Hugo Claus
Hugo Claus , born the April 5th 1929 with Bruges, is one of the most brilliant Belgian novelists contemporary.
Biography
Wire of a printer, he flees of the paternal house and becomes seasonal worker in the north of France. With Paris, Antonin Artaud becomes for him a second father. He takes part in the revolution Avant-gardiste of the art of Après-guerre and belonged to the movement Cobra (1948-1951). After a stay in Italy where he learns how to know the cinematographic medium, he turns over in Flanders and begins a career of novelist, poet, dramatic author, scenario writer and painter. At end of the years 1960, Claus plays a big role in the protest movement which wants to reform the industrial relations policy and cultural in Flanders. With the experimental Festival of Knokke, in 1967, it shocks the public opinion while making appear on scene three naked men in the role of the Holy Trinity. the Sorrow of the Belgians ( Het verdriet van België ), in 1983, is its first great best-seller in France. In 1997, it receives the price Pasolini, allotted by an international jury to greet the whole of its career.
The writer
Regarded as one of the Belgian novelists most talented of his time, Hugo Claus is defined itself as one “flamingant French-speaking”. He is especially the critic of the traditionalism and the provincialism of the Flemish company, while carrying to universal the evocation of the mediocrity.In the Sorrow of the Belgians , it knew to evoke the behavior of its compatriots during the last war and to paint the Fleming fricotor, conformist and profiteur with a realism which points out that of Pieter Bruegel Old the or of James Ensor. There remains however fascinated by its maternal area which he does not cease recreating with sensitivity and intelligence: “ To maintain manners and the extases of the tribe: yes, it is also the role of the writer. For example, the Sorrow of the Belgians, I wrote it so that my two sons know how their father had lived in a completely strange civilization and néandertalienne. I wanted to show them what it was food before the war, during the war and after the war in a very small community ” (H. Claus, the Pass-Wall , Lausanne, 1997).
the past broken up , its last novel, published with the Threshold in February 2000, takes again the same characters as the Rumor : “ the police interrogation which constitutes the screen of it, as tight and as ambiguous as those of “Crime and punishment”, wakes up a quantity of crucial questions on the human condition while resorting to grotesque which starts a squeaking laughter. It is a book according to my heart, fact of blood and to laugh, tenderness and horror, obscenity and poetry ” (dedication of the translator, France Inter).
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