The Netherlands vs Belgium in Elsschot's Cheese

Question

Frans Laarmans, the protagonist of Willem Elsschot's Cheese, pursues and obtains a job as the Belgian sales representative for a large Dutch cheese manufacturing enterprise. Cultural and other differences between Netherlands and Belgium are often mentioned in the novel. For instance, here is Laarmans traveling from Antwerp to Amsterdam for his job interview with his soon to be boss, Hornstra:

When customs asked me if I had anything to declare, I said jovially, "Of course not!" But the official replied that "of course not" wasn't an answer and that I must say yes or no. I realised at once that you've got to be careful with the Dutch. And that impression was confirmed at Hornstra's, as he didn't waste words and within half an hour I had been dismissed and paid and was back in the street with my contract in my pocket.

_{Elsschot, Willem. Cheese. 1933. Trans. Paul Vincent. London: Granta, 2002. p. 30.}

Further, the distinction between standard Dutch and Flemish seems to be at issue when Laarmans shows his wife the contract he has signed with Hornstra:

     "Read it, here's the document," I concluded.
      And I handed it to her, knowing in advance that she would only half understand the formal Dutch.

_{ibid., p. 39.}

As described in another question, Laarmans also mentions Dutch staples such as tulips and light bulbs that he would rather sell instead of cheese. He tries to reconcile himself to his trade thus:

All things considered, cheese, apart from the smell, is a noble product, don't you agree? It's been made for centuries and it's one of the most important sources of wealth for the Dutch, who are a brother people.

_{ibid., p. 34.}

It seems, then, that Laarmans' role as the Belgian representative of a Dutch product reflects larger issues about the cultural, commercial, and linguistic similarities and differences between Belgium and the Netherlands. Is this a good lens with which to approach the character of Laarmans in particular, this novel in general, and Elsschot as a writer more broadly? If so, how do these similarities and differences play out in the way Cheese, or Elsschot generally, is read in the two countries? For example:

• Does the narration and/or dialogue have specifically Flemish dialectal features that would be noticeable to a reader in the Netherlands? And conversely, does the dialogue and written correspondence between Laarmans and his Dutch boss employ a more formal register of standard Dutch?
• What is the status of Elsschot within the literary tradition of Dutch? To explain: Rabindranath Tagore is indifferently claimed as pan-Bengali, not specifically Indian or Bangladeshi—and in any case, he predates Bangladesh's existence. Taslima Nasrin, on the other hand, is well-known among Bengali readers in India and the diaspora, but her specifically Bangladeshi background is inextricable from the way she is read. So the two occupy rather different positions when one thinks of Bengali literature. That difference is not just a matter of literary or political history, but of reader expectation and response as well. In the Anglophone world, the differences between how we speak of Canadian, American, and/or British literary traditions might provide another avenue to explain what I'm asking when I ask about Belgium vs Netherlands within literature in the Dutch language.

So I'm interested in (1) what Cheese reveals about Elsschot's self-positioning as a writer, i.e., his navigation of the fungible boundaries between Flanders and the Netherlands, Flemish and standard Dutch; and in (2) his reception: whether (like Tagore) his national origin doesn't particularly come up, or whether (like Nasrin) it does inflect how he is read, or whether his position within the literary history of Dutch is something different again. I don't believe it makes sense to ask one of these questions without the other, as they are two sides of the same coin.

Answer 1

Flemish dialectal features versus Standard Dutch in Kaas

Elsschot grew up in Antwerp and learnt the local dialect as his "native language". This is also the dialect that he and his wife used while raising their six children.

When it came to writing novels, he stuck to Standard Dutch. For his first novel, he got advice on Standard Dutch from Anna van der Tak, one of the clerks he supervised while working at the Werf Gusto / A.F. Smulders (a shipbuilding company where Elsschot worked from December 1907 until August 1911) (Van de Reijt, 66–68, 227; Elsschot: Brieven, 144). Later on, he would often ask linguistic advice from the Dutch poet Jan Gresshoff (Van de Reijt, 227) [1]. In a letter from 06.01.1934, he asks Gresshoff to review the manuscript of Tsjip and mark every word and expression that was not pure Standard Dutch.

Judging by reviews and responses from Flemish readers, Elsschot's efforts to produce books in Standard Dutch worked. In fact, it worked a bit too well. When Een ontgoocheling ("A disappointment") was published in the Flemish literary magazine Het Tooneel in 1915, editor Lode Baekelmans replaced a number of words and sentence constructions with more Flemish-sounding alternatives. One of his changes was replacing "je", "jij" en "jouw" with "ge", "gij" en "uw", respectively (Van de Reijt, 111) [2]. After the publication of De verlossing ("The salvation"), the only review published in Flanders complained about the language (Van de Reijt, 135):

Waarom de lokale kleur verzwakken door Vlamingen te doen praten als Hollanders? Heel het werk is feitelijk voor Hollanders geschreven.

Translation:

Why weaken the local colour by making Flemish talk like Dutch people? The entire work is actually written for Dutch people. [3]

In 1921, the jury of the Triennial State Prize for Literature, judging works published in the years 1910–1917, also included De verlossing (1921) in its judgement and commented on the use of the Dutch ("Hollands") "je", "jij" en "jouw". These pronouns were acceptable in Villa des Roses, which was set in a boarding house in Paris, but not in the villages where the story of De verlossing is set (Van de Reijt, 136).

Menno ter Braaks review of Kaas mentioned the use of Standard Dutch as an important reason why Elsschot's work was relatively unknown in Flanders (Van Dijk).

In Tsjip (1934, written shortly after the publication of Kaas), there is a passage in which the main character's eldest daughter Adele and the Pole Bennek Maniewski get married in a church in Antwerp. Narrator Laarmans writes (Elsschot, Verzameld werk, 527),

Hij spreekt wel Frans met haar, maar verstaat toch ons Antwerps.

Translation:

Even though he [i.e. Bennek] speaks French with her [Adele], he understands our Antwerp dialect.

The comment is striking precisely because there is not a trace of dialect in the entire novel.

When Walter Vaes read the manuscript of Het dwaallicht ("The will-o'-the-wisp", Elsschot's last novella) in 1944, one of his comment was "te veel Hollandsch", i.e. "too much [Netherlands] Dutch" (Van de Reijt, 304).

However, that doen't mean that Elsschot's language isn't recognisably Flemish. Johan Anthierens dedicates an entire chapter to this aspect of Elsschot's writings (Anthierens, 99–111). He asked three readers to go through several of Elsschot's novels and novellas and list typically Flemish words and expressions. One of the funniest examples, in my opinion, is the following sentence from chapter V Een ontgoocheling ("A disappointment"; Elsschot, Verzameld werk, 153):

Schaamt ge u niet dat woord te gebruiken waar je vader bij is?

The English translation ("Aren't you ashamed to use that word in front of your father?") simply can't do justice to the confusion of the informal Dutch "je", the Flemish "ge" and the possessive "u", which should actually be "uw". (The possessive for "gij" is the same as for the formal second-person pronoun "u".)

Other examples include the following:

• kleed: in Flanders: "dress"; in the Netherlands: "mat, rug".
• ouderdom in the sense of "age" instead of leeftijd.
• schoonbroer, a typically Flemish calque of French beau-frère, instead of "zwager".
• "'t accoord" combined with the verb "zijn" (to be) instead of akkoord gaan or "het eens zijn". (Elsschot uses "'t accoord" in many of his letters.)
• "zich verwachten aan" (to expect) instead of Standard Dutch verwachten.

Many generations of Flemish people will recognise the examples listed by Anthierens as examples that teachers of Dutch have tried to stamp out during many decades of "language purification" in an attempt to promote what was once called "Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands" or ABN ("General Civilised Dutch", implying that Flemish was not civilised). Even though the Dutch readers in Anthierens's experiment conclude that Elsschot's work is recognisable as the work of a Flemish author, they admit it is the work of "a neighbour who writes in a very accessible way" (Anthierens, 111).

Another linguistic difference between Flanders and the Netherlands has nothing to do with Dutch or Flemish: when publisher Wereldbibliotheek wanted to republish Lijmen in late 1931 / early 1932, Elsschot was asked to provide translations for a few short passages in French (in the chapters "Wilkinson" and "Business"). These translations seemed highly desirable for a Dutch audience (Elsschot: Brieven: letter dated 10.11.1931). Elsschot regretted the change and asked whether it wouldn't be possible to provide the translations in footnotes rather than simply replacing the French texts (Elsschot: Brieven: letter dated 25.11.1931) [4].

Clichés about the Dutch?

The first quote from the question contains the comment "that you've got to be careful with the Dutch" (Dutch: "dat je met die Hollanders moet oppassen"; Elsschot, Verzameld wekr, 433). The comment is humorous but rooted in differences between the Flemish and the Dutch. One of these differences concerns attitudes towards authority. Vic van de Reijt writes that at the start of World War II, the Germans put the Netherlands under a Zivilverwaltung ("civil administration") and Belgium under a Militärverwaltung ("military administration"). For this reason, German influence on policy was more radical in the Netherlands than in Belgium. One reason for this difference is that the Belgian population was notorious for its "limitless undisciplined nature" and should therefore not be provoked too much (van de Reijt, 280; quote borrowed from De Bens).

The comment about formal Dutch can be interpreted in multiple ways: first, that Laarmans's wife, being a housewife and used to informal Dutch, would be unfamiliar with the kind of formal language and terminology used in contracts; second, that the difficulty resides in the differences between Standard Dutch and the familiar Antwerp dialect (which is not mentioned in Kaas). However, rather than a linguistic or cultural comment, it could also be interpreted, like so many other things in Elsschot's work, from an autobiographical point of view, namely as a dig at publisher Piet Endt of Wereldbibliotheek. In October 1930, Endt had sent Elsschot a four-page "model contract" for the republication of Lijmen (Elsschot: Brieven, 73: one letter dated 14.10.1930, followed by a reminder on 28.10.1930). After negotiations that dragged on until January 1931, the author and the publisher agreed on the conditions but Elsschot asked for a shorter written agreement as he did not want to sign that long "insurance policy" ("verzekeringspolis"; Elsschot, Brieven, 77–78, letter dated 21.01.1921). After this episode, Elsschot decided to move on to yet another publisher.

What is the status of Elsschot within the literary tradition of Dutch?

Almost all of Elsschot's works were first published by publishers from the Netherlands. Villa des Rose (1913) and De verlossing (1921) were published by C. A. J. van Dishoeck in Bussum; ¨Verzen van vroeger* was published by Joh. Enschedé in Haarlem; Kaas (1933), Tsjip (1934), Pensioen (1937), Het been (1938), De leeuwentemmer (1940), Het tankschip (1942), Het dwaallicht (1946) and Verzameld werk ("Collected works") were all published by P. N. van Kampen in Amsterdam. There are two exceptions: Een ontgoocheling (1921) was published by S. V. Lectura in Antwerp and Lijmen (1924) was published by L. J. Janssens in Antwerp (Elsschot's home town).

S. V. Lectura was a new publishing company started by Victor Resseler, whom Elsschot still knew from his student days. Sales of Een ontgoocheling did not go well; the 2000 copies only sold out during World War II, when the Flemish read books out of sheer boredom (Van de Reijt, 135; Van de Reijt: Ontdekking, 29). L. J. Janssens was a small local publisher who was willing to fulfil Elsschot's request to publish Lijmen in exactly 1200 numbered copies. Elsschot later described the Janssens edition as a big mistake, but Lijmen actually sold well (Van de Reijt, 149–150).

Many of Elsschot's works were first serialised in literary magazines, especially Forum and Groot Nederland, both of which were published by Dutch publishers. Until Kaas, Elsschot's work enjoyed a much better reception in the Netherlands than in Flanders. Flanders was still very catholic and the inclusion of Villa des Roses (in which one of the characters has an abortion) and De verlossing (in which the main character shoots a priest) in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Van de Reijt, 257) made sure that some of his works could not be read in schools, for example.

Several of Elsschot's work would never have been written without the encouragement or specific requests by people from the Netherlands: Anna van der Tak, a colleague at Werf Gusto, asked him "three hundred times" to write those stories he told her about his experiences in Paris, which resulted in Villa des Roses (Van de Reijt, 67); Kaas came into existence after Jan Gresshoff had commented he hadn't written anything in ten years (Van de Reijt, 213); and Menno ter Braak was very keen on reading another story about Boorman (Van de Reijt, 259), so Ellschot wrote Het been as a sequel or new chapter of Lijmen.

Based on Vic van de Reijt's biography, Elsschot had a wider readership in the Netherlands than in Flanders until at least the 1930s. Even after the publication of Kaas, invitations to read from his work (or similar events) came mostly from the Netherlands. In 1952, he was the first Flemish author to be awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize, a literary prize that was, and still is, most frequently awarded to authors from the Netherlands.

The eleven-volume edition of Elsschot's complete works was edited by people from the Netherlands (Peter de Bruijn, Wieneke 't Hoen and Lily Hunter) and published by a Dutch publishing house (Athenaeum–Polak & Van Gennep, 2001–2006). The author of the most recent Elsschot biography, Vic van de Reijt, is Dutch. Van de Reijt also co-edited Elsschot's letters with Lidewijde Paris, who is also Dutch. Elsschot's life and works are studied by people both from Flanders and the Netherlands.

Based on the above, Jos's comment on the question should come as no surprise:

As a Dutch reader, I have always found there was very little "Flemish" about Elsschot, compared to, say, Louis Paul Boon or Hugo Claus, either in his language or cultural references.

Sources

• Anthierens, Johan: Willem Elsschot. Het Ridderspoor. Meulenhoff/Kritak, 1992.
• De Bens, Els: De Belgische dagbladpers onder de Duitse censuur (1940–1944). De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1973.
• Elsschot, Willem: Brieven. Verzameld en toegelicht door Vic van de Reijt met medewerking van Lidewijde Paris. Amsterdam: Querido, 1993. (This is selection of Elsschot's letters, more specifically letters that are relevant to his private life and his life as an author (1137 pages, including annotations and index). As a business man, Elsschot wrote up to a dozen letters per day and these have not been included.)
• Elsschot, Willem: Verzameld werk. Fourth impression. Amsterdam: P. N. Van Kampen, 1960. (Reprint of Elsschot's collected works that was first published in 1957. Page numbers differ from the single-volume Verzameld werk published by Querido in the 1980s and 1990s and from the current edition by Athenaeum. The older edition by Van Kampen is still available in antiquarian bookshops. This is a volume of "collected works", not Elsschot's complete works.)
• Van de Reijt, Vic: Elsschot. Leven en werkan van Alfons De Ridder. Amsterdam: Athenaeum—Polak & Van Gennep, 2011. (The most up-to-date Elsschot biography and the first that takes a serious look at Alfons De Ridder's work in the advertsing business.)
• Van de Reijt, Vic: De ontdekking van Elsschot. Athenaeum, 2019.
• Van Dijk, Nel: Ter Braak over Willem Elsschot. In: Nel van Dijk, De politiek van de literatuurkritiek. De reputatie-opbouw van Menno ter Braak in de Nederlandse letteren. [dissertation] Eburon, Delft 1994, p. 89-114.

Notes

[1] Examples: Elsschot's letter from 23.03.1933 asking for the Dutch term for "prostate". In another letter, dated 02.04.1937, he asks for the Dutch word for toile cirée, a French term that the generation of my parents still uses, totally unaware of the Dutch translation wasdoek.

[2] Standard Dutch has two sets of pronouns for the second person singular: on the one hand "je"/"jij" and (possessive) "jouw" for informal communication, on the other hand "u" en (possessive) "uw" for formal communication. This distinction is similar to the distinction between "tu", "toi", "ton" versus "vous", "votre(s)", "vos" in French and to "du" (and related pronouns) versus "Sie" (and related pronouns) in German. "Gij" and "ge", by contrast, are unique to Flemish and overlap with both the informal "je"/"jij" and the formal "u". (There are formal letters by Elsschot in which he uses both "u" en "gij". See Van de Reijt page 234 for a copy of the letter, which was not included in Brieven.)

[3] "Hollanders" literally means "people from Holland", which is part of the Netherlands. It is still common in Flanders to refer to Dutch people as "Hollanders".

[4] Elsschot also used the occasion to replace the name Bohrmann (from the 1924 edition) with Boorman (Elsschot: Brieven, letter dated 20.02.1932).