This article focuses on fictional minds in the modernist novel Meneer Visser's Hellevaart(1936) by Simon Vestdijk, more specifically on the mind of its protagonist: MeneerVisser. The secondary literature about this novel so far tends to treat this character psychologically.Critics study Visser's traumatic youth and his inner psychological depths.Visser's mind is thereby seen as a passive monologue intérieur, isolated from the physicaland social environment of the storyworld. With Monika Fludemik's concept of typification,l argue that the term monologue intérieur is deceptive. Using the cognitive narratologyof David Herman and Alan Palmer, I demonstrate that Visser's mind is not passiveand isolated, but active and in constant interaction with his physical and socialenvironment. Finally, I relate the patterns highlighted by the narratological analysis to aninterpretation of the novel. The dynamic of Visser's fictional mind is shown to be thematicallymotivated.
