is there a Belgian literature?
Well, Belgium is a strange country, so it has at least two rather distinct literatures, the Francophone one and the other one. Both develop since the Middle Ages, even if with a certain feeling of being late-comers to the medieval Europe, and also with the feeling that the true centres of civilisation were somewhere else. In other words, Belgian literature often has a slight provincial taste, and it creates a certain tradition of rejection of certain forms of civilisation, to leave more space for the lower ones, for the popular classes and their cultural expression. It creates a peculiarity.
I have readAmélie Nothomb, Péplum (1996), Antéchrista (2003)
Conrad Detrez, Ludo (1974), Les Plumes du coq (1975), L'Herbe à brûler (1978) Michel de Ghelderode, Sortilèges (1941) Camille Lemonnier, Un mâle (1881) |
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I have writtenMy master dissertation Les propriétés de l'imaginaire dans le cycle autobiographique de Conrad Detrez (1997)
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books for young females
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I got relatively familiar with Belgian literature during my studies at the University Marie Curie-Sklodowska in Lublin, Eastern Poland. I followed a seminar in the matter, and I wrote a dissertation on Conrad Detrez. It was a peculiar education in many ways, reflecting all the idiosyncrasies of a provincial location and a marginal time - so shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in an academic reality that just started to reshape itself, just a little bit more in accordance with international standards.
I was taught Belgian literature by Jerzy Falicki, author of a history of Francophone Belgian letters published by Ossolineum. He used to present that basic book as the fruit of some twenty years of research; but it constituted for me quite an opposite inspiration. The very simplicity of that kind of scholarly discourse encouraged me to make my own history of contemporary Portuguese literature, the first academic book in my carrier, published in 2000. Falicki was one of those typical Polish professors of the time: prone to step on the limits of sexual harassment, that were rather blurry at the time, a declared friend and defender of young women, in his depth profoundly misogynist (he probably did not even know he was). The funny thing was that he considered himself morally superior in relation to all his West European colleagues; such was the dominant narration of Polish intelligentsia at the time; he would boast about having once invited a Romanian beggar for a feast, to sit at the table together with his family; he claimed to speak Romanian. Such were the Christian values that he cherished (although listening to the proud narration of his merciful deeds, I secretly doubted whether he would simply do it to humiliate his wife and spoil the feast that had costed her a lot of work). At the same time, his ambition was to play the role of some sort of sex educator, leading our femininity to épanouissement, much in the taste of 1968; apparently, such a role was for him yet another mission (the term dear to Polish intelligentsia), bringing closer to us the "civilisation" of Western Europe. Perhaps his desire of "civilizing" us was not entirely out of purpose, and I have no grievance whatsoever against the man; anyway, he was well in his sixties at the time, and whatever we might say or do was just a child's play in comparison with the abuse and disrespect with which we were confronted in Poland on a daily basis. I just count this story to paint the local colour of our life at the provincial university in Eastern Poland, shortly after the Fall of the Wall. Intellectually, my professor could hardly be regarded as a brilliant or sophisticated figure, and he believed that we, his students, essentially required uncomplicated reading, because of our lesser, feminine capacities. Belgian books, as he saw it, fulfilled the criteria. Especially things like Belgian fantastic narrations, about the man who passed through walls (I don't remember exactly the author and the title), and similar. A quarter of a century later, I sometimes wonder if he was right, at least partially. Perhaps it is true that there is a current in Belgian literature that presents itself as eminently unpretentious, even manifestly appealing to those readers who happen to have quite average intellectual capacities, keeping its promise of staying away from excessive sophistication. I think about it as I read Amélie Nothomb, such little books for young females as Antéchrista, a narration of seduction and psychological abuse among adolescent girls. And also Péplum, modest 150 pages filled with a dialogue between the author and a time traveller Celsius, a man from the future, member of an immoral ruling elite defined precisely by high IQ. The intratextual writer defends the mediocrity, the average intelligence that she claims to represent, believing that it comes together with some moral sensibility and the power of indignation. Perhaps these are indeed Belgian virtues, and at a given moment the average writer almost starts to convince me. The immoral man from the future decided to provoke the eruption of Vesuvius to deliberately turn Pompeii into a sort of archaeological miracle for the coming centuries. That was certainly not an act of gratuitous evil. Creating a legacy, he was trying to provide a proof of the value of the South, the deficient part of the globe that the superior part of the humanity, confronted with shrinking resources, decided simply to obliterate in order to solve once and for all the problem of poverty. (Enfin, il allait ne plus y avoir de pauvres! On allait pouvoir manger tranquille, allumer sa télévision sans avoir peur. La boîte aux lettres allait enfin cesser d'être encombrée de papiers qui racontaient le drame des enfants péruviens! - p. 114. Thus, the global South was pitilessly destroyed together with its lazy, indigent, inefficient inhabitants; le vingt-deuxième siècle a fait comme le Christ: il s'est arrêté à Eboli - p. 116). Meanwhile, the intratextual writer is worried about the hibiscus plant she had left in 1995; it needs to be watered every 24 hours. The solution to global problems exposed in this little book does not seem particularly intelligent to me. Anyway, the author will soon awake from the narcosis, for she was having an operation, and the whole story was nothing but a dream. The hibiscus will be saved. It is just a private, aleatory association, but the book brings to my mind my old professor from Lublin, trying to counterbalance his lack of superior intelligence with his presumed superior morality. As if it were a real choice, either high IQ or readiness for mercy. Personally, I still believe that it is rather to the contrary, intellectual sophistication brings about moral sensibility, a true, well-balanced one. Not the idiot ostentation of that eminently Christian professor who brought a beggar to his feast, certainly not to solve the problem of his poverty, but to boast about it year after year to the generations of his downtrodden female students. A little bit like Celsius boasts about his deeds in front of the poor woman from the past, that he clothed in a peplum for the occasion. Jerzy Falicki, Historia francuskojęzycznej literatury Belgów, Wrocław - Kraków - Warszawa, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1990. Amélie Nothomb, Péplum, Paris, Albin Michel, 1996. Neuville-sur-Oise, 22.07.2021. |
the self and the other
My intuition makes me place Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt here, in Belgium. In fact, this French writer living in Brussels since 2002 acquired Belgian citizenship in 2008. But there is a more profound reason. Somehow, I see his kinship with that strand of Belgian literature that speaks to normal people, that rejects intellectual sophistication, that doesn't pretend to be too intelligent.
Once upon a time, a little book by Schmitt was among my favourites: Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2001). This story of a Jewish boy who found friendship of a Turkish shop-keeper, a sort of Sufi in his free time, made me think about a legend about Ibn Arabi, who met a Jewish boy in Damascus, a boy who started to call him his father. I liked the delicate treatment of the religious in this book. I even wrote a couple of essays on it, in Polish.
I also enjoyed other texts of this author, although for quite dissimilar reasons. There was Oscar et la Dame Rose (2002), an emotional hospital story that, in spite of its simplicity, may appeal even to an experienced reader. But much more than this. There was La Rêveuse d'Ostende (2007), the first narration in the volume, about that discreet and charming sex relationship with a royal successor. With a pair of fine gloves as the uttermost pledge, taken to the grave.
Finally, during the pandemic, I found an old copy of La Part de l'autre (2001), a curiously constructed book about Adolf Hitler, about the possible futures of the failed painter. In one of these multiple biographies, he even marries the daughter of an important Zionist. Holocaust might never have happened. There is also Christianity, an aftertaste of that deeply felt religiosity, of that religious instinct that also makes the character of the Low Countries, in the figure of Soeur Lucie, the nurse who took care of Hitler wounded during the ww1. If the things had taken the sentimental, Belgian way, the 20th century might have been such a great time to live. If there were more acceptance for mediocrity, for modest, average existence. If the things were less strident, less grandiloquent, less ambitious, less voracious. If the self could be forgotten leaving more space to the other.
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, La part de l'autre, Paris, Albin Michel, 2001.
Neuville-sur-Oise, 22.07. 2021.
Once upon a time, a little book by Schmitt was among my favourites: Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2001). This story of a Jewish boy who found friendship of a Turkish shop-keeper, a sort of Sufi in his free time, made me think about a legend about Ibn Arabi, who met a Jewish boy in Damascus, a boy who started to call him his father. I liked the delicate treatment of the religious in this book. I even wrote a couple of essays on it, in Polish.
I also enjoyed other texts of this author, although for quite dissimilar reasons. There was Oscar et la Dame Rose (2002), an emotional hospital story that, in spite of its simplicity, may appeal even to an experienced reader. But much more than this. There was La Rêveuse d'Ostende (2007), the first narration in the volume, about that discreet and charming sex relationship with a royal successor. With a pair of fine gloves as the uttermost pledge, taken to the grave.
Finally, during the pandemic, I found an old copy of La Part de l'autre (2001), a curiously constructed book about Adolf Hitler, about the possible futures of the failed painter. In one of these multiple biographies, he even marries the daughter of an important Zionist. Holocaust might never have happened. There is also Christianity, an aftertaste of that deeply felt religiosity, of that religious instinct that also makes the character of the Low Countries, in the figure of Soeur Lucie, the nurse who took care of Hitler wounded during the ww1. If the things had taken the sentimental, Belgian way, the 20th century might have been such a great time to live. If there were more acceptance for mediocrity, for modest, average existence. If the things were less strident, less grandiloquent, less ambitious, less voracious. If the self could be forgotten leaving more space to the other.
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, La part de l'autre, Paris, Albin Michel, 2001.
Neuville-sur-Oise, 22.07. 2021.
Les Masques et la Fête du Printemps
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