After World War II
- Key People:
- Paul de Wispelaere
- Related Topics:
- Western literature
- Dutch language
The major writers of World War II and the postwar period were novelists. The range of subjects and styles in the novel was remarkable. A small sample includes the problem novels of Paul Lebeau and Gaston Duribreux; the “magic realism” of Johan Daisne and Hubert Lampo, who mingled the fantastic with everyday reality; the “social realism” of Piet van Aken (Het begeren, 1952; “Desire”) and Louis-Paul Boon (De kapellekensbaan, 1953; Chapel Road), who examined the bleak lives of the poor and downtrodden; the anguished Existentialism of Jan Walravens (Negatief, 1958; “Negative”); and the experimental novels of Hugo Claus. Boon, Walravens, and Claus belonged to a review group called Tijd en Mens (1949–55; “Time and Man”), which was marked by postwar chaos, rebellion, and Experimentalism. Boon and Claus eventually became recognized as the outstanding postwar novelists. The former often combined formal experimentation with colloquial directness and a compassionate if unsentimental social awareness. Many of his historical novels are based on detailed archival research. Claus’s prose fiction takes in every imaginable narrative mode, from the naturalistic to the surreal and the teasingly allusive. His major novel, the monumental Het verdriet van België (1983; The Sorrow of Belgium), paints an unflattering portrait of a Flemish collaborationist family in the years before, during, and after World War II, but it is also a Bildungsroman about a wayward adolescent who decides to become a writer.
In the 1960s the experimental trend in the novel led to new prose either based on stream-of-consciousness association (as in the works of Hugo Raes, Ivo Michiels, and Paul de Wispelaere) or consisting of introverted “texts” dwelling largely on the act of writing itself (as in the works of Willy Roggeman and Daniel Robberechts). The latter gained posthumous recognition for his uncompromising break with the narrative tradition. Michiels embarked on a multivolume project that systematically explores different themes by manipulating corresponding modes of writing and symbolic figures. Nevertheless, the tradition proved to be fertile—e.g., in the satiric and allegorical novels by Ward Ruyslinck and in Jef Geeraerts’s violent colonial novels. Walter van den Broeck later emerged as an accomplished writer, employing a mixture of autobiography and social history.
In postwar Flemish poetry the impact of Experimentalism—the unconstrained lyricism and richly metaphorical style that also informed the Vijftigers (“Fifties Movement”) in The Netherlands—made itself felt in the work of Albert Bontridder and Hugo Claus, whose raw and sensuous Oostakkerse gedichten (1955; “Oostakker Poems”) has remained a milestone. The playful Paul Snoek and the sombre Hugues Pernath continued the experimental line. In the 1970s such writers as Herman de Coninck and Roland Jooris led a Neorealist reaction, which was followed by a Neoromantic revival, evident in the work of such writers as Eddy van Vliet and Luuk Gruwez. The poetry of Freddy de Vree, on the other hand, was more intellectual. The poet Christine D’haen also made her mark during this period.
Postwar drama, at first still dominated by Teirlinck, saw new talent emerging in Jozef van Hoeck (Voorloping vonnis, 1957; “Provisional Verdict”), in the literary plays of Herwig Hensen, and in the political theatre of Tone Brulin, but especially in the many original plays and adaptations by Hugo Claus, such as Suiker (1958; “Sugar”) and Vrijdag (1969; Friday in Four Works for the Theatre, 1990). Van den Broeck later made his mark with socially committed and naturalistic work.
The end of the 20th century
Prose
Following the explosion of literary talent and innovation in the previous decades, surprisingly few new writers made their appearance in the 1970s. Those that did were hardly noticed, giving rise to the label “the silent generation.” About 1980, however, the impasse was broken when such writers as Leo Pleysier, Pol Hoste, Eriek Verpale, Eric de Kuyper, and Monika van Paemel either made their debuts or reached a wider audience, mostly with autobiographically inspired work. Van Paemel went on to write a masterpiece, the fast-paced epic De vermaledijde vaders (1985; “The Accursed Fathers”), a complex novel as much about the workings of memory as about the Second World War and its aftermath as seen from a feminist viewpoint.
In the mid-1980s a number of younger prose writers gained attention. They include Kristien Hemmerechts, who wrote about loss and sexual tensions in an understated manner, the more philosophical Patricia de Martelaere, and the inventive Koen Peeters. Such authors as Tom Lanoye and Stefan Hertmans made their mark in more than one genre. Lanoye was a performing poet and a passionate, often iconoclastic critic as well as a fiction writer. Hertmans’s critical essays are cosmopolitan and erudite, his poetry hermetic, and his fiction hallucinatory.
The new generation of emergent writers of the 1980s was bolstered by the magazines Kreatief, Yang, and De Brakke Hond, as well as by the critical work of Hugo Brems, Hugo Bousset, and Herman de Coninck. Brems proved an astute and skeptical chronicler of contemporary literature in general, Bousset championed postmodernist fragmentation and formal experimentation in prose fiction, and de Coninck became the most eloquent advocate of the muted, accessible, and ironic poetry of Neorealist vintage.
As regards fiction, the writers who came to the fore in the 1970s and ’80s still dominated the scene at the end of the 20th century. Apart from the towering figures of Hugo Claus and Monika van Paemel, Kristien Hemmerechts continued to explore feminist issues, Eric de Kuyper the autobiographical dimension, Leo Pleysier the modulations of the spoken voice, and Pol Hoste the complexities of memory and the creative process, while Herman Brusselmans practiced an illusionless, deliberately clichéd and camp-inspired form of anti-literature. The range of contemporary prose writing is perhaps best indicated with reference to two extremes: at one end the bewilderingly postmodern, hallucinatory fabulations of Peter Verhelst (Tongkat, 1999; “Tongue-cat”), and, at the other, the psychological subtlety and stylistic refinement of Erwin Mortier’s domestic still lifes (Marcel, 1999).
Poetry
In the last decades of the 20th century, the most singular poetic voice in Flanders was that of Leonard Nolens, whose work evolved from experimental to classical, as his earlier obsessive self-definition gave way to more serene reflections on relations with loved ones and others. His introverted diaries offer a sustained reflection on poetic creation. Nolens’s high seriousness contrasts with the more playful and ironic postmodernism of slightly younger poets, such as Dirk van Bastelaere, Erik Spinoy, Peter Verhelst, and Marc Tritsmans. The ambivalence of language as an instrument to create new meanings and as a deceptive interpreter of the world, constitutes their central theme.
Other forms
Drama revived in the work of Arne Sierens, Jan Fabre, and Josse de Pauw; the latter two are also active in other art forms, the visual arts and dance (Fabre) and film (de Pauw), respectively. Lieve Joris writes outstanding travel literature, and Geert van Istendael excels at passionate, witty, self-deprecating essayistic and fictional prose.
René Felix Lissens Theo Jozef Hermans