Eene drentsche veenkolonie
On this page you will find the texts from the exhibition on De fantastische werkelijkheid van Albert Steenbergen.
Two years after the death of Albert Steenbergen, in 1902, his Calkoen stories are collected in the book Eene Drentsche veenkolonie in de laatste helft der zeventiende eeuw. The collection of stories is a supposedly transcribed diary from the seventeenth century, written by Arent and his son Petrus Calkoen. For years, Steenbergen insists that the diary is real, but eventually it turns out that it is not. He divides the story into five parts. This excerpt is found at the end of part three. Arent has returned to his home village and reminisces about a few memories, shortly before his death:
'26 May 1676 (Written in Amsterdam in the house of Gerrit Pieters, just opposite my old residence in Houtewale.)
I have, knowing that the End of my Days is fast approaching, wanted to visit one more time the places I visited in my youth and say goodbye to everything that calls to my soul from times when life seemed to me to be a sweet preparation for eternal life here with God.
And then I laughed with Job: 'Man is born to misfortune, as the birds soar to fly!'
I have looked at the house, where just on this day, now fifty years ago, I saw the light of life. I have visited the graves of my parents, who died so soon after my birth, that I have little memory of their existence, and those of my sister and her sweet little child, and have traveled to Elspeet, where I was a young student, for the first time I met her, who from the moment I first saw her, attracted me to her, and with whom I was four years later in the same church, where her father and mother now rest.
The forest in which I wandered with her in the wedding days - I have now, and for the last time, wandered around in it, and with tears in my eyes I look at the beech tree, in which I, beside her, carved our names: May 15, 1652!
A day later, I was here at the place where we spent our first wedding day and... Which we should not have left. [...] 1653-1672, a short time, but how full of highs and lows!
Et nunc, ave in aeternitate! [Farewell in eternity!"]