The Golden Age
The exact year of his birth remains a mystery, but it undoubtedly took place at the beginning of the second half of the 15th century, in a Europe with no shortage of books, but where Latin was still the language of learning, all the more so for those who were 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 Fauste Andrelin, to England, where he befriended Thomas More, the author of Utopia. A child of the Renaissance and a fine connoisseur of the Ancients, his love of travel combined with his passion for correspondence with various international interlocutors fueled his inspiration and made him a champion of cosmopolitanism (as his motto put it: "the whole world is the homeland of us all"), which is just one facet of his humanism, as he advocated peace and criticized the clergy for forgetting the message of the Gospels. His most famous work - then and now - is Éloge de la folie (1511), a faux satirical entertainment and real philosophical manual, in which the eponymous goddess addresses mankind and criticizes their shortcomings. Even Pope Leo X is said to have laughed at this work, but it did not prevent it from being blacklisted after the author's death in Basel on July 12, 1536. Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert (1522-1590), who not only translated Erasmus and part of the Bible into Dutch, but also wrote the Manifesto of William the Silent, which led to the uprising of the Netherlands against Spanish domination. Jan van Hout (1542-1609), a poet who became a linguist in defense of his language, also took part in this struggle.
In the meantime, literature, which in the Middle Ages had found its way to the Court via oral tradition and chivalric tales, now moved into the bourgeois milieu with the proliferation of rhetorical chambers, the most famous of which was undoubtedly De Eglantier (The Rosehip, whose flower, the symbol of love, was the insignia), founded around 1517 in Amsterdam. This circle featured some of the most illustrious writers of its time, including Hendriz Laurenszoon Spiegel (1549-1612) from Amstellodam, who headed the circle and composed, among other poems, a celebrated ode to his native city, as well as Roemer Visscher, his fellow citizen and two years his junior, who made epigrams his preferred 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, considered to be the first of its kind written in Dutch. It was around this time - around 1615 - that the group began to suffer some dissension, leading to the creation of another entity: the Duytsche Academy. Also dedicated to poetry and drama, 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). The latter two intellectuals enjoyed a privileged audience, the former being considered nothing less than the initiator of modern poetry in Dutch since the publication of his songs Emblamata amatoria in 1611, and having shaken up the codes of theater with Geeraerdt van Velsen (1613), the latter 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 a word, the "Fountain of Holland" - and Joost van den Vondel - who was born in Cologne in 1587 but died in Amsterdam in 1679 - and who has been compared to both Molière and Shakespeare for his influence on Dutch theater. Without aiming to be exhaustive, we should also mention the works of Gysbert Japiks (1603-1666), written in Frisian, which he elevated to the status of a literary language despite its complete disavowal at the end of the 16th century. Finally, we conclude as we began, with the birth of a philosopher: that of Baruch Spinoza who, despite his premature death in The Hague in 1677 at the age of just 44, is a towering figure in his discipline. Although he didn't dare publish The Ethics during his lifetime, and the text was simply banned when it came out, it nonetheless remains fundamental and inspired thinkers far beyond the borders of the Netherlands and well into the 17th century.
Decline and renewal
The desire for independence and conquest went hand in hand with openness to the world, but also a certain permeability to outside influences, primarily French. However, the import of classicism somewhat parasitized the innovative inspiration of local writers, so the 18th century did not really produce any original works, although we can point to the epic poem Friso (1741) by Willem van Haren or the novel written four hands by Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken, Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart, which initiated the genre in 1782. It wasn't until the end of the century that the genre was revived, coinciding with the publication of Rhijnvis Feith's "sentimentalist" novel Julia (1783) and, by extension, the gradual emergence of German Romanticism. But political stakes and other confrontations soon lent this new trend a nationalist accent, as suggested by the poetry of Jan Frederik Helmers (1767-1813), who went from being tender(Nuit, 1788) to patriotic(La Nation hollandaise, 1812), especially from the moment he forged ties with his brother-in-law, Cornelis Loots, the author of La Langue hollandaise (1814). The person who best embodies this shift is Hendrik Tollens, a poet who asserts his positions in Ceux chez qui coule le sang néerlandais, composed in 1817, the same year Willem Bilderdijk begins teaching history in Leiden. This city, as much as this man, was to enjoy great importance in the years to come: the University of Leyden 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 was answered by Realism. This new ambition to be as close to the facts as possible, while also denouncing them, culminated in a novel published under the pseudonym Multatuli (Latin for "I have borne much"). Max Havelaar (1860) is the quasi-autobiographical account of Eduard Douwes Dekker, who grew up in his native house, now a museum dedicated to his memory (Korsjesportsteeg 20, Amsterdam), before moving to the Dutch Indies, where he revolted against the oppression suffered by the Javanese people. A huge bestseller from the outset, this book is now available in French from Editions Babel. In the same vein, Jacob Jan Cremer (1827-1880) railed against child labor in Frabriekskinderen (1863). Jacques Perk, who died of illness at the age of 22 in 1881, shook up the poetic norm in his sonnets, which were published by his friend Williem Kloos (1857-1938), leader of the Tachtigers (or Eighties) movement. Alongside him, Albert Verwey, Frederik van Eden and Herman Gorter revolutionized conventional aesthetics and published their prose in De Nieuwe Gids(The New Guide).
20th and 21st centuries
While poetry turned increasingly to symbolism, with the 1910 Generation and its magazine De Beweging (The Movement), the novel for its part abandoned realism and became shrouded in mystery (even mysticism) - as in the novel De Stille Kracht (1900), which Louis Couperus set in Java, like the rest of his work - or lent itself to neo-romanticism( Arthur van Schendel'sLa Frégate Marie-Jeanne, 1903) by describing an imaginary past. In fact, it was a rather fertile period: Nescio published short stories(De uitvreter, 1911), Simon Vestdijk multiplied his publications, Gerrit Achterberg completed his collection Afvaart in 1931... yet the Nazi threat was already present, as the critic Menno ter Braak hammered home. In 1936, he co-founded a vigilance committee, and died four years later when his fears were confirmed. The Diary of the very young Anne Frank brought the horror of the Second World War to life, as she described her daily life in a clandestine apartment, until a denunciation sent her to perish in Bergen-Belsen when she was not yet 18..
Neither those who survived her nor literature emerged unscathed from this conflict. The time had come to spare readers' sensibilities, and so a realism emerged 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 equally crude in his novels (including La Chambre noire de Damoclès, a masterpiece according to Milan Kundera). As for Harry Mulish, the war was an intimate drama for him, his mother being Jewish and his father a collaborator. He delved into his obsession in an essay dedicated to Adolf Eichmann(L'Affaire 40/61), but it was above all with his novel La Découverte du ciel that he won all the acclaim, becoming one of the Netherlands' most sought-after writers until his death in 2010.
The quest for individual - rather than 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, including those who were not born in the Netherlands but reside there, with all the questions of dual culture or rejection that this engenders. The second notable change is in the readership, which is more educated, more prosperous, and eager to discover new things. We are now fortunate enough to be able to make these discoveries in French too, since the number of translations is constantly growing. In this way, we can take hold of the work of authors who have made a lasting impression over the last few decades, such as Hella S. Haasse. Haasse (1918-2011), from her novel Un goût d'amandes amères to her collection of short stories Aloe ferox; Cees Nooteboom through his short stories(Le Matelot sans lèvres), novels(Rituels, Le Jour des morts) or essays(533: le livre des jours, Venise : le lion, la ville et l'eau); from writer-historian Geert Mak(Voyage d'un Européen à travers le XXe siècle), the unsettling Hans Maarten van den Brinck(Poids et mesures : une comparaison, Sur l'eau) or the precocious Arnon Grunberg, born in 1971, who published the cult classic Lundis bleus at the age of 22 and, at the dawn of the 2020s, has reconquered the tables of French-speaking booksellers(Taches de naissance, Des bons gars).
