Mededelingen van het Cyriel Buysse Genootschap 11

34

July 5, 1902

...

By the side of this French literature Belgium cultivates also writing in Flemish which is spoken by a little more than half the people and differs no more from Dutch than Norwegian from Danish. Speech, grammar, dictionary, are the same, but authors have widely different physiognomies and styles in the two regions of the old Netherlands, as in the two Skandinavian kingdoms.

As usual, verse in this language abounds. The ‘Laatste Verzen’ of the late great poet of West Flanders, Guido Gezelle, will not add much to his fame, but a really beautiful and original poem has been produced by a young author full of promise, ‘Vlasgaard’ (‘The Field of Flax’), by M. René de Clercq, who belongs to the same district as Gezelle and is evidently one of his pupils. In another corner of the country, the east of Belgium, a young school is springing up, the Limburgse school, represented by the work of Winters, Lenaerts, Bal[li]ngs, and Prenau.

[p. 149]

The drama has produced two pretty Flemish operas, performed at the National Theatre of Antwerp, ‘De Bruid der Zee,’ by M. Nestor de Tière, and ‘De Vrouwkens van Brugge,’ by M. Melis. Furthermore, M. Scheltjens has continued the series of his violently realistic plays with ‘Visscherseer.’ In prose we have the delightful posthumous fragments of Madame McLeod (née Sophie Fredericq), the village stories ‘Op Mijn Dorpken’ of the poet Pol de Mont, and the realistic sketch ‘Dikke Miel’ by M.R. Stijns, to mention three well-known old hands. Among the young men M. Frank Lateur, the ‘Stijn Streuvels’ of whom I spoke last year, has continued the series of his brilliant successes in Holland with his original stories of Flemish peasants of the West. His imitator, M. Herman Teirlinck, treats in the same style the rustic manners of the peasants who live round Ghent, while M. Baekelmans is making his way courageously, though his style is too laborious. The Abbé Caeymaex has composed an anthology of a hundred Catholic preachers of the Netherlands, from Geert Groote, the founder of the ‘Brethren of the Common Life,’ to the oldest curé of St. Peter at Ghent, a contemporary preacher of remarkable fertility. This month and the next will be celebrated at Courtrai the anniversary of the famous battle of the Spurs, in which the Flemish workers defeated the feudal nobles of Philip the Fair of France. The true significance of this great historie event has been much discussed in Belgium, with particular reference to the fine works of M. Pirenne. Among the numerous publications on the matter, I may notice the monograph of M. de Gryse, the oldest curé of Courtrai, and the lucid and erudite work of M. Victor Fris on the ‘liberation of Flanders in 1302.’

In fine art I mention with pride three great works, splendidly illustrated: the ‘Netherland Painters of the Nineteenth Century’ of M. Pol de Mont, which deals especially with the latest Flemish artists, such as Claus and Baertsoen and two books by M. Max Rooses, which appeared in French and English at the same time as the original Flemish text, ‘The Old Dutch and Flemish Masters in the Louvre and in the National Gallery,’ and the Standard book, ‘The Life and Work of Rubens,’ to which he has devoted thirty years, and which is written in a prose of grace and colour worthy of the great master of Flemish colouring.

PAUL FREDERICQ
[Tld by Editor]