Transferring the city – transgressing borders: Cultural mediators in Antwerp (1850–1930)

Abstract

The present paper analyses the complex forms of intercultural transfer activities in the multilingual, cosmopolitan city of Antwerp just after the First World War, at a time when the emancipation claims of the Dutch-speaking groups vis-à-vis the francophones were increasing and the literary avant-garde preached internationalism. It zooms in on two key cultural mediators, Georges Eekhoud (1854–1927) and Roger Avermaete (1893–1988), whose multiple transfer activities are inextricably bound up with Antwerp's history as a dual city but remain largely under-researched. It deals with the following concrete research questions: what were the aims, forms and functions of intercultural actors' transfer activities; how did they create new forms of literary writing and translation and new roles of authorship and translatorship; which urban networks organized and controlled these transfer activities; and which effects did these activities and networks have on the relations between the urban cultural communities they represented and on the creation of a common cultural history? On a methodological level, it reflects upon translation studies' concepts: does translation studies offer appropriate concepts and methods to analyse these new literary cartographies, these new forms of writing and translating and new roles of authorship and translatorship?

Keywords:

• multilingualism
• self-translation
• transfer
• mediator
• networks

Notes on contributors

Reine Meylaerts is full professor of comparative literature and director of CETRA (Centre for Translation Studies; http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra) at KU Leuven (Belgium). Her current research interests concern the theory, methodology and historiography of intercultural relationships in multilingual societies. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters on these topics (https://lirias.kuleuven.be/items-by-author?author=Meylaerts%2C+Reinhilde%3B+U0031976), and review editor of Target: International Journal of Translation Studies. She is coordinator of 2011–2014: FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN: TIME: Translation Research Training: An integrated and intersectoral model for Europe. She is also the former secretary general (2004–2007) of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and chair of the Doctoral Studies Committee of EST.

Maud Gonne is a PhD student in translation studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She is preparing a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Dr Reine Meylaerts on intercultural transfer activities by the translator-writer Georges Eekhoud within and beyond Belgium (1895–1910). This research is part of a broader interdisciplinary project titled “Custom Officers or Smugglers? The Mediating Role of Intercultural Actors within Belgium and between Belgium and France (1850–1920)”.

Notes

1. “Dutch” is the official term used to refer to the language spoken in Flanders. “Flemish” refers to literature, culture, ethnicity and identity – for example, in the designation of the actual federalized institutions such as the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region. Historically, as illustrated by various quotations in this article, the term “Flemish” also referred to the language, sometimes with a condescending flavour of “amalgam of dialects”.

2. Houses got house numbers, facades were transformed according to the French style, etc. (Bertels, Bisschops, and Blondé 2010, 40).

3. Therefore, all civil and military functions had to be given to French speakers so that Dutch speakers would be obliged to learn French (Peeters 1930, quoted in Willemyns 2002, 393).

4. All translations are mine.

5. The Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience (1812–1883), considered as a symbol of the Flemish emancipation struggle, was born in the Pompstraat in St Andries.

6. The pure francophones in Antwerp were 1.73% of the population in 1846, 3.42% in 1910, up to 4.08% in 1930. At the last linguistic census in 1947, 7.43% of the city's population were francophones (Vanneste 2010, 31).

7. In 1880, out of 169,112 inhabitants, 14,491 (8.5%) were bilingual French-Dutch. In 1890, out of 224,013 inhabitants, 42,617 (19%) were bilingual.

8. Antwerp deputy Edward Coremans is called the father of the languages laws that were passed between 1873 and1891 and that gave more rights to the Dutch-language speakers. After the First World War this task was continued by his fellow townsman Frans van Cauwelaert, the first supporter of the Flemish Movement to become a mayor in Antwerp.

9. For example, Le Matin [The Morning] (1894–1974) and La Métropole [The Metropole] (1894–1974).

10. For example, Sabbe or De Meyer.

11. For example, in Antwerp Dutch-language newspapers the number of Gallicisms, in relation to the total number of words, represented no less than 44.6% in 1850, and regressed slightly to 34.1% in 1900 (Willemyns 2002, 410). But in 1930 Dutch was still full of French words and expressions (Peeters 1930, quoted in Willemyns 2002, 412).

12. Within translation studies, the concepts of mediation and mediator are mainly used in (community) interpreting contexts. With regard to literary translation, interesting work has been done by Wolf (2002). The definition of a cultural mediator and the methodology that follow here are developed within a collective, interdisciplinary research project, “Customs Officers or Smugglers? Cultural Mediators in Belgium (1850–1930)”, financed by the KU Leuven research council (2011–2015).

13. As will become clear below, the effect of these discursive transfer practices may well be to separate linguistic communities.

14. Although Jakobson had already laid the foundation for a theory of transfer, and Even-Zohar (1990) further developed his ideas, the relation between translation and transfer is a topical issue in TS nowadays. For further readings, see e.g. Göpferich (2007); Weissbrod (2004, 2010). In comparison to this article, which focuses mainly on the processes and their actors, Weissbrod's publications focus mainly on the products. For an overview of the concept of cultural transfer, see D'hulst (2012).

15. In the same newspaper he also published an adaptation of Belgian-francophone writer André Van Hasselt's Les quatre incarnations du Christ [The four incarnations of the Christ] in serial form.

16. Both the language, French, and the genre, poetry, were typical, mainstream choices for the second half of the nineteenth century and would have contributed to his transgressing urban and national space.

17. For example, in La nouvelle Carthage (1988), the first naturalistic novel about Antwerp, or in Les libertins d'Anvers (1912) where he describes life in Antwerp in the sixteenth century and for which he did many years of research.

18. Further research is needed to know whether Eekhoud wrote his contributions for Dutch-language periodicals in Dutch or if they were written in French and translated into Dutch.

19. Franskiljon was a strong term of abuse used by Dutch-speaking Flemings for Gallicized, pro-French Flemings like Avermaete.

20. This style was in vogue at the time and contributed to the Parisian success of writers like himself, Verhaeren and Maeterlinck.

21. For example, Peter Benoit, Sa vie, son esthétique et son enseignement (1897); Persoonlijkewherinneringen aan het intieme leven van Peter Benoit (1909).

22. Flemish playwright, promoter of Flemish literature and culture and founder of the liberal newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws [The Latest News].

23. Translated serial novels in daily newspapers are typical for the nineteenth century. For a historical view on translations of serial stories in Flemish newspapers between 1844 and 1900, and on the intersection of censorship, translation and ideology therein, see van Doorslaer (2010).

24. A comparison of the two versions is beyond the scope of this article, but let us just mention one striking difference: in the French version, some 100 pages on the struggle between Flemish and francophones are deleted. The evocation of urban sociolinguistic struggles was, in other words, limited to the readers of the language group that issued the linguistic claims.

25. Through the law of 1876 the Antwerp Municipal Council had guaranteed that private primary schools would use Dutch as the medium of instruction. From the second grade, 3 of the 22 hours would be given in French, up to 7 of 34 in the fifth grade. This directive was not followed; French had a much more important place. According to an investigation in 1893, the school in the Maerlandtstraat had Dutch and French sections for the first three years; in the following years of study all subjects were taught in Dutch and translated in French (Beckers 1976, 175).

26. Interview with Alain Avermaete on September 22, 2011.

27. Max Elskamp (1862–1931); Paul Neuhuys (1897–1984).

28. Emmanuel de Bom (1868–1953); Lode Baekelmans (1879–1965); Karel van den Oever (1879–1926); M. E. Belpaire (1853–1948).

29. La conjuration des chats [The conspiracy of the cats] (1920).

30. It relates the devotion of a betrayed Catholic wife for her husband and is intended as a critique of Catholic morality.

31. On translation and hybridity, see e.g. Simon (2011); Schäffner and Adab (2001); Meylaerts (2006); Leclerc (2010).

32. That is, indeed, exactly what supporters of the Flemish Movement then asked of francophone Flemish writers: to rewrite their French works in their “original” language (see e.g. Eeckhout 1932).

33. Avermaete mainly translated his works on art, but also theatre. The play Meester van de Zee [Master of the Sea] (1931), for example, is a self-translation of Maître de la mer (1931). Avermaete considered the translation as “une pièce originale” [an original play] (Avermaete 1931).

34. The relationship between the two languages was about 25% Dutch to 75% French. Avermaete published 12 Dutch-language works that do not appear in French and 14 bilingual works, all belonging to the domain of the arts.

35. As a critic he wrote about Flemish literature in the francophone Belgian newspaper L'indépendance Belge [Belgian Independence] (1936–1939) and partly simultaneously about international art and literature in the Dutch Belgian Volksgazet [People's Journal] (1931–1938).

36. Between 1920 and 1934, Lumière published 65 volumes. One-quarter were art books, one-sixth were Dutch-language publications, both translations into Dutch and originals. Lumière also published translations of Flemish, Russian and German writers in French (Lemaire 1969, 8–15).

37. For example, Eekhoud was invited to a conference in French on the francophone Belgian writer Charles de Coster, considered at the time as the founding father of francophone Belgian literature.

38. They often promoted artistic avant-gardes, i.e. Flemish expressionist artists, as a way to get around the language question, unavoidable in literature.

39. The group comprises, in addition to its initiator Avermaete, four writers (Willy Koninckx, Georges Marlier, René Vaes and Bob Claessens) and two painters (Alice Frey and Joris Minne).

40. With some 130 subscriptions and a continuous struggle to survive, the periodical's internationalism was not resulting in an international distribution and readership. Inside Lumière, internationalism transpired mainly through regular features devoted to foreign literatures, which was a characteristic shared with many contemporaries.

41. For instance “In de Branding” [In the Surf] by Jef Horemans and “Heilige Nacht” [Holy Night] by Lode Baekelmans, in no. 7, 1920, and in no. 7, 1921, respectively. Horemans also had to deal with allegations of activism (see Avermaete 1919); for Avermaete this was no reason not to publish him.

42. Pratt (1991) defines contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power” (34). For her, “Autoethnography, transculturation, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression [… are] some of the literate arts of the contact zone” (37). She therefore calls for a “systematic approach to the all-important concept of cultural mediation” (43).