Customer Reviews

The Sorrow of Belgium (Tusk Ivories)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hugo Claus, most famous writer in the Low Countries, wrote this "piece de resistance". For his oeuvre he should be awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature.

The work, although looking quite bulky, fascinates from the first till the last page. It decribes in a painfull manner the hypocritical way well-to-do families live in pre-war Belgium, how religious superficiality leads to short-sighted nationalism, conservatism and collaboration with members of the occupating "Herrenvolk".

Reading it, it helps to understand the ambiguous nature of the kingdom of Belgium (language, politics, economy and culture).

I don't understand why all these Flemish Belgians review 'The Sorrow of Belgium' here at Amazon, just to say that it is a bad book. Probably they haven't read it. Or they had to read it or some other novel, play, piece of poetry by Claus at school, and disliked it at that time. One thing is for sure : they don't have the slightest insight in this book, or in any of Claus' work. Maybe they disagree with Claus' vision on Belgium, Catholicism, etc. To dislike Claus is only possible when you don't understand him. The Flemish reviewers just want to spit their frustration (call it : their ignorance) on the internet... It's silly.

The book isn't only the story of a childhood, a Bildungsroman, a war novel, a depiction of Belgian society during World War II, a postmodern novel with a procession of intertextual references to the Bible, Classical Mythology, Shakespeare, Jacob van Maerlant, Dante, Hölderlin, Gezelle, etc. It is a stilistic masterwork as well. Full of wit. Fabulous imaginery. Poetic. This is the work of a genuine writer, one out of many.

Too read Claus is to read a piece of art. He can only be compared to the greatest writers of all time : Joyce, Proust, Mann, Tolstoy, Borges, Ibsen, Pasolini... What can you say when you have finished 'The Sorrow of Belgium'? Maybe that you are stunned?

The sorrow of Belgium is a long, rich and stunning novel, poetic and at times heart-rending. The book is obviously the masters (this is how they call Hugo Claus in the newspapers and reviews here in Belgium and Holland) most impressive and most beautiful novel and has everything in it to become (if it isn't it already) a classic, also outside Belgium. Anyone who likes 20th century literature should read this book, it has everything in it from Proust, Joyce, and Faulkner to Garcia Marquez and ... Claus. Just read the book and make your own opinion.

I agree with Ozzie from Ghent, although I read The Sorrow of Belgium in English after having lived in Flanders. It gives a real feel for life in a West Flemish town (? Kortrijk) in the years leading up to and including World War II. Yes, if you know the Low Countries you will feel more than a little nostalgia. But when will someone translate Claus's "Geruchten" (Rumors)?

My rating of four stars reflects the fact that I give five stars to the first part and three to the last part. The first third of the book is a beautiful, heartbreaking story of one schoolboy's love for his male friend. However many schoolboy romances there are, we can always use more of them. On the other hand, the last two-thirds of the book gives us an overlong mishmash of interactions between largely uninteresting characters (with some notable exceptions, such as the boy who earns a little money by sharing his body with a man in the neighborhood). I do recommend the book overall, but understand that you may find it a real slog getting to the end.

I never understood why 'The Sorrow of Belgium/Het verdriet van België' created such a fuzz in the Dutch language community (Flanders + The Netherlands). Possibly, the fact that it was a 'must reed' in school, makes that I'm not that overwhelmed by it.
Mind you, it certainly isn't a bad novel, but (from my point of view) it isn't the highlight of twentieth-century Dutch literature that some people say it is. It does help to understand the Flemish feelings towards 'higher authorities' (like Belgium, like the (catholic) church), and maybe (given the correct interpretation of the whole background regarding the German occupation of Belgium during WWII) it can give this novell an universal angle.

I would like to point out that Hugo Claus is a much better poet than he is a novellist. If he'll ever get the Nobel Prize (for the last ten years his name is mentionned), it should be for his poetry, which is (without any exeption) extraordinary and amazing. Obvious problem: it's easier to translate a novell than a poem...

Just before the Big War, Louis Seynaeve is still a boy of eleven years. He grows up in the nunnery in Haarbeke, also known as the Reformatory. Together with his friends Dondeyne, Byttebier and Vlieghe he forms the secret society The Four Apostles. Later their club is reinforced by the new guy Goosens. Their main vocation is to get a hold of 'forbidden books'. One day father and grandfather Seynaeve visit Louis to bring him bad news: Louis' mother fell from the stairs and is taken to the hospital. The truth is that she is pregnant and that any moment now she can give birth to a brother that will upset the easy life Louis was living.

Like so many authors who were adolescent during the Second World War, Hugo Claus is gifted with a relentless urge to get in touch with what happened during his youth. The Sorrow of Belgium is clearly the culmination point of war drama in the works of this Belgian author. Claus does not narrate the heroic deeds of the soldiers, but paints a colorful canvas of life under repression. Simple factory workers and storekeepers are trying to make the best out of things, but more often than not they fall into despair and misery. All this makes great prose as seen through the eyes of the child, Louis Seynaeve.

But then something strange happens. In the middle of the book Hugo Claus decides to changes style completely. Instead of the steady sequential narrative of the first part, the reader gets a mishmash of impressions. The few storylines that are developed die in a pool of chaos. Suddenly the story stops making sense and starts flirting with utter boredom. It is clear that the main theme is collaboration and the blindness of people under repression, but nowhere is this given any reason of existence between the fragmental, pointless descriptions of the adventures of mostly flat characters.

It is incomprehensible why such a potentially great novel was ruined by the desire of Clause to write a novel of more that 700 pages. It would have been great it he had skipped the last 400 pages. A pity.

I review this book reluctantly because I read it over 11 years ago. Frankly there is little that I remember about except two things. The first is that there is an hilarious part on pre-pubescent boys sharing their misconceptions about girls. The second thing I remember about it is my disappointment that the book lacked what I was looking for. I had fairly close relatives in The Netherlands during WWII and some of the stories I heard from them (and others) gave me a totally different picture from what I found in Claus's book. From them I got a sense of being occupied by a sinister enemy. Clandestine meetings, people being hauled off to forced labor, and a sense of fear were among the impressions that I was left with. From "The Sorrow of Belgium" I got a sense of life somewhat altered but still pretty much like normal. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the residents of Belgium experienced a different life than my relatives. Perhaps my relatives embellished their tales of woe. Perhaps I only heard what was interesting to me when my great aunts and uncles shared their experiences with me. All I can say is, this comfortable life style caught me by surprise and left me disappointed. I have read a number of books by European authors trying to get a sense of life in Hitler's Europe. Maybe I have already found it in "The Sorrow of Belgium" but just don't realize it. If so, I'm disappointed in Belgium.

How can someone who has ever learned to write, produce such a stupid paperfilling. If you enyoy reading, pass this bunch of nonsense, else you maybe never touch one book again. How can a sensible person ever think about a Nobel nomination for this cheese advertising fool.