Portret Stijn Streuvels
After moving into the house The Thrush’s Nest in the village of Ingooigem, the Flemish writer Stijn Streuvels (pseudonym of Frank Lateur, 1871-1969) commenced work on the great agrarian novel which would make him famous. From his desk he looked out over the wide fields and watched the flax workers at work. He listened to the songs the women sung while weeding. Before appearing in book form, De vlaschaard was published in the Dutch magazine De Beweging. This was an appropriate first home for the novel because the magazine’s editor, Albert Verwey, deliberately gathered authors who were able to rise above the prevailing naturalism and be inspired by what he called ‘the Idea’, a symbolist assimilation of sensory perceptions. After reading Streuvels’s manuscript Verwey enthusiastically stated: ‘If the sun could write, it would write like Streuvels.’