Jan Slauerhoff - The Forbidden Kingdom

The radio operator is also alienated from his country of birth, Ireland. By his own account, this was a result of rejection by the community in which he was living. He and his family were felt to be different and were not recognized as truly Irish: We weren’t Irish. We were the last scions of the accursed Celtic race that had lived here before the birth of Christ, said the parson. No, descendants of shipwrecked mariners from the Armada, said the schoolmaster, that is, cowards who had not fought, but had fled right around Scotland.

The priest and the schoolmaster foster the notion of his family’s otherness by providing “historical” explanations. In Slauerhoff’s novel, national identity is problematic and exclusive, and exclusion can occur because of perceived otherness, but also because of a refusal on the part of individuals to conform. Cameron turns his back on Europe when he chooses to enter the forbidden kingdom at the end of the novel.

Issues surrounding nations, nationality and nationalism were at the root of European unrest in the 1930s, so Slauerhoff’s preoccupation with national cultures is not particularly surprising. In his journalistic writing, he seems to accept the historical differences between European cultures, while rejecting a fixed national identity for the individual. In this flexible view, an individual is capable of being shaped by contact with other cultures. Slauerhoff’s text offers three types of culture: European, colonial and the forbidden “other”. The Forbidden Kingdom has an uneasy relationship with history, which the novel shows can be used to marginalize individuals. The novel itself abandons the linear historical narrative of the prologue for the unsettling dual narrative of past and present. The past is a powerful force when encountered by a lost individual like the radio operator. It liberates him from himself, and enables him to move on towards exploring a new culture, no longer a forbidden kingdom.

Jane Fenoulhet

University College London