The last years of the 18th century, which had seen decline in the Republic, including the arts and international politics, were marked by a general revival of intellectual force. The romantic movement in Germany made itself deeply felt in all branches of Dutch literature and German lyricism took the place hitherto held by French classicism, in spite of the country falling to French expansionalism (see also History of the Netherlands).
The French era and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1795–1839)
Willem Bilderdijk.
Against this backdrop, the most prominent writer was Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831), an intellectual and intelligent man whose outspoken and eccentric worldview was partly caused by an illness during his adolescence that kept him indoors for ten years. Once recovered he lived a busy, eventful life, writing great quantities of verse; in 1809 he started writing the work he designed to be his masterpiece, the epicDe Ondergang der Eerste Wereld ("The Destruction of the First World"), which remained unfinished and appeared as a fragment only in 1820.
Bilderdijk had no time for the new romantic style of poetry, but its fervour found its way into the Netherlands nevertheless, and first of all in the person of Hiëronymus van Alphen (1746–1803). Van Alphen is best remembered for the verses he wrote for children, which are still taught in kindergartens all over the country. Van Alphen was an exponent of the more sentimental school along with Rhijnvis Feith (1753–1824), whose romances are steeped in Weltschmerz.
In Hendrik Tollens (1780–1856) some the power of Bilderdijk and the sweetness of Feith were combined. He is best known for celebrating the great deeds of Dutch history in a series of lyrical romances. Today, Tollens is best known for his poem "Wien Neêrlands Bloed" ("To Those in Whom Dutch Blood Flows Through the Veins"), a nationalistic effort that, set to music, was the Dutch national anthem until 1932, when it was superseded by Marnix' "Wilhelmus". A poet of considerable talent, whose powers were awakened by personal intercourse with Tollens and his followers, was Antoni Christiaan Wijnandt Staring (1767–1840). Staring first published at the age of fifty-three only, but continued to write till past his seventieth year. His poems are a blend of romanticism and rationalism.
After Napoleon's downfall in the Southern Netherlands village of Waterloo, the northern and southern provinces were briefly united as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands; this period lasted until 1830 only, when the southern provinces seceded to form Belgium. This period had little influence in literature, and in the new state of Belgium, the status of the Dutch language remained largely unchanged as all governmental and educational affairs were conducted in French.
Ministers, formalism and romanticism (1830–1880)
Nicolaas Beets (Hildebrand).
In scientific and religious literature men of letters showed themselves cognizant of the newest shades of opinion, and freely ventilated their ideas. The language resisted the pressure of German from the outside, and from within broke through its long stagnation and enriched itself, as a medium for literary expression, with a multitude of fresh and colloquial forms. At the same time, no very great genius arose in the Netherlands in any branch of literature. For the thirty or forty years preceding 1880 the course of literature in Holland was smooth and even sluggish. The Dutch writers had slipped into a conventionality of treatment and a strict limitation of form from which even the most striking talents among them could scarcely escape.
Poetry and a large part of prose was dominated by the so-called school of ministers, as the leading writers all were or had been Calvinistministers. As a result, many of their products emphasized Biblical and bourgeois domestic values. Prime examples include Everhardus Johannes Potgieter (1808–1875, lyric poetry) and Nicolaas Beets (1814–1903), who wrote large quantities of sermons and poetry under his own name but is chiefly remembered today for the humorous prose sketches of Dutch life in Camera Obscura (1839), which he wrote during his student days under the pseudonym of Hildebrand.
A poet of power and promise was lost in the early death of P.A. de Genestet (1829–1861). His narrative poem "De Sint-Nicolaasavond" ("Eve of Saint Nicholas") appeared in 1849 and attained great popularity. Another poet who among others wrote verse for children was Jan Pieter Heije (1809–1876), whose songs are sung to this day. A poet who left no large contemporary impression but who is considered one of the very few readable 19th-century poets is Piet Paaltjens (ps. of François Haverschmidt, 1835–1894). Paaltjens personifies the pure Romantic vein exemplified in German literature by Heine and others. Criticism was best represented by W. J. A. Jonckbloet (1817–1885), who was the first to write a comprehensive history of Dutch literature (1870).
Hendrik Conscience.
Under the influence of romantic nationalism, writers in Belgium began to reconsider their Flemish heritage and move for a recognition of the Dutch language in both official affairs (including education) and literature. Charles De Coster laid the foundations for a native Belgian literature by recounting the Flemish past in historic romances but wrote his works, including his masterpiece Légende de Thyl Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak (1867) in French. Hendrik Conscience (1812–1883), himself the son of a Frenchman, was the first to write about Flemish subjects in the Dutch language and so is considered the father of modern Flemish literature. In Flemish poetry, Guido Gezelle (1830–1899) is an important figure. Gezelle, an ordainedjournalist-cum-ethnologist, celebrated his faith and his Flemish roots using an archaic vocabulary based on Medieval Flemish dialects to the detriment of his intelligibility beyond his native West Flanders.
E. Douwes Dekker (Multatuli).
After the restoration in 1815 to the Dutch state of the Dutch East Indies, former corporate Dutch East India Company possessions occupied by the United Kingdom during the Napoleonic era, works of literature continued to be produced there, among which the romances of Melati van Java (ps. of Nicolina Maria Christina Sloot, 1853–1927), which were widely read in both the Netherlands and Belgium. With the rise of social consciousness regarding the administration of the colonies and the treatment of their inhabitants, however, a far more influential voice rose from the Indies in the form of Multatuli (ps. of Eduard Douwes Dekker, 1820–1887), whose Max Havelaar (1860) is a scathing indictment of colonial mismanagement and one of the few 19th-century prose works still widely considered readable today. Although the Belgians had obtained colonial possessions in their own right with the Congo Free State/Belgian Congo, no Dutch-language literature was forthcoming as the territory was entirely Francophone.
The two leading Dutch men of letters in the mid-19th century besides Beets and Douwes Dekker were critics, Conrad Busken-Huet (1826–1886) and Carel Vosmaer (1826–1888). In Busken-Huet the principles of the 1830–1880 period were summed up; he had been during all those years the fearless and trusty watch-dog of Dutch letters as he understood them. He lived just long enough to become aware that a revolution was approaching, not to comprehend its character; but his accomplished fidelity to literary principle and his wide knowledge have been honoured even by the most bitter of the younger school.
In November 1881 Jacques Perk (born 1860) died, a young poet who had done no more than publish a few sonnets in a journal published by Vosmaer. He was no sooner dead, however, than his posthumous poems, and in particular a cycle of sonnets called "Mathilde", were published (1882) and awakened extraordinary emotion. Perk had rejected all the formulas of rhetorical poetry, and had broken up the conventional rhythms. There had been no music like his heard in Holland for two hundred years.
A group of young men collected around his name. They were joined by a poet-novelist-dramatist somewhat older than themselves, Marcellus Emants (1848–1923). Emants had written a symbolical poem called "Lilith" in 1879 that had been stigmatised as audacious and meaningless; encouraged by the admiration of his juniors, Emants published in 1881 a treatise in the form of a novel in which the first open attack was made on the old school.
The next appearance was that of Willem Kloos (1857–1938), who had been the editor and intimate friend of Perk, and who now undertook to lead the army of rebellion. His violent attacks on recognized authority in aesthetics began in 1882 and created a considerable scandal. For some time the new poets and critics found a great difficulty in being heard as all the channels of periodical literature were closed to them, but in 1884 the young school founded a review, De Nieuwe Gids ("The New Guide"), which was able to offer a direct challenge to De Gids ("The Guide"), the old guard's periodical. The new movement was called Tachtigers or "Movement of (Eighteen-)Eighty", after the decade in which it arose. The Tachtigers insisted that style must match content, and that intimate and visceral emotions can only be expressed using an intimate and visceral writing style.
In the same year 1884 a new element was introduced. Until now, the influences of the young Dutch poetry had chiefly come from the United Kingdom; they were those of Shelley, Mrs Browning, the Rossettis (Dante and Christina). The Frenchnaturalists now became an additional ingredient and for some time the new Dutch literature became a sort of mixture of Shelley and Zola, heady and bewildering. This was the great flowering moment of the new school.
Louis Couperus.
One of the most important Dutch novelists, Louis Couperus (1863–1923), had his roots in the Tachtigers movement. His boyhood years were spent in Java, and he had preserved in all his nature a certain tropical magnificence. His first literary efforts were lyrics in the Tachtigers style, but Couperus proved far more important and durable as a novelist and his earliest story, Eline Vere (1889) already took him out of the ranks of his contemporaries. In 1891 he published Noodlot, which was translated into English as Footsteps of Fate It was greatly admired by Oscar Wilde, whose The Picture of Dorian Gray is said to have been influenced by it. Couperus continued to pour out one important novel after another until his death in 1923. He separated himself, as he developed, from the more fanatical members of the Tachtigers group, and addressed himself to the wider public. Another talent for prose was revealed by Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932) in De kleine Johannes ("Little Johnny", 1887) and in Van de koele meren des doods ("From the Cold Pools of Death", 1901), a melancholy novel.
19th century
After 1887 the condition of modern Dutch literature remained comparatively stationary, and within the last decade of the 19th century was definitely declining. In 1889 a new poet, Herman Gorter (1864–1927) made his appearance with an epic poem called Mei ("May"), eccentric both in prosody and in treatment. He held his own without any marked advance towards lucidity or variety. Since the recognition of Gorter, however, no really remarkable talent has made itself prominent in Dutch poetry except P.C. Boutens (1870–1943), whose Verzen ("Verses") in 1898 were received with great respect.
Willem Kloos, still the acute and somewhat turbulent leader of the school, collected his poems in 1894 and his critical essays in 1896. The others, with the exception of Couperus, showed symptoms of sinking into silence. The entire school, now that the struggle for recognition was over, and its members were accepted as the mainstream, rested on its triumphs and soon limited itself to a repetition of its old experiments.
The leading dramatist at the close of the century was Herman Heijermans (1864–1924), a writer of strong realistic and socialistic tendencies who single-handedly brought Dutch theatre into the modern time. His Ghetto (1898) and Ora et labora (1901) particularly display his peculiar talent, while his fishermen'stragedyOp hoop van zegen ("Trusting Our Fate in the Hands of God"), which is still staged and has been filmed more than once , remains his most popular play.
Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was a Dutch novelist and poet. His oeuvre contains a wide variety of genres: lyric poetry, psychological and historical novels, novellas, short stories, fairy tales, feuilletons and sketches. Couperus is considered to be one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature. In 1923, he was awarded the Tollensprijs.
Dutch language literature comprises all writings of literary merit written through the ages in the Dutch language, a language which currently has around 23 million native speakers. Dutch-language literature is the product of the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles and of formerly Dutch-speaking regions, such as French Flanders, South Africa, and Indonesia. The Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was called under Dutch colonization, spawned a separate subsection in Dutch-language literature. Conversely, Dutch-language literature sometimes was and is produced by people originally from abroad who came to live in Dutch-speaking regions, such as Anne Frank and Kader Abdolah. In its earliest stages, Dutch-language literature is defined as those pieces of literary merit written in one of the Dutch dialects of the Low Countries. Before the 17th century, there was no unified standard language; the dialects that are considered Dutch evolved from Old Frankish. A separate Afrikaans literature started to emerge during the 19th century, and it shares the same literary roots as contemporary Dutch, as Afrikaans evolved from 17th-century Dutch. The term Dutch literature may either indicate in a narrow sense literature from the Netherlands, or alternatively Dutch-language literature.
Alphonsus Josephus de Ridder was a Belgian writer and poet who wrote under the pseudonym Willem Elsschot. One of the most prominent Flemish authors, his most famous work, Cheese (1933) is the most translated Flemish-language novel of all time.
Hugo Maurice Julien Claus was a leading Belgian author who published under his own name as well as various pseudonyms. Claus' literary contributions spanned the genres of drama, novels, and poetry; he also left a legacy as a painter and film director. He wrote primarily in Dutch, although he also wrote some poetry in English. He won the 2000 International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Guido Pieter Theodorus Josephus Gezelle was an influential writer and poet and a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium. He is famous for the use of the West Flemish dialect, but he also wrote in other languages like Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Greek.
William Falconer was a Scottish epic poet concerned mainly with life at sea. He also compiled a dictionary of maritime terms.
Emmanuel Hiel, was a Flemish-Dutch poet and prose writer.
Jan van Beers was a Belgian poet born in Antwerp. He is usually referred to as "van Beers the elder" to distinguish him from his son, Jan van Beers (1852–1927), the painter.
Willem Johannes Theodorus Kloos was a nineteenth-century Dutch poet and literary critic. He was one of the prominent figures of the Movement of Eighty and became editor in chief of De Nieuwe Gids after the editorial fracture in 1893. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.
The Tachtigers ("Eightiers"), otherwise known as the Movement of Eighty, were a radical and influential group of Dutch writers who developed a new approach in 19th-century Dutch literature. They interacted and worked together in Amsterdam from the 1880s. Many of them are still widely read today.
Flemish literature is literature from Flanders, historically a region comprising parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Until the early 19th century, this literature was regarded as an integral part of Dutch literature. After Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830, the term Flemish literature acquired a narrower meaning and refers to the Dutch-language literature produced in Belgium. It remains a part of Dutch-language literature.
Middle Dutch literature (1150–1500) is the Dutch literature produced in the Low Countries from the 12th century to the 16th century. It is preceded by only a few fragmentary texts existing in Old Dutch, and it was succeeded by Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age literature.
Joanna Courtmans, born Joanna-Desideria Berchmans, was a Flemish writer.
Stefan Hertmans is a Flemish Belgian writer. He was head of a study centre at University College Ghent and affiliated researcher of the Ghent University. He won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prijs in 2002 for the novel Als op de eerste dag.
Patrick Conrad is a Flemish painter, poet, screenwriter and novelist, and one of the founders of The Pink Poets. He also directed about twenty movies for cinema and television, including – selected for the Cannes Festival - the international cult film Mascara. As a painter and collage artist he showed his Work in about 40 solo exhibitions in Belgium and France and three retrospective exhibitions of his work: in 1975, in 2005 and in 2022 in the Verbeke Foundation. His work is part of important private collections in France, Belgium, England, Scotland, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Australia and U.S. He lived 34 years in the south of France and moved in 2023 to Porto Alegre (Brasil). In Belgium he is represented by the Paul Verbeke galery which published an artbook about his work.
Carel Steven Adama van Scheltema was a Dutch socialist poet.
Orchids, a collection of prose and poetry is a collection of prose and poetry written by Dutch writer Louis Couperus, which was published in 1886. Couperus published his debut, A ribbon of poems in 1886 with publisher J.L. Beijers. The rights to publish Couperus' books were taken over by publisher A. Rössing, who then published the second book of Couperus, Orchids, a collection of prose and poetry. After Rössing filed for bankruptcy in 1890 the rights were taken over by L.J. Veen, who would publish the second edition in 1895. In 1989 Veen would reprint Orchids when Couperus' complete works were published.
LGBT writers in the Dutch-language area are writers from de Lage Landen, that is Flanders and the Netherlands,
Augusta Guerdina Peaux was a Dutch poet. She began her publishing career as a writer of prose fiction, in literary magazines and in one collection, and in the early 1900s started publishing poetry, in magazines associated with the literary movement known as the Tachtigers, with whom she became associated. With her sister Johanna, she translated poetry by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, and with her friend Truus, with whom she shared a love for Iceland and its literature, she translated stories from the Edda. Two volumes of her poetry were published; she never sought literary fame, though some fame came to her posthumously.
Jacques Fabrice Herman Perk was an important Dutch poet of the late 19th century. His crown of sonnets Mathilde, published by Willem Kloos, was the first important announcement of a renewal in Dutch poetry brought about by artists that came to be known as the Tachtigers. Perk's lyrical poems about nature, especially his sonnets, were influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and were of great importance to Dutch poetry.
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