Dutch literature

Introduction

      the body of written works in the Dutch (Dutch language) language as spoken in The Netherlands and northern Belgium. The Dutch-language literature of Belgium is treated in Belgian literature.

      Of the earliest inhabitants of The Netherlands, only the Frisians have survived, and they have maintained a separate language and literature since the 8th century. The remainder of The Netherlands was colonized by the Saxons and Franks between the 3rd and 9th centuries, resulting in a predominantly Frankish culture in the south and Saxon or an amalgam of Saxon and Frankish language and culture elsewhere.

      Under the less nomadic Franks, the south prospered more than the north, and there a literary language first developed. Because of marked differences between the dialects of the east, the centre, and the west (Flanders, with features that linked the coastal dialects with Old English), the development was very gradual. In the early Middle Ages, when Latin and, later, French were the languages of the educated, the vernacular was largely confined to unrecorded oral legend and folk songs. The earliest text that can claim to contain examples of Old Dutch was the early 10th-century “Wachtendonck Psalm Fragments.”

Medieval literary works

Poetry and prose

      The work of Heinrich von Veldeke, the earliest known poet to use a Dutch dialect, typified the age's religious zeal, which emanated from the French centres of learning. In addition to his Eneit (c. 1185), a chivalrous rendering of Virgil's Aeneid, and his love lyrics, which were important for German poets, Heinrich produced Servatius, a saint's life written in the Limburg dialect. Dutch 13th- and 14th-century texts were generally written in the cultural centres of Flanders and Brabant, where, for reasons of trade, the prevailing influence was French. Throughout Europe the Crusades brought courtly romances (courtly love) into vogue, and Dutch romances, following French models, were written about events from classical history, such as Segher Diergotgaf 's Paerlement van Troyen (“Parliament of Troy”); about Oriental subjects; or, most popular of all, on themes from Celtic sagas, including the Arthurian (Arthurian legend) cycle. But by the 1260s chivalry was on the decline; the titles of Jacob van Maerlant's (Maerlant, Jacob van) later works bear witness to a late 13th-century reaction against romance. Van Maerlant's compendia of knowledge, including his Der naturen bloeme (“The Flower of Nature”) and Spieghel historiael (“The Mirror of History”), answered a demand for the kind of self-instructional literature that long remained a characteristic of Dutch literature. The change in social patterns at this time is also evident in two epic tales. Karel ende Elegast (“Charles and Elegast”), probably an original Flemish chanson de geste of the 12th or 13th century, describes with feudal reverence Charlemagne's adventures in the magic world of folklore. Van den vos Reinaerde (c. 1240; “Reynard the Fox”) is the Flemish poet Willem's version of a translation by another Fleming, Aernout, of the French Le Plaid, which, by contrast, brilliantly satirizes feudal society and the epic manner.

      Mystical writing reached a remarkable lyrical intensity in the poetry and hortatory prose of a Brabantine laywoman, Hadewijch (late 12th, early 13th century), and this inspired later mystics, greatest of whom was Jan van Ruysbroeck (Ruysbroeck, Jan van), a disciple of the German mystic Meister Eckehart and The Netherlands' greatest medieval prose writer. His most important work was Die chierheit der gheestliker brulocht (1350; The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, or The Spiritual Espousals), concerning the soul in search of God. His work was part of a renewed ecclesiastic concern to instruct the laity, which resulted in a wealth of Bible stories, legends, and didactic short stories. Of these, Beatrijs, an early 14th-century Flemish verse rendering of a popular legend, is told with such humanity and restraint that it still inspires modern versions (e.g., those by Maurice Maeterlinck and Pieter Cornelis Boutens).

Songs, drama, and the rhetoricians

      The earliest recorded songs suggest a Germanic rather than a Romance tradition. Because the first extant plays—the 14th-century Abele spelen (“seemly plays”)—were entirely secular (and may have been the first of such in Europe), incorporating romantic themes from the earlier songs, there is reason to attribute the emergence of drama in The Netherlands as much to mime and song as to liturgical action. The only evidence of early liturgical drama is the Latin Officium stellae of the 14th century, after which there is nothing until 1448–55, when the play cycle on the seven joys of Mary was first performed at Brussels. Of the many miracle (miracle play) and morality plays (morality play), two deserve special mention: Mariken van Nieumeghen (late 15th century; “Mary of Nijmegen”) and Elckerlyc (of about the same date). The first anticipates the Renaissance in its psychology and treatment; the second, entirely medieval in its conception, is the original of the English Everyman. Both were written by members of rederijkerskamers (rederijkerskamer), or chambers of rhetoric, institutions that spread from the French border in the 15th century. Organized like guilds, with functions similar to those of the French medieval dramatic societies, the chambers were commissioned by the town protecting them to provide the ceremonial and entertainment at religious and secular festivals, and they were influential in popularizing art and morals. Drama by this time was in the hands of the laity rather than the church, and the introduction of secular themes made it necessary to perform outside of religious buildings, using stages or carts. The survival of the chambers depended on literary performance, and members organized national festivals and competitions. A record of one such festival, held in 1561, is the illustrated Antwerps landjuweel (1562; “Antwerp National Contest”).

The Renaissance and Reformation

      The literature of Flanders and Holland must be considered as a whole until about 1585, when the fall of Antwerp marked the final rift between the Protestant north and the Roman Catholic south. The new art of the Renaissance, coming to The Netherlands from Italy through France, first found expression in writers such as Lucas de Heere, who had fled from the Catholic southern provinces for religious reasons. Chapbooks (chapbook), containing prose versions of medieval romances, folk songs, and rederijkers (“rhetoricians”) verse; Reformation propaganda; marching songs of the Calvinist revolt against Spain; these and the first sonnets, the first dissertations in the vernacular, and the first grammars of the Dutch language displayed the restlessness of an age of change. So, while the Catholic Anna Bijns was fulminating against Lutheranism in her glowing satirical verse, which was countered later by the Calvinist Marnix van Sint Aldegonde in his polemical attack on the Catholic Church, the echoes of classical antiquity were reaching The Netherlands in the odes, sonnets, and translations of Jan Baptista van der Noot (Noot, Jan Baptista van der) and Jan van Hout. Carel van Mander (Mander, Carel van), painter and poet, introduced scholarly vernacular prose writing, though the Latin prose of Erasmus (Erasmus, Desiderius) had been famous throughout Europe for nearly a century.

      Van der Noot's Petrarchan sonnets, written in the manner of the French poet Pierre de Ronsard, were published in London, where he was then in exile for participating in an insurrection in 1567. The two great moderates of the age were the Erasmians Henric Laurenszoon Spieghel and Dirk Volkertszoon Coornhert (Coornhert, Dirck Volckertszoon), liberal Humanists who espoused a social, undogmatic Christian ethic. Spieghel's poetry is generally more intellectual than Coornhert's prose, which was influenced by Montaigne and the Bible, with a remarkably supple and lucid, even entertaining, style. It was Coornhert and his successors, in particular the translators of the Dutch authorized version of the Bible (published in 1637), who laid the foundations of the standard language.

The 17th century

      While the Spanish hold on the Catholic south of The Netherlands during and after the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) caused a decline in Brabant and Flanders, there was a spectacular expansion in Holland, to which artists, intellectuals, and financiers had fled from the Spanish armies. The emergence of Amsterdam and The Hague as capitals of an empire and the birth of civic pride in writers of the “Golden Age” symbolized the final passing of a medieval age belonging to Ghent, Bruges, Liège, and Antwerp.

The writers of the “Golden Age”

      Spieghel (Spieghel, Henric Laurenszoon), the greatest of a generation straddling the old and the new, wrote for both the burgher and scholar. His Nieujaarliedekens (“New Year Songs”) and Lieden op 't Vader Ons (“Songs on the Lord's Prayer”) continued a medieval tradition in a Renaissance style echoing Erasmian moderation; his learned Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst (1584; “Dialogue on Dutch Literature”) was intended to popularize the use of a national language. His most scholarly work, the unfinished Hertspieghel (1614; “Mirror of the Heart”), was particularly abstruse because it represented a first attempt at philosophizing in the vernacular and in poetry.

      The dichotomy inherent in the Renaissance—between popular religious revival and Humanism—was particularly marked in Holland because of the incompatibility of Calvinistic principles with the ideals of pagan antiquity. This caused a tense ambivalence in many writers of the 17th century who took both their religion and their art seriously. Daniël Heinsius (Heinsius, Daniël), a celebrated Humanist at the University of Leiden, wrote plays in Latin, but he also contributed to the vernacular by writing Hymnus oft lof-sanck van Bacchus (1614; “Hymn in Praise of Bacchus”) and an equally devout Lof-sanck van Jesus Christus (1615).

      A poet, playwright, and painter, Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero (Bredero, Gerbrand Adriaenszoon) took his material from the life of the commoner; his medium was the folk song, farce, or comedy. His secular songs in medieval style and devotional songs in Renaissance verse told of a passionate devotion to women and yearning for religious moderation. While his three tragicomedies were not successful, his three farces marked the zenith of the medieval genre. Contemporary life in Amsterdam provided material for his two comedies, including his masterpiece, Spaanschen Brabander (performed 1617).

      Amsterdam was the home of the poet and dramatist Joost van den Vondel (Vondel, Joost van den). Like Bredero, he was self-educated, and he resolved the conflict between artistic and religious leanings only when he entered the Roman Catholic Church at age 54. This was a courageous act of faith at a time when Catholics formed an unpopular minority. It is a measure of van den Vondel's indomitable personality that his attitude toward contemporary people and events, of which he was a fearless chronicler, still prevails even when history has recorded a different view. His plays, however, are too austere for modern readers, although, in his Sophoclean Jeptha (1659) and his Baroque masterpieces Lucifer (1654) and Adam in ballingschap (1664; Adam in Exile), he was as great an artist of the Counter-Reformation as his contemporary the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens.

      The aristocratic Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon) was one of a fortunate few in Holland to bring the refinements of the new art directly from Italy. He lavished an Italianate flourish on his sonnets and plays, the studied prose of his letters, and a monumental unfinished history of the war against Spain. His castle at Muyden became a thriving centre for the entertainment of artists and scholars attracted not only by a mutual interest in poetry, music, and learning but also by the charm of such gifted young women as the Roemer Visscher daughters, Anna and Maria.

      Anna Visscher (Visscher, Anna) in verse, like her father Roemer in prose, popularized ethics in a manner that was to bring Jacob Cats (Cats, Jacob) unmerited fame. Cats's prolix moralizing, pedestrian doggerel, and patronizing tone forced their way into his country's literature if only because of the disastrous influence they had on the taste of their middle-class readership.

      A more harmonious individual, Constantijn Huygens (Huygens, Constantijn), had all the qualities to which Dutchmen of his day might aspire. A man of strict Calvinist principles, he was an able diplomat who wrote trenchant, shrewd, and witty verse and made excellent translations of John Donne's poetry.

Religious poetry

      Three clerics contributed religious verse of considerable merit. The Roman Catholic Joannes Stalpaert van der Wiele wrote Den schat der geestelycke lofsangen (1634; “The Treasury of Devotional Praise”), containing songs of medieval simplicity and devotion. Jacobus Revius (Revius, Jacobus), an orthodox Calvinist, was a master of the Renaissance forms and the sonnet. Ironically, Dirk Rafaëlszoon Camphuysen, removed from his parish because of his unorthodoxy, satisfied a widespread demand for personal, devotional poetry in Stichtelycke rymen (1624; “Edifying Poems”). Equally popular was the introspective mystical poetry by the ascetic Jan Luyken (Luyken, Jan), a layman who began by writing hedonistic songs in De Duytse lier (1671; “The Dutch Lyre”), containing fine love lyrics.

The 18th century

      The appearance in 1669 of the first literary society (dichtgenootschap) was an omen of a decline in Dutch literature lasting through the 18th century. Material well-being sapped the vitality of the nation. Even the talented poet Hubert Poot suffered from the delusion of his day that rococo flourish and prescribed form were the criteria of poetry. Prose, too, consisted almost exclusively of translations and bombastic disquisitions. Significantly, Justus van Effen (Effen, Justus van) wrote in French before he founded De Hollandsche spectator (1731–35). The simple style of his moralizing essays contrasts with the work of his contemporaries, and his descriptive realism links him with two popular Dutch authors, Betje Wolff (byname of Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker) and Aagje Deken (byname of Agatha Deken).

      Betje Wolff (Wolff, Betje), essayist and poet, blended rationalism and romanticism in her creative genius. Her association with Aagje Deken (Deken, Aagje) as friend and fellow writer produced the classic epistolary novel De historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart (1782; “The History of Miss Sara Burgerhart”), dedicated to “Dutch young ladies.” Remarkable for its wit and realism, it owed much to the English novelist Samuel Richardson. Wolff's intelligence and humour also dominated the original didactic purpose of the pair's eight-volume Willem Leevend (1784–85).

      By the end of the century a number of poets—including Hieronymus van Alphen, Rhijnvis Feith, Jacobus Bellamy, and Antony Staring—were reacting against Neoclassicism. The most admired and influential poet of the period was Willem Bilderdijk (Bilderdijk, Willem), whose versatile genius was almost smothered with excesses of rhetoric but whose Protestant zeal had repercussions in the Réveil (Revival), a Calvinist fundamentalist movement that gave impetus to the literary revival of the 1830s.

The 19th century

Romanticism

      Although Jacob Geel's essays in Onderzoek en phantasie (1838; “Inquiry and Fantasy”) set a new standard in philological and philosophical criticism in Dutch literature, Geel's liberal rationalism was almost swept aside by the growing wave of Romanticism. Simultaneously, the freethinking born of the Enlightenment roused the militancy of the Calvinists, who realized that their entrenched position was being threatened. Willem Bilderdijk and his disciple Isaäc da Costa reminded the nation of its divine mission, and foreign historical novels (particularly the work of Chateaubriand and Sir Walter Scott) provided models for historical national Romanticism. In 1826 David van Lennep published a paper calling for novels modeled on Scott; and his son Jacob (Lennep, Jacob van) was the first of many writers to respond, with De pleegzoon (1833; The Adopted Son). Aernout Drost (Drost, Aernout), author of Hermingard van de Eikenterpen (1832; “Hermingard of the Oak Burial Mounds”), set at the beginning of the Christian Era, also started a new literary journal, De muzen (1834), which, like his novel, was true to the spirit of the Réveil. Two men on the journal's staff, a historian, R.C. Bakhuizen van den Brink, and a future leader of the literary revival, Everhardus Johannes Potgieter (Potgieter, Everhardus Johannes), continued the campaign to improve critical standards in De gids (“The Guide”), known as the “Blue Butcher” because of its merciless treatment of complacency. Potgieter defined the historical novel, and Anna Bosboom-Toussaint put his ideas into effect, transposing the universal Christian idealism of Drost to the national Protestant faith of the Golden Age. Bosboom-Toussaint's best known book, Majoor Frans (1874; “Major Francis”), was not historical, belonging rather to an era of liberal politics and female emancipationists.

      Nicolaas Beets (Beets, Nicolaas), although feted as a national Protestant poet, owes his enduring fame to his sketches in Camera obscura (1839), with their stylistic virtuosity and Dickensian observation of detail. Potgieter's allegorical humour was less direct in its appeal, and his quest for originality tended to deprive his style of simplicity and clarity. The perceptive and often scathing critic Conrad Busken Huet (Busken Huet, Conrad), a progressive who left the church, placed Dutch writing in a truer perspective with western European writing. His essays were collected in Litterarische fantasiën en kritieken (1868–88; “Literary Fantasies and Criticisms”), and his later work was best represented by Het land van Rembrand (1882–84). Meanwhile, a furor had been caused by an entirely unknown writer, Multatuli (pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker), whose Max Havelaar (1860; Eng. trans. 1927), a satire of Dutch exploitation of the Dutch East Indies, unexpectedly revealed a stylistic innovator of genius. Dekker's writing, in Wouterje Pieterse (1865–77; Eng. trans. 1904) and Minnebrieven (1861; “Love Letters”), vibrated between extremes of sentimentality and anarchy, iconoclasm and utopianism. Although poetry as a convention was anathema to him, Dekker was greatly admired by the young men of the new generation, such as Jacques Perk, who wrote sketches in Dekker's humorous style before composing a sonnet cycle, Mathilde (published posthumously in 1882), which opened a new epoch in Dutch literature.

Movement of the 1880s

      The appearance of the periodical De nieuwe gids (“The New Guide”) in 1885 marked the beginning of an important renaissance of literature in the northern Netherlands. Unlike the earlier periodical De gids, it pursued an exclusively aesthetic ideal. Leaders of the movement were the poets Willem Kloos and Albert Verwey and the violent and lyrical critic Lodewijk van Deyssel. Among others prominent in the movement were the dramatist, poet, and prose writer Frederik Willem van Eeden; Herman Gorter, who became the foremost poet after his poem “Mei” (“May”) appeared in 1889; and the poets Pieter Cornelis Boutens and Jan Hendrik Leopold.

The 20th century

      The writers of the Dutch revival of the 1880s were essentially individualistic, but in the next generation a new concern for philosophical and social problems became apparent. The poetry of a prominent socialist writer named Henriëtte Roland Holst-van der Schalk was characterized by a desire for justice and charity. The socialist dramas of Herman Heijermans were internationally successful. A group of Naturalist-Realist novelists—including Frans Coenen and, most gifted of all, Marcellus Emants—flourished. Arthur van Schendel made his debut with Neoromantic fiction, and Louis Marie Anne Couperus was at his peak as a stylish chronicler of life in The Hague.

      Significant early poets were A. Roland Holst, J.C. Bloem, and P.N. van Eyck, a philosophical poet and essayist. Immediately after World War I two poets emerged: Hendrik Marsman (Marsman, Hendrik), an advocate of free verse and representative of the Vitalist movement; and the pessimistic Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (Slauerhoff, Jan Jacob), whose works reflect the restless romanticism and disillusionment that characterized his life.

      The literary periodical Forum was founded in 1932 by Menno ter Braak and Edgar du Perron, leaders of a movement that aimed to replace superficial elegance with greater sincerity and warned against the German threat before the war. The most important mid-20th-century Dutch writer, Simon Vestdijk (Vestdijk, Simon), was originally associated with the Forum group, while Ferdinand Bordewijk's terse style produced hauntingly original fiction. The most original poet was Gerrit Achterberg, whose poems explore the boundary between life and death.

      During the Nazi occupation, free literature either stopped or was published secretly. The poets known as Vijftigers (Men of the Fifties) rejected the reflective lyricism of the interwar years in favour of an experimentalist style that drew on Dada, Surrealism, and primitive and children's art to create a maximum of physicality. Minimal punctuation, neologisms, and startling associative imagery were used in the poetry of Lucebert (pseudonym of Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk). The poets of the following decade, among them J. Bernlef (pseudonym of Hendrik Jan Marsman), reacted with a deliberately low-key, “prosy” style. In Hans Cornelis ten Berge's richly allusive poems, the poet's ego is submerged in a closely structured exploration of language, myth, and history. In the 1970s Gerrit Komrij and others returned to traditional forms such as the sonnet and to rhyme, often with knowing and ironic undertones.

      Postwar novelists showed the influence of the Nazi occupation in various ways. Anna Blaman treated existential solitude, while Willem Frederik Hermans' (Hermans, Willem Frederik) classically constructed stories and novels, notably De donkere kamer van Damocles (1958; The Dark Room of Damocles) and Nooit meer slapen (1966; “No More Sleep”), compellingly present a hostile universe that is chaotic and unfathomable. War, for Hermans, is simply an intensification of the abject human condition. Gerard (Kornelis van het) Reve (Reve, Gerard), who made his debut as a deadpan chronicler of postwar malaise in De avonden (1947; “The Evenings”), concocted, in such books as Nader tot U (1966; “Nearer to Thee”), an extravagant and virtuoso blend of fact and fiction in the name of Romantic Decadence. Inventive panache, vitality, and philosophical reflection mark the fiction of Harry Mulisch, from Het stenen bruidsbed (1959; The Stone Bridal Bed), set in postwar Dresden, E.Ger., to a later treatment of the aftermath of occupation, De aanslag (1982; “The Attack”). Though he belongs chronologically to the war generation, Jan Wolkers began writing in the 1960s and brought a visual artist's sensibility to his often brutal stories and novels. Reactions to the painful loss of empire in the East Indies ran the gamut of nostalgia, affection, bitterness, and alienation in the work of Beb Vuyk (byname of Elizabeth Vuyk), Maria Dermoût, and Albert Alberts, and the colonial experience continues to be a source of inspiration. The tradition of sombre and anecdotal realism, dating from the late 19th century, was continued with great popular success by Maarten 't Hart, who in De aansprekers (1979; Bearers of Bad Tidings) drew fruitfully on the experience of a strict Calvinist upbringing. The “academic” school of writers associated with the magazine De Revisor, founded in 1973, preferred elegantly crafted analytical fictions to “mere” storytelling. Fictional miniaturism continued to thrive in short stories by Anton Koolhaas, Simon Carmiggelt, and F.B. Hotz.

      It should be emphasized that from the 1930s Dutch literature and Flemish literature have been part of a composite literary culture: the writers, literary organizations, and departments of culture of the two countries have worked in close cooperation.

Additional Reading

C.G.N. De Vooys and G. Stuiveling, Schets van de Nederlandse letterkunde, 30th ed. (1966); Gerard Knuvelder, Handboek tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandse letterkunde, 5th ed. (1970–76); Theodor Weevers, Poetry of the Netherlands in Its European Context, 1170–1930 (1960); James Anderson Russell, Dutch Romantic Poetry (1961); and Reinder P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries, new ed. (1978).Gerard Willem Huygens Peter K. King Paul F. Vincent Ed.

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