Belgian poetry exists: an introduction to Belgian literary set theory

So, you want to know if Belgian poetry exists? Are you sure? Do you have time to spare? Okay, you’ve asked for it. And I am terribly sorry, gentle poetry reader, but I will have to turn to mathematics. I know, it wasn’t my favourite subject in secondary either, but I’ve found no better way to explain the curious existence of Belgian poetry than through set theory. Bear with me.

Let’s start with some definitions: a set (P) is a clear, well-defined group of unique objects, and an element (x) is an individual item belonging to the set. In this case Belgian poetry is the set that contains all Belgian poets and their poems. P = {Hadewych, Hugo Claus, Emile Verhaeren, Henri Michaux, Maud Joiret, Dominique De Groen, Jessy James LaFleur etc.}. Hugo Claus is a member of the set Belgian poetry. Hugo Claus ∈ P. Easy peasy. If only Belgians didn’t have to make things so complicated. Unsurprisingly, there is no agreement in Belgium about the proper definition of the Belgian poetry set. Belgian poets can belong to a plethora of possible sets, and in many cases, it is unclear which poet belongs to which set.

Belgian set theory: the hard way

Traditionally, a literary set is defined by the combination of nation and language, where, ideally, the nationality of the poet and the language of the poetry match. French poetry is poetry in French written by the French. Dutch poetry is poetry in Dutch written by the Dutch. German poetry is poetry in German written by the Germans. Simple as that. Belgian poetry is poetry in Belgian written by the Belgians? That’s not quite right, because Belgium went through a historic process of linguistic conflicts and federalisation, and evolved from a unitary, officially French-speaking state to a federal, officially multilingual country with a complicated state structure in which different cultural communities entertain various political and affective relationships with each other and with Belgium as a whole. In short, both ‘nation’ and ‘language’ are problematic as defining categories.

The set ‘Belgian poetry’ then needs different subsets. It would make sense to align these subsets with subnational political entities. Why not define them according to the economic regions that make up Belgium? In that case, Belgian poetry is a set containing the subsets Flemish poetry, Brussels poetry and Walloon poetry, defined respectively as poetry written in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia: P = {Flanders, Brussels, Wallonia}. But we could also use the three linguistic communities as criteria: the Dutch, French and German-speaking communities. In that case P = {NL, FR, DE}. This makes more sense, as culture is under the purview of the linguistic communities in Belgium. This means that each language has its own, separate literary institutions, funded by different subnational political entities. Moreover, the fact that economic regions and linguistic communities do not coincide creates a lot of confusion. Whereas there is an overlap between Flanders and the Dutch-speaking community, Brussels is a bilingual Dutch-French region, and Wallonia a bilingual French-German one.

In addition, each linguistic community is embedded in a bigger transnational language area, where they share the set of French-language, Dutch-language or German-language literature with the better defined and more visible national literatures of France, the Netherlands and Germany. The national literatures of these countries generally hold a dominant position in their language area. Their larger book markets and more prestigious publishers and institutions hold great appeal for Belgian writers, to such an extent that language now rivals nationality for assigning Belgian poets to a literary set. The cliché runs that one’s mother tongue is one’s true homeland, and some poets of Belgian origin, such as Henri Michaux, were in fact very hostile to the idea of being regarded as a Belgian poet.

While we can indeed divide Belgian poetry in subsets according to language, this leads to all sorts of friction and paradox. Dutch-language poetry in Belgium, for example, is hardly ever called that way: ‘Dutch-language Belgian poetry’. Many poets would also raise their eyebrows at the term ‘Flemish-Belgian poets’. Rather they would simply call themselves ‘Flemish poets’, because economic region and linguistic community coincide in an officially monolingual Dutch-speaking present-day Flanders. (Mind you, Flemish poets do write poems in Dutch, not in ‘Flemish’). However, historically Flanders was bilingual, with a cultural elite writing in French. Several of the most famous French-language Belgian poets, including Emile Verhaeren, lived within the boundaries of present-day Flanders. Are these poets then to be considered as part of ‘Flemish’ or ‘French-language Belgian’ poetry? For a long time, they were neglected by Flanders, as the combination of ‘French-language’ and ‘Flemish’ seemed an anomaly in the newly emancipated official monolingual community, where a ‘Dutch-language Flemish poet’ is considered a tautology. The French-speaking community, on the other hand, welcomed them with open arms in their literary canon.

French-language Belgian poets, in turn, are only called ‘Walloon poets’ by ignorant or tactless Flemish or Dutch people. Even though Wallonia has a cultural identity of its own, heavily marked by its industrial past, the region shares a linguistic community with French-speaking people from Brussels in what is today called the ‘Wallonia-Brussels Federation’. ‘Walloon poetry’, moreover, refers to poetry in Walloon, a regional language of the romance family with a rich oral tradition and an ever-receding number of active speakers in rural Wallonia. A French-speaking poet from the ‘metropole’ of Brussels would consequently refuse to be called a ‘Walloon poet’, as this has a very ‘provincial’ connotation. In the French language area French-speaking Belgian poets are often simply referred to as ‘Belgian poets’. However, in the past there have been heated debates about whether we should speak of ‘French-language poetry from Belgium’ or rather ‘Belgian poetry in the French language’, whereby language or nationality, respectively, is regarded as the primary defining category.

Finally, with a population of roughly 80,000 people, the German linguistic community in Wallonia (today often branded as ‘East Belgium’) is so small in comparison to the other two communities that it’s often simply overlooked by both. If you were to ask people in Flanders, Brussels or Wallonia to name a German-speaking Belgian poet, most would be completely lost. I can only think of Jessy James LaFleur and Bruno Kartheuser.

Some people, and certainly Flemish nationalists and Walloon regionalists, would say that the three aforementioned linguistic sets are no subsets at all, but simply different sets, as there exists no overarching set of ‘Belgian poetry’. Or they would argue that this set should be considered empty: P = ∅. Curiously, since the seventies, after the first Belgian state reform that created the linguistic communities, French-speaking Belgian writers (and, to a far lesser extent, Flemish writers) have played with the idea of ‘Belgitude’. Hereby, Belgian identity is paradoxically defined by an absence of national identity, a sort of post-national nationalist discourse that has today become somewhat of an anachronistic cliché.

I think it is more productive to consider ‘Belgian poetry’ in terms of intersections between any of the three linguistic sets: P = {NL ∩ FR, NL ∩ DE, FR ∩ DE}. Belgian plurilingual poetry spaces exist where there are bridges or overlaps between the three supposedly separate poetries. These spaces are more numerous than you would think and can exist in the form of exophonic poets (e.g. Jan Baetens, Elke De Rijcke), intra-national literary exchange projects (e.g. ‘Poet from Belgium’, formerly ‘National Poet’, ‘Flirt Flamand’, ‘Ta langue over mijn tong’), multilingual events and organizations (e.g. Poetik Bazaar, Passa Porta), border-crossing periodicals (e.g. Flemish Review de la Poëzie, les plats pays) or poetry translation anthologies and series (e.g. Belgium Bordelio or ‘De Flandre’ by Tétras Lyre). Brussels plays an important role as an intersection of Flemish and French-speaking Belgian poetry, as this bilingual city and region is home to both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking poets and cultural institutions, even if its potential as an intersection has not yet been fully realised.

Belgian set theory: the easy way

Nevertheless, this ‘intersectional approach’ still doesn’t do justice to the complex reality of Belgian poetry, as we are still bound to the categories of nationality and language. Expat and migrant poets active in Belgium, and Belgian poets writing in a foreign language are, by definition, excluded from our set. However, there’s a very easy way to resolve all the issues with defining the Belgian poetry set. We can broaden the idea of a ‘national literature’ by abandoning ‘language’ altogether as a defining category, and by changing ‘nationality’ from a necessary to a sufficient condition, together with ‘location of writing’ and ‘theme’. We could then consider Belgian poetry as the union (∪) of the following three sets:

1. Poetry written by people who hold Belgian citizenship (C)
2. Poetry written within the boundaries of present-day Belgium (L)
3. Poetry written about Belgium (T)

One of these three conditions would suffice to be included to the set ‘Belgian poetry’. In other words: P = {C ∪ L ∪ T}. It may seem radical to abolish language as a defining category in Belgium, a country with so many linguistic sensitivities, and this at any rate doesn’t fundamentally alter the institutional divide between the three literatures. However, it does open a different way of thinking about poetry in a multilingual country, a way that does justice to location without having to resort to vague transnational in-between spaces: poetry is created somewhere (even if poets move around). The historical, legal, political, social, material, imagined and everyday lived realities in a certain country matter and have a direct or indirect impact on poets.

In this way, Frank Keizer, a Dutch poet who until recently lived in Brussels and wrote a long poem about this city can be part of Belgian poetry, as can Martín Zícari, an Argentinian poet who lives in Brussels and has published a poetry collection named after the Flemish port city Ostend about his life in both Belgium and Buenos Aires, and Ahmed M. Saleh, a Palestinian poet living in Brussels who is the director of a cross-cultural literary organisation RIHLA that collaborates with the multilingual literary organisation Passa Porta and the Flemish branch of PEN. Of course, being part of one set of national literature does not prevent a poet from being part of another. Also, this isn’t intended as a way of appropriating poets, which could be problematic in a post-colonial context. Frank Keizer is no less part of Dutch literature, Martín Zícari no less of Argentinian literature and Ahmed M. Saleh no less of Palestinian literature. They are bound to those literatures because of their nationality, even while forming intersections with other national literatures because of their location or the topics of their poetry. After all, this definition of Belgian poetry applies just as much to any other national literature. Even so-called monolingual countries as France, the Netherlands and Germany would have much to gain by broadening their definitions.