DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.44747#0032
I
-The Golden Age of Proverbs:
Netherlandish Proverbs Seen as an Important Cultural Legacy, not
Just Allusions to Human Folly and a Topsy-Turvy World
Netherlandish Proverbs (1559, fig-1, The figures mentioned here
can be found accompanying the Japanese text.) is one of Bruegel’s
early masterpieces and a treasure trove of Flemish folk culture, but
I believe that its meaning and importance in cultural history need
further discussion. Previous studies have employed either a philo-
logical or hermeneutic approach. The first philological study was
Louis Maeterlinck’s Nederlandsche spreekwoorden handelend voor-
gesteld door Pieter Breughel den Oude (the lively depiction of
Netherlandish proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder) of 1903,10) based
on copies made by Pieter Brueghel the Younger since the original
work had not yet been discovered. Maeterlinck suggested the possi-
bility that more than one proverb might be represented by the same
figure. After the original painting was found, the proverbs it por-
trayed were gradually identified in subsequent studies, beginning
with a paper by Franz Weinitz in 1915.11) Gustav Gluck, in his Brue-
gel of 1934,12) listed more than ninety Netherlandish proverbs, with
German translation, and explained their meaning. In 1957, the
Belgian philologist Jan Grauls, in Volkstaal en volksleven in het werk
van P. Bruegel^ (language and life of the common people in the
work of P. Bruegel), searched out examples of proverbs quoted in
Flemish poetry, drama and other writings of the sixteenth century.
Referring to Dutch literary sources, Grauls made an important con-
tribution to knowledge of the meanings of the proverbs and greatly
expanded understanding of the popular wisdom, views of life, and
moral thinking of Bruegel’s time.
Starting from this prior research, I wrote Bruegel's World of Prov-
erbs (1992)14) trying a new approach. More than sixty percent of the
proverbs depicted by Bruegel were known and mentioned in literary
works in the same or similar form in other European countries than
Flanders, for example, in England, France, and Germany, in the mid-
sixteenth century. They included famous phrases or aphorisms from
ancient philosophers and medieval theologians as well as biblical
phrases which had been passed down as the common cultural prop-
erty of Christian Europe. Also, proverbs, the “repositories of common
wisdom,” were “winged words,” spreading to many different regions
through books and travelers.
For example, the phrase “belling the cat” (carrying out a dan-
gerous project) has a source in the Roman fable writer, Phaidros.
“Casting pearls (rose petals in Bruegel’s version) before the swine”
(giving valuable things to people who do not appreciate them)
comes from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament. Proverbs
like “falling in the ashes between two chairs” (losing an opportu-
nity, the ashes are not included outside the Netherlands) and
“grabbing an eel by the tail” (working hard at a task likely to fail)
are derived from ordinary experience. Bruegel’s “big fish eating little
fish” has the same meaning as the Japanese proverb jakuniku-
kyoshoku (the weak eaten by the strong), and “hitting two flies
with one swat” corresponds to the Japanese isseki-nicho (two birds
with one stone). “He who has spilled his porridge cannot scrape it
all up again” (referring to a mistake that cannot be undone) is
similar to the the Chinese proverb “spilled water does not return to
the tray” (with the specific meaning that divorced couples cannot
live together again). The parable of “the blind leading the blind”
is the almost same as a phrase “one blind man leading a group of
blind people” from the Japanese Genroku Taiheiki (Genroku
Chronicles). Thus, there are many proverbs in both Europe and
Japan which contain similar key words. They are universal lessons or
precautions for daily life which have emerged spontaneously in over
separated times and places.
One of the early hermaneutical studies of the proverbs was
Wilhelm Fraenger’s Der Bauern-Bruegel unddas deutsche Sprichwort
(Peasant Bruegel and German proverbs) of 192 3.15) Fraenger sees the
proverbs as images of a topsy-turvy world in which God is changed
into an ordinary man, a monk, or the Devil, humans are turned into
animals, ordinary life is confused with fables, and an unreal world
becomes real. Franz Roh, in his I960 study, Pieter Bruegel d.A. Die
Niederlandischen Sprichworter (i960),16) suggested that Bruegel
mainly chose negative proverbs as a compendium of the “follies of
the world.” Marijnissen, adoptingjan Graul’s methodology, collected
significant textual examples of proverbs from the writings of Marcus
van Vaernewijck, a mid-sixteenth-century chronicler of Ghent, and
plays performed by the chambers of rhetoric active in Antwerp and
other cities. According to Marijnissen,
We have to rely on literary sources of the fifteenth, six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. A comparative study of
Flemish, French and German expressions is urgently needed.17)
In Walter S. Gibson’s Bruegel (1977), this picture is described
as a view of the “Theatre of the World” in which human life appears
as an “absurd spectacle.” Gibson concludes,
Bruegel’s villagers well symbolize the absurdity and self-
deception of most human endeavors, the lesson which
42
-The Golden Age of Proverbs:
Netherlandish Proverbs Seen as an Important Cultural Legacy, not
Just Allusions to Human Folly and a Topsy-Turvy World
Netherlandish Proverbs (1559, fig-1, The figures mentioned here
can be found accompanying the Japanese text.) is one of Bruegel’s
early masterpieces and a treasure trove of Flemish folk culture, but
I believe that its meaning and importance in cultural history need
further discussion. Previous studies have employed either a philo-
logical or hermeneutic approach. The first philological study was
Louis Maeterlinck’s Nederlandsche spreekwoorden handelend voor-
gesteld door Pieter Breughel den Oude (the lively depiction of
Netherlandish proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder) of 1903,10) based
on copies made by Pieter Brueghel the Younger since the original
work had not yet been discovered. Maeterlinck suggested the possi-
bility that more than one proverb might be represented by the same
figure. After the original painting was found, the proverbs it por-
trayed were gradually identified in subsequent studies, beginning
with a paper by Franz Weinitz in 1915.11) Gustav Gluck, in his Brue-
gel of 1934,12) listed more than ninety Netherlandish proverbs, with
German translation, and explained their meaning. In 1957, the
Belgian philologist Jan Grauls, in Volkstaal en volksleven in het werk
van P. Bruegel^ (language and life of the common people in the
work of P. Bruegel), searched out examples of proverbs quoted in
Flemish poetry, drama and other writings of the sixteenth century.
Referring to Dutch literary sources, Grauls made an important con-
tribution to knowledge of the meanings of the proverbs and greatly
expanded understanding of the popular wisdom, views of life, and
moral thinking of Bruegel’s time.
Starting from this prior research, I wrote Bruegel's World of Prov-
erbs (1992)14) trying a new approach. More than sixty percent of the
proverbs depicted by Bruegel were known and mentioned in literary
works in the same or similar form in other European countries than
Flanders, for example, in England, France, and Germany, in the mid-
sixteenth century. They included famous phrases or aphorisms from
ancient philosophers and medieval theologians as well as biblical
phrases which had been passed down as the common cultural prop-
erty of Christian Europe. Also, proverbs, the “repositories of common
wisdom,” were “winged words,” spreading to many different regions
through books and travelers.
For example, the phrase “belling the cat” (carrying out a dan-
gerous project) has a source in the Roman fable writer, Phaidros.
“Casting pearls (rose petals in Bruegel’s version) before the swine”
(giving valuable things to people who do not appreciate them)
comes from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament. Proverbs
like “falling in the ashes between two chairs” (losing an opportu-
nity, the ashes are not included outside the Netherlands) and
“grabbing an eel by the tail” (working hard at a task likely to fail)
are derived from ordinary experience. Bruegel’s “big fish eating little
fish” has the same meaning as the Japanese proverb jakuniku-
kyoshoku (the weak eaten by the strong), and “hitting two flies
with one swat” corresponds to the Japanese isseki-nicho (two birds
with one stone). “He who has spilled his porridge cannot scrape it
all up again” (referring to a mistake that cannot be undone) is
similar to the the Chinese proverb “spilled water does not return to
the tray” (with the specific meaning that divorced couples cannot
live together again). The parable of “the blind leading the blind”
is the almost same as a phrase “one blind man leading a group of
blind people” from the Japanese Genroku Taiheiki (Genroku
Chronicles). Thus, there are many proverbs in both Europe and
Japan which contain similar key words. They are universal lessons or
precautions for daily life which have emerged spontaneously in over
separated times and places.
One of the early hermaneutical studies of the proverbs was
Wilhelm Fraenger’s Der Bauern-Bruegel unddas deutsche Sprichwort
(Peasant Bruegel and German proverbs) of 192 3.15) Fraenger sees the
proverbs as images of a topsy-turvy world in which God is changed
into an ordinary man, a monk, or the Devil, humans are turned into
animals, ordinary life is confused with fables, and an unreal world
becomes real. Franz Roh, in his I960 study, Pieter Bruegel d.A. Die
Niederlandischen Sprichworter (i960),16) suggested that Bruegel
mainly chose negative proverbs as a compendium of the “follies of
the world.” Marijnissen, adoptingjan Graul’s methodology, collected
significant textual examples of proverbs from the writings of Marcus
van Vaernewijck, a mid-sixteenth-century chronicler of Ghent, and
plays performed by the chambers of rhetoric active in Antwerp and
other cities. According to Marijnissen,
We have to rely on literary sources of the fifteenth, six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. A comparative study of
Flemish, French and German expressions is urgently needed.17)
In Walter S. Gibson’s Bruegel (1977), this picture is described
as a view of the “Theatre of the World” in which human life appears
as an “absurd spectacle.” Gibson concludes,
Bruegel’s villagers well symbolize the absurdity and self-
deception of most human endeavors, the lesson which
42