On October 20, 1653, one hundred leading painters, poets, architects, and sculptors of the city of Amsterdam, known as the Guild of St. Luke, assembled in the hall of the Order for their anniversary celebration. This was the historic Feast of St. Luke, and Vondel was the honored guest of the occasion.
The poet was placed at one end of the table, on a high chair, which was to represent a throne. Here he was crowned with laurel as the "Symposiarch," or "King of the Feast," it is said, by the great painter Bartholomew van der Helst. Thus Apollo and Apelles were happily united in the bond of a common sympathy, and all petty dissensions were forgotten in the triumph of art. Poems were read, toasts were made; the ceremonies, as is usual at all the feasts of the Hollanders, closing with their national anthem--"the grand Wilhelmus"--the most affecting and sublime of all national odes, calling up, as it does, memories of a hundred years of martyrdom and of the heroic founder of the Republic.
It was the proudest moment of the poet's life; and we can imagine the depth of his emotion as the glorious laurel graced his battle-furrowed brow. Perhaps, too, the romantic face of Rembrandt was near by, drinking in with his thirsty eyes the picturesque beauty of the scene, unconscious of the crown which fickle destiny had reserved for him. Or it may be that the thoughtful youth Spinoza, silent and abstemious, found there some theme for his revolutionary philosophy.
Yet Vondel was king of them all; crowned with a kingship won by prodigies of valor on the battle-field of life. Every leaf in that laurel wreath was purchased by a thorn. But who thinks of the sharpness of the thorn when caressed by the velvet of the leaf?
So Vondel, in that moment of triumph, forgot his sorrows in his cup of joy, as he drained the sweet present to the dregs.
In return for the honor it had done him, Vondel dedicated his prose translation of the Odes of Horace to the hospitable Guild. He was now sixty-six years old, and was yet in the possession of every bodily and mental power. He was now to give forth his masterpiece--a work for which his whole life had been a constant preparation. We come to the "Lucifer."
This tragedy appeared in 1654 and was the monumental creation of this combatant poet, the crystallization of the Titanic passions of the age. It has, therefore, a significance that can never fade.