The Holland Society of New York - Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 177 text:

9 Q sent iITY D . TER- GIATE TH ison ntlls tiuS III March I2-Vondel as a l rist I ' h of some of his best lyrics. March IQ-HOOft, the Dutch Tacitus, and the second lyrist of his age. Y ,wit translations March 26-Huygens, the poet of manners, the wit and man of fashion, diplomat, and Statesman March 29-The Nieuwe Gids school: Van Eeden, the first Dutch poet of to-d Swarth, the singer of moods. HY, and Helene You are cordially invited to be present, No tickets are required. SETH Low, LL. D., I 4 President. In reference to these lectures Professor Carpenter wrote as follows : COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY or NEW YORK, DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES. April, IS, IQOI. THEODORE M. BANTA, ESQ., Secretary of the Holland Society, DEAR SIR: The course of lectures on Dutch Literature delivered this year for the third time under the auspices of Columbia University, through the munificence of the Holland Society, by Leonard Charles Van Noppen, A.lVI., calls at the end for a word of comment on the part of the University. The audiences this year, although as usual ap- preciative, have not been as large in the total num- ber of attendance as in the preceding years when the lectures were held on the University grounds. This has apparently been due in great part to the general inaccessibility of the place where they were held to the students of the University, who have hitherto formed a part of the audience, but who were this time almost entirely unrepresented. In spite of its apparent distance from the centre of

Page 176 text:

HOLLAND SOCIETY LECTURES. The circular in reference to these lectures sent out by President Low was as follows : COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND A LITERATURES. HOLLAND SOCIETY LECTURES ON DUTCH LITER- ATURE BY LEONARD CHARLES VAN NOPPEN, A.M. p TO BE GIVEN IN THE CHAPEL OF THE FIFTH AVENUE COLLEGIATE REFORMED CHURCH, FORTY-EIGHTH STREET AND FIFTH AVENUE,ON.AFTERNOONSIN'FEBRUARNYAND MARCH, Igor, AT HALF-PAST FOUR O'C'LOCK. February 26--Vondel's Samson 5 a comparison with Milton'S Samson Agonistesf' March 5-Vondel's Adam in Banishment 3 a comparison with the Adamus exul of Grotius and Milton's Paradise Lost. IIO O 13 W E S WI' TH C S Lit und the Cha wor T prec I ber cl the l- This genell held hithe Were Spite

Page 178 text:

II2 population, Columbia, on account of its many lecture courses, has developed a clientele, who naturally look to it for this phase of intellectual entertain- ment and who expect to go to the University itself to find it. Many of these people did not for this reason go to the new place. Aside from these disadvantages of location with respect to the University, no more appropriate place could have been chosen than the chapel of the Fifth Avenue Collegiate Church in which to hold this course of lectures on Dutch Literature. The church edifice is not only a result of one of the earliest organizations and foundations of New Netherland, but from the walls of the lecture-room itself look down the portraits of several of those early ministers of the Collegiate Church who preached to their congregations in New Amsterdam in the Dutch language of the Mother Country. The University feels itself under great obligations to the Consistory of the Collegiate Church for placing this room so generously at its disposal. The lectures this year need more than the usual cursory word of commendation. The lecturer has come to be recognized as the principal authority in America on the literature of Holland, old and new. His whole treatment of his material is characterized not only by a knowledge of his subject in its length and breadth, but by a sympathetic feeling for it in its inherent qualities that only his Dutch antecedents and his present contact with Holland could have made possible, and this his audience has felt and appreciate . Wholly aside from the actual attendance upon the lectures themselves, the very fact that they are given, and are announced and commented upon in the publications of the University, has attracted a very general and growing attention to this neglected Subjecttin America. We are constantly in receipt of inquiries as to the manner and means of study- Ing the Dutch language and literature, not infre- quently from members of your own Society, and in V9.1 CUE I' of 1 tivf I not mei maj