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 De
veelvraat Hugo Claus
(Hugo Claus - omnivore)
documentary by Tonko Dop
Of course, nothing but good should be said of the dead. But not
many writers will have been praised to the sky like Hugo Claus
(† 19-3-2008) was. The whole of Belgium mourned him
collectively, from the deeply saddened Prime Minister to the
lady behind the snack counter on the corner of the street. Claus
exceeded Famous Belgians like Brel, Hergé and Magritte. No less
in Holland: The Great Three (writers Hermans, Reve and Mulisch)
became, with Claus, The Great Four.
Claus left an impressive oeuvre of over 150 (!) books, but
there’s much more. Calling Hugo Claus a versatile artist is an
understatement: he could do practically anything. But where in
the flood of commemorations did we hear about Hugo the painter,
the scriptwriter, the comics writer, the song writer, the film
director, the plastic artist, the mediapersonality
avant-la-lettre, the librettist, the womanizer, the pub-crawler,
the boxer, and not least of all: Hugo almost the Nobel prize
winner?
What is artistic value of his 20 film scripts, the 4 films he
directed, his many paintings, the chansons he wrote for Liesbeth
List? Claus: “How can you enjoy a good entrecôte if you don’t
know the taste of meatballs? How can you fuck a beautiful women
if you haven’t slept with an one-eyed hunchback? I distrust
every book, every masterpiece, if it doesn’t have an eye for
vulgarity.”
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