Marnix Gijsen

(pseudonym of Jan Albert Goris). Born Nov. 20, 1899, in Antwerp. Belgian writer and public figure. Writes in Flemish. Participant in the Flemish national movement.

Gijsen’s early poetry combines religious motifs with the ideas of classical philosophy (the collection of expressionist poems The House, 1925). His novel The Book of Joachim of Babylon (1948) is based on a mystical conception of a spiritual link between contemporary man and the civilization of ancient Babylonia. Gijsen shows the seamy side of bourgeois culture in the novels Telemachus in the Countryside (1948), Man of the Day After Tomorrow (1949), Good and Evil (1951), Cat in a Tree (1953), and Armageddon (1965). He is also the author of Literature of the Southern Netherlands Since 1830 (4th ed., 1951).