Mededelingen van het Cyriel Buysse Genootschap 11

32

July 7, 1900

...

By the side of French writing in Belgium Flemish literature continues to flourish. The last year has deprived us of two veteran poets of note, Gezelle and Hiel. The former wrote in the patois of West-Flanders, and was the head of a school now disappearing, Emmanuel Hiel was the most fertile poet of Flemish Belgium. Some of his cantatas, set to music by the other great Flemish composer Peter Benoit and by others, are particularly tuneful. There is no danger of poetry dying out in Flanders. Among a crowd of names I may notice the small collection of M. Rafaël Verhulst, ‘Langs groene Wegen,’ and especially that of M. René de Clerq, ‘Echo's,’ as full of promise. The latter is already brilliantly successful in the sonnet, a

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form of verse fashionable in Flemish Belgium and also in Holland.

Prose, too, can show many novelists - Mlle. Hilda Ram, MM. F. van Cuyck, J. van Hoorde, J. de Bock, and others. A political veteran, M. Julius de Vigne, who sits for Ghent, has surprised the public by producing a collection of short stories, some of which are truly remarkable. M.H. de Marez possesses plenty of talent, but has rather lost his way in ‘De Zee,’ wherein he falls into the unhealthy and risky sort of subjects associated chiefly with the name of Zola. The chief of the younger Flemish prose writers, M. Cyriel Buysse, has collected some previously published sketches in ‘Te Lande.’ Some of them possess distinction and are remarkable for their style.

Last year the city of Ghent opened a great Flemish theatre - there was one already at Antwerp and Brussels - and there has been a large supply of Flemish dramas. The most successful has proved to be ‘Veva,’ a piece dealing with contemporary manners, by M.G. de Mey, which contains many pretty scenes, and was well played at the Ghent theatre.

Among books of travel I may notice that of F. Vande Wattijne in Norway, the letters of the Catholic missionary A. Vyncke on Central Africa, and the journey of M.P. de Mey to Stanley Pool. M. Pol de Mont published an admirably illustrated book on Van Dyck on the occasion of the very striking exhibition of his works last year at Antwerp, which formed a sort of pendant to the Rembrandt exhibition at Amsterdam. M. Max Rooses is responsible for a similar publication splendidly illustrated, which is devoted to the contemporary masters of painting in Holland and Belgium.

As usual, there are plenty of monographs dealing with local history, by MM. F. de Potter, J. Broeckaert, and others. The most important volume of this sort is the ‘Geschiedenis van de Stad Leuven’ of M. Herman Vander Linden, which brings out clearly the municipal organization of Louvain and its economie situation in the time of its chief glory, the Middle Ages. M. Nap. de Pauw, the well- known lawyer, has published some important documents on the rivalry in cloth-working between Ypres and Poperinghe in the fourteenth century. The author of this article has in the fourth volume of his ‘Corpus Inquisitionis Neerlandicae’ collected the documents of the beginning of Charles V.'s reign. M.H. de Marez in his book ‘Nieuwe paden’ reviews the chief authors of the new school in Holland and Flemish Belgium. Prof. F. van Veerdeghem,

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of Liège, has discovered at the Copenhagen Library a long life of Ste. Lutgarde in mediaeval Flemish verse, and published it, as well as several theatrical pieces of the seventeenth century. These last were discovered at Hasselt, and are edited by him, with the assistance of M.O. Vanden Daele. Prof. C. Lecoutere, of Louvain, has also printed from a Paris manuscript a collection of mediseval religious songs. For their contributions to the philology of the Netherlands MM. J. Jacobs and L. Goemans, not to mention others, deserve notice.

From the above list it will be gathered that Flemish literature, which began by being at first merely popular and poetical, is gradually becoming learned. The professors of our university are beginning to write their books in their mother tongue. Besides those I have noticed important Flemish works appeared last year dealing with botany, chemistry, electricity, and pedagogy. The Flemish even dream of forming at Ghent a university of their own, like the Slav University the Czechs of Bohemia have had for some years at [P]rague. Whatever comes of the scheme, no one can deny that the level of Flemish literature is gradually but surely rising year by year.

Finally, I may mention two small works - one in English, one in German - which are likely to be of great interest to English readers: ‘The English Faust-book of 1592,’ edited by Prof. Logeman, of Ghent, and ‘Was dachte Shakespeare über Poesie?’ by M. Paul Hamelius, a young professor who has already done good work in Flemish history and English criticism.

PAUL FREDERICQ
[tr. Rendall]