Hans Theys

 

 

 

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Hans Theys

 

 

Testitatutes (Time to Quit)

Last Conversation with Walter Swennen

 

 

A few days ago, Swennen wrote to me that he was going to die soon and wanted to see me one last time. I suggested a date and time, which were approved. He is sitting on a big bed in a corner of the living room, near the section of the library containing translated American detective novels from the 1950s. We exchange greetings. I ask where I can sit. On the bed? He doesn’t really know. I find a chair and return to him. Above his head, he has hung a concrete poem by Bob Cobbing. To the left of the poem hangs a small ghost: a stencil he used to create a painting. Next to the bed is a walker, enhanced with a found plank (tied down with a scarf according to the DIY principle cherished by Swennen) on which an oxygen tank rests. (The library is also made with found or recycled planks.)

Swennen (pointing to a stack of paper): I’m signing drawings. I just sorted them.

- In 2016, I saw you burn all your poems in a barrel on the roof terrace. I could read the first line of an untitled poem: “It rains inside as it rains outside.”

(We laugh.)

- It’s trivialized Verlaine, portraying the poet’s heart as a drafty room.

Swennen: I recently had a visit from Joris Dockx, who currently works freelance for a woman who exploits every scrap of paper she finds in an artist’s studio. We must prevent that. I’m eliminating.

- Kundera wrote about Brod that he hadn’t done wrong ignoring Kafka’s wishes and publishing his writings, but that he should have admitted to betraying his friend.

Swennen: I agree.

- There’s a beautiful catalogue of the objects found in Eva Hesse’s studio after her death. Next to each image 
is a comment by Sol LeWitt: “This is definitely a work of art” or “This is definitely not a work of art.”

Swennen: A week ago, I had a lack of oxygen in my blood. It was a strange experience. I didn’t feel like I was suffocating. Everything became still everything came to a rest. Without any pain.

- How did that happen?

Swennen: I have holes in my lungs due to a disease called bullous emphysema. Bullous means ‘bubbles’, like in champagne. Apparently, there are four stages. I’m in the fourth. I’m waiting for a doctor to decide if I’m worthy of dying. You need a kind of driver’s license… I’m curious if the world of spirits exists. We don’t know much about it. The existing descriptions are scarce and not very detailed.

- All we know is that it is crowded. Heraclitus, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Madame de Sévigné, Nietzsche, Jim Thompson, Billie Holiday, Lennie Tristano, David Goodis, Bob Cobbing, Boby Lapointe, Marcel, Malcolm Morley, Filip Denis, Nan… You can meet them all, but not together, of course. One person at a time. In an undetermined, unpredictable order. You’ll be accompanied by a psychopomp.

Swennen: For the Egyptians, that was Anubis, who was depicted with the head of a jackal. The dead had to undergo certain trials, experience certain rites of passage… I’m working on some hieroglyphs these days.

- Do you know why Champollion was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone?

Swennen: Tell me.

- He was the first to understand that hieroglyphs represented words or concepts as well as sounds. That they were used as phonemes as well. He understood that the two systems were used at the same time.

Swennen: It was a mix. The miracle is that every element has remained beautiful. Look, I just made a hieroglyph for the concept ‘painter’. (He shows me a sketchbook in which I see several hieroglyphs for ‘painter’, including one that’s crossed out.) I also converted the phrase ‘Testitatutes’ into hieroglyphs. Not long ago I paid a visit to the Egyptian section of the Museum in Brussels. They have a mummy of a guy. Do you know what he did during his lifetime?

- No.

Swennen: He was chief of police. (Laughs.) It says so on the label.

- Are Els and Julie okay?

Swennen: They are. Els arrived the day before yesterday. Julie was there for breakfast this morning.

- Did you see your sisters?

Swennen: They’re coming tonight. They say my eldest brother is angry.

- Franz. The rocker.

Swennen: Yes. He’s angry because I’m leaving before him, because I’m not waiting my turn.

- We’ve often talked about your mother’s family, but never about your father’s.

Swennen: My paternal grandfather was a cyclist-rifleman during the Great War. Afterward, he became a civil servant. At the end of his career, he was the librarian of Saint-Louis. During my year of philosophy, I met people who had known him. He made a family tree that traces back to Denmark. Apparently, we descend from Vikings who sailed up the river to Liège. He also found a coat of arms with a headless bird at the top and a row of three diamonds below. One day, he met a young woman in Hasselt. She was from Kontich. He went to fetch her there. She became my grandmother. They had three sons. The eldest was named Alphonse. He was a surveyor in Africa. An alcoholic. I hardly ever saw him. The second was named Lucien. He had a local printing shop. They had trepanned him. He was a bit simple, but okay. And then there was René, my father.

- I see you’re reading Schelling.

Swennen: I read somewhere that he’s the only German idealist who understood Spinoza. It’s very good. To the eternal question whether an all-powerful God is also responsible for the evil in the world, he answers yes. (Laughs.) According to him, God is twofold: there is good in him, but also evil.

- A mix.

Swennen: God needs humanity to combat the evil within himself.

- According to Gerard Reve, God is alone and drinks. He created humanity to be less alone. At the end of the novelistic essay ‘Mother and Son’, Reve recounts a conversation with a theologian whom he asks the following question: If Jesus is God, who is so desperate in the olive grove that he needs to be strengthened by an angel? Who else then… God Himself? And the theologian replies: “That’s what the Church teaches us.”

Swennen: Ah, Trinity! What a wonderful discovery. A tour de force. A triangle always works. Or counting to three. When you’re painting, for instance. (He shows me a box containing a fountain pen.) Do you know those? Kaweco? German fountain pens. Since 1883. You can also use them without ink cartridges. You can just fill them with ink. It doesn’t leak.

- Have you seen Marianne Berenhaut recently?

Swennen: She calls me every now and then. She lives mainly in London now. She’s ninety. So am I, by the way. When I had that Vespa accident, a doctor said: “Your body is ten years older than you.” Still, I started smoking again. Why not? But it’s not wise to smoke near the oxygen tank, a nurse told me.

- I see you’ve placed a book about Netchaev with the cover facing forward?

Swennen: “Full speed through the mud!”

- You’re perfectly fine here. Just like a student room. A return to the beginning.

Swennen: I’ve wasted a lot of time.

- Time lost that perhaps was necessary to achieve an equally necessary resilience.

Swennen: Probably. In the end, I only felt at my place in painting.

(Silence)

Swennen: I need to rest now.

- I understand.

Swennen: I’m glad to have known you.

- Same here.

 

 

Montagne de Miel, 30 July 2025