Chapter 2 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives Jan Just Witkam 1 Introduction ‘A complete scholarly life’ is how Snouck Hurgronje’s life has been character- ized in a recent biography.1 It deals with the great man’s eventful life and his almost equally fascinating afterlife, and it does so with scholarly distance and with an eye for the interesting detail. Snouck Hurgronje’s was a special life in- deed. In his travels from Europe to Mecca, to Java, to Aceh, and back to Europe again, with a short return trip to North America, he wrote profusely about what he had seen and experienced, and about his ideals in the world at large, all the time developing his linguistic skills and ethnographic talents, and not only giv- ing expression to his political impulses, but also leading a private life in pursuit of happiness. It was a life lived by an artist of chiaroscuro, by someone who wanted to be in the limelight but who at the same time sought darkness as a refuge; someone who wished to speak out, but often did so in an encoded way. He would reveal himself to his readers, both in his publications and in his un- published correspondence, but would simultaneously hide his deepest feel- ings behind encrypted reminders. Some of these clues can still be read be- tween the lines of his literary and scholarly legacy, though most of them must now be considered lost for ever. Was it a game that Snouck Hurgronje was play- ing with his readership, or did these things exist only in his innermost thoughts, a few of which are accessible to us now as accidental spectators? We shall nev- er know precisely, as we have no idea how many of these details are beyond retrieval. 1 Acknowledgment. I am grateful to William Facey, London, for giving me numerous sugges- tions for English usage in this text. Wim van den Doel, Snouck. Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2021. The Dutch word ‘volkomen’ can mean ‘complete’ and also ‘perfect’. Only on p. 551, at the very end of his story of Snouck Hurgronje’s life, does van den Doel tell his readers what such a complete or perfect life en- tails.