Philip, Esquire Blommaert (

Ghent Ghent ( ; ; historically known as ''Gaunt'' in English) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the Provinces of Belgium, province ...

, 24 August 1809 – 14 August 1871) was a Belgian writer. He earned his living as a private scholar and was a friend and comrade of

Hendrik Conscience Henri (Hendrik) Conscience (3 December 1812 – 10 September 1883) was a Belgian author. He is considered the pioneer of Dutch-language literature in Flanders, writing at a time when Belgium was dominated by the French language among the upper c ...

with whom he promoted the use of

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. In 1834 he wrote poems for the Flemish magazine ' in

, but with little success because of their rough language. Together with

Jan Frans Willems Jan Frans Willems (11 March 1793 – 24 June 1846) was a Flemish writer, and the father of the Flemish movement. Willems was born in the Belgian city of Boechout while it was under French occupation. He started his career in the office of a n ...

he worked for several Belgian magazines against the influence of the French language in

Flanders Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...

, and in 1840 was one of the co-authors of the ''Vlaams petitionnement'' (E: Flemish petition) to support the Flemish cause in

. Of more importance was the publication of Dutch poems from the 12th to 14th centuries, such as ''Theophilus'' (Ghent 1836, 2nd edition 1858), and ''Oudvlaemsche gedichten'' (1838–1851, 3 Volumes), as well as a Dutch translation of the

Nibelungenlied The (, or ; or ), translated as ''The Song of the Nibelungs'', is an epic poetry, epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The is based on an oral tradition of Germanic hero ...

in iambic verse. Together with C.P. Serrure he founded the Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, a

text publication society A text publication society is a learned society which publishes (either as its sole function, or as a principal function) scholarly editions of old works of historical or literary interest, or archival documents. In addition to full texts, a text p ...

to produce editions of medieval Flemish literature. Together with Serrure he edited the ''Kronyk van Vlaenderen van 580 tot 1467'' for publication in 1839.Both volumes in one
on

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

. His most famous work was the ''Aloude geschiedenis der Belgen of Nederduitschers'' (Ghent 1849), where he gave his opinion that the

Low German Low German is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language variety, language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. "Low" ...

areas are destined, despite their political divisions, to the fulfillment of a high cultural-historical idea.

Later years

In 1860 he became a member of the

Royal Belgian Academy Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family or royalty Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, ...

, where he took part in the work of the commission for the publication of a Flemish cultural monument. He had started working on the publication

Jacob van Maerlant Jacob van Maerlant (c. 1230–40 – c. 1288–1300) was a Flemings, Flemish poet of the 13th century and one of the most important Middle Dutch authors during the Middle Ages. Biography Jacob van Maerlant was born near Bruge ...

's just-discovered poem ''Istory van Troyen.'' when he died.

References

Philip Blommaert
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blommaert, Philip 1809 births 1871 deaths Belgian writers

Later years

See also

References