Ode to Annie M.G. Schmidt | The land where grown-up people reside

By Gaite Jansen27 augustus 2024

Annie M.G. Schmidt, photo Marcel Antonisse (source: Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 NL)

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

Dear Annie,

After some time among the trees, I inevitably arrived

In the land where grown-up people reside.

You had spoken of this, You had warned of hormones,

Of things both ways, of angry men, angry newspapers

So yesterday I was walking the streets, Feeling anxious and glum and abandoned

When I heard the neighborhood cat talking

The cat took me, hup on the roofs, where behind a newly hung sheet

A little fairy sat with lots of freckles, and a crown on both her royal feet.

'Hello' the little fairy said very politely 'I see you are in sorrow?'

I told her about the headlines, about great violence

and not knowing how to stop

I told her about black and white and that there is no magic in a fruit pit,

About a heart that can be torn out, about-

'Please stop, I've heard enough of it'

The little fairy looked at me, took me in, and then ordered the cat to go and begin

'Find the unicorn, the king, the animals, find garlands, a cake even the ants

Don't forget the bird of paradise and the hummingbird,

It's time for the meeting of the imagination.'

The cat had spread the word and everyone came rushing over.

I pricked up my ears to hear phrases among the murmurs and the cheers.

There are no teddy bears there.

'You bump into the same stone without learning from it'

"Silence! Silence! - What a mess - We have an emergency to address!"

The cat then took the floor first 'I had heard of this country before

It seems that talking cats are killed there'

'Ah well no, you see' then said the Freckled Fairy, 'Here speaks your one Supreme Spree'

'What you describe in that monarchy, sounds like a typical case of no fantasy’

I heard the sound relief go through the air, and I swear I saw Minoes and even

Otje standing there.

And back there, by a pool of mud, I saw a spiky tuft of Flodder.

'That land, to which you will soon return, can it not coexist with ours?

Perhaps if you grieve or suddenly lose your destination, you will find relief in your imagination'

Yes! Cheered some kind of pimply purple beast and all night long was a big feast.

Perhaps, dear Ms. Annie M.G. Schmidt, you do not know the scope of your powers

Your imagination and simplicity, give us miracles and safety.

Even in the land where the grown-ups reside,

There remains a place for endless dreams to collide.

With your imagination you made us strong.

A power we carry with us, our whole life long

Period

1911– 1995

About

Ode by Gaite Jansen to Annie M.G. Schmidt

Through her stories, Annie M.G. Schmidt has undoubtedly been one of the women who raised me. Her stories, poems and imagination taught me the richness that exists inside our heads. No matter what happens outside; inside your head you are in control. Inside your head it can be as beautiful as you can imagine and inside your head you are always safe.

Through her poems like “The Failed Fairy” I learned that being different is fun and I am nice and naughty played like background music inside me when I had to give the big people three kisses. When I talked to animals I was like Otje or Minoes en my mother may not have been a cat, but according to her, she had been a lion tamer, and so I thought she resembled Ibbeltje's mother .

With our imagination we are everything. Our imagination is, like oxygen, that was gives us life.

Annie M.G. Schmidt is definitely a household name, and without her, Dutch history would not have been fully told.