Beauty and Truth neighbours once more

Literary Non-Fiction in the Netherlands and Flanders

By Ger Groot

Considering there are many highly literary works of non-fiction from Flanders and the Netherlands, Ger Groot asks how justifiably the position is that literature means ‘fiction’. A look at a number of highlights.

According to the renowned Dutch literary historian Knuvelder, a small disaster occurred around 1270, when Jacob van Maerlant, author of mainly narrative history books, wrote Der naturen bloeme (Flowers of Nature). The event marked the introduction of the treatise or, as another literary historian put it, the ‘shackling of literature in the chains of didactics’. It has been suggested that Middle Dutch literature never recovered from it or, indeed, that Dutch literature in general never has. The pedantic, unimaginative presentation of facts allegedly cast a huge shadow over the unrestricted imagination of real literature.

Frits van Oostrom, who wrote a biography of Van Maerlant, does away with this rather imbalanced vision of the most productive and possibly most influential author of Middle Dutch literature. Although Van Maerlant’s emphasis was on truth, Der naturen bloeme is a story well told. The author attempted to avoid unrestricted fantasy and unlikely hear-say - just as, after all, he had done in his history books, always keen on separating legend from history. And, Oostrom continues, are beauty and truth really the arch enemies romanticists have made them out to be? Is not this just a prejudice still dominating our idea of literature?