergesmakt; mandjes, roestpannen, zaklorren,
houtblokken, takkebossen, waar ze nou telkens
tusschen snuffelde. Snauwig keek ze ’m aan, als ie
trapgat afstrompelde. Dan bitste ze ’m nijdig toe wat ie
in den kelder van doen had. ’t Was verduiveld, of ze
voèlde dat ’t dan hevig heet in ’m liep; dat zorgen en
 angst in z’n strot dichtschroefden, dat ie àfwilde van
z’n benauwing, hem z’n roeszaligheid van-bij-z’n-
spullen-zitten, dáár kon verzwijmelen en zich
verdooven. Gauw moest ie dan ’n uitpraatje klaar
hebben, en zoo liep ie wel uren rond te scharrelen in ’t
vervuilde kelderhok, allerhande pestige vervelende
dingetjes doend, die hij niet wòu doen, Guurt
vervloekend, dat zij, in d’r smerigheid en
verwaarloozing van huishoudingen, noù, nou hìj heet
liep, zich daar vastzoog tusschen de lorren,
rondsnuffelde met Job’s geduld, en hèm belette z’n
rommel te grijpen, te omtasten, met z’n brandende
begeer-oogen te omgretigen.—Als ze eindelijk
opstapte, holde ie naar z’n hok, in woesten grabbel
met angst-argwaan, heet-gejaagd loerend op ’t
keldertrapgat, in duizelende verrukking en hart-
mokering, dat ze’m toch nooit zouên snappen. Hoorde
ie gedruisch boven ’t luik, voetgeschuifel en kreukig
rokgeschuur, dan beefde ie, bééfde ie, bleef ie toch, in
koorts-spannende angst-verrukking oogen-gretigend
waanzinnen bij z’n spullen, wagend, alles wagend tot
de laatste gevaar-sekonde.—

Aan tafel ’s middags keek ie angstiger Guurt áán, of

ze wat zeggen zou, wat gemerkt had, maar er kwam
geen woord uit z’n meid, daarover.

—Ouë nog ’n spekkie? was ’t eenige wat ze zei, klonk

’m gemoedelijk, na z’n overspannen angst voor
gesnapt-zijn, fantazie-angst die ’m folterde en doorreet
van schok-gevoel, elk [268]oogenblik: noù-zal-je ’t
hewwe.—En vriendelijk-lekker antwoordde ie:
 —Heul groag maid, heul groag!

Daarna zei ie in zich zelf, de vraag van Guurtje wel

tien maal over, dat ’t van binnen in ’m druischte en
klonk:.. Ouë nog ’n spekkie?.. Ouë nog ’n spekkie?..
Maar telkens veranderde ie toon-accent, zich zelf dan
afvragend of ze ’t wel zoo ècht gemoedelijk bedoeld
had, als hij ’t eerst meende.—Voor zijn wijf had ie
heelemaal geen angst meer. Ging ie ’s nachts soms
nog naar z’n kelderhok, voorzichtig in de paar uurtjes
duister maar, dan bleef ze’m soms aanstaren, keek hij
haar terug áán zonder dat ze ’n stom woord kon
uitbrengen. Meestal kon ’r spraak zich niet eens meer
op den naam van ’r man smakken. Dan voelde hij zich
overmoedig, demonisch-sarrend, lolde ie ’r even
zachtjes in de ooren.

—Gerrit goan d’r bai s’n bulle waif, sain bulle waif!
hoho!

—Bulle.. bulle? klankloos haperde en teemde ze

idioterig terug, zonder besef de woorden van ’r lippen
versullend. Dan grinnikte ie zoetjes-gesmoord, bang
voor de anderen die wèl beseften. Kwam ie terug uit
den kelder, dan lag ze weer te lip-puffen of staarde ze
wakker naar ’m òp, zonder begrip, met staar van ’n
stille idiote in d’r doffe oogen.

Maar nou, in die broei-grauwe luchten, met al dat

onweer, dat ’m deed stikken van benauwdheid was z’n
overmoed tegenover haar ook dikwijls wèggezakt.

Z’n boonen! z’n boonen! als die maar bleven!

 Van de stamsperzies hadden de jongens al wat
gehaald. Kees was bedankt, mocht weer eens
aanslenteren in ’t drukst van den pluk. Ouë Gerrit
raasde, schold, giftiger onstuimiger op ’t weer. Hij
berukte z’n baard, z’n haren, zich-zelf omfolterend met
angstvragen, hoe dat afloopen moest. Nou had ie
gedacht er zoo onverschillig mogelijk onder te blijven.
De bloesem en afval sneeuwde áán met z’n angst
mee, en telkens keek ie bangelijker hoe de ranken
zich hielden.

—Hoho … vier-en-vaif en nie genog, kaik d’r rais

waa’n woar d’r lait! doar ken je ’n huurtje van
beskouwe.. snof’rjenne, [269]teemde ie naar Dirk die ’m
met ’n snauw afgromde, en zonder ommezien op z’n
uitgeplante andijvie aanstramde, kopgebukt en spier-
gespannen, als ’n paard dat vrachtkar aansjort in
eersten opzet.—

—Is da nie vast ’n skande, soo veul nat weer, in ’t

harretje van Augustus t’met. Z’n kinderkop wrangde
elk uur knorriger, en z’n bisschopsbaard trok ie met
woeste handvegen, heen en weer. Wat had ie d’r nou
an dat stelletje moffeboonen, en die dubbele
stamsperzies.… aldegoar grof goed.. aa’s de
stokboone nie gonge! kaik! nou had Piet d’r f’murge ’n
tàchtig boontjes fònde.. ’t Waa’s god-gekloagd!
Skande.. skande! En hep d’r Dirk nie veuls te loat
d’andaifie uitplant? en soo waid van malkoar.. Dá’ had
d’r end Juli op regels motte stoan. Nou most tie d’r
nog òpbinde.… aa’s ’t goed gong! Somers-andaifie
òpbinde! wie hep d’r ooit soo sout gaite? Die staifkop!
hoho! D’r had al ’n gaile krop insitte kenne.. aa’s tie se
op malkoar plant had.…

Morrend en vloekbrommend liep ie overal door den

tuin, loerender en banger, iederen dag. Ja, wel was ie
stom geweest om die spruitkool tusschen zijn boonen
te zetten.

—Sel d’r is ’n nat klompie gaife!

Langzaam zetten de boonen áán. ’t Weer bleef guur,

grauw-zilverig, al stroomde de regen niet meer. De
spruitkoolen, omzaaid van kleine bolletjes, dropen van
water, in glans-plassig nat. Gloei-droppels trilden op
de vette roode kolen, op de bieten, sla en ruche-fijne
gekartelde boerenkool. ’t Groen rondom blonk en glom
nattig onder ’t grijze luchtzware grauw. Onrustiger,
banger sjokkerde ouë Gerrit door z’n tuinen, dan op
de Beek, dan achter z’n huis, dan in ’t duin, wel
voelend met scheutjes blijdschap dat er wat hitte
aanbroeien ging onder ’t onweer-zwoele grauw.

De landwerkers zongen opgewondener onder hun

arbeid. Nog drie dagen en de kermis zou er zijn, de
groote uitbarstende pret voor hun zomerzwoeg, het
kleurigbonte wonder van tenten, kramen en spullen.—
En overal rondom, de kristallen fonkel van kronen en
de helle gloeilichtflakker van lampen, verduizelend
[270]voor hun begeer-oogen. Nou kwam de kermisgloei
die ze bekroop als ’n achtdaagsche koorts, ’n krisis
van hevig leven bracht, waarin ze uitbarsten en
verzwijmelen zouden, zich rollen, met hun zware
boerenpassie, in de modder van diergenot. Daarin
zouden ze zich wreken òp bijeengespaarde woede,
 haat en wrok. Nou mochten ze vechten, mokeren,
zuipen, geilen.

En overal koortste ’t lied uit, zongen ze op de akkers,

in de straatjes, zalige onbestemde dwarrel van
ronkende geluiden; krijsch naar genotsroes die
opvuren kwam. Hun wreede kelen raasden, en
verschalden kermiszang van ’t vorige jaar. En
klankengalm bevend en rauw van hartstocht,
verschorde over ’t grauwend-zomersche land.

Ouë Gerrit vloekte tegen de kermis die z’n boel nog

meer ging verpesten; de kerels lambeuken zou van
vermoeiïng, slaperigheid en hangerigen kregel.—

Dàt ging nou opstormen, dwars door ’t zware

boonenwerk. Maar toch wilde ie smoren z’n razernij,
want hóórden ze’m grommen, dan zouden ze’m vast
heelemaal laten stikken met den grooten haal, in de
blakerende kermisjool.— [271]