Mededelingen van het Cyriel Buysse Genootschap 11

[p. 138]

29

July 3, 1897

...

While the Flemish movement agitates all Belgium violently in view of a law which is to place the Flemish language on a complete footing of equality with French, which has been recognized as the official language of the kingdom since 1830, Flemish literature does not share in the polemics and the agitation of French literature in Belgium. It is in a state of dull placidity.

As was the case last year, no volume of poetry of real importance has seen the light during the last twelve months; and if prose is less mediocre and better represented, it also has put forward no work of first-class merit. M. Cyrille Buysse, whom I have praised in the past for some books of power and originality, is unequal to himself in his novel ‘Op 't Blauwhuis’ (‘The Blue House’). M.R. Stijns has published ‘Driften’ (‘Passions’), a collection in extravagant colours. A beginner, M. Hendrik de Marez, is responsible for the freshest and most original work, entitled ‘De Gouden Vlinder’ (‘The Golden Butterfly’), which shows considerable promise.

There are the usual number of theatrical pieces which appear every year, and are generally very weak. I must notice, however, ‘De Herbergprinses’ (‘The Queen of the Inn’), by M. Nestor de Tière, because M. Jan Blockx has written admirable music to this libretto, and the piece has enjoyed a brilliant success at the Flemish opera at Antwerp.

The activity of Flemish writers, which was once displayed chiefly and almost exclusively in the novel, poetry, and the drama, now shows itself in an increasing variety of fields. Above all, national history and local archaeology are cultivated with enthusiasm. M. Frans de Potter has continued the publication of his great history of Ghent, ‘Gent van den Vroegsten Tijd tot Heden’; M. Edward Gailliard has published, with an abundant commentary, the celebrated ‘Keure van Hazebroek’ in French Flanders; M. Ad. Reydams has studied the names and the history of the houses of the town of Malines in his curious book entitled ‘De Namen en de Korte Geschiedenis der Huizen van Mechelen’; M.L. van Laeken

[p. 139]

has devoted a large work of no great fairness to the excesses of the Sansculottes in Flemish Belgium, and to the rising of the peasantry in 1798. The late M.J.J. Mulder wrote an important study on the stubborn resistance made by the City of Antwerp in the sixteenth century. The writer of the present paper has published the second volume of his ‘Corpus Doe. Inquisitionis Neerlandicae,’ which includes the documents dealing with heresy and the Inquisition in the Netherlands before the Reformation. M. de Quéker has studied the action of official and private beneficence, and M.J. van Hoorde has given us a fine essay on our two excellent Flemish landscape painters Xaveer and Cesar de Cock.

While Prof. Vercoullie, of the University of Ghent, is preparing the new edition of his excellent etymological dictionary of the tongue of the Netherlands, his pupil M. Hipp. Meert has presented us with his volume ‘Distels’ (‘Thistles’), which is devoted to the mistakes of style committed by most Flemish authors when they endeavour to write their maternal language, which is also that of their brothers of Holland. In Flemish Belgium old forms are better preserved than in Holland. So it is that a Roman Catholic priest, Jan Bols, has added to the number of collections of old Flemish songs his volume ‘Honderd oude Vlaamsche Liederen’ (‘A Hundred Old Flemish Songs’), in which he prints the words with the music of each. Of late years much attention has been paid, and with considerable success, in Flemish Belgium and in Holland to popularizing the songs of the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century.

PAUL FREDERICQ
[tr. Rendall]