HET BEELD VAN MIDDEN- EN OOST-EUROPA IN DE MODERNE NEDERLANDSE POЁZIE

Abstract

An imagological approach to contemporary Dutch poetry demonstrates what kind of stereotypes of Central and Eastern Europe find expression in the poetry written by immigrants from the countries of the Eastern Bloc on the one hand and by autochthonous poets on the other hand. The first ones see the relation East ←→ West as the dichotomy warm = cordial ←→ cold = rational, the latter see the otherness of the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe in their devotion to the history and in permanent looking back, to the past, and in two results of the long decades of communist ideology: the inability to think freely and the economic backwardness of their countries. Most of the verses written by autochthonous poets are devoted to historical events that had their specific features in Eastern Europe: the two world wars and the tragedy of the Jews, the civil war in Yugoslavia. However, for a number of Dutch poets the theme of Eastern Europe results from free associations and has no ideological loading.