Transnational Brokering: The Case for Symbolism and Surrealism in Flanders

The perspective of generations in literary history is problematic, but also has advantages. One of them is that it allows one to see that in the formation of national literatures forces are at work that bridge language barriers and national borders. In this article we will problematize the notion of cultural broker, adding both a generational and transnational perspective. We will elaborate the case of P.G. van Hecke and Marc Eemans, who both undertook intercultural activities by transgressing boundaries in between Belgium and its neighboring countries but also generations. P.G. van Hecke started as an epigone who gladly defined himself as cosmopolitan, and ended as an avant-gardist who finally clung to cosmopolitanism even in practice. When van Hecke joined the larger movement of surrealism, he finally found the kindred spirits that he had earlier needed in order to prove himself as a model and mentor. With van Hecke, we have an older literary figure who reinvents himself through the avant-garde, wearing a modernistic French suit. With Marc Eemans we have a youngster emerging very fast like a meteor who, however, just as quickly grows prematurely old. Eemans quickly sidetracks himself or is quickly cast out. Only through transnational (and also sociological) spectacles we notice how both these figures have been erased by the history of literature. Van Hecke has disappeared from Dutch literary history after the venture of De Boomgaard and has achieved no real place for himself in the French; Marc Eemans is kept out of the French-language literature and more particularly art history, but has been able to prove himself even less in the Dutch literature. Only when we let go of the language and put on our transnational spectacles, we see their position relative to the generation (in a broad sociological sense) that becomes dominant in the twenties. Whether it is characteristic of minor literatures to homogenise more rapidly, we leave undecided. It is clear, however, that in minor literatures, the position of contemporaneous or postfactum neglected figures can be more easily revised. Both van Hecke and Eemans, as marginal bilingual authors, can, without much effort, be ascribed to the broader (sociological) generation of surrealism, though they have played different roles. This surrealism appears to be not exclusively left-wing and French-speaking, but also has right-wing and Dutch-speaking representatives. By focussing on similar and interrelated social relationships that cross the boundaries of minor literatures but also help shape them, a start can be made in rewriting the history of literature.