Mededelingen van het Cyriel Buysse Genootschap 11

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35

July 4, 1903

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By the side of French in Belgium flourishes, as in previous years, Flemish, which is very like Dutch. The good writers of Flemish are, indeed, more read in Holland than in Flemish Belgium, where the reading public is more restricted and less cultivated.

M. Max Rooses, the Keeper of the Plantin Museum at Antwerp, to whom we already owe a fine history of the Antwerp school of painters, has completed his masterly ‘Life and Work of Rubens’, which I mentioned last year. It is admirably written and illustrated, and has already appeared in a French translation. One of the finest books of the year is that of M. Julius Sabbe on ‘Peter Benoit.’ With the curious literature concerning the old painters of Bruges are connected the interesting studies of MM. Karel vande Woestyne and Medard Verkest. M. Flor. van Duyse has now completed the first volume of his great work on the popular songs of the Netherlands, ‘Het Oude Nederlandsche Lied’. It is a volume of more than 900 pages, containing 260 songs, words and tunes, with copious and learned notes. This Standard work is fit to rank with the most celebrated collections of the kind in Germany, England, and France.

Last July the Flemish celebrated at Courtrai the six hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Spurs. It was the occasion for a violent controversy throughout the country between politicians and historians concerning the real significance of the Flemish victory. The best historical work on the point came from M. Victor Fris, whom I mentioned last year, and the Abbé J. Laenen. The latter has also written an interesting sketch of commerce in the Austrian Netherlands in the eighteenth century. M.F. van Veerdeghem has published the memoirs of the late Flemish novelist D. Sleeckx, which supply some interesting revelations about Antwerp during and after the revolution of 1830. Peter Benoit, our great musical composer, has also left some fragmentary memoirs, ‘Vlaamsche Brieven.’

In general history I must note a political history of Ireland written by M.P. van Zuylen in a very anti-English spirit. The author of this article has published the fifth volume of his ‘Corpus Documentorum

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Inquisitionis Neerlandicae,’ which contains some hundreds of documents on the persecutions directed against the Protestants of the sixteenth century.

Literary history has received some careful additions. M. de Vreese has continued his labours on the MSS. of the great writer of mystic Flemish prose in the fourteenth century, Jan van Ruusbroec. His colleague of the Ghent University, Prof. Logeman, who is well known in England, has examined afresh the question of the connexion between ‘Elckerlyc’ and ‘Everyman.’ The second volume of the posthumous work of the poet Prudens van Duyse on the history of the Chambers of Rhetoric in the Netherlands has been published by his son and M. Frans de Potter, who has also finished his great Flemish bibliography since 1830, a work which exhibits the increasing activity of Flemish writing, though the revolution seemed to have sounded its death-knell. MM. Coopman and Scharpé are continuing their illustrated history of Flemish literature since 1830, which is full of unpublished details, portraits, and autographs. M. van Veerdeghem and the author of this article have written a monograph on Sleeckx; Prof. Verriest has published a splendid eulogy of the poet of West-Flanders, Guido Gezelle; and his brother the Abbé Guido Verriest in ‘Twintig Vlaamsche Koppen’ has sketched portraits of the principal Flemish writers of the same district. Mlle. Marie Belpaire, in her interesting volume ‘Het Landleven in de Letterkunde,’ studies the novels of Conscience, Virginie Loveling, George Eliot, Ian Maclaren, Georges Sand, René Bazin, Rosegger, Anzengruber, Auerbach, and Björnson. MM. A. de Cock and Teirlinck have given us the first part of their masterly work ‘Kinderspelen en Kinderlust in Zuid-Nederland,’ which deserves the attention of all students of folk-lore. This instalment is concerned with leaping, running, and dancing games. The introduction to the work is an excellent piece of writing. MM. Brants, E. Soens, and J. Jacobs have published curious works on German mythology.

In Flanders literature is in mourning this year for the poet and agitator Julius Vuylsteke, while Holland deplores the death of its two poets, Nicolaas Beets and Schaepman. These leading literary figures will not be easily replaced. Among the poetical collections, which are as numerous as ever, I must notice ‘Wijding,’ by a young poet of Ghent with a future, M. Richard de Cneudt. As for prose, the young school is pre-eminent. ‘Stijn Streuvels,’ whose success in Holland I have mentioned more than once, has published ‘Dagen’ and ‘Langs

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de Wegen.’ The Abbé Hugo Verriest, in his volume ‘Op Wandel,’ has collected a series of sketches and impressions. Two veterans in the writing of Flemish novels remain faithful to the old tradition, M. Segers in his ‘Lief en Leed in de Kempen’ and M. Omer Wattez in ‘Het Gezin van den Mulder.’ We have also had some delightful posthumous sketches by Madame Clara Cogen-Ledeganck on the celebrated Beguinages of Ghent, which her daughter has published with pious care and adorned with pretty engravings.

The stage has not been neglected. Our realistic playwright, M. Scheltjens, has produced two poignant pieces, ‘In 't zwarte Land’ and ‘Rivierschuimers.’ M. Sabbe and M. Cuppens cultivate, on the contrary, an almost mystic vein, the former in his fairy play ‘Pinksternacht,’ the latter in his ‘Communiekantje.’ The strongest dramatic work of the year has been the Socialistic play by the well-known novelist M. Buysse, ‘Het Gezin van Paemel,’ which shows small Flemish farmers at warfare with their village lord, their clergyman, the gamekeepers, and gendarmes, all conspiring to grind them down and reduce them to despair. Played at Ghent by a company of amateurs, who are working Socialists, in the dialect of the Flemish peasants of the neighbourhood, the drama, though extravagant here and there, made a deep impression on a public in part of a bourgeois character. It is a strong piece, which appeals to others, too.

PAUL FREDERICQ
[Tld by Editor]