L.P. Boon's example and the 'failed' following. The wordless novels of Louis Paul Boon and Frans Masereel
Abstract
This paper compares Louis Paul Boon's 3 mensen tussen muren with Frans Masereel's wordless novel The Sun. All his life, Louis Paul Boon struggled to combine in a single work his skills as a writer with those of a visual artist.
Before World War II, Boon was convinced that he was going to conquer the world as a genius and visionary visual artist. His desire to pursue a career as a writer was less pronounced.
Due to family circumstances, however, he had to stop his academic training as an artist. And as a result of his participation in the mobilisation as well as in World War II, it seemed as if Boon would have to abandon all his plans.
However, when he returned from the war, traumatised from captivity, he tried to come to terms with his experiences by painting and writing about them. In the pre-war and war years he was heavily impressed by two works of art: Charlie Chaplin's film Modern times (1936) and Frans Masereel's wordless novel The Sun (1919).
Visual artist Frans Masereel (1889 - 1972) used uncaptioned woodcut prints to tell wordless stories. For several reasons, Boon was impressed by Masereel's wordless novels The Sun and The City, which tempted him into imitation.
The wordless novel could possibly form the ideal solution to unite Boon's two talents. Boon attempted to create a wordless novel: 3 mensen tussen muren (3 men between walls) - created in 1941 but first published in 1969.
He considered his attempt a failure, but could not let go of Masereel. When he joined communist newspaper De roode vaan in 1944, he started to write text to the woodcut prints of The Sun.
He then continued the series in Front, the former resistance paper. Finally, Boon published them again in his one-man magazine Reservaat, and included some new texts inspired by The Sun.
Boon found it difficult to combine both disciplines in a single work. On the one hand, he kept trying, whereas on the other, as a large part of his literary works shows, he found an entirely different solution