Editor's Introduction
by Charles J. Rolo
THE day I arrived in Amsterdam, the distinguished poet and man-of-letters, Victor van Vriesland, assembled at a few hours’ notice a group of writers and editors to give me a literary briefing. In Brussels, Gustave van Geluwe, the celebrated tailor and patron of art, forsook his business for an afternoon to guide me through his prodigious collection of modern Belgian paintingsit numbers literally hundreds of canvases — and offered to introduce me to any artists I might wish to meet. Wherever I went in the Low Countries, I encountered the same sort of generous co-operation.
The solidly representative picture which my friends in Belgium and Holland were so anxious to help me achieve unfortunately called for a book, not a seventy-two-page magazine. My selections had to be fairly short, and this ruled out no end of talented writers whose talent just does not run to the 4,000word size. The poetry had to be presented in translation, and this excluded a number of fine poets whose work could not be converted into poetic English, even by translators who wrote English poetry. Editing, like politics, is the art of the possible. What is presented here has no pretensions to being more than a diversified collection of writings from and about Belgium and Holland, plus a glimpse of their modern art. Though a limited “perspective,” it offers some rewarding discoveries and will, I hope, quicken interest in two small countries in which there is much to admire.
Out of a history full of invasions and a geographic situation that is both constricting and exposed, Belgium and Holland have acquired more political and social maturity than most nations. The Belgian is profoundly attached to his chez nous, the Dutchman is as patriotic as the next man, but thev are singulary free from the virus of nationalism: they have been in the vanguard of the movements toward European integration. Although, crudely speaking, Belgium has a high-price, free-enterprise economy and Holland a planned economy which has kept prices low, the two countries are pulling together, loyally if grumblingly, within the Benelux Customs Union.
While strongly individualistic, the Belgians — and more conspicuously the Dutch—have a remarkable sense of discipline. Both in Belgiumwith its two different peoples, Flemings and Walloons — and in Holland — roughly 60 per cent Protestant, 40 per cent Catholic — keen attachment to diversity goes hand in hand with an overriding sense of communal responsibility. Notwithstanding the religious division that runs through every aspect of Dutch life, the Dutch are a solidly united nation: between the rigid Calvinist and the fervent Catholic there is nothing resembling the animosity of our right-wing Republicans toward our left-wing liberals. The Belgians admit to a passion for abundance and their Labor rivals Management in its appetite for lusher returns; but both Labor and Management readily agreed to reciprocal concessions in order to avert strikes that would delay the postwar reconstruction.
The contemporary literature of these two countries, except for the work of a few expatriates, is very little known to us. In the case of Flemish and Dutch (in effect the same language), the problem of translation has been a formidable barrier. Translation should be done into the native language of the translator, and there are few literary Americans or Englishmen who have the necessary command of Dutch. Although the Dutch and Flemish are copious producers — and, incidentally, consumers of literature, the sum total of their serious writing that has been published in English is amazingly small. Much of it has been mediocrely translated; much of it is out of print.
Efforts are being made on both sides of the Atlantic to remedy this situation, and they should pay worth-while literary if not financial dividends. Here, I can only mention in passing one striking point about Dutch literature today (which is ably discussed in the essay by Adriaan van der Veen). The prevalence of fantasy and the pronounced streak of bitterness are not at all what our conventional image of the Dutch leads us to expect.
The best of the Belgians writing in French are published in Paris, and a good many of them gravitate there. In Brussels, the drama has rather more vitality than the novel OR the short story. Oneof the lasting memories I brought back with me was of a visit to Belgium’s greatest living dramatist, Michel de Ghelderode, who is represented in this supplement with a memoir of the old-time Brussels puppet shows. A frail, intense man in his sixties, he is — as was the great painter Brusselmans— a prototype of the dedicated artist, content to live very modestly and indifferent to popular favor. There are many lesser writers and painters in the Low Countries of the same stamp. The serious artist has fewer temptations to contend with than in countries where culture is highly commercialized and where compromise offers seductive rewards. The Dutch writer especially has at least one advantage over his English or American confrere: he runs very little risk of being corrupted.