De wondere wegen van La Salette. Nederlandstalige literatuur in het Tsjechisch versus bekeringen tot het katholicisme
The Wondrous Ways of La Salette: Dutch-Language Literature in Czech versus Writers’ Conversions to Catholicism

Summary/Abstract: The Industrial Revolution profoundly changed society. Most European countries changed from an agrarian to an industrial society. Cities grew substantially, a large proletariat emerged and secularisation increased. The new political movements of the 19th century – liberalism and socialism – were strongly anticlerical, more so in Belgium than in the Netherlands. In the mid-19th century, many Marian apparitions took place, the first being that in La Salette in 1846. The apparitions invariably took place in the countryside, to simple people, with an appeal for personal conversion and apocalyptic messages. The Catholic Church was reluctant to acknowledge them. La Salette had a strong influence on several decadent and symbolist poets, the most important of whom was Léon Bloy (1846-1917). Bloy influenced both the Dutchman Pieter van der Meer de Walcheren (1880-1970), and the Czech Josef Florian (1873-1941). Around both there emerged circles of Catholic or Catholicised literati. The Czech members of the group around Florian translated – sometimes through French translations by Van de Meer de Walcheren – Middle Dutch and other mystical and Catholic Dutch literature, especially poetry. La Salette thus achieved the transfer of a specific part of Dutch-language literature to Czech soil.

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