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Hugo Claus (1929-2008) |
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Highly versatile and prolific
Belgian author, whose oeuvre included poetry, novels, dramas, short
stories, screenplays, essays, translations. Most of Hugo Claus's
writing had an experimental quality. An anti-authoritarian, his attacks
on conventional bourgeois mores, religious bigotry stirred much
controversy. Claus worked also as a stage and film director – his
films were regarded as scandalous due to their eroticism and bluntness.
His international breakthrough Claus made in 1983 with the postmodern
novel The Sorrow of Belgium,
a Bildungsroman set in the Nazi-occupied Belgium during World War II.
Claus wrote in Flemish. For decades he was the dominant figure in
Belgium's postwar Dutch-language literature. He had not yet reached the gate before Papa was discussing emigrating to Argentina, Mijnheer Byttebier had started a timber business over there with Minjheer Groothuis's money. This branch of the Seynaeves would build itself a new future, in Spanish. Or was it Portuguese? Louis looked it up right away in Aunt Violet's Larousse, it was Spanish, which is easy if you know your French vocabulary, all you have to do is to add an "o" here and there at the end and everybody understands you. Argentinian meat is very cheap and very good, and a lot of comrades were over there already. Even Mama allowed herself to be carried away that night. "Because all we have to look forward to here is sorrow," she said. (The Sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans, New York: Pantheon Books, 1990, p. 549; originally published as Het verdriet van België by De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 1983) Hugo Claus was born in Bruges, the son of Jozef Claus, a printer, and Germaine Vanderlinden. His
childhood Claus spent in the East Flemish town of Kortrijk. After
a very strict Catholic boarding school upbringing, Claus left school at an early age,
unable to adapt himself to the traditional education system. During World War II, when Belgia was occupied by German
troops, Claus wanted to served as an SS-volunteer at the Eastern front,
but he was to young to be enrolled. His mother worked for the occupying
forces and became friendly with a German officer. After the war his
father, who admired Hitler, was sent to a prison for a year and his
mother had her civil right revoked for life. ('Reinventing the Modernist Novel: Louis Paul Boom and Hugo Claus' by Kris Humbeeck, in Dutch and Flemish Literature as World Literature, edited by Theo D'haen, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, p. 236) While studying at the Academy of Ghent, he toiled
on a farm at the same time. In France he was a seasonal worker in a sugar
factory, saying later that he found it so senseless that he decided
never to work for anyone again. Claus's play, Suiker (1958),
was based on these experiences. In Paris Claus met the poet and dramatist Antonin
Artaud whose influence is seen in the early collection of poems, Registreren (1948,
Registration).
"I will meet him still / under bridges, in the empty train station. /
He will put his arm around my shoulder. / Towards morning he starts
drilling, / shaking my fibres, / until I scream, Artaud, Artaud." ('For the Poet Antonin Artaud,' in Even Now: Poems
by Hugo Claus, selected and translated from the Dutch by David Colmer,
afterword by Cees Nootebom, Brooklyn, New York: Archipelago Books, 2013) After returning to Belgium Claus joined the Cobra group, which was named after the cities of Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. The group was established in 1948 by Karel Appel with other Northern European artists and writers, and presented a European parallel to the Abstract Expressionists in New York. Later Claus published essays on the painter Corneille (Over het werk van Corneille, 1951) and Appel. In the novel Een zachte vernieling (1988) he took a new look at the CoBrA group. In 1950, Claus went to live in Paris, where he fell under the spell of existentialism. He also spent some time in Italy. In 1955 he settled down in Belgium and married Elly Overzier; they had one son. As a novelist Claus made his debut with De metsiers (1950, The Duck Hunt / Sister of Earth), which was inspired by William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. This naturalistic family chronicle made Claus famous. De hondsdagen (Dog Days, 1952) was inspired by Faulkner's Sanctuary and its famous hard-boiled version No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase. Claus's experimental period in poetry ended with De Oostakkerse Gedichten (1955). In the fragmented Het verlangen (1978, Desire) overweight, slow-witted Jake and dark, brooding Michael leave The Unicorn, their local tavern and head for Las Vegas, where they see the other side of glitter and glamour in the New World. Meanwhile their friends at The Unicorn comment on their missing buddies and Jake's wife struggles to tend their brain-damaged daughter. Claus's ambitious war novel De verwondering (1963), set in post-war Flanders,, was a story
of a private inferno of a psychiatric patient and Flemish Nazis. The work included references to Dante, Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland, Sir James
Frazer's The Golden Bough, and classical mythology. The work had a late sequel in Het verdriet van België (1983,
The Sorrow of Belgium), which traced grippingly the narrow-mindedness
of ordinary Belgians, a subject which had led the French poet Charles
Baudelaire (1821-1867) collect his insults in a travel book entitled Pauvre Belgique!
The
post-modern bestseller covers the years from 1939 to 1947. Louis
Seynaeve, the protagonist, is a Flemish schoolboy who grows up in Nazi
occupied
Belgium. His experiences parallel with those of Claus. The formative years of Louis are defined a convent bording school with its nuns and monks and the strong women of the family. His father, a printer, supports the occupying Reich. And like the author himself did, Louis joins the local Nazi youth movement. One of the characters say: "We, Belgians or Flemings, being a small nation, cannot help thinking in small terms, because we don't count for very much and could be swept away at any time like pieces of dirt." (Ibid., p. 391) At the end Louis is seventeen. He has said goodbye to his illusions. The story later inspired Claude Goretta's television film Der Kummer von Flandern (1994). Schaamte (1972) was set in the Caribbean and the autobiographical Het jaar van de kreeft
(1972) was based on a love affair between the author and a well-known
actress. In Claus's work the emphasis is more on situation than on
character. Often his books dealt with a family crisis in which the
victims and victimizers are both threatened by the same forces. De zwaardvis (1989, The Swordfish) was a novella about a small-town conflict and crisis. In the story Martin Ghyselen, a lonely boy, escapes the pressures of his surroundings into fantasy, seeing himself tragically as the martyred Jesus. De geruchten (1996) was set in the mid-1960s. René Catrijsse, the sick prodigal son, returns to his home village. He has fought in the Belgian Congo before deserting from the army. His return coincides with a series of accidents in the community, and soon also the scapegoat is found. As a playwright Claus wrote psychological and social dramas, such as Suiker (1958), historical spectacles (Tijl uilenspiegel, 1965; Het leven en de werken van Leopold II, 1970), and adaptations of classical Greek, Roman, and Elizabethan texts, written under the influence of Antonin Artaud's theatre of cruelty. Orestes (1976) was after Euripides and Het huis van Labdakos (1977, The House of Labdacus) was a synthesis of several ancient Greek and Roman works. Claus's dramatic output ranged from the theatre of absurd and slapstic farce to naturalism. "I have no style," Claus once said. Many of his plays dealt with religious taboos and forbidden love. A Bride in the Morning (1955), Claus's first full-lenght play, alluded to an referred to an incestuous relationship between the bipolar young hero, Thomas, and his sister Andrea. Claus wrote this landmark work of Dutch-language theater while in self-imposed exile in Rome with his future wife Elly Overzier. When it was produced in Paris with great success, Jean-Louis Trintigant appeared in the role of Thomas. "There reigns in this work an atmosphere of impassioned charm and innocence, charm and innocence that throughout are truly menaced by the monsters that surround them," wrote Le Figaro Littéraire. Claus's Masscheroen (1968), drawing on the sixteenth-century miracle play Mariken van Nieumeghen, was brought to trial on charges of obscenity and sacrilege. Vrijdag (1969) was a triangular drama in which the acceptance of the truth means a step toward reconciliation. George Vermeersch returns from prison and finds that his wife has a lover. Vermeersch reveals that he had an incestuous relationship with their daughter. His wife acknowledges that she was aware of the situation. When the lover leaves her, the Vermeersches are left to reconstruct their marriage. The Life and Works of Leopold II (1970) connected sexual lust and colonialism. In The Temptation (1980) an elderly nun imagines having a carnal liaison with Jesus and urinates during a spiritual experience. In 1973 Claus travelled to Bangkok where his wife of that time, Sylvia Kristel, acted in Emmanuelle,
one of the most successful erotic movies ever made. Claus, who was 27
years her senior, coached her in acting. "You might move a little, you're like a dead fish," she recalled him saying. (Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir by Sylvia Kristel, London: Harper Perennial, 2008, p. 134)
With Kristel he had a son, Arthur. Claus encouraged her to paint.
According to Kristel, he wasn't much affected by their break-up; he
"lives through them and uses them as material. Our union was bound to
be temporary, we were too different . . . " (Ibid., p. 182) Claus's own place in Belgian cinema was primarily as a writer, for example of commentaries for documentaries by Charles Dekeukeleire, Paul Haesaerts and Patrick Ledoux. He wrote the screenplay for Roland Verhavert's Pallieter and adapted Stijn Streuvel's novel De Teleurgang van de Waterhoek for Fons Rademakers' film Mira (1971). With Rademaker he also collaborated in Het Mes (1961), De dans van de reiger (1966), and Niet voor de poezen (1973), based on Nicolas Freeling's Van der Valk crime thriller. Claus's own films caused much controversy and were less successful. In 1967 he directed De Vijanden (Enemies) from his own screenplay and in 1980 Vrijdag (Friday), based on his play which was produced originally in Amsterdam in 1969. Another attempt at direction was Het Sacrament (1989, The Sacrament), about 24 hours in the life of a priest. Claus adapted the film from his novel Omtrent Deedee (1963). The Sacrament was submitted for the 62nd Academy Awards for best foreign language film; the winner was Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore. Claus lived long periods in Paris and Rome. In the later years of his life Claus spent half of the year in his farm in Northern France. Claus's several awards include the State Prize for Dutch Letters, the Herman Gorter Prize, and VSB Prize for poetry in 1994. Claus won three times the coveted Triennial Award for Theatre. De Geruchten (1996) received in 1998 the Aristeion Prize. He was frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hugo Claus, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, died by euthanasia at a hospital in Antwerp on 19 March, 2008. His third wife was the actress Veerle Claus-De Wit.
Selected works:
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