Background
Felix Timmermans was born on July 5, 1886, in Lier, Belgium. He was the thirteenth of fourteen children. His father, Joannes Gommaire, was a traveling lace merchant. His mother was Angelina van Nuyten.
Felix Timmermans
Felix Timmermans
Felix Timmermans
Felix Timmermans
Felix Timmermans
Felix Timmermans
Felix Timmermans
biographer novelist playwright author
Felix Timmermans was born on July 5, 1886, in Lier, Belgium. He was the thirteenth of fourteen children. His father, Joannes Gommaire, was a traveling lace merchant. His mother was Angelina van Nuyten.
Felix left school at age fourteen, training as a draftsman and painter and sometimes attending art classes in Lier. His lack of formal education, in fact, is seen by many critics as a significant part of his idiosyncratic writing style.
Felix Timmermans initially worked as a pattern drawer in his father’s lace business. After World War I, he moved to the Netherlands, where he stayed until 1920, earning his living as a writer, poet, painter and artist. Although he also published poetry, plays and adaptations of medieval texts, Timmermans primarily wrote novels, fictionalised biographies and stories. He also illustrated his own books.
Timmermans wrote romanticised biographies of Pieter Bruegel and St. Francis of Assisi, as well as travel tales, autobiographical works and plays. In 1935, he published his well-known work, A Peasant’s Psalm, a novel that reveals a deep knowledge of suffering, in which praise of nature gives way to praise of humanity.
Alongside Stijn Streuvels, Timmermans is one of the representatives of the Flemish ‘rural novel'. While Streuvels cultivates the farmer and countryside into an almost mythical fact, Timmermans continues to work within a kind of mini-realism or miniaturism. The main themes are always an unshakeable faith, resignation to providence and allegiance to one’s own region and traditions.
Though Timmermans’s simple style and humorous tone prompted some critics to dismiss his work as provincial, his books weave more serious themes into their bright narratives. Yet in his personal life, Timmermans held beliefs some saw as dangerously naive. He appeared friendly to the Nazis during World War II, believing they would aid the Flemish national cause. Regarded as a collaborator - though he did not engage in any treasonous activities - he lost much of his popularity after World War II and suffered emotional stress because of the damage to his reputation. In fact, some critics maintained that this distress may have worsened the heart condition that claimed Timmermans’s life in 1947.
Felix spent his entire life in the provincial town of Lier. Indeed, his parents chose the name “Felix,” or “Happy One,” to dispel any negative superstition regarding this supposedly unlucky number, but Timmermans was known as a melancholy man who saved any high spirits for his work.
On October 12, 1912, Felix married Marika Janssens. They had three daughters: Cecilia, also known as Leah (1920), Clara (1922) and Thonet (1926) and son Gommaar (1930). These children have also become active in the art world. Among other things, they illustrated the work of their father and wrote various biographies about him.