Nineteenth-century Dutch literature
Encyclopedia
This article deals with literature
written in Dutch
during the nineteenth century in the Dutch-speaking regions (The Netherlands, Belgium
, Dutch East Indies
).
The last years of the 18th century, which had seen decline in the Republic, including the art
s and international politics, were marked by a general revival of intellectual force. The romantic movement
in Germany
made itself deeply felt in all branches of Dutch literature and German lyricism took the place hitherto held by French classicism
, in spite of the country falling to French expansionalism (see also History of the Netherlands).
Against this backdrop, the most prominent writer was Willem Bilderdijk
(1756–1831), an intellectual and intelligent man whose outspoken and eccentric worldview was partly caused by an illness during his adolescence
that kept him indoors for ten years. Once recovered he lived a busy, eventful life, writing great quantities of verse; in he 1809 started writing the work he designed to be his masterpiece, the epic De Ondergang der Eerste Wereld ("The Destruction of the First World"), which remained unfinished and appeared as a fragment only in 1820.
Bilderdijk had no time for the new romantic style of poetry, but its fervour found its way into the Netherlands nevertheless, and first of all in the person of Hiëronymus van Alphen (1746–1803). Van Alphen is best remembered for the verses he wrote for children, which are still taught in kindergarten
s all over the country. Van Alphen was an exponent of the more sentimental school along with Rhijnvis Feith
(1753–1824), whose romances are steeped in Weltschmerz
.
In Hendrik Tollens
(1780–1856) some the power of Bilderdijk
and the sweetness of Feith
were combined. He is best known for celebrating the great deeds of Dutch history
in a series of lyrical romances. Today, Tollens is best known for his poem "Wien Neêrlands Bloed" ("To Those in Whom Dutch Blood Flows Through the Veins"), a nationalistic
effort that, set to music, was the Dutch national anthem until 1932, when it was superseded by Marnix'
"Wilhelmus". A poet of considerable talent, whose powers were awakened by personal intercourse with Tollens and his followers, was Antoni Christiaan Wijnandt Staring (1767–1840). Staring first published at the age of fifty-three only, but continued to write till past his seventieth year. His poems are a blend of romanticism and rationalism
.
During this period, the Low Countries
had gone through major political upheaval. The Spanish Netherlands had first become the Austrian Netherlands before being annexed
by France in 1794. The Republic, which had become a de facto monarchy
in 1747 when the office of stadtholder
became hereditary to the House of Orange-Nassau
, saw a revolution inspired and backed by France that led to the Batavian Republic
and Kingdom of Holland
vassal state
s before actual French annexation in 1810. This transition period removed many old habits and institutions and provided for unitary government
, the first constitution
(1798) and uniform orthography
(Matthias Siegenbeek's spelling).
After Napoleon
's downfall
in the Southern Netherlands
village of Waterloo
, the northern and southern provinces were briefly united as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
; this period lasted until 1830 only, when the southern provinces seceded
to form Belgium
. This period had little influence in literature, and in the new state of Belgium, the status of the Dutch language remained largely unchanged as all governmental and educational affairs were conducted in French.
In scientific and religious literature men of letters showed themselves cognizant of the newest shades of opinion, and freely ventilated their ideas. The language resisted the pressure of German from the outside, and from within broke through its long stagnation and enriched itself, as a medium for literary expression, with a multitude of fresh and colloquial forms. At the same time, no very great genius arose in The Netherlands in any branch of literature. For the thirty or forty years preceding 1880 the course of literature in Holland was smooth and even sluggish. The Dutch writers had slipped into a conventionality of treatment and a strict limitation of form from which even the most striking talents among them could scarcely escape.
Poetry and a large part of prose was dominated by the so-called school of ministers, as the leading writers all were or had been Calvinist ministers
. As a result, many of their products emphasized Biblical and bourgeois domestic values. Prime examples include Everhard Johannes Potgieter (1808–1875, lyric poetry
) and Nicolaas Beets
(1814–1903), who wrote large quantities of sermons and poetry under his own name but is chiefly remembered today for the humorous prose sketches of Dutch life in Camera Obscura (1839), which he wrote during his student days under the pseudonym
of Hildebrand
.
A poet of power and promise was lost in the early death of P.A. de Genestet
(1829–1861). His narrative poem "De Sint-Nicolaasavond" ("Eve of Saint Nicholas") appeared in 1849 and attained great popularity. Another poet who among others wrote verse for children was Jan Pieter Heije (1809–1876), whose songs are sung to this day. A poet who left no large contemporary impression but who is considered one of the very few readable nineteenth-century poets is Piet Paaltjens
(ps.
of François Haverschmidt, 1835–1894). Paaltjens personifies the pure Romantic vein exemplified in German literature
by Heine
and others. Criticism was best represented by W. J. A. Jonckbloet (1817–1885), who was the first to write a comprehensive history of Dutch literature (1870).
Under the influence of romantic nationalism, writers in Belgium
began to reconsider their Flemish heritage and move for a recognition of the Dutch language in both official affairs (including education) and literature. Charles De Coster
laid the foundations for a native Belgian literature by recounting the Flemish past in historic romances but wrote his works, including his masterpiece Légende de Thyl Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak (1867) in French
. Hendrik Conscience
(1812–1883), himself the son of a Frenchman, was the first to write about Flemish
subjects in the Dutch language and so is considered the father of modern Flemish literature. In Flemish poetry, Guido Gezelle
(1830–1899) is an important figure. Gezelle, an ordained journalist
-cum-ethnologist
, celebrated his faith and his Flemish roots using an archaic vocabulary
based on Medieval
Flemish dialects to the detriment of his intelligibility beyond his native West Flanders.
After the restoration in 1815 to the Dutch state of the Dutch East Indies
, former corporate Dutch East India Company
possessions occupied by the United Kingdom
during the Napoleonic era
, works of literature continued to be produced there, among which the romances of Melati van Java (ps.
of Nicolina Maria Christina Sloot, 1853–1927), which were widely read in both The Netherlands and Belgium. With the rise of social consciousness regarding the administration of the colonies and the treatment of their inhabitants, however, a far more influential voice rose from the Indies in the form of Multatuli
(ps. of Eduard Douwes Dekker, 1820–1887), whose Max Havelaar
(1860) is a scathing indictment of colonial mismanagement and one of the few nineteenth-century prose works still widely considered readable today. Although the Belgians had obtained colonial possessions in their own right with the Congo Free State
/Belgian Congo
, no Dutch-language literature was forthcoming as the territory was entirely Francophone.
The two leading Dutch
men of letters in the mid-nineteenth century besides Beets and Douwes Dekker were critics, Conrad Busken-Huet
(1826–1886) and Carel Vosmaer
(1826–1888). In Busken-Huet the principles of the 1830–1880 period were summed up; he had been during all those years the fearless and trusty watch-dog of Dutch letters as he understood them. He lived just long enough to become aware that a revolution was approaching, not to comprehend its character; but his accomplished fidelity to literary principle and his wide knowledge have been honoured even by the most bitter of the younger school.
In November 1881 Jacques Perk (born 1860) died, a young poet who had done no more than publish a few sonnets in a journal published by Vosmaer. He was no sooner dead, however, than his posthumous poems, and in particular a cycle of sonnets called "Mathilde", were published (1882) and awakened extraordinary emotion. Perk had rejected all the formulas of rhetorical poetry, and had broken up the conventional rhythms. There had been heard no music like his in Holland for two hundred years.
A group of young men collected around his name. They were joined by a poet-novelist-dramatist somewhat older than themselves, Marcellus Emants
(1848–1923). Emants had written a symbolical poem called "Lilith" in 1879 that had been stigmatised as audacious and meaningless; encouraged by the admiration of his juniors, Emants published in 1881 a treatise in the form of a novel in which the first open attack was made on the old school.
The next appearance was that of Willem Kloos
(1857–1938), who had been the editor and intimate friend of Perk, and who now undertook to lead the army of rebellion. His violent attacks on recognized authority in aesthetics began in 1882 and created a considerable scandal. For some time the new poets and critics found a great difficulty in being heard as all the channels of periodical literature were closed to them, but in 1884 the young school founded a review, De Nieuwe Gids ("The New Guide"), which was able to offer a direct challenge to De Gids ("The Guide"), the old guard's periodical. The new movement was called Tachtigers or "Movement of (Eighteen-)Eighty", after the decade in which it arose. The Tachtigers insisted that style must match content, and that intimate and visceral emotions can only be expressed using an intimate and visceral writing style.
In the same year 1884 a new element was introduced. Until now, the influences of the young Dutch poetry had chiefly come from the United Kingdom
; they were those of Shelley
, Mrs Browning
, the Rosettis (Dante
and Christina
). The French
naturalists
now became an additional ingredient and for some time the new Dutch literature became a sort of mixture of Shelley and Zola
, heady and bewildering. This was the great flowering moment of the new school.
It was at this juncture that Louis Couperus
(1863–1923) made his first definite appearance. His boyhood years were spent in Java, and he had preserved in all his nature a certain tropical
magnificence. His first literary efforts were lyrics in the Tachtigers style, but Couperus proved far more important and durable as a novelist and his earliest story, Eline Vere (1889) already took him out of the ranks of his contemporaries. In 1891 he published Noodlot, which was translated into English
as "Footsteps of Fate" It was greatly admired by Oscar Wilde
, whose Picture of Dorian Grey is said to have been influenced by it. Couperus continued to pour out one important novel after another until his death in 1923. He separated himself, as he developed, from the more fanatical members of the Tachtigers group, and addressed himself to the wider public. Another talent for prose was revealed by Frederik van Eeden
(1860–1932) in De kleine Johannes ("Little Johnny", 1887) and in Van de koele meren des doods ("From the Cold Pools of Death", 1901), a melancholy novel.
(1864–1927) made his appearance with an epic poem called Mei ("May"), eccentric both in prosody and in treatment. He held his own without any marked advance towards lucidity or variety. Since the recognition of Gorter, however, no really remarkable talent has made itself prominent in Dutch poetry except P.C. Boutens (1870–1943), whose Verzen ("Verses") in 1898 were received with great respect.
Willem Kloos, still the acute and somewhat turbulent leader of the school, collected his poems in 1894 and his critical essays in 1896. The others, with the exception of Couperus, showed symptoms of sinking into silence. The entire school, now that the struggle for recognition was over, and its members were accepted as the mainstream, rested on its triumphs and soon limited itself to a repetition of its old experiments.
The leading drama
tist at the close of the century was Herman Heijermans
(1864–1924), a writer of strong realistic and socialistic
tendencies who single-handedly brought Dutch theatre into the modern time. His Ghetto (1898) and Ora et labora (1901) particularly display his peculiar talent, while his fishermen's
tragedy
Op hoop van zegen ("Trusting Our Fate in the Hands of God"), which is still staged and has been film
ed more than once http://www.imdb.com/find?q=op+hoop+van+zegen;s=tt, remains his most popular play.
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
written in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
during the nineteenth century in the Dutch-speaking regions (The Netherlands, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, Dutch East Indies
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
).
The last years of the 18th century, which had seen decline in the Republic, including the art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
s and international politics, were marked by a general revival of intellectual force. The romantic movement
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
made itself deeply felt in all branches of Dutch literature and German lyricism took the place hitherto held by French classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
, in spite of the country falling to French expansionalism (see also History of the Netherlands).
The French era and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1795–1839)
Willem Bilderdijk
Willem Bilderdijk , Dutch poet, the son of an Amsterdam physician. When he was six years old an accident to his foot incapacitated him for ten years, and he developed habits of continuous and concentrated study...
(1756–1831), an intellectual and intelligent man whose outspoken and eccentric worldview was partly caused by an illness during his adolescence
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
that kept him indoors for ten years. Once recovered he lived a busy, eventful life, writing great quantities of verse; in he 1809 started writing the work he designed to be his masterpiece, the epic De Ondergang der Eerste Wereld ("The Destruction of the First World"), which remained unfinished and appeared as a fragment only in 1820.
Bilderdijk had no time for the new romantic style of poetry, but its fervour found its way into the Netherlands nevertheless, and first of all in the person of Hiëronymus van Alphen (1746–1803). Van Alphen is best remembered for the verses he wrote for children, which are still taught in kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...
s all over the country. Van Alphen was an exponent of the more sentimental school along with Rhijnvis Feith
Rhijnvis Feith
Jhr. Rhijnvis Feith was a Dutch poet.He was born of an aristocratic family at Zwolle, the capital of the province Overijssel. He was educated at Harderwijk and at the university of Leiden, where he took his degree in 1770. In 1772 he settled at his birthplace, and married...
(1753–1824), whose romances are steeped in Weltschmerz
Weltschmerz
Weltschmerz is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind...
.
In Hendrik Tollens
Hendrik Tollens
Henricus Franciscus Caroluszoon Tollens was a Dutch poet best known for Wien Neêrlands Bloed, the national anthem of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1932....
(1780–1856) some the power of Bilderdijk
Willem Bilderdijk
Willem Bilderdijk , Dutch poet, the son of an Amsterdam physician. When he was six years old an accident to his foot incapacitated him for ten years, and he developed habits of continuous and concentrated study...
and the sweetness of Feith
Rhijnvis Feith
Jhr. Rhijnvis Feith was a Dutch poet.He was born of an aristocratic family at Zwolle, the capital of the province Overijssel. He was educated at Harderwijk and at the university of Leiden, where he took his degree in 1770. In 1772 he settled at his birthplace, and married...
were combined. He is best known for celebrating the great deeds of Dutch history
History of the Netherlands
The history of the Netherlands is the history of a maritime people thriving on a watery lowland river delta at the edge of northwestern Europe. When the Romans and written history arrived in 57 BC, the country was sparsely populated by various tribal groups at the periphery of the empire...
in a series of lyrical romances. Today, Tollens is best known for his poem "Wien Neêrlands Bloed" ("To Those in Whom Dutch Blood Flows Through the Veins"), a nationalistic
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
effort that, set to music, was the Dutch national anthem until 1932, when it was superseded by Marnix'
Philips van Marnix, lord of Sint-Aldegonde
Philips of Marnix, Lord of Saint-Aldegonde, Lord of West-Souburg was a Flemish and Dutch writer and statesman, and the probable author of the text of the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus.He was...
"Wilhelmus". A poet of considerable talent, whose powers were awakened by personal intercourse with Tollens and his followers, was Antoni Christiaan Wijnandt Staring (1767–1840). Staring first published at the age of fifty-three only, but continued to write till past his seventieth year. His poems are a blend of romanticism and rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
.
During this period, the Low Countries
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
had gone through major political upheaval. The Spanish Netherlands had first become the Austrian Netherlands before being annexed
Annexation
Annexation is the de jure incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity . Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral, and weaker of the two merging entities, barring physical size...
by France in 1794. The Republic, which had become a de facto monarchy
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
in 1747 when the office of stadtholder
Stadtholder
A Stadtholder A Stadtholder A Stadtholder (Dutch: stadhouder [], "steward" or "lieutenant", literally place holder, holding someones place, possibly a calque of German Statthalter, French lieutenant, or Middle Latin locum tenens...
became hereditary to the House of Orange-Nassau
House of Orange-Nassau
The House of Orange-Nassau , a branch of the European House of Nassau, has played a central role in the political life of the Netherlands — and at times in Europe — since William I of Orange organized the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule, which after the Eighty Years' War...
, saw a revolution inspired and backed by France that led to the Batavian Republic
Batavian Republic
The Batavian Republic was the successor of the Republic of the United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on January 19, 1795, and ended on June 5, 1806, with the accession of Louis Bonaparte to the throne of the Kingdom of Holland....
and Kingdom of Holland
Kingdom of Holland
The Kingdom of Holland 1806–1810 was set up by Napoleon Bonaparte as a puppet kingdom for his third brother, Louis Bonaparte, in order to better control the Netherlands. The name of the leading province, Holland, was now taken for the whole country...
vassal state
Vassal state
A vassal state is any state that is subordinate to another. The vassal in these cases is the ruler, rather than the state itself. Being a vassal most commonly implies providing military assistance to the dominant state when requested to do so; it sometimes implies paying tribute, but a state which...
s before actual French annexation in 1810. This transition period removed many old habits and institutions and provided for unitary government
Unitary state
A unitary state is a state governed as one single unit in which the central government is supreme and any administrative divisions exercise only powers that their central government chooses to delegate...
, the first constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
(1798) and uniform orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
(Matthias Siegenbeek's spelling).
After Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
's downfall
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
in the Southern Netherlands
Southern Netherlands
Southern Netherlands were a part of the Low Countries controlled by Spain , Austria and annexed by France...
village of Waterloo
Waterloo, Belgium
Waterloo is a Walloon municipality located in the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium. On December 31, 2009, Waterloo had a total population of 29,573. The total area is 21.03 km² which gives a population density of 1,407 inhabitants per km²...
, the northern and southern provinces were briefly united as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
United Kingdom of the Netherlands
United Kingdom of the Netherlands is the unofficial name used to refer to Kingdom of the Netherlands during the period after it was first created from part of the First French Empire and before the new kingdom of Belgium split out in 1830...
; this period lasted until 1830 only, when the southern provinces seceded
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
to form Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
. This period had little influence in literature, and in the new state of Belgium, the status of the Dutch language remained largely unchanged as all governmental and educational affairs were conducted in French.
Ministers, formalism and romanticism (1830–1880)
Poetry and a large part of prose was dominated by the so-called school of ministers, as the leading writers all were or had been Calvinist ministers
Minister of religion
In Christian churches, a minister is someone who is authorized by a church or religious organization to perform functions such as teaching of beliefs; leading services such as weddings, baptisms or funerals; or otherwise providing spiritual guidance to the community...
. As a result, many of their products emphasized Biblical and bourgeois domestic values. Prime examples include Everhard Johannes Potgieter (1808–1875, lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
) and Nicolaas Beets
Nicolaas Beets
Nicolaas Beets was a Dutch theologian, writer and poet. He published under the pseudonym, Hildebrand....
(1814–1903), who wrote large quantities of sermons and poetry under his own name but is chiefly remembered today for the humorous prose sketches of Dutch life in Camera Obscura (1839), which he wrote during his student days under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Hildebrand
Nicolaas Beets
Nicolaas Beets was a Dutch theologian, writer and poet. He published under the pseudonym, Hildebrand....
.
A poet of power and promise was lost in the early death of P.A. de Genestet
Petrus Augustus de Genestet
Petrus Augustus de Génestet was a Dutch poet and a theologian.Petrus Augustus de Génestet lost both of his parents at a very young age; after that he lived with his uncle, the Dutch painter Jan Adam Kruseman...
(1829–1861). His narrative poem "De Sint-Nicolaasavond" ("Eve of Saint Nicholas") appeared in 1849 and attained great popularity. Another poet who among others wrote verse for children was Jan Pieter Heije (1809–1876), whose songs are sung to this day. A poet who left no large contemporary impression but who is considered one of the very few readable nineteenth-century poets is Piet Paaltjens
Piet Paaltjens
thumb|right|François Haverschmidt.François Haverschmidt was a Dutch minister and writer, who wrote prose under his own name but remains best known for the poetry published under the pen name of Piet Paaltjens.- Life and career :Haverschmidt read Calvinist theology at Leiden University, graduating...
(ps.
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of François Haverschmidt, 1835–1894). Paaltjens personifies the pure Romantic vein exemplified in German literature
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
by Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
and others. Criticism was best represented by W. J. A. Jonckbloet (1817–1885), who was the first to write a comprehensive history of Dutch literature (1870).
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
began to reconsider their Flemish heritage and move for a recognition of the Dutch language in both official affairs (including education) and literature. Charles De Coster
Charles De Coster
Charles-Theodore-Henri De Coster was a Belgian novelist whose efforts laid the basis for a native Belgian literature....
laid the foundations for a native Belgian literature by recounting the Flemish past in historic romances but wrote his works, including his masterpiece Légende de Thyl Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak (1867) in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Hendrik Conscience
Hendrik Conscience
Henri "Hendrik" Conscience was a Belgian writer. He was a pioneer in writing in Dutch after the secession from the Netherlands in 1830 left Belgium a mostly French speaking country....
(1812–1883), himself the son of a Frenchman, was the first to write about Flemish
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
subjects in the Dutch language and so is considered the father of modern Flemish literature. In Flemish poetry, Guido Gezelle
Guido Gezelle
Guido Pieter Theodorus Josephus Gezelle was an influential Flemish language writer and poet and a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium.- Life :...
(1830–1899) is an important figure. Gezelle, an ordained journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
-cum-ethnologist
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
, celebrated his faith and his Flemish roots using an archaic vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
based on Medieval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
Flemish dialects to the detriment of his intelligibility beyond his native West Flanders.
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
, former corporate Dutch East India Company
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...
possessions occupied by the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
during the Napoleonic era
Napoleonic Era
The Napoleonic Era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory...
, works of literature continued to be produced there, among which the romances of Melati van Java (ps.
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Nicolina Maria Christina Sloot, 1853–1927), which were widely read in both The Netherlands and Belgium. With the rise of social consciousness regarding the administration of the colonies and the treatment of their inhabitants, however, a far more influential voice rose from the Indies in the form of Multatuli
Multatuli
Eduard Douwes Dekker , better known by his pen name Multatuli , was a Dutch writer famous for his satirical novel, Max Havelaar , which denounced the abuses of colonialism in the Dutch East Indies .-Biography:Dekker was born in Amsterdam...
(ps. of Eduard Douwes Dekker, 1820–1887), whose Max Havelaar
Max Havelaar
Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company is a culturally and socially significant 1860 novel by Multatuli which was to play a key role in shaping and modifying Dutch colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth century...
(1860) is a scathing indictment of colonial mismanagement and one of the few nineteenth-century prose works still widely considered readable today. Although the Belgians had obtained colonial possessions in their own right with the Congo Free State
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...
/Belgian Congo
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...
, no Dutch-language literature was forthcoming as the territory was entirely Francophone.
The two leading Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
men of letters in the mid-nineteenth century besides Beets and Douwes Dekker were critics, Conrad Busken-Huet
Conrad Busken-Huet
Conrad Busken Huet , was a Dutch literary critic.-Biography:Busken Huet attended Gymnasium Haganum. He was trained for the Church, and, after studying at Geneva and Lausanne, was appointed pastor of the Walloon chapel in Haarlem in 1851...
(1826–1886) and Carel Vosmaer
Carel Vosmaer
Carel Vosmaer was a Dutch poet and art-critic, born at The Hague. He wrote under the pseudonym Flanor.-Life:...
(1826–1888). In Busken-Huet the principles of the 1830–1880 period were summed up; he had been during all those years the fearless and trusty watch-dog of Dutch letters as he understood them. He lived just long enough to become aware that a revolution was approaching, not to comprehend its character; but his accomplished fidelity to literary principle and his wide knowledge have been honoured even by the most bitter of the younger school.
The Movement of 1880
A group of young men collected around his name. They were joined by a poet-novelist-dramatist somewhat older than themselves, Marcellus Emants
Marcellus Emants
Marcellus Emants , 14 October 1923) was a Dutch novelist who was one of the few examples of Dutch Naturalism. He is seen as a first step towards the renewing force of the Tachtigers towards modern Dutch literature, a movement which started around the 1880s...
(1848–1923). Emants had written a symbolical poem called "Lilith" in 1879 that had been stigmatised as audacious and meaningless; encouraged by the admiration of his juniors, Emants published in 1881 a treatise in the form of a novel in which the first open attack was made on the old school.
The next appearance was that of Willem Kloos
Willem Kloos
Willem Johannes Theodorus Kloos was a Dutch poet and literary critic, and is widely considered one of the great writers of the Dutch language....
(1857–1938), who had been the editor and intimate friend of Perk, and who now undertook to lead the army of rebellion. His violent attacks on recognized authority in aesthetics began in 1882 and created a considerable scandal. For some time the new poets and critics found a great difficulty in being heard as all the channels of periodical literature were closed to them, but in 1884 the young school founded a review, De Nieuwe Gids ("The New Guide"), which was able to offer a direct challenge to De Gids ("The Guide"), the old guard's periodical. The new movement was called Tachtigers or "Movement of (Eighteen-)Eighty", after the decade in which it arose. The Tachtigers insisted that style must match content, and that intimate and visceral emotions can only be expressed using an intimate and visceral writing style.
In the same year 1884 a new element was introduced. Until now, the influences of the young Dutch poetry had chiefly come from the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
; they were those of Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, Mrs Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
, the Rosettis (Dante
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
and Christina
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
). The French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
naturalists
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
now became an additional ingredient and for some time the new Dutch literature became a sort of mixture of Shelley and Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, heady and bewildering. This was the great flowering moment of the new school.
Louis Couperus
Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was a Dutch novelist and poet during the Belle Époque. There is a wide variety of genres in his oeuvre, which contains poetry, fairy tales, psychological novels, and historical novels...
(1863–1923) made his first definite appearance. His boyhood years were spent in Java, and he had preserved in all his nature a certain tropical
Tropics
The tropics is a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth...
magnificence. His first literary efforts were lyrics in the Tachtigers style, but Couperus proved far more important and durable as a novelist and his earliest story, Eline Vere (1889) already took him out of the ranks of his contemporaries. In 1891 he published Noodlot, which was translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as "Footsteps of Fate" It was greatly admired by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, whose Picture of Dorian Grey is said to have been influenced by it. Couperus continued to pour out one important novel after another until his death in 1923. He separated himself, as he developed, from the more fanatical members of the Tachtigers group, and addressed himself to the wider public. Another talent for prose was revealed by Frederik van Eeden
Frederik van Eeden
Frederik Willem van Eeden was a late 19th century and early 20th century Dutch writer and psychiatrist...
(1860–1932) in De kleine Johannes ("Little Johnny", 1887) and in Van de koele meren des doods ("From the Cold Pools of Death", 1901), a melancholy novel.
19th century
After 1887 the condition of modern Dutch literature remained comparatively stationary, and within the last decade of the 19th century was definitely declining. In 1889 a new poet, Herman GorterHerman Gorter
Herman Gorter was a Dutch poet and socialist. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers, a highly influential group of Dutch writers who worked together in Amsterdam in the 1880s, centered around De Nieuwe Gids .Gorter's first book, a 4,000 verse epic poem called "Mei" , sealed his reputation...
(1864–1927) made his appearance with an epic poem called Mei ("May"), eccentric both in prosody and in treatment. He held his own without any marked advance towards lucidity or variety. Since the recognition of Gorter, however, no really remarkable talent has made itself prominent in Dutch poetry except P.C. Boutens (1870–1943), whose Verzen ("Verses") in 1898 were received with great respect.
Willem Kloos, still the acute and somewhat turbulent leader of the school, collected his poems in 1894 and his critical essays in 1896. The others, with the exception of Couperus, showed symptoms of sinking into silence. The entire school, now that the struggle for recognition was over, and its members were accepted as the mainstream, rested on its triumphs and soon limited itself to a repetition of its old experiments.
The leading drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
tist at the close of the century was Herman Heijermans
Herman Heijermans
Herman Heijermans , was a Dutch writer.Heijermans grew up in a liberal Jewish family as the fifth of 11 children of Herman Heijermans Sr. and Matilda Moses Spiers...
(1864–1924), a writer of strong realistic and socialistic
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
tendencies who single-handedly brought Dutch theatre into the modern time. His Ghetto (1898) and Ora et labora (1901) particularly display his peculiar talent, while his fishermen's
Fisherman
A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen and may be used to describe both men...
tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
Op hoop van zegen ("Trusting Our Fate in the Hands of God"), which is still staged and has been film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
ed more than once http://www.imdb.com/find?q=op+hoop+van+zegen;s=tt, remains his most popular play.