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Her debut novel, Het schuwste dier (2011, The Shyest Animal), was warmly received, as was her second novel Dagpauwoog (2013, Adventures in Animal Activism). She went on to study animal communication, publishing her findings in Animal Languages, which was translated into nine languages. Rights to her novel The Bird Cottage were sold in seven different territories and it was awarded the BNG Bank Literature Prize. For her doctoral thesis in philosophy, Political Animal Voices, Meijer received the Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Prize.

Eva Meijer

Eva Meijer’s new novel is inspired by the life and work of Len Howard. Born to a wealthy family in Wales, Len acquires a love of birds and music from her father, with whom she performs at soirees, where he recites poetry, accompanied by his daughter on violin. Even then, Len struggles with the future marked out for young ladies in her day. She finds the thought of marriage and children discomfiting. And so she sets off to London, to devote her life to music.Despite being one of the stars of the orchestra, Len finds it difficult to cope with unfettered city life, the gossip among musicians and her own insecurities, particularly about men, fuelled by her lover’s infidelity. The world of humans constricts her, much like the dresses her mother made her wear as a child. Life in Ditchling is like a breath of fresh air. Literally, because she keeps the windows of her remote cottage open, so that robins, tits and blackbirds can fly in and out as they please.She becomes something of a recluse, even denying the postman access to her garden, where she lets the birds pick thread off her socks to line their nests. Meijer composes a serene portrait using scenes from Len’s youth, her time in London and everyday affairs at Bird Cottage, which are woven together with the story of Star, Len’s favourite great tit.

Eva Meijer has written an eye-opening novel about a woman who loves birds. This ‘bird friend’ is portrayed naturally, without eccentricity or political intent.

Meijer’s soothing sentences lovingly sketch Len’s extraordinary relationship with birds. Particularly with Star, who even learns to count, but also with Baldy, One-Eye and Tinky, who each display their own behaviour and peculiarities. ‘Star always devoted a great deal of time to raising her young, feeding them longer than most tits and teaching them various handy tricks. One thing she taught each new nest was that there was no need to fear me.’‘No one looks closely enough,’ Len muses as she negotiates London’s busy streets. But that is certainly not the case in The Bird Cottage, a novel free of noise and interference, so that the twittering and fluttering of birds is rendered crystal clear and almost audible.

Eva Meijer gives an entrancing account of Len Howard’s life. So mesmerising and moving, in fact, that during the reading of 'Het Vogelhuis' I sometimes sensed I was part of a greater, natural and meaningful whole.

Book

Fiction

Asset

Assets

Het vogelhuis

At the age of 40, violinist Gwendolen ‘Len’ Howard (1894-1973) exchanged the company of humans for that of birds. Having given up her seat in a London orchestra, she moved to Ditchling, a tiny village in Sussex, where she took up residence in ‘Bird Cottage’ and began studying the behaviour of the birds in her garden, gaining insight that was well ahead of its time, which she published in articles and two books that became bestsellers in their day.

The Bird Cottage

Eva Meijer combines her field of study, philosophy, with her love of animals. That combination of academic interest and personal passion has produced a lucid and inspiring plea to listen more carefully to animals. She presents a history of philosophical thought about animals and language, addressing questions such as: when can you call communication a language? And what exactly is a language, anyway?Descartes decided that animals do not have a soul because they do not have rationality, and the best proof of rationality is the power of speech. Meijer shows that every species of animal speaks in its own way. Animals even have grammar: dolphins in their clicks, cephalopods in the colour patterns of their skin, and whales in the structure of their songs. There are some from whom humans could learn lessons about the efficient use of language: prairie dogs alert each other by a single call to the height and proximity of a potential interloper, even including the colour of their clothes and what they are carrying. This book makes clear that animals speak, not just by instinct but for social, emotional and creative reasons.Along with ideas from Aristotle, Descartes and Wittgenstein, Meijer takes Heidegger’s beliefs about language as her guide: language gives us insight into the world around us and helps us to shape it. This notion is central to Animal Languages. Studying the languages of animals gives us a starting point for new relationships with them. Meijer argues that we should enter into conversation with animals, rather than making them the object of study.

Bursting with facts and empirical research, 'Animal Languages' offers a valuable insight into the complexity of language and communication and the difficulty of researching animal languages.

Non-Fiction

Dierentalen

Animals use far more elaborate and complex language than we think. They chat, gossip, mourn, rhyme, speak in dialects and make jokes. Whales sing a different series of songs each season, which rhyme and are picked up by other whales in passing, making them ‘hits’. Some species of bird have dialects that differ from one region to the next, and the birds that live on the regional boundaries are bilingual.

Animal Languages

Language shapes us and sometimes we can re-shape ourselves through conversation with others. Meijer describes depression beautifully as a condition in which one’s relationship with the world and with oneself disappears, the connection is lost. If there is no connection, conversation becomes useless. Time falls away too: in a depression, the sufferer is cut off from present, past and future.People with recurrent depression grow like crooked trees but their brains do not change their souls, argues Meijer. Her essay examines the truth about adolescents and existentialists, and the ideation of suicide. She discusses the usefulness of therapy and being admitted to a clinic. An important part of her story is discovering sources of comfort. Merleau-Ponty argued that thinking is embodied, that the body is made up of everything you experience. This creates difficulties, but it also provides opportunities. Meijer finds some solutions in the body: movement helps, especially walking, because it makes you realise that you occupy a place in the world, thereby helping to restore a connection.Though Meijer is not opposed to anti-depressants, they do not offer a complete solution. Pills can eliminate a kind of paralysis, which is useful, but depression endured has value. You can learn to put it in perspective (it passes) and to ‘live around it’. Art can be employed as a weapon against meaninglessness. Comfort can be found in silence, cats and winter trees. Ultimately, The Limits of My Language is a quest for what gives meaning to our lives. Meijer does not offer a panacea, but a very realistic view of the problem.This is Eva Meijer at her best: the poetic power of her novels is combined with the analytical acuity of her non-fiction work. Her argument is sensitive, investigative, informative and provides insights into what it actually feels like to endure a depression.

A brave, original, ground-breaking and exceptionally well-written and accessible essay.

This dissertation is highly original, internatio- nally significant and well written. The book goes beyond a case by reframing habitual language in a way that will appeal to non-specialists. The book shows the daring and flair of its writer. It tickles us, bites and barks at us, and there is an exceptional balance between the creative and the analytical.

De grenzen van mijn taal

Much has been written about the treatment of depression, less about its meaning. Depression is more than just a problem of brain chemistry, the questions posed by the depressed person are fundamental. In 'The Limits of My Language', author and philosopher Eva Meijer uses her own experiences as raw material to map the phenomenon. Calling on philosophers like Wittgenstein, Derrida and Foucault, she delves into what they each have to say about communication, loneliness and insanity.

The Limits of My Language

We experience the first half of the book through the eyes of Sophie Kaïzowski, who founded a commune with her husband and three other anarchists near the village of Luynes, France. The basic principles are veganism, equality between men and women and nudism—the latter of which leads to sunburns in the summer and freezing in the winter.In her diary, Sophie describes the members’ many political and philosophical discussions, their work on the land and the relationships that developed among them. Gradually, however, the pressure mounts: the harvest does not yield enough, people are hungry, and arguments break out. Sophie is also torn by her love for one of the other married residents, Clémence. The commune’s manifesto speaks of ‘the promotion of the coexistence of humans and nature and peace in general’. Sophie’s diary ends with a scene in which one anarchist knocks out another.Almost 100 years later, political philosophy student Sam is so inspired by Sophie’s diary that she and her partner and another couple decide to leave the city to live self-sufficiently in the countryside. Like their predecessors, they enjoy an idyllic start, but soon frictions arise. Personal interests collide, for example in Sam’s open relationship with her girlfriend Jona. Sam finds it increasingly difficult to accept Jona’s promiscuous behaviour, and in the end, she is left alone on the farm.

[…] the power of 'Forward' lies in Meijer’s seriousness, her thoughtful, sensitive touch. In the tenderness with which she describes “that constant resistance called love,” there’s an uncontrollable, anarchistic urge for independence and a sense of freedom. She mixes essayistic passages about manifesto and revolution with more sensual sentences about the physical torments of earthly farm life and the confusing longings for a loved one.

When all seems lost, and the municipality is even threatening to cut down the nearby forest, Sam rediscovers her fighting spirit. With the help of her friends, ex-lover, fellow villagers and social media, she launches into action. The forest seems saved, at least for the time being.Forward is an honest novel about the human quest for freedom and equality and our desire to be part of a greater whole. Without cynicism, Meijer describes how hard it is to put ideals into practice, though every attempt to do so is valuable — perhaps not in the moment itself but for future generations. Forward is urgent, inspiring and moving.

Eva Meijer plays an unparalleled and light-hearted game with the philosophical theories of Kropotkin, Bakounin and Proudhons. At the same time, she fictionalises the lives of a number of prominent French anarchists from the beginning of the twentieth century (including Sophie Zaïkowska, Georges Butaud and Louis Rimbault).

Voorwaarts

Two communes — one in Central France in the 1920s and the other in the Netherlands today. Despite the century between them, the ideals on which they were founded and the obstacles they face are not substantially different. In both cases, the individual members struggle to submit themselves to the collective.

Forward

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