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Document Details : Title: 'Ik durf het niet uitmaken'. Het aarzelende proza van René Berghen Author(s): BREMS, Elke Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 43 Issue: 4 Date: 2001 Pages: 333-349 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.43.4.383 Abstract : During the interbellum the psychological novel was introduced in Flemish literature as a fairly new genre incorporating some characteristics from the international modernist movement. René Berghen was one of the most consistent performers of this new poetics and was therefore considered an elitist and intellectualist author. Berghens prose analyses human behaviour without a clear moral commitment. His characters’ search for identity is thwarted by their acute consciousness. Between each individual and the reality that surrounds them there is not only an over-exerted consciousness, but Berghen also introduces the notion of subconsciousness. The relation with reality is blurred and the certainty of a singular Truth wavers. René Berghen was not canonized: his psychological, cautiously modernist prose was considered un-Flemish and insufficiently recognizable during the interbellum, while in the post-war period his novels were rejected as outdated and half-hearted attempts to assimilate modernist characteristics. |
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