Henri Borel

1869–1933

Henri Borel was a Dutch writer and interpreter who brought Chinese philosophy and literature to a wider readership. His work ranged from translations and cultural essays to novels and newspaper criticism. In Wu Wei, he used an imagined conversation about Tao, art and love to explore his own response to Lao-Tse’s thought.

Languages, travel and colonial service

Henri Jean François Borel was born in Dordrecht in 1869, the son of a professional soldier who rose to the rank of general. His own career took a different direction. In 1888 he began studying Chinese at Leiden, preparing to work as an interpreter. He continued his training in Xiamen, then commonly called Amoy, after travelling to China in 1892 with his first wife.

In 1894 he entered service as an interpreter in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. The position belonged to the machinery of colonial administration: interpreting involved written translation, work for judicial authorities and advice about Chinese communities. His knowledge of language developed through this practical setting as well as through books and study.

Borel published a series introducing Chinese philosophy to nonspecialist Dutch readers, including Confucian texts, the Daodejing and later Mencius. He combined language study with a wish to explain Chinese thought to a public that often encountered it through colonial reports.

Novels, criticism and literary friendships

His writing was not confined to China. Het jongetje, published in 1898, and Het zusje, published in 1900, helped establish him as a novelist. He also wrote about the society and arts of the Dutch East Indies, including music and theatre. A talented pianist himself, he responded with particular enthusiasm to Javanese gamelan. His literary and cultural interests accompanied his administrative career rather than simply replacing it.

Books and contributions

1 work in the current library

Wu Wei: A Phantasy Based on the Philosophy of Lao-Tse

Henri Borel; translated by Meredith Ianson

Philosophy & Mysticism

Sources and further reading

He later returned to the Netherlands and worked as a journalist and critic for Het Vaderland in The Hague. His friendship with Frederik van Eeden connected him with a wider literary world; the Dutch Wu Wei carries a dedication to that friend. His writing attracted sharply divided judgments. Joop van den Berg’s later study records both hostility towards his emotional prose and continuing interest in his observations of colonial society.

His translation methods varied. Audrey Heijns’s research distinguishes direct translations of Chinese philosophical texts from later stories adapted through a German version. Borel’s own Wu Wei takes another form: it is a personal literary response to the philosophy he studied. He died in The Hague in 1933.

An imagined conversation about Tao

Wu Wei formed part of Wijsheid en schoonheid uit China, published in 1895. Lumitheca’s held English edition appeared in London in 1903, published by Luzac & Co., with an authorized version by Meredith Ianson. Borel wrote the Dutch work; Ianson supplied the English text through which readers encounter it here.

Borel states in his preface that Wu Wei is neither a translation nor a free rendering of Lao-Tse. He translates isolated passages but develops the rest in his own way. He expressly claims the landscapes and discussions of art and love as his additions. The meeting with a sage is the literary form through which he presents those thoughts.

The conversation begins on an island, where a visitor searches for wisdom and receives it through images of the sea, clouds and natural movement. The sage distinguishes wu wei from mere idleness: it is presented as activity released from forced desire. The argument unfolds through questions and objections, allowing the visitor’s uncertainty to remain part of the book’s movement.

Art, love and the life beyond retreat

The later sections test that account of natural action against experiences that mattered to Borel as a writer. A poet’s work is compared with birdsong, arising from an inward necessity rather than a pursuit of applause. The discussion of love asks whether attachment and loss can be reconciled with a larger spiritual order. These are Borel’s imaginative applications of the philosophy, expressed through the changing relation between the visitor and his guide.

The sage’s parting gift is a porcelain image of Kwan-Yin that he has treasured. The visitor carries it away, uncertain whether his teacher is looking after him or gazing at the sea. He then returns to the town with renewed confidence that Tao is present among people as well as in retreat. The ending brings detachment and affection together through an object and a farewell.

The notes make Borel’s construction of the book visible. He identifies borrowed passages, explains adaptations and disputes other interpreters of Chinese texts. His dialogue and its commentary preserve his own argument about how Lao-Tse should be understood.