The Twentieth Century
In common with the rest of Europe, the Netherlands of the nineteenth century effectively remained unchanged until World War I (1914–1918). Belgium was invaded by the German Empire; the Netherlands faced severe economic difficulties owing to its policy of neutrality and consequent political isolation, wedged as it was between the two warring sides.
Both the Belgian and Dutch societies emerged from the war pillarised, meaning that each of the main religious and ideological movements (Protestant, Catholic, Socialist and Liberal) stood independent of the rest, each operating its own newspapers, magazines, schools, broadcasting organizations and so on in a form of self-imposed, non-racial segregation. This in turn affected literary movements, as writers gathered around the literary magazines of each of the four "pillars" (limited to three in Belgium, as Protestantism never took root there).
One of the most important historical writers of the 20th century was Johan Huizinga, who is known abroad and translated in different languages and included in several great books lists. His written works were influenced by the literairy figures of the early 20th century.
- Hendrik Marsman
- Adriaan Roland Holst
- J. van Oudshoorn
- Arthur van Schendel
- Hendrik de Vries
- Jacobus van Looy
Read more about this topic: Dutch Literature
Famous quotes containing the words twentieth century and/or twentieth:
“In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)