The Rise and Fall of Freeloaders: From Nescio’s Japi to Contemporary Society

A beautiful word opens the eyes, shows the world as it really is. So also freeloader. On the one hand, we mean ‘freeloader’, someone who looks away in the restaurant when the bill comes, or who is invariably the first to take a shower at the sports club while others clean up pawns. On the other hand, we involuntarily think of Nescio’s freeloader, Japi, champion scrounger, idler, profiteer and table skimmer, who, however, has something glorious about it.

The freeloader is of all times, but nowadays it can mainly be found on the website of The Telegraph. Not only do films there deal with the drama in the field of breast implants that causes Dutch celebrities to queue up to tell how bad it is – “My breasts were on fire!” – but also the political tension is discussed, in particular those surrounding Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract. In both cases there is talk of ‘cracking’: Brigit, Fajah and other stars without a clear talent for anything specific live off media attention, political commentator Wouter de Winther tells Omtzigt to beware of opportunists who cling to him for their own gain.

With the clapper

‘Klaploper’, according to Van Dale, means ‘good-for-nothing’ and ‘profiteering’. The history of the word goes back to Middle Dutch, for example: ‘Mette clapped go‘, meaning ‘to walk with the leprosy clapper’, an expression meaning ‘to beg’, originated from the ancient custom whereby people suffering from leprosy or leprosy were obliged to walk about with a clapper or a rattle to impress others with the sound. warn and thus prevent infection.

The success of freeloaders proves that the freeloader is anything but a ‘leprous’ in our modern society. It seems that flapping or at least clever maneuvering has become a requirement to get anywhere, which is why observers are already seeing the downpour now that Omtzigt is doing well with his new party. Where success can be achieved without too much effort, you will find the freeloader.

And then there is Japanese. Nescio’s ‘Wonderful Guy’ in the novella The outeater from 1911. „[Japi], found you lying in your bed with his dirty shoes, when you came home late at night. The outlaw who smoked your cigars, and stopped your tobacco, and burned your coals, and checked your cupboards, and borrowed money from you, and wore your shoes, and put on your coat when I had to go home in the rain.”

Nescio’s freeloader turns his back on bourgeois society, and this problematizes the term

But Nescio’s freeloader turns his back on bourgeois society, and that makes the term problematic. As a tragic hero, Japi undermines norms and values. ‘No, thank God,’ replies Japi when Bavink asks him if he sometimes paints. He continues: “And I don’t write poetry either and I’m not a friend of nature and not an anarchist. Thank God I am nothing at all.”

Nothing in Japi is on fire, nor does he want to take advantage of someone else’s success. Here we do not see an untalented buffoon, but a man whose lavishness is an act of protest against finery and emptiness in the people and the world around him. He was a freeloader, but a nice one.

A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on August 28, 2023.
2023-08-27 13:00:23
#idlers #useless