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Part of
From West to North Frisia: A Journey along the North Sea Coast
Edited by Alastair Walker, Eric Hoekstra, Goffe Jensma, Wendy Vanselow, Willem Visser and Christoph Winter
[NOWELE Supplement Series 33] 2022
► pp. 161–178

Ritual walks, chronotopic moves

A few remarks on Obe Postma’s poetics

| University of Groningen

On the basis of a – partially stylometric – analysis of his poetry, this article shows how the work of one of Friesland’s most famous poets, Obe Postma (1868–1963), can best be understood as a series of Bakthinian chronotopes, accounts of simultaneous movements through time and space. Whereas for the reader this procedure results simply in lyrical descriptions of the Frisian countryside throughout its long history, for Postma himself his poetry was also aimed at evoking and reviving his own blissful childhood memories. This was not unlike the way Marcel Proust’s sensations were triggered by his aunt Mathilde’s famous Madeleine biscuits. However, whereas Proust was coincidentally overcome by this sensation, Postma went proactively looking for it. His poems had a real-life equivalent in the ritual countryside strolls he used to take on Sunday afternoons.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Postma’s life and work: The canonization of a philosophical poet
  • 3.The development of Postma’s self-image as a poet and his poetic techniques
  • 4.Down to earth: Fan fuorgen en sleatswâlen
    • 4.1Strophe 1: The dying poet
      • Contents:
      • Comments:
    • 4.2Strophe 2: The humble earth
      • Contents:
      • Comments:
    • 4.3Strophe 3: Coming in through a dash
      • Contents:
      • Comments:
    • 4.4Strophe 4: The plot of the poem
      • Contents:
      • Comments:
  • 5.Conclusion: Ritual walks, chronotopic moves
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 10 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/nss.33.11jen
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Archive materials

Ynventaris–skriften.pdf
[URL] [consulted 7 mei 2017].
Tresoar, Ljouwert, OPS 71
Lecture on his poetry by Postma himself).