Feit en tussenkomst. Geschiedenis en opvattingen van Tijd en Mens (1949-1955)

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Summary

Feit en tussenkomst: geschiedenis en opvattingen van Tijd en Mens (1949-1955) (Fact and interference: history and ideas of Tijd en Mens (1949-1955)) deals with the history and ideas of what is generally regarded as the most important avantgarde literary journal and -movement in the postwar literary history of Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Both the literary-historical context in which Tijd en Mens came into being and the ideas on literature and society that Jan Walravens, the main founder of the journal propagated, are discussed. Finally the history of Tijd en Mens itself is also analysed.

The main goal of Tijd en Mens was to put an end to the hegemony of neoclassicism that had been the dominant literary school in Flanders in the period 1930-1949. The neoclassicist poets rejected the sometimes rather vague idealism of their expressionist predecessors, with their focus on humanity and community, and, above all, their - in classicist eyes - exuberant stilistic experiments. Reacting to this ‘chaos’, the neoclassicists considered it their task to write poetry based on an orderly world view, that is anchored in a universal, super-human, static Platonic Idea. To them poetry had nothing to do with the social or political reality the twentieth-century man lived in.

In the period 1945-1949 the Brussels journalist, essayist and novellist Jan Walravens (1920-1965) became the most significant spokesman of a very small group of young writers with a new view on literature and society. Moved by the horrors of the Second World War, from Auschwitz tot Hiroshima, and the growing fear of a possible Third War, under the influence of surrealism and especially Sartrian existentialism, Walravens pleaded in many speeches and essays for a totally new kind of poetry. He considered the neoclassicist values no longer fitting for the modern post war era: he wanted literature to be concerned with contemporaneons realities and the existential problems man was confronting. Literature shouldn't leave people cold. Instead of an object of beauty, a poem had to be a ‘fact and intervention’: it had to confront both writer and reader with the real world and the chaotic time they lived in, and provoke their thoughts about them.

In this period Walravens made several attempts to found a literary journal ‘for the younger generation’, to meet this challenge. In 1949 he succeeded, in cooperation with the neo-expressionist poet Remy van de Kerckhove. Their journal was named Tijd en Mens , ‘time and man’, a title that referred to Sartres famous Les Temps Modernes .

In Feit en tussenkomst the existence of Tijd en Mens is split into two periods. In the first - from 1949 till early 1951 - Tijd en Mens aimed to be more than just a literary journal. Walravens, and Van de Kerckhove as the first editor in chief, tried to establish a broader movement: not only writers were involved, but also painters, composers and even a sculptor. With the publishing of Tijd en Mens 8, in February 1951, latent and personal literary in- group animosities bubbled to the surface. Van de Kerckhove and three sympathizers, who called themselves neo-expressionsts, tried to take over the

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journal. Their ‘coup’ fell through and they left Tijd en Mens .

After Van de Kerchoves' departure in 1951 Walravens became editor in chief. From that moment on Tijd en Mens focused on representing avantgardism in a broader sense. Contacts were made with Dutch experimental poets, the so called ‘Beweging van Vijftig’ (the ‘Fifties-movement’), and two issues of Tijd en Mens were published together with the Dutch experimental journal Podium. Tijd en Mens also published writings and drawings of Cobra-artists.

In this period the experiment became more and more accepted in the literary mainstream. The group members got serious attention in papers and literary reviews, and the writers obtained contracts from official Flemish and - sometimes - Dutch publishers. Meanwhile other young Flemish writers became attracted by the experimental poetry too. From 1953 they founded their own journals like De Tafelronde (‘The Round Table’) and taptoe , (‘tattoo’), but most of them only after failed attempts to publishing in Tijd en Mens first. In this last period Tijd en Mens became more and more an impregnable bastion. Mainly because this younger generation had their own views on poetry: they wanted to write experimental texts, but they rejected the strong ‘ethical’ aspect that Walravens considered essential. In 1955 the rise of these writers, combined with the increasing weariness of the most important group members caused Tijd en Mens' ‘suicide’, as Walravens characterized it afterwards.

Feit en tussenkomst is an interpretation of the literary and social ideas of Jan Walravens, which were at the same time the ideas of Tijd en Mens. The interpretive part of the book gives an analysis of his essayistic oeuvre with main articles like ‘De phenomenologie van de moderne poëzie’ (‘The fenomenology of modern poetry’). At the same time the book describes the historical development of this important journal, based on hundreds of previously unpublished letters from public and private archives in Flanders and The Netherlands.