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30-07-2015, 10:02

Eighteenth Century to the Present

Nevertheless, the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century marked a period of scholarly and cultural decline, not only in the south but even in the north. The Austrian and Napoleonic Wars, the short-lived reunification of the Netherlands in 1815, and their separation again in 1830 took a heavy toll. Under Napoleon some universities, such as those of Louvain (1797), Franeker (1811), and Harderwijk (1811), were closed.

Still, on the whole, Greek authors continued to be relatively well studied, edited, and equipped with learned commentaries, especially in the north. The Hellenist Carel Gabriel Cobet (1813-89), professor of Greek at the University of Leiden (1848-83), dominated classical scholarship for almost half a century. Through his many pupils he had an enormous influence until far into the twentieth century, but his hypercritical approach in the matter of textual transmission and his outspoken predilection for the pure Attic language led him to propose massive and faulty interventions in works of authors from other regions and periods.

But much more than the scholarship of that time in the field of Greek and Latin classics, which all in all was no more than average in quality, it is vernacular literature that deserves closer attention. Carel Vosmaer (1826-88) was one of the few Dutch authors who was deeply influenced by the classics. His archaeological novel Amazone (1880) has its setting in Rome and Naples; his romantic idyll Nanno is modeled on Greek verse. He translated the Iliad and the Odyssey into Dutch hexameters. As an editor of the leading journal De Nederlandsche Spectator, he played an important part in the revival of Dutch literature and set a trend for the next generation, known as the ‘‘Tachtigers’’ (The Movement of Eighty). This was an innovative and influential group of writers belonging to the same social circle at Amsterdam who aspired to extreme individualism and aestheticism. Several members had a classical training or were even active in the field of classical studies. Willem Kloos (1859-1938), for example, started as a student of classics, focusing mainly on the Greek poets. His earliest poetical works (Rhodopis, 1880; Ganymedes op aarde, Ganymede on earth, 1885; Sappho, 1893) were pervaded with the Greek conception of life. Later on he also treated Greek authors such as Callimachus and Pindar, and translated some Greek tragedies (Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Alcestis). Herman Gorter (1864-1927) even obtained his doctoral degree with a dissertation entitled De interpretatione Aeschyli metaphorarum (On the interpretation of Aeschylus’ metaphors, 1889). His epic poem Pan (1912) and his study on Degroote dichters (The great poets) reveal his lasting love for the classics. Jan Hendrik Leopold (1865-1925) was not only a poet of the utmost sensitivity and harmony but was also active as a philologist, publishing on Herodotus, Marcus Aurelius, and the Latinity of Spinoza. That most refined poet Pieter Cornelis Boutens (1870-1943) translated Plato’s Symposium at the age of 18, and his own oeuvre remained permeated with Platonic ideas in matters of love and eroticism. He also translated the Odyssey and part of the Iliad, along with some Greek tragedians and Sappho.

To the same generation belonged Louis Couperus (1863-1923), who was above all a wonderful narrator. Time and again he goes back to classical antiquity for his tales and novels (Dionyzos, 1904; De berg van licht, The mountain of light, 1905/6, a historical novel narrating the life of the emperor Heliogabalus; Herakles, 1913; De verliefde ezel, The amorous ass, 1918, a retelling of Apuleius; Izkander. De roman van Alexander den Groote, Izkander, the novel of Alexander the Great, 1920). He also translated Plautus’ Menaechmi and two Idylls of Theocritus.

During the twentieth century several more classical scholars developed into fine poets whose work was entirely imbued with classical echoes and motifs: Ida Gerhardt (1905-97), Anton van Wilderode (the pseudonym of Cyriel Coupe, 1918-98), and Jos de Haes (1920-74). For her doctoral dissertation Gerhardt translated two books of Lucretius, and later on also some Greek epigrams and Vergil’s Georgics. In the entire oeuvre of Jos de Haes there is an intense yearning for purity, mixed with constant feelings of guilt and incapacity. He left a collection Reisbrieven uit Griekenland (Travel letters from Greece, 1957), together with translations of Pindar, Pythische oden (Pythian odes, 1945) and of Sophocles, Philoktetes (1959). Anton van Wilderode often suggested an imaginary ideal world in his poems, playing with classical figures and themes (Najaar in Hellas, Autumn in Greece, 1947; De overoever, The opposite shore, 1981; Een tent van tamarinde, A tent of tamarind, 1984). He also translated several of Horace’s poems and Vergil’s entire oeuvre.

The two most profilic writers of the modern period were Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971) and Hugo Claus (born 1929). Many of Vestdijk’s poems have a mythological background: in some novels, such as Else Bohler, Duitsch dienstmeisje (Else Bohler, German house maid), which revived the Perseus and Andromeda story, he treated mythological themes, and three of his novels are even set in ancient Greece. In 1981 Paul Claes (born 1943) investigated the traces of classical influence in Claus’s oeuvre in his doctoral dissertation, entitled De mot zit in de mythe: antieke inter-textualiteit in het werk van Hugo Claus (The moth is in the myth: ancient intertext-uality in the work of Hugo Claus). He also developed into a gifted author himself and a translator of classical authors such as Sappho and Catullus. He even tried his hand at a Latin translation of Claus’s poetry.

Thus Latin and Greek language, values, and models did not entirely disappear from the Low Countries. It cannot be denied, however, that not only in the Low Countries, but all over Europe, a general classical decline can easily be detected. The main cause for this decline is that, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, the ideal of an education based on humanistic principles gradually crumbled away. At the universities in Belgium and the Netherlands, Latin as a teaching language was replaced by the vernacular, French in Belgium, Dutch in the Netherlands. Still, dissertations were presented in Latin until the beginning of the twentieth century, and in some minor institutions, such as Roman Catholic seminaries or faculties of theology, the teaching of Latin persisted until after World War II. In the secondary schools, teachers complained that their pupils had to study not only several vernacular languages but also mathematics and sciences, so that their study program was overloaded and their knowledge of Latin and especially of Greek rapidly declined. A vivid illustration is to be found in the letter sent by Domien Cracco (1790-1860) to the bishop of Bruges in 1842 (Epistola de ratione docendi in gymnasiis, Letter on the course of study in secondary schools). This situation deteriorated over the years in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and continues nowadays more rapidly than ever. The amount of time reserved for the teaching and study of Latin, and especially of Greek, has been reduced to an unworkably low level or has even been dropped altogether. Other decisive elements have been the process of democratization in the field of higher education and new - but not better - pedagogical insights, which have led to the opening of universities in the 1960s even to those who had not studied Latin and Greek at their secondary school. Even worse: due to the predominant impact of mathematics and the physical and social sciences, the study of Latin and Greek has become an almost unsurmountable disadvantage for anyone wishing to go on to academic studies in fields other than the humanities. The Catholic Church also played some role. The second Vatican Council, by allowing the use of the vernacular for the liturgy instead of Latin, contributed in that way to the elimination of Latin from everyday affairs and its confinement to an even more remote corner of life. In this way Latin today has evolved into a curiosity, surfacing only at a few traditional events, such as diplomas bestowed honoris causa (honorary degrees) and congratulatory letters exchanged between universities, heraldic devices for newly appointed noblemen, and medals or inscriptions at the foot of a statue.

More than four hundred years ago, on July 2, 1602, Justus Lipsius wrote to Isaac Casaubon that scholarship, especially in Greek, was declining rapidly, so that ‘‘they were just holding on to vanishing Latin literature. So what hope could there be for Greek?’’ (Tournoy 1998). And three years later, on September 21, 1605, he wrote to his Bruges friend Janus Lernutius that they were heading for the last frontier of illiteracy. It is to be feared that after four centuries, his prophetic vision is about to come true.

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Eighteenth Century to the Present