Novel
Het recht van den sterkste
Not translated into English
Cyriel Buysse · 1893
Opening lines
Reus, de wenkbrauwen gefronst, staakte schielijk het dansen. Maar ’t duurde slechts een oogenblik: hij slaakte, dof, een vloek en zijn beide grove werkmanshanden om Witte Manse’s middel geslagen, mengde hij zich weder met haar in den wilden, beestachtigen drom.
Reus, brows knitted, abruptly stopped dancing. But it lasted only a moment: he let out a muffled oath and, with both his coarse workman's hands clasped round White Manse's waist, merged once more with her into the wild, brutish throng.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
At the Akspoele fair, in East Flanders, Reus Balduk, a brute released from prison two days earlier after nine months for brawling, and whose girlfriend has married in the meantime, decides that Maria Beert will be his. That same evening, on the way home, he takes her by force in the cornfields. A weeder on farms, Maria is the exception in the Zijstraat, the disreputable street of her village where poachers and thieves are known only by their nicknames: she dreamed of marrying an honest boy and living far from there. Reus comes back to claim her.
Context
Willem Kloos refused to publish it in full in his review, because of the sexual scenes, and gave only an extract; the book appeared in Amsterdam from the publisher of De Nieuwe Gids in November 1893, two years after the manuscript was sent. The author acknowledged in 1913 the influence of Zola, whose thesis of heredity he rejected. A succès de scandale that made him known in the Netherlands, the novel was called “literature of pigs” in Flanders and was not reissued there until 1967.
Who it is for
Thirty-four short chapters, of a raw naturalism: violence against a woman is shown without evasion.
Prizes and reception
The first novel and the best known of its author; poorly received in Flanders, it was not fully recognised until its reissue in 1967.