Stijn Streuvels

The Flax Field (De vlaschaard)

After moving into the house The Thrush’s Nest in the village of Ingooigem, the Flemish writer Stijn Streuvels (pseudonym of Frank Lateur, 1871-1969) commenced work on the great agrarian novel which would make him famous. From his desk he looked out over the wide fields and watched the flax workers at work. He listened to the songs the women sung while weeding. Before appearing in book form, De vlaschaard was published in the Dutch magazine De Beweging. This was an appropriate first home for the novel because the magazine’s editor, Albert Verwey, deliberately gathered authors who were able to rise above the prevailing naturalism and be inspired by what he called ‘the Idea’, a symbolist assimilation of sensory perceptions. After reading Streuvels’s manuscript Verwey enthusiastically stated: ‘If the sun could write, it would write like Streuvels.’

A century later the reader cannot help but be moved by the compelling power of Streuvels’s descriptions of nature. It is not necessary to know that the author was a baker who spent his whole life in direct contact with traditionally closed country folk. His work shows clearly that he knew their language and character inside out and was deeply inspired by nature. The changing seasons and the power of the elements are convincingly evoked. Lovingly and yet dramatically, the author depicts the conversations and summer festivals of the peasants who, within their limited human possibilities, are integrated within nature as a whole.

The book begins with a farmer called Vermeulen grumbling at the stubborn mist which refuses to disperse before the sun. Streuvels sets the character down before you like a rock, a giant. In comparison Vermeulen’s high-spirited son Louis and the restless temptress Schellebelle change with the weather. A tragedy results. Vermeulen, who doesn’t want to make way for the new generation, fells his own son. Too late, the old farmer realizes that he has let himself be blinded by money and property. With his son and heir dying at home, his remorseful groans form a dark counterpoint to the grumbling of the novel’s first few pages.

The generation conflict which erupts on the ‘enchanted fields’ beneath the ‘fertile sky’ will appeal not only to country people but also to the disenchanted in modern cities – the only requirement is a willingness to be swept up by Streuvels’s powerful style.

Publisher

Standaard / Manteau
Mechelsesteenweg 203
B-2018 Antwerpen
TEL. +32 3 285 72 00
FAX +32 3 285 72 99
E-mail: info@standaarduitgeverij.be
Website: www.standaarduitgeverij.be

Publishing details

De vlaschaard (1907, 303 pp)