The Golden Age
The exact year of his birth will remain a mystery, but it undoubtedly occurred at the beginning of the second half of the 15th century, in a Europe that was not short of books, but where Latin was still the language of learning, all the more so for those who would be more or less forced to enter the orders. The fruit of an illegitimate union, Erasmus nevertheless benefited from a good education, from Rotterdam to Gouda where his family settled in his early youth, from Paris where he entered the Sorbonne and made friends with the Italian poet Fausto Andrelin to England where he befriended, among others, Thomas More, the author of Utopia. A child of the Renaissance and a fine connoisseur of the Ancients, his taste for travel combined with his passion for correspondence with various international interlocutors fueled his inspiration and made him one of the champions of cosmopolitanism (according to his motto: "the whole world is the homeland of all of us"), which is only one facet of his humanism, he who advocated peace and criticized the clergy who were oblivious to the message of the gospels. His most famous work - at the time and today - is In Praise of Madness (1511), a fake satirical entertainment and a real philosophical manual, in which the eponymous goddess addresses men and pinpoints their failings. It is said that this work made even Pope Leo X laugh, but this did not prevent it from being put on the index after the death of its author on July 12, 1536 in Basel. In the same vein, we should also mention Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert (1522-1590) who, in addition to translating Erasmus and part of the Bible into Dutch, wrote the Manifesto
of William the Silent, which signaled the uprising of the Netherlands against Spanish domination, a struggle in which Jan van Hout (1542-1609), a poet who became a linguist in order to defend his language, also took part.For the time being, literature, which in the Middle Ages had found a place at Court through oral tradition and chivalric stories, now entered the bourgeois milieu with the multiplication of rhetorical chambers, the most famous of which was undoubtedly De Eglantier (The Rosehip, whose flower, symbol of love, was the badge), founded around 1517 in Amsterdam. The most illustrious writers of its time passed through this circle, among them the Amstellodammers Hendriz Laurenszoon Spiegel (1549-1612), who headed it and composed, among other poems, a famous ode to his native city, as well as Roemer Visscher, his fellow citizen and younger by two years, who made epigrams his favorite genre. The playwright Samuel Coster (1579-1665) also haunted this place, where his play Teeuwis de boer (Teeuwis the farmer) was staged, and perhaps also his classical tragedy Ithys, which is considered the first of its kind written in Dutch. It was around this time - around 1615 - that the group began to suffer from some dissension, which led to the creation of another entity: the Duytsche Academy. Also dedicated to poetry and theater, it was also devoted to scientific research in Dutch (unlike the other universities, which still taught in Latin), and was born of the combined will and talents of Samuel Coster, Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (1581-1647) and Gerbrand Adiaenszoon Bredero (1585-1618). These last two intellectuals enjoyed a privileged audience, the first being nothing less than considered the initiator of modern poetry in Dutch since the publication of his songs Emblamata amatoria in 1611 and having upset the codes of the theater with Geeraerdt van Velsen (1613), the second having made a name for himself with his songs in popular language (Le Grand Chansonnier bouffon, amoureux et pieux) and having taken a stand, before his contemporaries, against slavery in his play Moortje
(1615). However, the portrait of this effervescent period would not be complete without Jacobs Cats (1577-1660) - who was, in two words, the "Fountain of Holland" -, and Joost van den Vondel - who was born in Cologne in 1587 but died in Amsterdam in 1679 - who has been compared to Molière as much as to Shakespeare for his ascendancy on the Dutch theater. Without aiming to be exhaustive, it would also be worthwhile to mention the work of Gysbert Japiks (1603-1666), written in Frisian, which he raised to the rank of a literary language, even though it was completely disavowed at the end of the 16th century. Finally, let us conclude as we began, with the birth of a philosopher: that of Baruch Spinoza who, despite his premature death in 1677 in The Hague, at only 44 years of age, is a key figure in his discipline. Although he did not dare to publish The Ethics during his lifetime, and this text was simply forbidden when it came out, it remains nonetheless fundamental and inspired thinkers well beyond the borders of the Netherlands and well beyond the 17th century.Decline and renewal
The desire for independence and conquest rhymes with openness to the world, but generates a certain permeability to external influences, which are primarily French. However, the importation of classicism somewhat parasitized the innovative inspiration of local writers, so the 18th century did not really produce original works, although we can still point out the epic poem Friso (1741) by Willem van Haren or the novel written by four hands by Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken, Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart, which initiated the genre in 1782. It was not until the end of the century that a certain revival occurred, coinciding with the publication of Rhijnvis Feith's "sentimentalist" novel Julia (1783) and, by extension, with the gradual emergence of German Romanticism. But political issues and other confrontations soon lent this new trend a nationalistic accent, as suggested by the poetry of Jan Frederik Helmers (1767-1813), which went from being tender (Nuit, 1788) to being patriotic (La Nation hollandaise, 1812), especially from the moment he began to collude with his brother-in-law, Cornelis Loots, the author of La Langue hollandaise (1814). The person who best embodies this shift is certainly Hendrik Tollens, a poet who asserts his positions in Ceux chez qui coule le sang néerlandais
, composed in 1817, the same year that Willem Bilderdijk begins to teach history in Leiden. This city, as well as this man, would gain great importance in the years to come: the University of Leiden would become an intellectual Mecca, and Bilderdijk would gather admirers and disciples at his side, including the poet Isaäc da Costa, his designated successor. As is often the case, romanticism is answered by realism. This new ambition to be as close to the facts as possible, which also knew how to become a denunciation, found its high point in a novel published under the pseudonym of Multatuli (in Latin: "I have endured much"). Max Havelaar (1860) is the quasi-autobiographical account of Eduard Douwes Dekker who, after growing up in his native house, which has since become a museum dedicated to his memory (Korsjesportsteeg 20, Amsterdam), had gone to the Dutch East Indies where he revolted against the oppression suffered by the Javanese people. A huge bestseller from the moment of its publication, this book is now available in French from the publisher Babel. In the same vein, Jacob Jan Cremer (1827-1880) protested against child labor in Frabriekskinderen (1863). The rejection of polite thinking was also reflected in the way he wrote, and so Jacques Perk, who died of illness at the age of 22 in 1881, challenged the poetic norm in his sonnets, which were published by his friend Williem Kloos (1857-1938), leader of the so-called Tachtigers (or Eighty-Seveners) movement. Alongside him, Albert Verwey, Frederik van Eden and Herman Gorter revolutionized the conventional aestheticism and published their prose in De Nieuwe Gids(The New Guide).20th and 21st centuries
While poetry turned more and more to symbolism, with the 1910 Generation and its journal De Beweging (The Movement), the novel for its part abandoned realism and became shrouded in mystery (or even mysticism) - as in the novel De Stille Kracht (1900), which Louis Couperus set in Java, as did the rest of his work - or lent itself to neo-romanticism (Arthur van Schendel'sThe Frigate Marie-Jeanne, 1903) by describing an imaginary past. To tell the truth, the period is rather fertile: Nescio publishes short stories (De uitvreter, 1911), Simon Vestdijk multiplies publications, Gerrit Achterberg completes his collection Afvaart in 1931..., yet the Nazi threat is already present, as the critic Menno ter Braak hammers it out. In 1936, he founds a vigilance committee, and will kill himself four years later when he sees his fears confirmed. The Diary
of the young Anne Frank will materialize the horror of the Second World War as she describes her daily life in a secret apartment, until a denunciation sends her to perish in Bergen-Belsen when she was not 18 years old..Neither those who survived her nor literature emerged unscathed from this conflict, the time had come to spare the readers' sensibilities, and so a realism appeared that some described as "shocking". Gerard Reve (The Fourth Man) and Anna Blaman (Op leven en dood) were among the first to evoke homosexuality, their own and that of their characters. Willem Frederik Hermans did not spare his peers in an essay on Dutch literature and was just as raw in his novels (including The Dark Room of Damocles, a masterpiece according to Milan Kundera). As for Harry Mulish, the war was for him an intimate drama, his mother being Jewish and his father having collaborated. His obsession with Adolf Eichmann (The 40/61 Affair) was deepened in an essay, but it was above all with his novel The Discovery of Heaven
that he became one of the most popular writers in the Netherlands until his death in 2010. The search for individual - and no longer collective - identity is certainly the issue that gripped writers in the second half of the twentieth century, and continues to do so in the twenty-first century, including those who were not born in the Netherlands but reside there, with all the questions of dual culture or rejection that this engenders. On the other hand, the second notable change is in the readership, which is more educated, more prosperous, and eager to discover. We are now fortunate to be able to make these discoveries in French as well, since the number of translations is constantly increasing. Thus, we can seize the work of authors who have made a lasting impression in recent decades, such as Hella S. Haasse (1918-2011), who was one of the most influential authors of the French language. Haasse (1918-2011), from her novel A Taste of Bitter Almonds to her collection of short stories Aloe ferox; Cees Nooteboom via his short stories(The Lipless Sailor), his novels(Rituals, The Day of the Dead) or his essays(533: The Book of Days, Venice: le lion, la ville et l'eau); of the writer-historian Geert Mak(Voyage d'un Européen à travers le XXe siècle), of the troubling Hans Maarten van den Brinck(Poids et mesures : une comparaison, Sur l'eau) or of the precocious Arnon Grunberg, born in 1971, who published the cult Blue Mondays at 22 years old and reconquered, at the dawn of the 2020's, the tables of the French-speaking booksellers(Taches de naissance, Des bons gars).
