Hendrik Conscience

Hendrik Conscience (born Henri Conscience the December 3rd 1812 with Antwerp, dead the September 10th 1883 in the same city) is a Belgian writer of Flemish expression .

Childhood and adolescence

He was wire of Pierre Conscience, a native of Besancon. This one had been chief of steering gear in the marine of Napoleon Bonaparte and was named sub-manager of the port of Antwerp in 1811 when the city was French. When the city was withdrawn from the empire, Pierre remained. It was a very eccentric person, who bought and dismounted the ships out of use with which the port was full after peace.

The child grows in an old shop filled with maritime objects to which the father added then a collection of unsaleable books, among those, of old novels which ignited the imagination of the teenager.

His/her mother died in 1820. The boy and his young brother did not have an other companion only their father. In 1826 Pierre remaria with a widow much younger than him, Anna Catherina Bogaerts.

Henri had developed an insatiable appetite for the reading. Shortly after its new Pierre marriage started to hate the city, sold its trade and was withdrawn in Campine, the area punt between Antwerp and Venlo. There, in a small farm surrounded by a large garden, the boys spent the weeks and even the months without another frequentation that Anna.

Beginnings

At the seventeen years age, Henri left the paternal house to become tutor in Antwerp and to continue his studies which were soon upset by the Belgian Révolution of 1830. He went voluntary like soldier in the Belgian news Armée and was used in the barracks of Venlo then as Termonde, until in 1837, having obtained the rank of Quartermaster-sergeant. He thus found among the Flemish of all the social classes and observed closely their mental practices. The young man then decided to write in the scorned language of the country, an idiom considered then as too country being spoken and especially written by the French-speaking which formed, in Flanders, the Bourgeoisie.

However, in the vicinity, the Dutch had a rich and respected literature, in Dutch, a language close to Flemish. Henri realized that new territorial division was going to create a crenel , conditions of a blossoming in a language which it described like romantic, mysterious, major, energetic even wild. “If I manage to write, I will throw myself to body lost in the Flemish composition. ”

Its Poem S, however, written whereas he was soldier, was all in French language. It did not receive a pension and it was with the Chômage. Determined with impossible he wrote to sell a Flemish book. Inspired by a passage of Francesco Guichardin, he wrote a series of scenes located at the time of the Révolte of the gueux, under the title In 'T Wonderjaar 1566 . This text was published in Ghent in 1837. His/her father found shocking so much the fact that his/her son writes a Flemish book that it threw it outside. The novelist then had like alone fortune only two frank and some clothing.

Recognition

A former schoolmate found it in the street and took it at his place; soon people of the high society, in particular the painter recognized Gustave Wappers, were interested in this ambitious but unhappy young man. Wappers gave him a costume and presented it to the king Léopold I {{er}}. This one had in addition made the request, immediately not filled for bureaucratic reasons, that the Wonderjaar is added to the library of each school of the kingdom. It was under the patronage of Léopold Ier whom it published its second book Fantasy in 1837. A small station with the provincial files ensured him of the regular incomes and in 1838 it made appear its historical novel most famous the Lion of Flandres . This novel was followed of How to become a painter (1843), what can suffer a mother (1843), Siska van Roosemaei (1844), Lambrecht Hensmans (1847), Jacob van Artevelde (1849) and the Conscript (1850). During these years he lived a varied existence, for thirteen months like a under-gardener in a country house, but finally as secretary of the academy from the Art schools in Antwerp. It was necessary much time before its books - applauded but seldom bought - enabled him to be a little independent. Its ideas, however, started to be allowed. At the time of a congress Flamingant which took place at the beginning of 1841, its writings were compared with a seed for a literature of the national type. Also the Flemish nationalists encouraged to them circulation.

In 1845 Henri was made knight of the Ordre of Léopold. To write in Flemish had ceased being ridiculous; on the contrary to use the idiom of the Prolétariat had almost become a fashion.

In 1845 Henri published a Histoire of Belgium , but one advised to him to return to the presentations of the ordinary and picturesque lives which were its speciality. It published then Aveugle Pink (1850), Rikketikketak (1851), the Gentleman pourrissant (1851), Misery (1853). It started to have imitateurs.

In 1855 the first translations started to appear. In 1867 the post of guard of the royal museums of Belgium was created and this important function was allotted to him. It continued to produce news with a great regularity (on the whole, it wrote some more than eighty). He had become a celebrity in the city and its seventieth birthday gave place to public festivities. He died after a long illness in his house and one made him national funeral.

The portraits of Conscience present it to us with long flexible hair, contemplative dark eyes under large eyebrows, a pointed nose, and a large mouth of good mood; during its last years, it wore a long white beard.

Its historical frescos do not keep the popularity which they knew, but the description of the life of ordinary people in their daily life preserve their sociological value.

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