The 20th century
- Key People:
- Paul de Wispelaere
- Related Topics:
- Western literature
- Dutch language
The turn of the 19th century
The writers grouped around Van Nu en Straks helped to bring about a revival and internationalization of Flemish culture. Though they held a wide variety of opinions, they all strove for an art that would comprehend all human activity, and in which individual feelings would be given universal significance. In his masterly essays and his symbolic novel De wandelende Jood (1906; “The Wandering Jew”), their leader, August Vermeylen, advocated a rationalism infused with idealism. Prosper van Langendonck, on the other hand, interpreted the incurable suffering of the poète maudit. In 1898 Emmanuel de Bom published Wrakken (“Wrecks”), the first modern Flemish psychological and urban novel, and Starkadd, an early Wagnerian drama by Alfred Hegenscheidt, was produced.
The poetry and prose of Karel van de Woestijne formed a symbolic autobiography of a typical fin de siècle personality, the sophisticated, world-weary sensualist striving for spiritual detachment. His work, a passionate confession of human frailty, represents one of the great achievements of European Symbolism.
Stijn Streuvels, a master of prose, made the West Flemish rural landscape his microcosm, presenting in such novels as De Vlaschaard (1907; The Flaxfield) a visionary world in which man is dwarfed by nature. The polished work of Herman Teirlinck, novelist, dramatist, and essayist, was characterized by imagination, sensuality, and a sonorous vocabulary. In the stylistically refined stories of F.V. Toussaint van Boelaere there were often tragic undertones.
Flemish Naturalism emerged in the work of Reimond Stijns in the first decade of the 20th century. It reached its height in the robust tales and pithy plays of Cyriel Buysse and in the regional novel, as exemplified by the evocations of Bruges by Maurits Sabbe and the vivid treatment of Antwerp life by Lode Baekelmans. At the turn of the 21st century, Buysse, to whom Maurice Maeterlinck referred as “our Maupassant,” still attracted critical attention and public interest.
The group associated with the review De Boomgaard (1909–11; “The Orchard”), which included André de Ridder and Paul Gustave van Hecke, strove to be more cosmopolitan than Van Nu en Straks and defended a more dilettante attitude to culture. The elegiac poet Jan van Nijlen had affinities with this group.
After World War I
During World War I there was a new flowering of the picturesque regional tale: Pallieter (1916) by Felix Timmermans and the roguish De witte (1920; Whitey) by Ernest Claes became known outside Flanders. From the poetry of August van Cauwelaert and the prose of Franz de Backer it was obvious that the generation that fought in the war emphasized realism over romanticism. But a trend first revealed during the German occupation found its most direct outlet in revolutionary Expressionism, as seen in the manifesto of the review Ruimte (1920–21; “Space”): ethics must take priority over aesthetics, and the art of the community over that of the individual. Expressionism was most apparent in lyrical poetry and drama. Wies Moens’s early poetry reflected this humanitarian trend, whereas Gaston Burssens remained less pathetic and more playful. The outstanding lyricist of the movement was Paul van Ostaijen, who had expressed faith in humanity in Het sienjaal (1918; “The Signal”) but soon went through a Dadaist crisis of philosophical and artistic nihilism. Van Ostaijen experimented with visually expressive form—he called it rhythmic typography, as in his Bezette stad (1921; “Occupied City”)—and finally wrote “pure poetry” (concentrating on word and sound), grotesque verse and prose, and penetrating essays on art and poetry. The review ’t Fonteintje (1921–24; “The Little Fountain”), whose editors included Richard Minne and Maurice Roelants, reacted against Expressionism. Nevertheless, drama also was given new life by Expressionism. In the 1920s the Flemish Popular Theatre became one of the foremost avant-garde theatres in Europe. Herman Teirlinck was particularly important in the revitalization of the Flemish theatre, and he raised the standards of both playwriting and, by his interest in the training of actors, performance.
By 1930 the tide of Expressionism had run out, and the novel had come into its own. The regional novel was supplanted by the psychological novel, introduced by Roelants with Komen en gaan (1927; “Coming and Going”), and was raised to great stylistic heights by Maurice Gilliams (Elias, 1936), who was also a subtle poet and essayist. Lode Zielens wrote about the lives of the poor, and Gerard Walschap treated social, religious, and moral problems in a forceful, deliberately colloquial style.
The focal point of these authors, even after World War II, was human complexity and the often deluded attempts to make sense of the world and of others. The skeptical Raymond Brulez, whose four-part fictionalized memoirs Mijn woningen (1950–54; “My Dwellings”)—composed of De haven (“The Harbour”), Het mirakel der rozen (“The Miracle of the Roses”), Het huis te Borgen (“The House at Borgen”), and Het pact der triumviren (“The Pact of the Triumvirate”)—combine stylistic sophistication with a cool intellectualism. Both Brulez and the disenchanted humanist Marnix Gijsen, who produced his best work in the symbolic Het boek van Joachim van Babylon (1947; “The Book of Joachim of Babylon”), are more or less detached observers of human weaknesses.
In Willem Elsschot’s short but superb novels, such as Lijmen (1924; Soft Soap) and Kaas (1933; “Cheese”), caustic irony and an astringent style mask the author’s underlying compassion. The new tone was set by the “personalistic” poets of the Vormen (1936–40; “Forms”) group, of whom Pieter Geert Buckinx is representative.
After World War II
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