Flanders in Creative Contrasts [antikvár]

Introduction Contrasts have created Vlanders. On the one hand their great number assembled in a small country has given history and modern life there a unique pattern. On the other, particular pairs of contrasts have, by their interaction one on another produced a new fact or quality. Contrasts exist, of course, in all countries. What makesYlandersspecialis their scope and variety in a land which is in area only about one fiftieth of the state of Texas, or about equal to East Anglia. To this must be added its great age. Tlanders, in a series of differentforms, had existed before the Norman conquest of England in 1066, before the unification of the French state, before the continents ofAmericaandAustralia had even become a gleam in someone 'j eye. Of course, Flanders is now different: in size, in frontiers, in aspirations, in importance, but every stone in the mosaic of which it is formed has importance for its present-day pattern. All the contrasts which have existed, and still continue in Flemish history and the Flemish people are essential elements in the country today. History cannot andmust not be ignored. Thisdoesnot, however, mean that history is made up only of important facts and figures. Humour for example, is not necessarily unscientific or unhistorical. A country able to produce sophisticated artifacts of all sorts is certainly capable of seeing some of its past, andpresent, as more than battles, rulers and dates. Historicalfacts and figures were essentially ordinary. People in the past underwent cold and sickness, felt brave or forgetful, were the result of chance and colds-in-the-head. Battles were lost because the troops had drunk too much, and won because commanders turned up later than they were expected. History can speak to us when we realise that Lambert of Saint- Omer, writing his Liber Fioridus in 1120 no doubt also sufferedfrom chilblains in the cold of his cloister; that the great Emperor Charles V enjoyed taking clocks and watches to pieces; that Constant Permeke could not paint without seeing the grey seas ofOstend. Yet in spite of such recognisable ordinary reactions, certain unbroken lines show in the