^ LIBRARY ^ UNIVERStTY Of CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO . ^t CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN LITERATURE CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN LITERATURE BY JETHRO BITHELL NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS 1916 [All rights reserved) (HRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN) CONTENTS CHAP. FAGB Preface vii I. Belgian Literature till 1880 11 II. The Standard of Revolt 42 III. Camille Lemonnier 60 IV. Georges Eekhoud 85 V. ^MILE Verhaeren io8 VI. Maurice Maeterlinck 150 VII. The Symbolist Poets 190 VIII. The Parnassian Poets 253 IX. EugIine Demolder 264 X. Flemish Novelists and Dramatists . . . 279 XI. Walloon Novelists and Dramatists . . . 289 XII. Novelists in Flemish 314 XIII. Poets in Flemish 329 XIV. Essayists, Critics, and Scholars .... 354 Bibliography 373 Note 379 Index 380 PREFACE The present sketch of contemporary Belgian litera- ture lays no claim to completeness. Belgium to- day teems with writers of merit ; and to have dealt adequately with all of them would have needed a series of volumes padded with academic detail. The publisher and the author have for the moment no farther ambition than to stimulate interest, and to give information which is so sadly lacking in this country that some of the most distinguished of Belgian poets are living in exile in London un- noticed and without a welcome, making munitions (all honour to them), or living as they can. There have been great difficulties of selection ; and there are many authors whom I have read with profit who are not even mentioned. In some in- stances it has not been easy to decide whether an author is Belgian or otherwise. Huysmans was of Flemish parentage, but since he was born in Paris it is no doubt best to consider him a Frenchman. vii Contemporary Belgian Literature The brothers J. H. Rosny, who rank with the very best of contemporary French novelists, might with some justice have been claimed as Belgian writers, for they are Belgians born, and they lived in Brussels, I am told, till well on in their teens. But they have been so long resident in France that they might possibly resent being docketed as Belgians. There is the same difficulty with regard to Francis de Croisset and Henry Kistemaeckers, the only Belgian-born playwrights who have become natural- ised on the Paris stage. Henry Van de Velde, again, lives in Germany and writes in German ; Paul G^rardy, most Belgian of Belgians, is a denaturalised Prussian ; while Leon Souguenet is French-born but Belgian by habit. There is always the question whether " Belgian literature " exists at all. ... I have indicated in the course of the book that some eminent Belgian writers will not hear of such a thing. And, after all, one never hears of Swiss literature. . . . That may be, however, because there are so few Swiss writers of international reputation. Belgium, on the other hand, is not only rich in distinguished writers, but these writers have a marked Belgian vm Preface individuality, and for these reasons we are surely justified in claiming a national literature (one of the most interesting in Europe to-day) for the little country over which the Germans have ridden rough-shod. To the living writers of Belgium this book would express a practical sympathy by calling attention to their work. They will need readers after the war ; and they deserve them. J. BITHELL. IX CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN LITERATURE CHAPTER I BELGIAN LITERATURE TILL 1880 The best help in the appreciation of Belgian literature is an understanding of the course of Belgian history. Belgian literature, quite as much as Belgian history, is a record of warfare, an epic of invasions ventured and invasions repulsed, and of the clash of hostile races within the country itself. From without, two avid nations stretch out their armies to seize the soil of the land ; from within, two cultures that refuse to intermingle advance and recede in their struggle for the heart and soul of the state. And it is in our own days that this age-long contest has reached the exasperation of its violence : never was the fight between Teuton and Frank so desperate as it is to-day, and never II Contemporary Belgian Literature has the racial animosity flamed more in the elo- quence of orators and the passion of poets than it has done during the last thirty years between the Yser and the Rhine. This struggle for supremacy between two races is at the same time a struggle between two languages, between French and German. These languages were first officially opposed to each other when, in the year 842, the two sons of Louis the Pious met near Strassburg and took an oath to support each other. Each monarch swore in the language spoken by the people of the other : Charles the Bald of France in German, and Louis the German in French. Here for the first time lan- guage faces language in a momentous episode of history. In the following year, 843, the soli- darity of tribes speaking the same language was set at nought when, by the Treaty of Verdun, the empire of Charlemagne was divided among the three sons of Louis the Pious, for by this treaty the Scheldt was fixed as the western boundary of the buffer state created for Lothar, who thus found himself master of a portion of what is now Flanders, while the remainder of the Flemish country was 12 Belgian Literature till 1880 attached to Neustria, that is, France. On the other hand, the French-speaking tribes to the East of the Scheldt were incorporated in Lothar's kingdom, which, as far as the North is concerned, was mainly German in language. It must be remembered that the Teutonic language spoken in the ninth century on either bank of the Scheldt was essentially the same language as that spoken along the Rhine : in primitive stock it was the German language, which split into Low German and High German, or, as we say now, Dutch-Flemish and German, but still kept all the resemblances of close kinship. Even at the present day, from the philological point of view, there is not much more than a difference in consonants between Dutch or Flemish and the High German spoken at Berlin ; and there is still less difference between the language spoken by the common people in North Germany, plattdeutsck, and Dutch or Flemish. The rivalry between Teutonic and French cul- ture sharpened into savage animosity under the Counts of Flanders : while in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the aristocracy was French in Contemporary Belgian Literature spirit, the burghers remained staunchly Flemish ; and the parties which then received the names of Leliaerts (adherents of the French lilies) and Clauwaerts (those who held by the Flemish clawing lion) were the forerunners of the fransquillons and the fiarningants of to-day. No comprehension of Belgian literature is possible unless we keep these racial and party differences in mind. We must class Belgian writers : firstly, as Flemings or Walloons ; secondly, as adherents of French cul- ture or of Germanic (Dutch-Flemish) culture. These are the simple lines of cleavage ; but they do not, as we shall see, preclude complications. The racial distinction in particular is often illusory : thus, the Flemish writer Max Elskamp had a Walloon mother, while the Walloon poet Iwan Gilkin had a Flemish mother. That part of Belgian literature which is French in expression, " la litt^rature beige d'expression fran^aise," ^ is mostly the work of the Walloons, a race of Celtic extraction — the descendants of the old Gallise or Belgse — who were Romanised at an early ^ This term, first used by Francis Nautet in his history of Belgian literature, has been generally adopted. 14 Belgian Literature till 1880 date. It would serve no purpose in this sketch to attempt to define exactly the boundaries of the Walloon country ; but we may say roughly that the provinces of Hainaut, Namur, and Liege are Walloon — with the town of Liege as the literary capital — while of the other provinces of Belgium Antwerp, West Flanders, East Flanders, and Limburg are almost wholly Flemish. Brabant is mainly Flemish. Luxemburg is Walloon and German. That part of Belgian literature which is Dutch in expression is the work of the Flemings. All educated Flemings know French, and some of them (Verhaeren, for instance) have never taken the trouble to master Flemish. How far the native Flemish of a writer colours his French style is often a fascinating problem ; especially as the young Flemish authors of the modern school aim at reproducing their racial individuality in their French style. The Walloon writers are, practically without exception, purists. They write the French of Paris. The Flemings, on the other hand, are not always purists : they do not all write the standardized form 15 Contemporary Belgian Literature of their language, which is Dutch. The poems of Guido Gezelle, for instance, are deliberately Flemish in vocabulary and turn of phrase. Just as Bjornstjerne Bjornsen in Norway, and the writers of his school, the rebels of the maal- stry La Jeune Belgique did not pass without challenge. Edmond Picard, already a lawyer of great reputation, opposed the maxim by his ideas of a "social" or "revolutionary" art, of a " useful art " (J art utile). The mission of art, he claimed, was to destroy the abuses of a decadent society, to clear the way for the flood-tide which was to submerge all that was effete. This was the programme of Picard's organ L' Art Moderne. Between La Jeune Belgique and L' Art Moderne there was war open and declared. In 1884 Picard's organ began to attack the writers of La Jeune Belgique as "Parnassians." This was equivalent to charging them with being mock-Parisians. Against this alleged tendency L Art Moderne de- creed that art should be national, that a Belgian writer should think as a Belgian and write as a 53 Contemporary Belgian Literature Belgian. At least one duel was fought, and the two parties proved irreconcilable. The writers of La Jeune Belgique had no objec- tion to being called Parnassians : they considered that they, like the French Parnassians of 1866, were fighting "a literary amorphism produced by the exaggeration of moral, philanthropic, social, and political preoccupations." They definitely affirmed the relationship by the publication in 1887 of an anthology of their verse : Le Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique. This book, published at Paris by L^on Vanier, is one of the landmarks of modern Belgian literature. It is more than an anthology, it is, and was intended to be, a proof paramount of the actual existence of a new school of poetry in Belgium. It is to be noted that it includes poems by writers who were afterwards avowed symbolists — Andr^ Fontainas, Charles van Lerberghe, Gr^goire Le Roy, and Maurice Maeterlinck. The directors of La Jeune Belgique, however, were not favourably disposed to the symbolists. Max Waller, the first editor, refused to print vers libres and looked on Verhaeren as a man lost and strayed. Waller died in 1889, and was succeeded by Henri Maubel, who 54 The Standard of Revolt adhered to the policy established by the first editor. The policy of excluding the symbolists, however, was not approved of by all the directors, who were now Georges Eekhoud, Albert Giraud, Francis Nautet, Henri Maubel, and I wan Gilkin. There were disputes ; and Valere Gille, the youngest poet who had contributed to Le Parnasse, was appointed editor. He was only twenty-three at the time. Under his auspices the review was thrown open to all and sundry, and vers litres by the French and Belgian symbolists were accepted. In 1891 Gille resigned, and was succeeded by Gilkin, who re- versed Gille's policy, and in 1893 issued a new manifesto calling upon his countrymen to practise le culte de la forme. Gilkin, and those who sup- ported him, were of opinion that the proximity of Flemish made it most difficult for Belgians to keep their French pure, and that their only salvation lay in the cultivation of a French free from all provincial disfiguration. Gilkin, it is evident, had reached quite a different standpoint from that which had inspired his manifesto in La Semaine des ^tudi- ants. He and his party had now come to the conclusion that, as far as literature was concerned, 55 Contemporary Belgian Literature they were Frenchmen, not Belgians. They would have nothing to do with anything that suggested local conditions. They were determined to look upon themselves as French writers inhabiting Brussels, Ghent, or Liege, instead of Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles. The foreign elements which, owing to the number of symbolist poets of foreign extraction, were forcing their way into French literature, they regarded as harmful, and they fought against them with more determination than even those French critics of Paris who were the defenders of the classical tradition. The result was a splitting of Belgian poetry into two schools : Gilkin, Giraud, Gille, S^verin, and others were " Parnassians " ; Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, van Lerberghe, Fontainas, Eiskamp, and others were vers libristes and sym- bolists. The Parnassians rallied round La Jeune Belgique, while the vers libristes and symbolists wrote for U Art Moderne and several dissident reviews, the most important of which was Albert Mockel's La Wallonie. Four of the best poets, Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach, Georges Eekhoud, and Georges Khnopff, had refused to contribute to Le Parnasse, 56 The Standard of Revolt so that the anthology does not represent the whole poetic movement, but it is nevertheless a most interesting book, full of virility and wickedness, in the midst of which the more delicate notes of Maeterlinck, Charles van Lerberghe, and Fernard Severin seem out of place. The prevailing mood is a Baudelairian pessimism : hardly one of the poets but shows who has stood godfather to his muse. Some of the eighteen contributors are now, it is true, poets of yesteryear. Theodore Hannon is one of those minor poets who are consistently ignored or curtly treated by the decent historians of literature, but who have always an intelligent public among the col- lectors of curios. Take away his obscenity and little remains ; but his obscenity is not vicious, it is merely a graceful play with words ; Hannon is not perverse, he is naughty. His licentious images conjure up exotic picture-s : as that of lemons bursting through thin paper, which make him think of the pale gold breasts of Japanese girls. Max Waller's Flilte a Siebel is poor stuff by the side of Theodore Hannon's Rimes de Joie. The 57 Contemporary Belgian Literature two books are similar in intention ; but whereas Hannon's obscenity is that of an artist, Waller's is the sneering cynicism of a man about town. Emile van Arenbergh is to be taken more seriously, though of him, too, it cannot be claimed that he is any longer read or considered at the value he once seemed to have. He might be called a Philistine Baudelaire : he has the pessi- mism, but only as much of the perversity of Baudelaire as a judge — he was a juge de paix — can decently make a show of. His sonnets have an imposing frontage. Seen from afar, they have the Heredian build ; but on closer inspection the stones are seen to have been dug out from here and there, not hewn from one block ; and they are loose. Fragments are often richly coloured, but with the learned tints of Gautier, not with the mellow tones of the native Flemish colouring. Valere Gille has suffered still more from time. He is a kind of miniature Edmund Gosse ; he is rather a librarian than a poet. His verse has distinction, but it is a distinction of form ; and the fact that his collection La Cithare (1897) was crowned by the French Academy is a terrible 58 The Standard of Revolt incrimination of the French Academy. However, some of his sonnets, derivative as they are, are well-knit, and spread the peacock's tail with suffi- cient pomp. Who that reads the charming Walloon tales of George Garnir, remembers that he was one of the poets of the Parnasse? How many Dutch people are aware that their favourite poetess Helene Swarth began with French poetry in a Belgian anthology ? Who in these days knows the name of Leon Montenaeken .-* Who, in England and all over the world, does not know his little lyric, which is to be found in the Parnasse? ** La vie est vaine : Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine . . . Et puis — bonjour ! " La vie est breve : Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve . . . Et puis — bonsoir ! " The poets of yesteryear do not wholly die. . . . 59 CHAPTER III CAMILLE LEMONNIER Every five years the Belgian state awards a prize for the best book which has appeared during the five years preceding. In 1883 the jury decided that during the previous half decade no work of sufficient merit had appeared to justify their award- ing the prize. This decision was considered by the young writers of Belgium, who were by this time both numerous and conscious of their own importance, to be a deliberate insult to Camille Lemonnier, for in the period in question he had published four novels, two of which at all events, Un Male and Le Mort, could not possibly by good critics be rated as anything less than masterpieces. It was felt that the time was come to show Lemon- nier that he had a following among his more in telligent countrymen, and that he was no longer a voice crying in the wilderness. On the 27th of May 1883 a public banquet was offered to 60 Camille Lemonnier him at Brussels ; eloquent speeches were made ; the newspapers thrashed out the question of the national literature ; in short, a sensation was created. This historic banquet, known henceforth as le banquet du Male, marks another stage of progress in modern Belgian literature ; for the first time the literary men of the country had acted as a body and publicly challenged the Philistines, who for so long had kept literature and intellectual life in a position of dependence on the crassest con- ception of public morality. Henceforth authors claimed the liberty of writing as they thought fit, without consideration of the tender susceptibilities of those who would fain have gagged all free utterance and only allowed literary expression in a pruned and official language. As to Camille Lemonnier, he went on writing as he had always done, luxuriantly and without restraint ; but when the time came again for the jury to hold their momentous deliberations, they could no longer afford to ignore the man who had come to be known to the Belgians as their "field-marshal of letters," and in 1888 Lemonnier was awarded the quinquennial prize, not, it is true, for his fine 61 Contemporary Belgian Literature novels L' Hysterique or Happe- Chair, but for La Belgique (1888), his monumental itinerary of Belgium. And even this was not allowed to be given as a prize in schools — it was "too lyrical," the official verdict ran. In all Belgian literature there is no more out- standing figure than Camille Lemonnier. He is not merely the greatest Belgian novelist, he is the greatest Belgian prose-writer ; and even if he had been a lesser artist, if he had lost ground to the sustained fierceness of Georges Eekhoud, or been out-classed by the subtle imagination and the ex- quisite refinement of Eugene Demolder, he would still have loomed large as a great fighter for the recognition of Belgian literature, as the general, in short, who set the young men of letters on their feet and led them to victory. "He alone perhaps," says Edmond Picard, "symbolises the Belgian literary activity in the French language in its entirety. He was the centre of it, the trunk, the backbone : nearly everything has issued forth from him, or directly or indirectly leaned on him." Camille Lemonnier, the son of a lawyer who hailed from Louvain, was born at Ixelles near 62 Camille Lemonnier Brussels in 1844. The name is Walloon, but both father and mother were Flemish. A oflance at his genealogy, however, shows that he is of mixed extraction : his great-grandmother on his father's side was an Italian. As a schoolboy at the Athenee of Brussels, he showed little aptitude for study ; but he learned Baudelaire's poems by heart. Soon afterwards he heard Baudelaire, then in exile in Brussels, lecture on Theophile Gautier : it was his first glimpse of that tangible distress of literature which he was to experience to the full. His first newspaper article brought him the friendship of another of the victims of literature — Charles De Coster, whose great champion he was to be. He entered the Univer- sity of Brussels as a student of jurisprudence ; but his incapacity in this sphere was so evident that his father removed him and procured him a post as a clerk in the provincial government of Brussels. From this still more uncongenial employment he ran away when he was twenty-two, determined to live by his pen. He began by writing art criticism for the newspapers ; this he collected in his first book Salon de Bruxelles, which he was enabled 63 Contemporary Belgian Literature by the generous assistance of a wealthy friend to publish in 1863. This book of art criticism was to be followed by several others, chief among them being Histoire des Beaux- Arts en Belgique (1887) and Les Peintres de la Vie (1888). His father died when he was twenty-five. With the money he inherited Lemonnier rented a chateau on the hills near Namur, and here for some time he lived the life which suited his robust consti- tution and unbridled instincts, the life which he has described in a number of his novels, in Un Male above all, but also in Amants Joyeux and in the novels of forest life which preach a return to the primitive conditions of nature. " Born by mistake between the walls of a great city," says Georges Rency, " Lemonnier had at last found his true homeland. It was a kind of initiation for him. In the little domain which extended round his rustic dwelling were gathered together the delights of a noble river and the sturdy, stinging pleasures of the forest. He was a hunter, an angler, and a poacher. He lived through all the excitement of his Male before he dreamt of writing it down. He intoxicated himself with nature, drank it, ate his 64 Camille Lemonnier fill of it. And when his purse was empty and he was forced to return to a normal existence, he tore himself away from this wild and splendid country with a despair and bitterness that never left him." During this period of untrammelled life in the open Lemonnier wrote Nos Flamands (1869), a series of aggressive essays full of enthusiasm for the great men of his race, a fiery appeal for a national regeneration which for the moment fell on deaf ears, but had its effect when the time was ripe ten years later. The book is dedicated to "the young men of our schools and workshops," and it bears the motto: " Nous-memes ou perir ! " (Let us be ourselves, or perish !) a battle-cry which was to be taken up with resounding vigour when the fight for a national literature beofan in earnest. The next formative force in Lemonnier's life was the Franco-German War, which inspired him with the pamphlet Paris-Berlin, an eloquent pleading of the cause of France. It had an enormous success, and was attributed to Victor Hugo, "who did not protest." ^ Lemonnier expressed his horror of war in a book of more permanent import, Les ^ A. Meckel, Mercure de France, April 1897. 65 E Contemporary Belgian Literature Charniers (1871), which has been described as forming, with Baroness von Suttner's Down with your Anns and Zola's La Debacle, " a triptych of horror." "There is only one thing I execrate," says Lemonnier in this book, "and that is war. This hatred in me is as indestructible as my soul." Les CharnierSy Lemonnier's first masterpiece, may be said to open his first creative period. Leon Bazalgette, in his authoritative monograph,^ divides Lemonnier's work into three distinct periods. " The first, in which there triumphs a rich and opulent art, uncompromising and swollen with sap, plastic above all, filled his youth from twenty to forty. The second, dominated by the quest of originality and an inquiring and experimental psychology, is the result of his maturity, from his fortieth to his fiftieth year. At fifty he returns to the instinct of his youth, but to an instinct which, having traversed all the experiences of a lifetime, now appears enriched, fortified, more supple and wider of range, controlled by an unerring will — a ^ Camille Lemonnier (one of the series Les Celebrit^s d'Au- /ourd'/iui), Paris, Sansot, 1904. 66 Camille Lemonnier magnificent period of plenitude and of triumphant fecundity, an age of re-birth ripening some of the noblest fruits of his art." The fine flower of the first period is Un Male, which appeared in 1881, and at once placed Lemonnier in the first rank of contempor- ary novelists. It is the novel by which he is best known : he wrote some sixty books, but to the major part of the reading public he is "the author of Un Male!' There would be no risk in saying that this is the best, as it certainly is the most famous Belgian novel. But it is more than a novel, it is a lyric ecstasy, a poem in prose, a panegyric of forest and farm, a litany of instinct. The book, which was written at a farm, opens with a wonderful description of dawn in an orchard, where Cachapres, a poacher famed far and wide for his prowess and agility, has spent the night. When he awakens he sees, from where he lies, the farmer's daughter, Germaine, opening her bed- room window. " Then something extraordinary happened. He looked at her, with his great teeth bared. On his cheeks there was a broad, cajoling smile, and his eyes seemed lost in a mist. A beast 67 Contemporary Belgian Literature awoke in him, wild and tender." The story follows up the pursuit and the capture of this sturdy wench ; but the love events are not more exciting than the detailed description of the poacher's life in the forest, his snaring of animals by night, his daring excursions to the neighbour- ing town to dispose of the game he has killed, his hairbreadth escapes from the gamekeepers who are on his track. It is all realism ; but the realism is mellowed with poetry. There are many things in Un Male which the memory will not let go. There are the kermesse scenes, full of gluttony and lust. There is a Homeric description of a fight in an inn : every phase stands out with the vigour of Meissonier's Une Rixe. But all the interest centres round Cachapres in his defiant and full-blooded outlawry. " Some folks chop wood," he says to Germaine, "others plough; some have trades. I'm fond of animals." Brute as he is, he is a fascinating character, modelled to the mystery of the forest ; and when the nets of his fate close round him, when at last he is hunted down and hit by the bullet of a gendarme, the novel gathers all the 68 Camille Lemonnier elemental force of a great and inevitable tragedy. He drags himself through the briars of a thicket to die as a wounded beast might die ; and in his death-throes he is tended by a ragged little wench who has grown up like a squirrel in the woods and has helped him in his poaching. He has hardly noticed the little thing ; but she with her wild heart has loved him. She will not leave him. " She thought he was asleep and called out to him ; he did not stir. She touched his skin, lightly : it was already hard and horribly cold. Then she flew into a rage and shook him as hard as she could. Flis body, as stiff as stone, moved like a lump of something. What was the matter with him ? She bent down over him, put her arms round him, kissed him with her hot lips, and felt as though a wave of love flooded her. " She had come across dead animals l^'ing in her path, and they had been stiff like this. . . . She did not shed a tear. She crouched by his body, put her thin arms round his neck, and all day long she lay with her face to his, plunging her sharp and crazy eyes into his glassy eye- balls. She looked at him with stupefaction. And then she caressed him again with her burning hands. What did it matter if he was dead, now that he was hers. The sly stirrings of her virginity, which she had had to hide from him when he was alive, now cast off all restraint on this unresisting corpse. Emboldened by the dead 69 Contemporary Belgian Literature man's consent, she fondled him, pressed him to her with a savage tenderness, without horror or disgust. " At nightfall a wild cat appeared, attracted by the smell. She drove it away with stones. Then crows perched on a neighbouring tree and croaked there, as grave as judges pronouncing judgment. She screamed to frighten them away. She returned to the hut, but said nothing to her parents, jealously keeping her secret for herself, and when morning dawned she went back to him. " When some days had passed, she saw a horrible thing : the wound was slowly moving, with a slow undu- lation that never stopped. . . . " She screamed, and fell flat on her hands, with her head in the grass." Sad and terrible as the ending of Un Male is, it is not a depressing book. It is saturated with health ; it throbs v^^ith virility ; and it has the in- spiriting force of all healthy and virile things. Le Mort, on the other hand, has the statuesque lugubriousness of a Dance of Death. Le Mort is just as much a hymn to Death as Un Male is a hymn to Life. To this extent they are companion volumes — the medal and its reverse. Le Mort appeared a year after Un Male, in 1882. It is the long drav\^n-out agony of remorse of tvsro 70 Camille Lemonnier brothers, who have been driven by avarice to murder. The psychological series opens with L' Hystdrique (1885). This, the best of the series as well as the first, is the lurid story of the guilty love of a per- verted priest for one of his flock, an anaemic girl whose retarded puberty, breaking forth at last when she has whipped herself into ecstasies of religious fervour, plunges her into mystic hallucinations, in the spasms of which she believes that her seducer is Jesus. Splendidly drawn is the figure of the cleric, with his sexual disgrace motived by his descent from the Spanish conquerors of Flanders. This priest, however, is not wholly guilty of his hellish crimes ; there is a note of discreet sympathy in the characterisation. It is the system, the cloistering, which is wrong — this strong man, who is overcome by his blood and the hypnotic sugges- tiveness of the rising sap in springtime, might have been a stalwart soldier, a headlongf man of action. n HysUrique was followed by Happe-Chair (1886), a documented study of the life of workers in rolling-mills. This novel, which owes something to Meunier's plastic art, has often been compared 71 Contemporary Belgian Literature with Zola's Germinal, but according to Bazalgette Lemonnier's novel was " historically anterior." Germinal had, however, appeared the year before ; and Happe-Chair is dedicated to Zola. It would be hard to prove that Lemonnier was not directly influenced, in the novels of his second period, by Zola. There is, for one thing, the exaltation of the milieu into a grandiose symbol. The life of the d^guinage, sordid, and centred in creature comforts, in L' Hystdriqiie is not excessively enforced ; but in Happe-Chair the rolling-mill is as much an obsession as the coal-mine is in Germinal. Nevertheless, Lemonnier does not belong with a disciple's de- votion to the school of Medan ; he follows the lead, but with independence. He is less pedantic ; he is more alive. It is difficult for him to keep the poet down : where his work is Zolaesque, it reminds one of La Faute de H Abbe Mouret, that intense poem. The only novels of Lemonnier which can fairly be censured as being in Zola's unpleasant manner are Madame Lupar (1888) and La Fin des Bourgeois (1892). In 1888 Lemonnier was fined one thousand francs and costs in Paris for his short story 72 Camille Lemonriier V Enfant du Crapaud, which had appeared in Gil Bias, to which he contributed many of the short stories collected in various volumes. L' Enfant du Crapaud ^2.^ reprinted in Ceux de la Glebe (1889), perhaps Lemonnier's best collection of short stories, with its description of the dragging horror of the lives of those who till the soil. E Enfant du Crapaud was condemned in spite of the eloquence of Edmond Picard, who had gone to Paris to defend his fellow- countryman. Lemonnier was not frightened into modifying his realistic method, and the next novel of his which appeared, Le Poss^dS (1890), might not unreasonably have shocked conservative minds, although in justice to Lemonnier it must be said that he was never a pornographer — he was merely a great writer who, at all events during this psych- ological period which stretches from E Hysterique to Ea Faute de Mada7?te Ckafvet, thought it his duty to dive into the motive forces of disease and perversion and to describe life as he found it, without palliation. Realism and Satanism were the fashion, that is all ; and Lemonnier in his prose went no farther than, for instance, I wan Gilkin in his verse. Ee Possede shows the genesis 73 Contemporary Belgian Literature and rapid growth of perverted sex Instincts in an old man, a magistrate who has Hved honourably till his fiftieth year. A few years later Lemonnier was again prose- cuted for immoral writing, this time at Brussels. He was defended by Edmond Picard again, aided by the novelist Henry Carton de Wiart ; and he was acquitted. It was again a short story which had given offence, L Homvte qui tue les Femmes (reprinted in Dames de Volupte, 1892), quite a harmless presentation of the crimes of Jack the Ripper. Lemonnier was prosecuted for the third time, at Bruges, for the publication of V Homme en Amour (iSgy) ; and he was acquitted in triumph, the occasion being seized by his friends and sym- pathisers to do honour to his art. L'Homme en Amour and Le Possede are really variations of the same theme ; but the later novel is more universal in its application, and more in the nature of a protest against the atrophy of the sex instinct. It forms a diptych with another novel of protest, Georges Eekhoud's Escal- Vigor. The trial at Bruges inspired Lemonnier with Les Deux Con- sciences, an avowedly autobiographical novel in 74 Camille Lemonnier which he pleads his own case against his judges and justifies his literary method. Lighter in tex- ture is Claudme Lamour (1893), the history of a Parisian music-hall star. L^ Arche (1894), a fire- side idyll, a glorification of motherhood and family life, points forward to the noble novels of the third period. It is a feminist novel, eloquent of the great future in store for woman when her emanci- pation is complete. La Faute de Madame Charvet (1895) is the opposite picture to L! Arche : ruth- lessly it exposes the naked bones of adultery. Now a new period, Lemonnier 's third period, begins. It is as though he were sick of the de- pravities he has been painting with such conscien- tious truth, as though he had turned his back on perversion and adultery and taken refuge in the haunts of his youth, in the open country, at the heart of the forest. He is again the Lemonnier who wrote Un Male ; but chastened by his long pilgrimage through the labyrinth of dingy streets and with a new message intense as the religion of an apostle. This message has all the freshness, in his glowing presentation of it, of a new and miraculous discovery ; and yet it is essentially 75 Contemporary Belgian Literature Rousseau's preaching of the return to nature, to instinct. There is no pretence of "philosophy": Lemonnier does nothing more than expound a view of life which amounts to a robust futurism. He writes Lite Vierge (1897), which was to be the first part of a trilogy showing the progress of man through tribulation to the consciousness of divinity- Here Lemonnier had intended to lead up to the same conception of the man-god as informs the later work of Verhaeren and Maeterlinck. No other part of the trilogy was completed — perhaps the plan seemed too deliberate to Lemonnier, who was first and foremost an artist impelled by the mood of the moment, and always more attached to the character than to the idea. But in Adam et Eve (1899) the legend is continued — a man who has suffered greatly flees to the forest, and finds calm and content in the physical activity of primitive existence. There is the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in Adam et Eve ; m Au Cceur Frais de la ForH (1900) there is the witchery of The Blue Lagoon. Two waifs, a boy and a girl, find their way from the slums of a city to the heart of a mythical forest ; here they learn to use their hands and 76 Camille Lemonnier their brains ; here they have their first child, and from here they set forth to found the ideal city of the future. If in this series of novels there is one tendency more evident than another, it is the tendency to socialism — not the socialism of parties, but a doctrine of brotherly affection and of the nobility of labour, an intuition of the future. Socialism is thrust openly into the foreground in Le Vent dans les Moulhis (1901). This is more a poem than a novel : it is a hymn to " Mother Flanders." This Flanders, however, is not defined by names and drawn with clear-cut lines : it is all a dream- land, a land drowned in mists, a land of shy and awkward dreamers, a land of kitchen gardens and orchards, creeping canals, farms with green shutters and red-tiled roofs, roads that run between lines of poplars, with the river Lys meandering through the landscape. What a different country is this to that painted with opulent colour in the early novels, that country of teeming fertility and ruthless violence ! The characters, too, have grown gentle ; they are another race. Even the militant socialists, who, at the bidding of the gentry, are Contemporary Belgian Literature attacked with stones at their meetings, have more of milk and honey than of gall. Le Ve7it dans les Moulins is Flemish through and through : it is informed, not by French realism, but by Flemish mysticism. These taci- turn peasants, who " are shaken to the marrow by life and yet say things which belie the force of their emotion," are akin to those of Stijn Streuvels. A Fleming to the core is the hero, Dries Abeels, the son of a flax merchant. Dries is a socialist ; but he is also a rentier. The intention is fixed in his heart to give all he has to the poor ; he is convinced that it is his duty to learn some manual trade and live by the exercise of it, as those do who live and toil around him. But, well-nourished as he is, with his "bullock's blood," he is fond of good eating; he is idle; he does not like early rising. In the end his better nature prevails ; he shakes his sloth away, rises heroically before the sun, and binds himself apprentice to a carpenter. What follows is a healthy glorification of manual labour, as in the other novels of this period. He is no longer Dries the gentleman of means ; he is 78 Camille Lemonnier Dries the carpenter — and a good carpenter at that, for he works with love, reading poems into the wood he handles. Now he is conscious that " the man who does not work has no right to the bread he eats." Now, and now only, he has the right to preach socialism to the labourers — a hard task, even when fortified by personal example : for clergy and gentry are leagued against progress, and to teach the dignity and the rights of labour is like driving nails into beechwood. There is scarcely a hint of sensual things in Le Vent dans les Moulins. There is a love story ; but it is one of great restraint and chastity. The novels of primitive life at the heart of the forest are pure in intention ; but their very purpose, the hymning of natural life, leads to scenes of initiation and marital passion, Le Vent dans les Moulins ends with an engagement which is likely to be long ; and with Dries content to wait for his little housekeeper. Equally pure in tone is Le Petit Homme de Dieu (1902). It may be called a companion volume of Le Vejit dans les Moulins ; both are " local " novels, hymning the soul of Flanders. But whereas Le Vent dans les Moulins generalises the landscape, 79 Contemporary Belgian Literature Le Petit Homme de Dieu centres in one dead city — in Furnes-la-Marine (Furnes by the Sea), with its old church of Saint Walburga, its old houses, and its age-old customs. The dominant picture is that of the Ommegang, the procession which from time immemorial has been seen every year in Furnes — the chief inhabitants proceed through the town in solemn state, clad as New Testament figures. Georges Rency has described the cere- mony : " Amid a great crowd of simple folks, fishermen and farmers, pass in procession the characters of the Gospels. The Wise Kings from the East are there, seeking the stable of Bethlehem. Herod and his courtiers are plot- ting the death of Jesus. Mary Magdalene displays her beauty and her jewels. Christ himself appears, mounted on a she-ass, among palms and hailed by cries of ' Hosanna ! ' Farther on he appears a second time, bending under his cross, halting at all the stages of Calvary. Finally, the chariot of the Ascension shows him soaring in glory eternal. Penitents, male and female, barefoot and in cowls, moan as they bear their gallows." The old city is described with meticulous accu- racy, with the quaint realism of old Flemish genre pictures. But mysticism, not realism, emanates 80 Camille Lemonnier from the whole. The Ommegang has a subtle influence : the influence which the Passion Play has on the villagers of Oberammergau : " In this strange little town of Furnes, people never knew exactly in what period things were happening : all the events of the day took on a sacred appearance." The characters call one another by the names of the personages they represent : thus, the locksmith is Pilate to his cronies in his very shop, and the Wise Kings from the East cannot divest them- selves of their regal dignity even when they sit down to their beer in the inn. But the one who is most conscious of his sacred character is Ivo Mabbe, the little ropemaker who takes the part of Jesus and is for that reason known as " Le Petit Homme de Dieu." In the intensity of his simple piety he grows close to the mind of the Saviour, so close that he begins to iden- tify himself with the part he plays. This phase of religious mania has often been described : by Gerhart Hauptmann among others in The Apostle and The Foolin Christ Emanuel Quint. Haupt- mann's Christs are mad : Ivo is merely on the way 8i F Contemporary Belgian Literature to madness. He only takes Christ's teaching literally, and shocks his fellow-townsmen, who are nothing if not "respectable," by associating with outcasts, to whom he preaches the Gospel, which in his mouth is identical with socialism. But the good burghers of Furnes do not approve of socialism, which to their minds is very far removed from Christianity. They turn against " the little Christ- man " : " Since the day when for the first time he had gone into these slums and alleys, every one had turned against him. Herod told him clearly that he was running the risk of losing the esteem of decent people. Pilate, the lock- smith, had reproached him for bothering about things which did not concern him. Some of the doctors of the Temple laughed at him from the threshold of their doors when he was passing, and even Joseph, the carpenter, a holy man, avoided him." Ivo grows the more determined in his Christi- anity, and he persists in his ministrations to the outcast of the earth, considering that he has the right to repeat Christ's words. This extreme Christianity of his, however, as he comes to see, degenerates into a moral pride. In the end he realises that he is not and cannot be Christ ; and 82 Camille Lemonnier that he must first of all practise humility. Now he returns to Cordula, the rich farmer's daughter from the dunes, who had long been betrothed to him, but whom he had kept at a distance because she played the part of Mary Magdalene (how could Christ marry the sinner ?). Another novel of Lemonnier's, La Chanson du Carillon, has its scene in a dead city, in Bruges. Of his other novels Le Sang et les Roses (1901) should be mentioned. The theme is daring : a childless husband agrees to let his wife be loved by another man, for the sake of the child she desires and for which her nature cries out. Lemonnier was not a French novelist. He was essentially a Flemish novelist : he is as much the novelist of Flanders as Verhaeren is the poet of Flanders. Not that he situated his novels entirely in Flemish districts : in such novels as Happe-Chair he has described the Walloons, and painted Walloon scenes with perfect precision. But his whole char- acter was Flemish, violently Flemish, both in the realism of the earlier novels and the mysticism of those which came later. Lemonnier travelled little, only in France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. 83 Contemporary Belgian Literature His impressions of Germany he described in En Allemagne, which contains valuable art criticism of the galleries in Munich. Even when he had be- come famous in Paris, when he was acknowledged in Paris as one of the most distinguished of French writers, he continued to live in Brussels, a guide, counsellor, and friend to the tyros of literature, encouraging the diffident to plunge into the whirl- pool, instilling his own breezy courage into those who drew back. Lemonnier was a great optimist. But, unlike Verhaeren and Maeterlinck, he had not to pass through a stage of pessimism. His optimism was a part of his constitution ; it is the optimism of a healthy man. Camille Lemonnier died* in June 191 3. He was buried in the fulness of summer, on a hot day, and the roses that covered his coffin scented the streets, says George Rency, long after the procession had passed. 84 CHAPTER IV GEORGES EEKHOUD In poultry-fancying circles there has of late years been a boom in the Campine fowl, a small, hand- some bird with lovely eyes. Most of its admirers know that it is a Belgian fowl, but few realise that it keeps some of the qualities of the pheasant because it is by nature a moorland fowl, a native of the Campine (in Flemish, Kempen), that vast stretch of rusty heather and golden broom which lies above Antwerp, Malines, and Louvain — a region "desolate, but full of character." Half the province of Antwerp and more than half of the province of Limburg belong to the Campine. The few railway lines which cross it have made little change in its old-world character, and in the pagan savagery of its inhabitants. The little towns are far scattered — Herenthals (the capital), Diest, Sichem, Averbode. Round the hamlets, oases of green with church spires piercing 85 Contemporary Belgian Literature the sky like bayonets, graze thin cattle, tied to posts lest they should sicken by eating too much of the spurrey which in this desolate region takes the place of grass and clover. Many hamlets are unconnected by regular roads, but some sort of communication is kept up by a service of lumber- ing carts drawn by bullocks. The sandy wastes are sucked down by spongy fens and blown into hillocks held together by starved, reddish heather and bristling broom and furze. Here and there rise stunted larches and struggling fir plantations. The mystery of these waste lands with their black walls of pinewoods, their malignant mazes of paths, their wrinkled ponds, and their incendiary sunsets in copper skies, has been magically described by Verhaeren in his poem "Silence"; and it is the country which Georges Eekhoud has seized for his own, as Thomas Hardy has seized Wessex. " The country I love best," says Eekhoud in Les Kermesses, " does not exist for any tourist, and doctors will never recommend it. In this certainty my jealous and selfish fervour takes heart. Worn by the weather, the prey of fogs, are these plains of mine. Except for the schorres of the polder, the region fertilised by the alluvia of the Scheldt, few of its corners have been 86 Georges Eekhoud cleared for cultivation. One canal, starting from the Scheldt, irrigates its heather-grown wastes and farmed patches, and hardly a railway connects its unknown townships with the outer world. The politician execrates it, the merchant despises it, and it frightens and be- wilders the legion of poor painters. The population •remains robust, shy, obstinate, and ignorant. No music moves me as the Flemish tongue does in their mouths. They speak it with a rhythmical drawl, feeding its guttu- ral syllables abundantly, and its rude consonants fall as heavy as their fists. Their movements are slow and well-poised ; they are broad-backed and chubby-cheeked, sanguine, taciturn. I have never met plumper wenches, with firmer chests or more challenging eyes than the wenches have in this country. The lads in their blue smocks have a determined swagger. In their drinking- bouts they slash away with their knives. At the ker- messe they gorge and swill with a kind of awkward solemnity and pursue their women folks with no pretence of decency. . . . " They cling to the faith of their fathers, go on pil- grimages, honour their priest, believe in the devil, in spell-casting, and in the evil hand, that jettatura of the north." Georges Eekhoud was born in 1854 in Ant- werp. His father, an official in an Insurance Company, was a Fleming ; his mother was the daughter of a German married to a Dutch woman. 87 Contemporary Belgian Literature The father's character and early death have been described by his son, with great tenderness, in "Ex-Voto," one of the short stories in Les Ker- messes. The boy was eleven when his father died, and he was sent to school in Switzerland. His school-life here, where he acquired a good know- ledge of German, English, and Italian, he has described in various parts of his work, particularly in " Climaterie," one of the short stories collected in Mes Com^jtunions , and in Escal-Vigor. His schooling finished, his uncle, a candle-manufacturer and the mayor of Borgerhout, near Antwerp, tried to make an engineer of him. This plan failing, the boy was sent to the Military School, but after six months he ran away. The uncle now refused to have anything more to do with him, but, as his guardian, he let him have the interest on his father's estate, about a hundred francs a month. Not being able to make both ends meet with this pittance, Eekhoud joined the staff of an Antwerp newspaper. All his relations had cast him off; but after a time his grandmother, a rich woman, relented, and took him into her house. Here his life was free from care ; and it was a great forma- Georges Eekhoud tive period, for he had the opportunity of regular intercourse with painters and poets, and he had leisure to read, and see life. These events of his boyhood and youth are evidently described with considerable truth in La Nouvelle Carthage, which is certainly an autobiographical novel. In 1878 Eekhoud's grandmother died and left him a considerable fortune. His great desire had been to be a gentleman farmer ; and he made haste to purchase an estate in the north of Antwerp, in the village of Cappellen, between the polders of the Scheldt and the wastes of the Campine. Here he hunted and lived the true squire's life, visited all the kermesses, and acquired that intimate knowledge of peasants and rural customs which he turned to such good account in his stories. But his farming was a disastrous failure ; and he was soon without means aofain. He went to Brussels and joined the staff of the Etoile Beige as musical and literary critic. This was in 1881, just at the time when the new men were gathering there and beginning their campaign. Eekhoud became a firm friend of Theodore Hannon and Camille Lemonnier, and 89 Contemporary Belgian Literature with them he contributed to La Boheme, a little review which had a short life. Soon, however, Max Waller and his fighting men arrived from Louvain — the men who, as Vance Thompson says, were defiantly young and wore amaranthine waistcoats and flying scarves. La Jeiine Belgique was launched ; and Eekhoud had found his feet. In 1884 Les Kermesses appeared, a collection of tales containing wonderfully vigorous descrip- tions of local customs observed at Cappellen and the neighbourhood. The language is violent, and often reads like translated Flemish ; the realism is sometimes revolting ; but several of the tales are masterpieces. In 1886 followed Kees Doorik, a curious kind of novel — it is rather a short story spun out by descriptions of festivals. It may be said at once that Eekhoud has never been able to write a consecutive novel : all his "novels" are made up of detachable episodes. Kees Doorik is a foundling who is hired (bought as a slave, according to the custom of the country, would be more correct) by a rich farmer near Antwerp. The farmer dies, and Kees, who by this time has grown up into a fine young fellow with all the 90 Georges Eekhoud routine of the farm at his fingers' ends, falls in love with his master's young widow, and hopes to marry her. But she is seduced at a kermesse by a scapegrace from a neighbouring village, and Kees has to leave the farm where he has grown up and which he cannot help regarding as his own. There is forced symbolism in the exposition of his love for the fields he has tilled : la canipagne has a double meaning, " country " and "wife," and the rather fanciful idea on which the gruesome tragedy is based is that Kees Doorik's love of the farmer's widow is a deser- tion, punishable with death, of his real wife, the country. The last part of Kees Doorik is taken up by a description of the "goose-riders'" festival, a most villainous and brutal custom which shows that the Flemings of to-day are much what they were when the infante Cardinal Ferdinand of Spain wrote to his brother King Philip : " Certo que viven come bestias en esta parte " (They certainly live like beasts in these parts). A live goose is suspended on a kind of gallows, with its head hanging downwards, and the villagers 91 Contemporary Belgian Literature ride underneath it on their heavy cart-horses, each snatching at the bird's head till one of them wrenches it off. The one who performs the feat is then crowned " King of the goose- riders," and has the privilege of entertaining the unsuccessful competitors to a banquet and a great deal of drink. It is after such a festival that Kees comes into collision with the creature who has supplanted him in the affections of the farmer's wife. There is a fight, and Kees murders his rival. The description of the murder is a good sample of Eekhoud's violence, which we are asked to believe (and there is sufficient con- firmation in the works of other Belgian authors — notably in Verhaeren's poem "Peasants") is justified by the fury of Flemish life : " He plunged the knife into his body, drew it out, and plunged it in again. He had previously pulled down the fellow's clothes below the belt, so that there should be nothing in the way of the blade. At the first thrust the wretch shrieked: * O Kees ! Don't do that ! Mercy ! O Kees, Kees ! ' Kees took no notice. He was sitting astride of him, and had him completely in his power. He crushed George's hips between his thighs, as though he were riding a stallion. With one hand he held his 92 Georges Eekhoud enemy fast by the throat, to keep him from crying out, and with the other he slashed away at him, as though he were hacking with a pick in the polder. His victim's groans died down. To silence him altogether, he thrust his knife, for the last time, into his neck, as you do when you slaughter a pig. . . ." Les Milices de Saint- Fra^i^ois (1886) is another tale of the Campine. Les Nouvelles Kermesses (1887) is quite different in style to Les Kermesses. These tales are in ordinary French, smooth and somewhat insipid, not at all in the rough and jolting language Eekhoud had hammered out for himself from Flemish rhythms. There is interior evidence that the stories are older in date than the first collection of Kermesses. The first story, for instance, reads like a close imitation of Con- science. Another story, " Bon pour le service," a poignant picture of military life in Belgium, is very interesting at the present time. Everyone who has lived in Belgium knows that the army is despised, and that to have to join the army is to lose caste. "In all these vagabonds in uniform he found the same passive character. They all looked as if they had 93 Contemporary Belgian Literature been flung out of their orbit. In their eyes was the expression of a caged beast, far from its native clime. To whatever branch of the service they belonged, they were all sheep-like in their ways, awkward, humiliated, abashed. Instinctively they made way and yielded the causeway to the civilian. They wore, not the uniform of the soldier, but the livery of the pariah. Instead of representing an army, of breathing out the patriotism of a nation, of incarnating the best of the nation's blood and youth, they were conscious of playing the part of mercenaries. They were considered everywhere as re- fuse, as a burden, as people who don't work. When times were calm, these soldiers of a neutral country were apt to be confused with indigents kept by the public rates, with the inmates of workhouses and orphan- ages. This did not prevent the civilians from expecting that the conscripts would in case of strikes fire on their brothers of the mines and factories." La NoMvelle Carthage is a very ambitious book. It aims at reproducing the whole life of Antwerp in recent times : " To paint Antwerp, with its own life, its port, its river, its sailors, its dock-labourers, its plump women, its rosy children whom Rubens in olden times had thought plastic and appetising enough to fill his Para- dises and Olympias, to paint this magnificent breed in its ways, its costume, its atmosphere, with scrupulous and fervent care of its special customs and morals, with- 94 Georges Eekhoud out neglecting any of the correlations which accentuate and characterise it, to interpret the very soul of this city of Rubens with a sympathy bordering on assimi- lation." Eekhoud laboured hard to carry out this crowded programme ; and the result is a book full of in- terest, but not a novel. It is rather a collection of descriptive essays leavened by autobiography literally transcribed and fired by a fierce spirit of anarchism. The book begins after the funeral of Laurent Paridael's father, when the orphan is taken to live with his uncle, a retired officer in the Engi- neers (as Eekhoud's own uncle was), who is now a rich manufacturer. There is a Zolaesque de- scription of the candle factory in a chapter which might be detached and issued as a socialist pam- phlet. To Eekhoud the workmen are helots, and the employers heartless scamps. The machinery is diabolical, a monster always on the watch to seize and pulverise those who tend it. In the factory the toilers are slaves, and as soon as they are out of it they behave like beasts. It is a curious kind of socialism, to take sides with the workman against the master, and then 95 Contemporary Belgian Literature make him out to be a swine. And with sympathy for his swinishness, one is afraid. There are, how- ever, one or two examples of partly decent work- people in the novel ; but these characters are obviously spurious — they are imitations, no doubt, of types in Dickens, one of Eekhoud's favourite authors. Eekhoud could never have conceived a clean-limbed socialist like the chauffeur in Bernard Shaw's Don Juan. But Eekhoud is more of an anarchist than a socialist ; and the whole doctrine of La Nouvelle Carthage tends, with regard both to morals and politics, to anarchism. Antwerp is above all a great commercial city, and it was this aspect which was bound to take the foremost part in the novel. Here again Eekhoud is far from being entirely successful. He is too one-sided in his outlook on life. With his artist's eyes he sees the picturesqueness of the busy life on the quays ; these dockers in all their dirt are for him types of masculine beauty {beaute male is an obsession with him) ; and he describes their activity with all the zest and glow of Homer describing a battle scene. But he has no com- prehension of mercantile life as a whole. For the 96 Georges Eekhoud sake of relief, perhaps, he introduces a pair or so of honest merchants ; but it is quite evident that he looks upon merchants as a class with the bitter hate of a jaundiced anarchist. From such a stand- point it was quite impossible that he could create an adequate picture of a great commercial city : for this, idealism would be needed. There is more genius in Georges Eekhoud's little finger than in the whole body of Thomas Mann or Rudolf Herzog ; yet these two German authors have succeeded admirably where Eekhoud has failed : Mann has transferred Lubeck with all its charm and old- world atmosphere to the pages of his Buddenbrooks, and Herzog in Die Hanseaten has given a fasci- nating picture of the strain and stress and the far-seeing aims of Hamburg merchants. Nothing could be more dull and unlikely than Eekhoud's description of a day on the Antwerp Exchange. He gives us detail added to detail ; but they do not fuse — we only get a glimpse of the outward aspect of the Exchange. How much more vivid is Verhaeren's symbolistic vision of The Exchange ! The poet gets at the soul of the thing ! And yet even this chapter is redeemed by a fine ending : 97 G Contemporary Belgian Literature all the retailing of routine leads up to the hammer- ing of a dishonest merchant, and here Eekhoud is in his element — it is no longer a question of commercial life, there is physical violence to de- scribe, and the narration becomes dramatic and animated. The later chapters of La Nouvelle Carthage should be considered as a series of essays. The hero moves through them in a shadowy sort of way ; but by this time all interest in this irritating anarchist has been lost. There is a magnificent description of emigrants arriving at Antwerp and embarking for America ; those from the Campine with sprigs of heather in their caps, and with hand- fuls of Campine sand sewn into sacks, by way of scapulars. Absolutely unwarranted by the structure of the book, and yet perhaps the finest thing in it, is the chapter called " Le Rietdijk." The Rietdijk is (or was) a street in Antwerp con- taining such property as that which Mrs. Warren derived profit from in Brussels. Verhaeren has described such houses in his poem "L'Etal" (The Butcher's Stall). Les FusilUs de Malines (1890) is hardly a 98 Georges Eekhoud novel either. It is not even a historical novel, though it relates history with a novelist's imagina- tion. It describes how the peasants of the Cam- pine, when the Jacobins introduced conscription in 1798, rose in rebellion, marched on Malines, and took it by a lucky chance, only to be captured immediately by the French, and mowed down or shot as rebels. The scenes of slaughter are splen- did ; but taken as a whole the book is rather thin. Mes Communions is a collection of tales, most of them so weak that they may be juvenile work which has at last found a publisher. Some of them are swamped with maudlin sentiment which is not natural to Eekhoud and is clearly due to imitation of Conscience. Some of the stories, however, are sufficiently revolutionary in concep- tion : " Burch Mitsu " has been reprinted as an anarchist tract, and some of the tales show that morbid palliation of sodomy which brands Eekhoud beyond redemption. It is significant that he takes as a motto for the book that passage from Suspiria de Profundis in which De Quincey confesses that the few individuals who had disgusted him were flourishing people of good repute, whereas he 99 Contemporary Belgian Literature recollected with pleasure and good-will all the rascals he had ever known. Cycle Patibulaire (1892) is as robust as Mes Communions is weak. One of the tales it is com- posed of, " Hiep-Hioup," is a masterpiece of morbid psychology. A gamekeeper, who on the death of his elder brother had been recalled from the priests' seminary to take his father's post, and who retains the deferential manners of a priest, falls madly in love with a light-o'-love, and in the end he shoots her. The other tales of the volume relate such cases of carnal aberration. ** Gentille " is the life-story of a farmer's daughter who falls in love with a noted smuggler on the Flemish coast, in the district about Coxyde, Lombaertzyde, and Furnes ; she runs away to him and follows him about on the dunes like a faithful dosf. The smuggler is caught and dies in prison ; and the son the woman bears him grows up a hereditary blackguard. To her son she transfers the love she had felt for the father : it is not at all maternal love. The end is bestial : the wretch brings filthy little girls in from the slums and loves them in the presence of his mother, who is 100 Georges Eekhoud jealous of his caresses. " Le Quadrille du Lan- cier " is a preliminary study for the bacchanalia of Escal- Vigor. Eekhoud had to appear in the Belgian law- courts to answer for Escal- Vigo7'- (1899). He was acquitted. It is not so much a palliation as a glorification of sodomy. The book is its own condemnation : the love-scenes with the boy are ridiculous in the extreme. The curious thing is that Eekhoud should have lent colour to the charge of depicting his own character by sending the hero to school in Switzerland and by endowing him with other personal qualities. Kehlmark, the hereditary "count of the dike" in some imaginary island off the west coast of Flanders, has, like Eekhoud, inherited the property of his grand- mother, and, like Eekhoud, he is an anarchist in his views of society. In this partial identification of himself with the hero of his book, however, Eekhoud probably does no more than show his withering contempt for public opinion, for, so far as information is available, he is an inoffensive man in his private life, and dowered with solid citizen virtues. Kehlmark has been taught by his lOI Contemporary Belgian Literature love of art to appreciate masculine beauty. On the island over which he has hereditary jurisdiction he takes a fancy for a young rascal who idles away his time sunning himself on the dunes, and has learned to play the bugle : " Kehlmark watched the bugle-player, who was more robust and slender than the other boys, and had a complexion of amber, velvet eyes under long black lashes, a fleshy and very red mouth, nostrils dilated by a mys- terious olfactory sensuality, and black, dense hair. The lines of his body were brought out by the wretched dress which adhered to his shape as the fur sticks to the elastic limbs of feline animals. His body, delicately poised and twitching to and fro, seemed to be following the undulations of the music and performing a very slow dance, like the shivering of aspens, in summer nights when the breeze is but the breathing of plants. The statuesque posture of this young rustic, who with the muscular relief of his mates combined a subtle perfection of outline, reminded Kehlmark exactly of Franz Hals's B,eed Player. His heart felt oppressed, he held his breath, the prey of too great a fervour." This passage may serve to [explain and (to some extent) excuse the book. To begin with, no one will deny that it is an excellent piece of description. Then, it is evidently the transposi- tion of a well-known picture. Belgian literature 102 Georges Eekhoud is full of such transpositions. The example best known in England is Maeterlinck's Massacre of the Innocents. So that in such a book as E seal- Vigor, which cannot too strongly be condemned from the moral point of view, the correct stand- point of criticism is to regard the highly coloured prose as essentially a poetisation of pictures. Even where the picture cannot be identified, the art of the description has evidently been taught by paint- ing or sculpture. The culmination of the tragedy is appalling, and cannot even be hinted at. Recounted in words, the story of the vengeance of the women of the island is terrible indeed. But it would be hypocritical not to allow that Eekhoud by the resistless force and emotional fury of his descrip- tion has gone far to justify his daring. If it is not morality, it is art. And after all, Eekhoud has only done in prose what Jordaens and Rubens and other artists did on canvas. This chapter of the pagan kermesse is a picture of bacchanalia, that is all ; and as a picture, it is superb. In Les Libertms d'Anvers something very much like sexual mania runs riot. Ostensibly, it 103 Contemporary Belgian Literature is a picturesque resumd of the history of Antwerp through the ages, with special reference to the sexual anarchists who at various periods have preached their "religion" and recruited a following. As a novel, it is absurd ; as an olla podrida of history, anarchism, obscenity, and local colour it has a certain charm. The pictorial part is again most brilliant. The centrepiece of this succes- sion of pictures is the Joyous Entry of Charles V into Antwep. Other novels of Eekhoud are La Faneuse cC Amour and L Autre Vue. He has written con- siderably on the Elizabethans ; his Ati Siecle de Shakespeare has done something to popularise Shakespeare studies in Belgium. That Eekhoud is not an exact scholar, however, is shown by the fact that he speaks of Ben Johnson. (Maeter- linck, another Belgian Shakespearean, talks of Ben Jhonson). He has translated Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Marlowe's Edward II ; and he has written a tragedy of Perkin Warbeck, a fellow- Fleming in whom he celebrates the quali- ties of the race. Eekhoud is a perplexing personality. He 104 Georges Eekhoud attracts ; he repels. He may be admired ; he cannot be loved. He has the most energetic style of all Belgian writers ; no one considers him a stylist. Appreciation of his descriptive powers is tempered by surprise at the clumsiness of his construction. He is overflowing with matter ; and yet he repeats himself constantly — he seems to consider that what he has once written has per- manent and incontrovertible value as a document, to which the reader may be referred for further information. To give one instance of this irritat- ing habit : the passage quoted from Les NoMvelles Kermesses, relating the contempt felt in Belgium for soldiers, is reproduced in La Nouvelle Carthage — with some additional information it is true, as that in Antwerp girls refuse to dance with soldiers at the popular balls. Eekhoud's artistry is in de- scription, not in construction. He is not a crafts- man, he is a genius. He is full of matter ; but his matter has a great sameness. He is a rebel ; and he can create rebels. Gentlefolks he cannot create, for he mis- judges them. He has a fixed idea that the rogue and the vagabond is a free man, while the bourgeois 105 Contemporary Belgian Literature is hidebound in custom ; and the elucidation of this idea is the main purpose of his best work. At first, the unexpectedness of the doctrine dazzles like a fine paradox ; in the long run it palls. A great writer interprets life, which is infinite in variety ; Eekhoud interprets a phase of life, the only phase he can see. But in his own limited range, in his championing of the outlaws of society and of Campine peasants, he is an acknowledged master. It may be doubted whether his conception of the Campine peasant is strictly true to life ; it is hardly likely that a whole race of agricultural labourers should be so violent and lustful as they are in Eekhoud's showing. The fact that all the characters he is in sympathy with are fleshy ("gars charnus," " plantureuses dimes," " seins volumi- neux," "bras muscles," "hanches de taure" — such expressions recur ad nauseam) need not be charged against him ; the men and woman in the paintings of Rubens and Jordaens are just as fleshy. It is Eekhoud's generalisation of character which pro- vokes protest. In his wonderful tales of vagabonds, criminals, io6 Georges Eekhoud pariahs, soldiers, tramps, and beggars, Eekhoud can be compared only with Gorky. Probably Gorky's vagabonds are more true to life, for, after all, Eekhoud is an author who has specialised in such people — he is not and cannot be one of them. In other words, his conception of the unclassed is an artist's conception, one that he has dreamed himself into, and in which he believes passionately, but which is nevertheless a dream. He sees the picturesque exterior, rags and dirt and all ; and in his anti-social fervour (which is an attitude, sincere no doubt, but still an attitude) he uses the vagabond as an object lesson. On the whole, Georges Eekhoud must be con- sidered as a man of genius who has lost control of his genius. He has not fulfilled the promise of Les Kermesses and Kees Doorik. He should have given us a stage of men, each distinct from the other ; he should have schooled himself into a Shakespearean variety ; but he has cloistered himself with the abnormal and the horrible, he has made himself the Belgian Webster, become a glittering and flattering mirror of violence and perversity. 107 CHAPTER V ^MILE VERHAEREN Of all the men whom the war has forced into the forefront of public interest, there is none who deserves his accretion of fame more than Emile Verhaeren. But the war has not estab- lished, it has only widened, his reputation. Even in England, the last stronghold of intellectual apathy, he has been known to poetry-lovers for the last twenty years. He has been acclaimed in far-away Japan ; one of his books {Images Japonaises) was published in Tokio in 1900. The one book of travel-pictures he has written {Espana Negra^ translated by Dario de Regoyos, Barcelona, 1899) ^^^ ^° ^^i^ day only be had in Spanish. In Russia he has been extensively translated, and he is in that country regarded as the great iconoclast of modern poetry who, more than Nietzsche, more than Maeterlinck, has opened the avenues of literature to the doctrines of power 108 !^mile Verhaeren and of the epic grandeur of everyday life. But the country in which he has had the greatest influence is Germany. The Germans, indeed, do not conceal the fact that they regard him as a German poet who by accident writes in French. He is a native of Flanders, and Flanders is German, for the Flemings are a German race ; therefore Verhaeren is a German poet. They have translated him ; they have written books about him ; they have organised lecturing tours for him throughout the length and breadth of the German Empire, and everywhere given him looo marks a lecture ; they have feted, applauded, in- terpreted, and — annexed him. And when they came to Brussels, they paid him the supreme compliment of bringing his name with them on the black list of proposed hostages. They would have shown their further appreciation of his great- ness by shooting him like a dog. Not finding him at Brussels, they are said to have destroyed his cottage near Mons, with its priceless docu- ments and art treasures, the collections of a life- time. However, Verhaeren is at this moment busy at a new book. La Belgiqiie Sanglante 109 Contemporary Belgian Literature (Belgium's Agony), which is not likely to be welcome to his thousands of German admirers. Nevertheless, the Germans are not altogether wrong in emphasizing the Germanic element in Verhaeren's work. None of the Flemish writers is more German and less French than he. In him the qualities of his race are sharply accentu- ated ; and his very appearance (with his bony face and huge, drooping moustaches) is that of one of the Goths who sacked Rome. The racial characteristics of the Flemings are identical with those of the Germans ; a certain heaviness in thought and expression, a marked lack of the sense of humour, an imperturbable and obstinate conceit. The prevailing characteristic in either case is that of violence — a violence of habit which runs to waste in the drunkenness and gluttony we see unashamedly pictured in Flemish genre- pictures, a violence of expression which in litera- ture shapes itself according to the mind of the writer into a fibrous strength or a flabby coarse- ness. "The Flemings are brutal," Verhaeren will say in the emphasis of his conversation ; and the merest acquaintance with Flemish life or literature no Emile Verhaeren proves him to be right — the Flemings are brutal in the same degree as their near kinsmen the Prussians are cruel. We must expect, then, to find in Flemish literature what we find in Flemish painting — brutality and violence. This is not to be understood as unqualified censure — all expres- sions of praise or blame are relative, and from the point of view of a robust criticism violence in literature is merely a criterion of strength. Nietzsche's blonde beast must be violent ; the superman must be violent. At all events, a great deal of recent German criticism has laboured this point ; and it is not therefore surprising that the Germans should have pounced on Verhaeren and annexed him as a German superman, as one whose writings are full of German vigour, though the language in which he writes is the language of mental poison and physical degeneracy. It is no secret that the flamingants look upon those Flemings who write in French as renegades, as traitors to the national cause. To many of their countrymen, therefore, Maeterlinck and Verhaeren are traitors. This is not the place to dilate upon the tragic strife between party and party in Belgium III Contemporary Belgian Literature — a strife which would be better called a class- war, a foolish class-war which may yet cause untold mischief even when the Germans are driven beyond the Rhine. But the existence and the savagery of this race-warfare must be recognised before one can get a clear idea of Belgian litera- ture. It would be ridiculous in the extreme to regard Maeterlinck and Verhaeren as French writers ; they are Flemish writers who write in French ; and to understand them aright in their degree of importance as Belgian writers we must establish the fact that they are champions of French culture in a country where the Parlia- mentary majority and the paramount influence of the national Church were, consciously or uncon- sciously, paving the way for an alliance or a union with Germany. If it were merely a question of literature, one might regret that all the Flemings do not write in Flemish. The Flemings are right in their battle-cry: " De taal is het volk" (The language is the nation, the language is the man). From the phonetician's point of view, language is the pro- duct of the organs of speech ; from the point of 112 Emile Verhaeren view of the historian of literature, language is the product of the blood and the heart and the mind. Just as individuals speak with the rhythms of their individuality — the violent man with violent emphasis, the gentle man with a gentle lisp or drawl — so nations mould their language into an expression of their national idiosyncrasies. The Danes, for instance, an aesthetic and indolent race, have swallowed nearly all their consonants and effeminised the virile old Norse tongue of their ancient sagas into a language of faintly breathed vowels, into a language without a backbone ; the practical English have eliminated the superfluities of grammar to the same extent as the scientifically- minded and theorising Germans have kept theirs intact ; the French have refined and clarified their language to the very measure of their own super- refinement and logical clearness of thought ; and the Flemings (like the Germans) have preserved the clashing consonants and the uncouth gutturals, the resonant vowels and the voluminous verbs of their ancient Saxon speech, so that it is to this day a language that rings with the pristine vigour of broad-limbed and muscular men ; a language 113 H Contemporary Belgian Literature sated with violence, it is true, but with the vio- lence of virility. When robust, vehement men, therefore, like Maeterlinck or Verhaeren, express themselves in delicate French they run the risk of losing a great part of their force. When the ponderous thought of a Maeterlinck or the onrushing vehemence of a Verhaeren is confined in the delicate meshes of the French sentence it often seems as though the envelope were overweighted, as though the bag were bulg- ing. Maeterlinck, at all events, reads noticeably better in an English or German translation than in the original, and the unctuous style of his essays, which seems as though some corpulent priest were being borne along in a sedan chair, bestowing blessings, as he passes, on kneeling crowds, would not have been possible in Flemish. But there is another feature of the Flemish character besides strength ; this is, its inherent chiaroscuro^ the half-lights of its mysticism, the colouring gloomed by shadow which is the secret of Rembrandt's pictures. Maeterlinck, who is pre-eminently a mystic, has finely illuminated this trait of Flemish in the preface to his translation 114 Emile Verhaeren of Ruysbroeck ; in Flemish, he says, "the words are really lamps behind the ideas, whereas in French the ideas have to light up the words." Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, then, have certainly lost strength and the fascination of the half-lights they might have had in their native language. Great as they are in French, they would have been still greater in Flemish. But at this period of history there is something far greater than national literature ; there is the question of national life itself, and the service which such men as Maeterlinck and Verhaeren by writing in French have rendered to the cause of the national life of Belgium, which can only exist as a bulwark against Germany, has been inestimable. As a matter of fact, Verhaeren himself never took the trouble to make himself master of Flemish. When he was a child, French was always spoken in the house, although his parents were Flemings ; and he only learned Flemish when he went to the elementary school of his native village, St. Amand (on the Scheldt near Antwerp). He might, of course, if he had been a Flemish patriot in the meaning of the flamingants, have been at pains 115 Contemporary Belgian Literature to perfect himself in the language which was spoken around him ; but, according to his own account, it would always have been a foreign language to him. And yet, according to authori- tative French critics, his French has never been pure. His French, some of them seem to think, is a translated Flemish. To give one example, he finds it possible to write : Les touj'ours mimes Jours, meaning les jours qui sont toujours les nihnes. This phrase is certainly Germanic in structure ; in German, for instance, it would be die immer gleichen Tage. But Verhaeren, in his conversation, will say that such ungrammatical ex- pressions are not imitations of the Flemish idiom at all, but absolutely necessary to him in order to render the sudden impulse of his feeling : his dis- tortions of grammar have been intentional ; his Verhaerenese is as deliberate as Carlylese. Les jours qui sont toujours les memes is a circuitous phrase in comparison with the dramatic vigour of les toujours memes jours. French purists will never admit the right of a " barbarian " (Ver- haeren has repeatedly been called a barbarian by French critics) to use an adverb as an adjective ; Ii6 £mile Verhaeren but he may possibly succeed in forcing his inno- vations on them in various instances of his word- coining. Here again he is as daring and as picturesque as Carlyle ; and some of the words he has coined (we must remember that few French writers dare to coin words) have already been accepted : for instance, les villes tentaculaires (tentacular towns). In Les Tendresses Premieres Verhaeren has related the story of his boyhood at Saint- Amand. His father was a retired draper from Brussels. The house in which he was born (in 1855) was on the road from Termonde to Antwerp, and from the windows the ships could be seen passing along the river — " the massive and lethargic Scheldt" — that was always at the back of the boy's thoughts. It was an old-world house, with oak and mahogany furniture. From the windows of the attic Termonde was visible — Termonde, which seemed the end of the world. Behind the house was an orchard full of old pear- trees, which in springtime looked like a flock of white birds trailing their wings in the sun. And the great flower-garden ! — Verhaeren's description 117 Contemporary Belgian Literature makes it seem a wonderful place, a garden with golden beeches and silver aspens, and with great cocks cut in the holly and yew of the hedges. Over the lawn roamed two Numidian cranes, and three crazy peacocks whose spread tails were like the sunset. To the poet-child the garden and the strange birds were a dream of Paradise, a burn- ing fever of beauty as long as the summer lasted. His companions were the barefoot village urchins, with whom, in the autumn, he went robbing the orchards. And they went swimming in the hidden creeks of the Scheldt, where the grass grew as high as a wall, and after the swim they would dry themselves on the dike's velvet flanks. And little Verhaeren was on familiar terms with all the petty tradesmen of the place — the bellringer, the car- penter, the blacksmith, and the other artisans whose handicraft he was to magnify in the grandiose sym- bols of Les Villages Ilhtsoires. Near the house was his uncle's oilworks. The intention was that in due course Verhaeren should succeed his uncle. But, his schooling at Ghent completed, the young man showed no inclination to be an oil-manufacturer, and he was sent to Louvain ii8 Emile Verhaeren to study jurisprudence. In 1881 he passed his final, and set up as a barrister at Brussels. But Edmond Picard, for whom he worked as a stagi- aire, saw that he would never make a lawyer and advised him to find something more congenial. As a matter of fact it was already clear to Ver- haeren that he could be nothing but a man of letters ; and after the publication of Les Flani- ««^ combines a modern subtlety with a more popular appeal, as in his " Night's Gentleness" : " A gentleness breathed from everywhere Round all things now is flowing, Floating and hovering in the air, And softened lights now are glowing. 346 I Poets in Flemish "A perfume as of crushed desire From the thick of the bushes is sighing . . . The soul of something is moaning low, And in the foliage dying . . . " Something, too, is dying in me . . . Something in me is weeping — Something that seeks for sweet words to soothe My eyes till they are sleeping . . . " And heavier, heavier on my lips The stifled silence is weighing. Because there wells forth from my heart A pity beyond all saying " For the man who walks his path alone, Who has no loved one to cheer him. No bosom where he can rest his head. No love in the night-tide near him . . ." The poets who are the paladins of modernity are Prosper van Langendonck (born at Brussels 1862), August Vermeylen (born at Brussels 1872), and Karel van de Woestijne (born at Ghent 1878). They v^ere associated in the foundation of the review Va7i nu e7i Straks in 1893. They are impressionists rather than symbolists, and very few of their countrymen understand them. But 347 Contemporary Belgian Literature obscurity can only be charged against van de Woestijne, the greatest of the three ; and his obscurity is the measure of his depth. There is no obscurity in these three mood-paintings by van Lanofendonck : I " I am strange at heart . . . Whelmed and bedimmed as when November vapour the chill forest loads. I am sad at heart, like one whose breast forebodes, Though choked with tears, it never will weep again. " I am sick at heart . , , O that the strength of men Ne'er girt me ! O to be free from all that goads, To pierce the whence and whither of the roads, And why life lures us first and baulks us then. " From ocean's deeps we climb to seek the air And the free light, with frantic gasping breath, Only to meet the ice-crust of despair, And breathless there to hang 'tween life and death. " I am sad at heart, like one whose breast forebodes, Though choked with tears, it never will weep again" II " It is my heart that beats in the black tower. Above the streets deserted in the rain ; Pent in its narrow cell it throbs amain. Panting, in this quiet evening hour. 348 Poets in Flemish " It is my heart that moans in the black tower, Weeping into the piteous air its pain In cries of grief for ever born again, And falling o'er deaf houses like a shower. " Listen ! It is my heart that they are tearing ! My worn-out heart, whose passionate despairing, Uttering the whole world's pain, cries out for pity ! " And high o'er those that rend it, raised above All ecstasies of human hate and love It sheds its helpless anguish o'er the city." Ill " In pain I bore you, but with double bliss I have cherished you, and warmed you with my fire. Called you the children of my heart's desire, Despite my womb's most bitter agonies. " My children ! On your brow has burnt my kiss ! I have cared for you with love that could not tire, And reared you to be full of holy ire, And fierce in battle where injustice is — " But now, when all my fire in you should flare. Yea, ali the passion that my spirit boasts. Your hopeless misery my affection thwarts I " Why will you, with your eyes that stare and stare. Close in upon me like a ring of ghosts ? — O children of my spirit, O ray thoughts ! " 349 Contemporary Belgian Literature In mood-painting, too, lies August Vermeylen's strength : BRUGES I . Litanies " O ! in the dusk of these sepulchral chapels The singsong of these long, long litanies ! The candles shine before the crape-veiled Cross Whereon a Christ is dying, centuries old, With a thin writhing body, black with blood. Deep in the dusk the great tall candles shine And conjure forth shadows that come and go Upon the motionless capes and sombre hoods Of old, old women that with yellow hands Folded, incessantly reiterate The singsong of their long, long litanies. " It is a distant humming of faint voices. The tremulous singsong of these litanies ; A lamentation murmured quietly — Trailing, with its timid ' Pray for us ! ' Returning ever, a persistent wail For penance in the nightmare of a sin . . . It is a faint far humming of dead voices. Moaning humility and wretchedness, Dumb pain, the undying pain of all the world ! . . . O ! in the dusk of these sepulchral chapels Old women singing these long litanies, These mumbled prayers, for souls in purgatory ! 35t> Poets in Flemish 2. Saturday Evening " This seems an evening of long, long ago . . . The bells are tolling for the dying sun. Through lofty windows bleed the last sunbeams, And slowly, wave by wave, into the church Stream shadows. Slowly, slowly the bells strew The heart-pain of this evening o'er the land . . . " Now, like a dying heart, that hardly beats Its last tired throbs . . . — Then silence. Far and wide . . . Only a hollow footfall seems afar To trail its way o'er cemetery stones. " My thoughts pace on as silent widows do. The evening filters through into my soul . . ." Karel van de Woestijne defies translation and quotation. He is the Mallarme of the Flemings. . . . This elegy might be attempted : " Child, your white face is chanting memories, And the sweet story of your days and mine, Which in our life like quiet gardens lay Bathed in the tender twilight dying out ; While around gardens green the heavens are A quiet robe of shadows calm and slow, And while among the trees the last bird's voice Glows in a long-drawn elegy that sinks Slowly, and revives, and sinks again . . . 351 Contemporary Belgian Literature " Now, O my child, no song lives round us, and no Peace-days like quiet gardens round us live ; No twilight weaves around our mingling dream, And shadows sad steal round our parted limbs . . . "And in the night I see, last comfort, only Your tired white face still trembling, all in tears . . ." Or this wistful musing : " How should I know whether ray love in you shall sink, O child, You that are calm and simply tender like the eve round grassy graves . . . For who that sets out with a heart that nothing craves, Who knows what woman shall refresh his lips With juicy fruits and love's sweet, restful gifts ? " For see, I think of you, though you are strange to me, although. Simple, calm, and tender you are living in my soul. Although no fears of love seize on your quiet breath to ^Ij make it race, Although your gestures do not seek my life : I think of your grey eye, calm in your white face." ** A Song of Fever " presents no difficulties : " It is so sad, this raining in the autumn. This beautiful rain in the autumn, out of doors, — How heavy all the flowers are in the autumn ; — And the oM rain running along the panes . . . 352 Poets in Flemish Gray in the grayness stand the trees and sway, The trees that are shivering so and rustling tears ; — And it is the wind, and it so droll a way Of singing and sighing in the crowns of the trees . . . " Now I am waiting for the shufQing tread, I am waiting for the ancient picture of peace, Old good gray mother comfort round the deep bed Where the warm fever is dreaming it is alight. And the thick tears burst through their weight of lead . . . " . . . It is so sad that I must be wretched now — It is so sad this raining in the autumn . . .'' 353 CHAPTER XIV ESSAYISTS, CRITICS, AND SCHOLARS Of Belgian essayists the prince is of course Maeterlinck, and it might have been expected that his success would have produced imitators. This is not the case, however. The other Belgian essayists who have any reputation have each a style of their own, and no motto of the olden days has been kept more in honour from year to year than Lemonnier's Soy ons nous. Unfortunately the essayists are for the most part lost in the sea of journalism ; but those whose essays have been collected and issued in book form are tangible per- sonalities with something new to offer. The most eminent, after Maeterlinck, is Edmond Picard. He is an author whom it is very hard to characterise. He has written enormously, and it might have been equally pertinent to discuss him as a dramatist, for his plays {^Jericho, Psuke, Le Jure, Fatigue de Vivre, Ambidextre Journaliste^ 354 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars La Joyeuse Entree de Charles-le-Temeraire) have some claim to originality : they aim at creating a "theatre of ideas." But their discussions are only another manifestation of the unresting activity — political, social, philosophic, critical — of a man who must have his finger in every pie. All he has written is only interesting as an expression of the multiple mind of Edmond Picard ; and perhaps when his personal influence — he is a Maecenas and great fomenter of literary work — has passed away his works will fall out of literature. But at all events he is at the moment one of the first of Belgians as he is one of the most prominent citizens of Brussels. His books of travel {^En Congo lie ^ El Moghreb al Aksa, Monseigneur le Mont Blanc) are well known, but his most popular work are the the four volumes of his Scenes de la Vie Judici- aire {^Paradoxe sur I'Avocat ; La Forge Roussel ; L' Amiral ; Mon Oncle le Jurisconsulte\ in which, by examples from everyday life, he interprets the spirit of law. " Uncle Picard " is, moreover, famous in Belgium as the apostle of Belgian nationalism. " Belgian " is for him not a merely geographical term with no inner meaning, but the name of 355 Contemporary Belgian Literature something markedly individual among the nations of the world. Other writers have divided ' ' Belgian" into two parts; "Flemish" — i.e. Dutch; and "Walloon" — i.e. French. Picard will have none of this ; there are, according to him, and there must be, Belgians ; and he wishes the Belgians to be conscious and proud of their national character- istics. His adversaries twit him with having in- vented rdme beige, the Belgian soul ; but the war should have proved that he was a far-sighted patriot. Another politician who is a stylist of great re- finement is the socialist leader, Jules Destr^e. He began with poems in prose, Les Ckimeres (1889), a book full of the pessimism of the period, full of disgust with life, a companion volume to Gilkin's La Nziit. He has written a psychological and social novel : Le Secret de Frederic Marcinal, and a study of Belgium's black country : Le Bon-Dieu- des-Gaulx. Quelqties Histoires de Misericorde are a collection of socialist tales. Other works of his are Lettres a Jeanne (1887); Imagerie Japonaise (1889) ; Journal des Destree (1892). But probably his best work is contained in Discours Parle- 356 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars mentaires and in the essays of Semailles (191 3). Destree is also a distinguished art critic, and he has done much to popularise art among the masses. Like Destree's Les C/mneres^ Arnold Coffin's books are black with pessimism. His style is iced with the hatred of the follies of our time. His fiction [Journal d' Andre, 1885 ; Delzh^e Moris; Maxine, 1887) is thinly veiled self-analysis, not radically different from that in the essays of his Impressions et Sensations (1888). A writer of rare books with restricted editions, James Vandrunen is known as a stylist who with patient words colours exquisite reveries. He is a writer for the few ; and that is his glory. Elles ! (1887) is an analysis of love which decides against the vulgarity of the dream's materialisation and finds its refined and melancholy delights in an intellectual Mormonism. Les Forets (1888) are impressionistic essays which describe forests with a very delicate artistry matched by the form of the book itself — it is printed in green, blue, red, silver, pink, and black letters on terra-cotta paper. Quilleboeuf (1888) is a vieillerie e^i bleu et noir, 357 Contemporary Belgian Literature a piece of literary tapestry figuring an old rock n the Seine in Normandy. He has also written books of travel {Eit Pays Wallon^ 1 900 ; Heures Africaines, 19 10). A book on Vandrunen has been written by Auguste Vierset, one of the brilliant writers of La Wallonie. Another essay- ist who chisels every sentence is Eugene Baie {^Epopee Flamande ; Sub Umbra et sjib Rosa) ; it is perhaps the highest praise to say that he is hardly read by any except his fellow-craftsmen, to whom he is a master. Among the younger essayists the most subtle is perhaps Charles Bernard, a lawyer and journalist in 'Antwerp. Leon Souguenet (a Frenchman by birth, but long resident in Belgium) is a force in journalism ; he has written literary criticism (Les Monstres Beiges, 1904), a book on London i^A la D^couverte de Londres, 1909), and ixiLa Victoire des Vaincus he has collaborated with Louis Dumont- Wilden, the most noted of contemporary Belgian critics. Dumont-Wilden has written tales ( Visages de Decadence ; Coins de Bruxelles ; Le Coffre aux Souvenirs) ; a species of guide-book, La Belgique Illustree ; and much art criticism {Le Portrait en 358 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars France ; Fernand Khnop^). His Les Soucis des Derniers Soirs is a series of subtle dialogues in which philosophic doubt is probed and tortured. Dumont-Wilden is Edmond Picard's classic anta- gonist : far from believing in rdme belge^ he is more French than the French themselves, and his book of essays L' Esprit Etiropeen has since the out- break of the war been awarded a large sum of money by the French Government. It is one of those books which the war has made more topical ; and in its way it is a prophecy of the French victory. The author follows, with shrewd obser- vation, the growth of "the French spirit" in Europe, and analyses the causes of its ascendency. In the Middle Ages, he establishes, there was something that could be called a European spirit ; and if the nations of Europe were to be threatened by Islam or by the yellow races it might appear again. But this European spirit was held together by the Roman Catholic religion, and the Reforma- tion destroyed the unity. Since Luther, Europe has been nothing more than a collection of states each of which, indifferent to any moral unity, strives to impose its domination by conquest. The 359 Contemporary Belgian Literature birth of the new spirit was in humanism : religion had been nationaUsed, humanism is international. The history of Hterature proves that in this new bond of nations France took the lead, and that all the nations accepted her hegemony. The empire of the mind is French ; the empire of taste is French. French culture is the only higher culture. The end of the eighteenth century marked the apogee of the intellectual domination of France in Europe. Everywhere French culture was super- posed on national and popular culture. With the Revolution it seemed to lose its prestige. Europe had willingly submitted to the ascendency of the French aristocracy ; it was hostile to the French democracy. After 1870 it seemed for a time as if the nations would succeed in escaping from the fascination of French culture. But they did not succeed, and their efforts only went to show the helplessness of rival cultures. Obviously, if there were no French spirit, there would be no European spirit, that is to say, there would be no single culture which could be superposed on the various national cultures. A business man might object that Germany and Great Britain are supreme, as 360 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars far as economic power is concerned ; but political economy, with its vulgar utilitarianism and its in- difference for the things of the mind, will never be able to create a culture. A culture is always the product of an elite, and gold does not repre- sent an elite. In reality, the new European spirit is being created by a cosmopolitan elite composed of idle people, dilettanti, artists, great lords, and adventurers. The Jews have imported a new element into it ; Slavs and Germans are more numerous in this company than Frenchmen. But this world none the less expresses itself in French, and its culture is French. Nietzsche, who in- vented the " good European," foresaw a species of individual who should be " essentially super- national, and who, as a distinctive sign, would possess, physiologically speaking, a maximum of faculties and of assimilative force." But Nietzsche also foresaw reactions in the direction of accentu- ated national feelincf ; and we have seen such re- actions in recent years. Even the little countries are claiming to be themselves ; and in France for some time we have been witnesses of a sort of reconstitution of the national feeling whose sudden 361 Contemporary Belgian Literature explosion is to-day striking all Europe with aston- ishment. There is a fever in France which shows that she has, besides the feeling of right and justice, the passion of war. Certain of the "good Europeans " are disturbed by this manifestation. They love France, but a humiliated France, only on condition that France is i\\& gr^sculus of modern Europe. But the young generation of Frenchmen want none of that. They prefer the hatred of Europe to its scornful affection. France is be- ginning to realise that she can only count upon herself. Another essay of the book discusses " culture." This is a German word which does not sound well in French. The Germans invented it because it was their idea to blend moral influence and political influence. No one can adopt German culture without working for the extension of the German Empire. French civilisation, on the other hand, remains indifferent to French politics, and that is why it is European. Just as in former times the worst enemies of France, Frederick the Great, Catherine of Russia, were French in spirit, so to-day the nations that are the political enemies of 362 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars France speak her language. But German science, German literature, German art, German civilisation are all instruments of German politics. On ac- count of this German attitude it is urgent to defend this liberty of the mind, this humanity, this French culture. And for the Gallic race the best means of defence is to take the offensive. When France defends herself, she defends Europe ! Much of this seems almost trite to-day ; but the war has only proved how wideawake this Belgian writer was to the new French spirit. Dumont-Wilden illustrates his argument by bril- liant profiles of men who stood to Europe for the French spirit — the Prince de Ligne, that Belgian soldier who fought for Austria and was one of the finest conversationalists of his day, as he was the forefather of modern Belgian literature ; Talley- rand ; Stendhal ; Maurice Barres ; Andre Gide. Maeterlinck he takes as a representative of the pseudo-French spirit. Of the historians of Belgian literature none has done better work than Francis Nautet, whose Histoire des Lettres Beiges d Expression Frangaise was unfortunately never completed. It is a valu- 363 Contemporary Belgian Literature able book which has become very rare ; and a reprint is one of the needs of the hour. Nautet was in the swim of the movement in the 'eighties, and his enthusiasm, as Verhaeren says, "joyously harnessed itself in front of the car of the first harvests of our art." Maurice Gauchez apparently aims at being the Belgian Remy de Gourmont ; the three heavy volumes oi Le Livre des Masques Beiges are modelled on the French Livres des Masques. The portraits are interesting ; and some- thing can be gleaned from the criticism, though one refuses to believe that even a little country like Belgium, where admission to the literary caf^s and a nodding acquaintance with the lions seem to entitle a writer to fame, can produce such multitudinous hordes of geniuses. Gauchez has also written a serviceable book on Verhaeren. His poetry {Images de Hollande, 191 2 ; Pays ages Suisses, 191 3) is laboured and cold. Eugene Gilbert's criticism is somewhat biassed by his Roman Catholic stand- point, but his critical essays [En Marge de quelques Pages ; France et Belgique) are often illuminating. In Les Lettres Frangaises dans la Belgique d Au- J our d' huHi (^06) he has written the handiest manual 364 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars of modern Belgian letters. Firmin van den Bosch (now a member of the International Tribunal in Egypt) is a critic of equal reputation and similar tendencies [Essais de Critiqzie Catholique ; Les Let Ires et la Vie; Coups de Plumes; Impressions de Litterature Contemporaine\ The representative Belgian writer of books of travel is Jules Leclercq. His latest volume is La Finlande aux m,ille Lacs (19 14); other books of his are Les ties Foriunees, Au Pays de Paul et Virginie, Java ; but he is an inveterate globe- trotter, and he has described his experiences in nearly every part of the world. It would require a whole book to deal with the art critics of Belgium. There would not be much risk in assuming that every writer of distinction has one or more books of art criticism to his credit. (Maeterlinck is the only exception that occurs to one.) Of the writers in Flemish, there is a multitude of books by Max Rooses and Pol de Mont, some of which have been translated into English. Of the many who write in French, Fierens-Gevaert might be singled out for special mention. He makes art criticism a romance. One 365 Contemporary Belgian Literature of his best books is La Peinture au Musee de Bruxelles. Of the academic scholars there are few who have an international reputation. The academic life of Belgium is the least satisfactory aspect of its intellectual activity. Professors are apparently appointed because they are orthodox and sup- porters of the Government ; originality is vetoed. There are, however, some Belgian scholars of distinction. In philosophy Georges Dwelshauers has a considerable reputation, at all events in Belgium. The two scholars who have first-class importance as men of letters are the historian Henri Pirenne and the philologist Maurice Wil- motte. Henri Pirenne was born at Verviers, was the disciple at the University of Liege of Godefroid Kurth, the author of Les Origines de la Civilisa- tion Moderne, continued his studies in Paris, Leipzig, and Berlin, and in 1889 established his reputation by his specialist work Histoire de la Constitution de la Ville de Dinant. His Les Anciennes Democraties des Pays-Bas, dealing with the establishment of trading centres, is more 366 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars popular in tone. Appointed Professor of History at Ghent, he devoted his best energies to the writing of his Histoire de Belgique (four volumes, 1899- 191 1 ), which was published in German before it appeared in French. This history has in Belgium itself had something of the popular success which that of Macaulay achieved in England. The Belgians are notoriously poor readers, owing perhaps to the mediocrity of their educational in- stitutions — the great Belgian writers have their public in France and (alas !) in Germany ; but Pirenne is a Belgian writer who is actually read at home. The education of an officer is not com- plete till he has read the national historian ; and the History is in great demand as a prize in schools and colleges. Parties go to the work to justify their theories ; Edmond Picard's party in particular finds in it the confirmation of the theory that Belgium exists and that there are and always have been Belgians. Pirenne himself is free from party bias ; he is a scientific historian, a Walloon with a scholar's extensive knowledge of the Flemish language and of Flemish literature, a cosmopolitan who can see the part which Germany and France 367 Contemporary Belgian Literature together have had in the making of Belgium. He says : " Like our soil, formed by the alluvia of rivers coming from France and Germany, our national culture is a sort of syncretism in which can be found, blended and modified the one by the other, the genius of two races. Solicited on all sides, our culture has been broadly receptive. It is open like our frontiers, and in it are to be found, in its periods of blossoming, the best elements of Franco-German civilisation richly and harmoniously assembled. It is in this admirable receptivity, in this rare aptitude of assimila- tion, that the originality of Belgium resides. It is this which has enabled us to render signal services to Europe, it is to this that our country is indebted for the possession of a national life common to each of the two races it contains, without sacrificing the individuality of each." Pirenne is perhaps the only man of letters in Belgium who has made a fortune by the sale of his works among his own countrymen. How extensive his sales are (for Belgium) may be seen from the fact that more than seven hundred copies of the fourth volume of his history were sold in three days. With the proceeds he has built a villa in the Ardennes. One may agree with Firmin van den Bosch, who says : "If, some day, Belgium were to be erased from the map of the 368 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars world, Henri Pirenne's History of Belgium would survive as the immortal and moving Will and Testament of a little nation which through the centuries affirmed the obstinate consciousness of its destiny." Maurice Wilmotte, a professor at the University of Liege, a Romance philologist who ranks with the best of those in Germany and France, and the editor of La Revue de Belgique, is, politically, an antagonist of Pirenne. To Pirenne, Belgium is a blend ; Wilmotte asserts, in his La Culttire Franfaise en Belgique (191 3) that the two races have never blended. Each race, according to him, keeps the originality of its temperament ; and the task of either is to rise to the great current of French culture. " The Belgians have no national literature," he says. Of one Belgian critic, the Viscount Charles de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, it may be said that he invented a new manner of criticism. He was a patient collector of first editions and of biblio- graphical material concerning the lives of great writers, especially of the writers of the Romantic School. In La Veritable Histoire de "'Elle et 369 2 A Contemporary Belgian Literature Lui'' he throws light on the relations of Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand. Other works of his are : L' Histoire des CEuvres de H. de Balzac, La Genese dun Roman de Balzac, Une Page Perdue de H. de Balzac, Autour de H. de Balzac, L' Histoire des CEuvres de Th. Gautier, Un Roman cT Amour, Les Lundis dun Chercheur, Sainte- Beuve Inconnu, Trouvailles d'un Bibliophile. There are several other authors of distinction who would have been worthy of enumeration in this chapter if there had been space. There are individual books of excellent criticism such as Gustave Abel's Labeur de la Prose, Gerard Harry's Maurice Maeterlinck (translated by Alfred Allinson), J&tudes et Portraits Litteraires by M. J. Carez, Desire Horrent's Ecrivains Beiges dAujourdhui. Finally, the chief reviews should be mentioned, for they contain much that has permanent value, and much that is not reprinted in book form (for there are so few Belgian pub- lishers that authors, unless their work attracts sufficient attention to catch the eye of Paris publishers, have often to issue their books at their own expense). The most artistic of the 370 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars literary magazines is perhaps Le Masque, edited by Gr^goire Le Roy and Georges Mario w. Its career has been somewhat erratic, like its contributors, but that is only a further claim on collectors. Georges Rency's La Vie Intellectuelle believes devoutly in rdme beige and the possibility of a national literature, upholds the theory that those Belgian authors who migrate to Paris lose caste, and sedu- lously recommends itself and its ideals to the present King and Queen, who are said to take an interest in the national literature, even in so anti- Catholic a writer as Verhaeren, who is received at Court. La Vie Intellectuelle is a combative review, full of zest and go. (One of the contri- butors to its back pages, by the way, was Emile Cammaerts, who wrote the monthly letter from London.) Le Tkyrse, edited by Leopold Rosy, is rather derisive of the "Belgian" ideals. It sides with Maurice Wilmotte, and its belief in the intellectual mediocrity of Belgium is unshak- able. Wilmotte's Revue de Belgique is learned and academic. L Art Moderne and La Belgique Artistique et Litter aire are competent in their discussion of art and literature, while Durendal is Z1^ Contemporary Belgian Literature the organ of the Roman Catholic men of letters. Of the reviews in Flemish the chief are Van Nu en Straks and Vlaanderen. Perhaps one should say of these reviews : They were. . . . But we may expect them to arise from their ashes when peace comes, and it is to be hoped that they will then be admittedly " Belgian." For, as Stuart Merrill has said, if Belsfium did not exist, it would have to be in- vented. 372 BIBLIOGRAPHY (Selected) ' TRANSLATIONS FROM BELGIAN AUTHORS The Massacre of the Innocents and other Tales by Belgian Writers. Translated by Edith Wingate Kinder. Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1895. Contemporary Belgian Poetry. Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell. " Canterbury Poets " Series. London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 191 1. Contemporary Flemish Poetry. Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell. "Canterbury Poets" Series. Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 191 5. (In Preparation.) Camille Lemonnier. Birds and Beasts. Translated by A. R. Allinson ; Illustrated by E. J. Detmold. London: George Allen & Co., Ltd., 191 1. Emile Verhaeren. The Dawn {Les Aubes). Translated by Arthur Symons. " Modern Plays." London : Duckworth, 1898. Poems by Emile Verhaeren. Selected and rendered into English by Alma Strettel. London : John Lane, 1899. Second Edition, 1915. * In particular, the numerous translations of Maeterlinck's works are omitted, as these are well known and easily accessible. 373 Contemporary Belgian Literature fimile Verhaeren. The Cloister. Translated by Osman Edwards. London: Constable, 191 5. Belgium s Agony. Translated by M. T. H. Sadler. London : Constable, 1 9 1 5 . The Plays of J^mile Verhaeren. London: Constable, 191 5. (Contains 77!^ Dawn, translated by Arthur Symons ; The Cloister, translated by Osman Edwards ; Philip II, translated by F, S. Flint ; Helen of Sparta, translated by Jethro Bithell.) The Love Poems of Emile Verhaeren. Translated by F. S. Flint. London: Constable, 191 5. ANTHOLOGIES Pamasse de la Jeune Belgique. Paris : Leon Vanier, 1887. Poetes Beiges d' Expression Fran^aise, par Pol de Mont. Almelo : W. Hilarius, 1899. Anthologies of the works of Edmond Picard, Camille Lemonnier, fimile Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach, Octave Pirmez, Andre van Hasselt, Jules Destree, Max Waller, Georges Eekhoud, Charles van Ler- berghe, Albert Giraud, Iwan Gilkin, Eugene Demolder, and Fernand Severin are published by the Associa- tion des Ecrivains Beiges, Brussels. Les Conteurs de Chez Nous, Brussels : Association des Ecrivains Beiges. 374 Bibliography CRITICISM Bazalgette, Leon. Camille Lemonnier. " Les C6lebrites d'Aujourd'hui." Paris: F. Sansot & Cie., 1904. Entile Verhaeren. " Les Celebritds d'Aujourd'hui." Paris: F. Sansot & Cie., 1907. Bersaucourt, Albert de. Thomas Braun. Paris : Les Marches de I'Est, 19 13. Conference sur Emile Verhaeren. Paris, Jouve, 1908. Bever, Adolphe van. Maurice Maeterlinck. "Les Cele- britds d'Aujourd'hui." Paris: Sansot & Cie., 1904. Bithell, Jethro. Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck. "Great Writers" Series. London: Walter Scott (1913)- Bosch, Firmin van den. Essais de Critique Catholique. Ghent: 1898. Impressions de LiMrature Contemporaine. Brussels : Vromant et Cie., 1905. Les Lettres et la Vie. Brussels : Albert Dewit, 1912. Daxhelet, A. Georges Rodenbach. Brussels : O. Scheffens, 1899. Destree, J. Les Ecrivains Beiges Contemporains. Syllabus d'un Cours d'Extension Universitaire. Brussels : 1897. Gauchez, Maurice. Emile Verhaeren. Brussels : Editions du " Thyrse," 1908. 375 Contemporary Belgian Literature Gauchez, Maurice. Le Livre des Masques Beiges. Masques de Franz Gailliard. Preface de J. Ernest Charles. 3 large vols. Paris and Mons : La Societe Nouvelle, 1909, 1910, 191 1. Gilbert, Eugene. En Marge de Quelques Pages. Paris : Plon, Nourrit et Cie., 1900, France et Belgique. Paris : Plon, Nourrit et Cie., 1905. Les Lettres Frangat'ses dans la Belgique d'Aujour- d'hui. Paris : F. Sansot & Cie., 1 906. Iwan Gilkin. Ghent: I. Vanderpoorten, 1908. Gilkin, Iwan. Les Origines Estudiantines de la " Jeune Belgique" a rUniversitede Louvain. Brussels: Editions de "La Belgique Artistique et Littdraire," 1909. Guerin, Charles. Georges Rodenbach. Nancy : Crepin Leblond, 1895. Harry, Gerard. Maurice Maeterlinck. Brussels : Ch. Carrington, 1909. {Le Massacre des Innocents, otherwise only accessible in French in La Pleiade for May 1886, is reprinted at the end). A biographical study, with two essays by M. Maeterlinck. Translated by Alfred Allinson. London: George Allen & Sons, 19 10. Heumann, Albert, Emile Verhaeren. Avec onze dessins par Georges Tribout. Paris : La Belle Edition. Le Mouvement Litteraire Beige d Expression Frangaise depuis 1880. Preface par M. Camille Jullian, de rinstitut. Paris: Mercure de France, 191 3. Horrent, Desire. Ecrivains Beiges d' Aujourd' hui. Brussels : Lacomblez, 1904. 376 Bibliography Kinon, Victor. Portraits d'Auteurs. Brussels : Associa- tion des ficrivains Beiges, 19 lo. Lemonnier, Camille. La Vie Beige. Paris : Fasquelle, 1905. Liebrecht, Henri. Histoire de la Litterature Beige dEx- pression Fran^aise. Deuxieme Edition. Preface d'Edmond Picard. Brussels : Librairie Vander- lenden, 191 3. Meyere [Meijere], Victor de. Un Romancier Flamand: Cyriel Buysse. Paris : Sansot & Cie., 1 904. Mockel, Albert. Emile Verhaeren, avec une note bio- graphique par F. Viele-Griffin. Paris : Mercure de France, 1895. Charles van Lerberghe. Paris : Mercure de France, 1904. Nautet, Francis. Histoire des Lettres Beiges d Expression Fran^aise. Brussels: Rozez, 1892. Pasquier, Alix. Edmond Picard. Brussels : Association des ficrivains Beiges, 191 3. Potvin, Ch. Ch. de Coster. Sa Biographic. Lettres a Elisa. Brussels, 1894, Ramaekers, Georges. E. Verhaeren. Brussels : Editions de "La Lutte," 1900. Rency, Georges. Physionomies Litteraires. Brussels : Associations des £crivains Beiges, 1907. Ridder, Andre de. Stijn Streuvels. Zijn Leven en zijn Werk. Amsterdam : L. J. Veen (no date). en Gust van Roosbroeck. Pol de Mont. " Mannen en Vrouwen van Beteekenis in onze Dagen." Haarlem: H. D. Tjenk Willink en Zoon, 19 10. 377 Contemporary Belgian Literature Rodrigue, G. M. Fernand Severin. Brussels : Editions du "Thryse," 1908. Souguenet, Leon. Les Monstres Beiges. Brussels: 1904. Thiry, Oscar. La Miraculeuse Aventure des Jeunes Belgiques (1880- 1896). Brussels: Editions de la Belgique Artistique et Litteraire, 191 2. Thomas, Edward. Maurice Maeterlinck. London : Methuen, 1911. Verhaeren, fimile. Les Lettres Fran^aises en Belgique. Brussels: Lamertin, 1907. Vermeylen, A. La Poesie Flamande de 1880 a 1910. Ghent : Vanderpoorten, 1 9 1 2. Zweig, Stefan. Emile Verhaeren. Leipzig : Insel- Verlag, 19 10. Traduit par Paul Morisse et Henri Chervet. Paris : Mercure de France, 1 9 1 o. Translated by Jethro Bithell. London : Constable, 191 5. 378 NOTE Some of the verse translations in this volume are taken from my two books Contemporary Belgian Poetry and Contemporary Flemish Poetry in the " Canterbury Poets " Series, and thanks are due to Messrs. The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., for their authorization to quote them. I have also to thank Mr, Heinemann for his permission to quote a scene from La Princesse Maleine. The poems from Georges Rodenbach's Le Regne du Silence are repro- duced by permission of Monsieur Eugene Fasquelle. J. B. 379 INDEX Abel, Gustave, 370 Albert, King, 282, 371 Amiel, H. F.. 28 Amsterdam, 269—270 Anarchism, 96, 99, loi, 106, 107 Andr6, Paul, 306-307 AntSe, 227 Antwerp, 18, 20, 22, 23, 85, 87, 88, 94 fi., 103 fi., 115, 117, 229, 231, 233, 236, 238, 282, 343 Ardennes, the, 306 Arenbergh, iSmile van, 44, 58 Army, the Belgian, 93-94, 105, 282, 307 Artiste, L', 43 Art Moderne, L', 53, 56, 371 Austria, 304, 330, 363 Baie, Eugene, 358 Balzac, Honor6 de, 17, 30, 265, 370 Baudelaire, Charles, 49, 57, 58, 63, 126, 257 Bazalgette, Leon, 66 Beaumont and Fletcher, 104 " Belgian," the term, viii, 55-56, 289, 305, 355-356, 359, 367, 369. 371 Belgique Artistique et Litter aire, La, ^71 Bemmel, Eugene van, 29 BerUn, 203-204 Bernard, Charles, 358 Bjornsen, Bjornstjerne, 16, 324 Blockx, Jan, 46 Boer War, 269 Bois, Albert du, 307-308 Bonmariage, Sylvain, 309—310 Bosch, Firmin van den, 365, 368 Bouche, Ferdinand, 3 10, 327 Braun, Thomas, 237, 239-242 Bruges, 22, 23, 24, 74, 83, 190 ff., 197 ff-, 315. 35'>-3Si Brussels, viii, 29, 40, 52, 56, 61, 63, 74, 84, 89, 109, 119, 130, 190, 203, 205, 212, 249, 287, 293. 299. 308," 328, 347 Bruyn, Edmond de, 238 Buysse, Cyriel, 26, 316, 324 fE. Byron, Lord, 22, 201, 330 Cammaerts, fimile, 371 Campine, the, 32, 85-87, 89, 98, 99, 106, 279, 280 Carez, M. J., 370 Carlyle, Thomas, 116, 117 Chainaye, Hector, 219 Christianity, 81—82 Conscience, Hendrik, 20 ff., 93, 99 Coppee, Fran9ois, 49 Coster, Charles de, 28 ff., 42, 43, 63, 14s, 309 Courouble, Leopold, 293, 299 Courtrai, 23, 315 Crane, Walter, 175, 176 Croisset, Francis de, viii Crommelynck, Ferdinand, 285- 287 Davignon, Henri, 305-306 Delacre, Jules, 250-252 Delattre, Louis, 290-293 Delchevalerie, Charles, 303-304 Deman, Edmond, 48 Demblon, Celestin, 159, 219, 222, 304 Demolder, Eugene, 62, 153,2643., 281, 289, 298 De Quincey, 99 Destree, Jules, 219, 356-357 Devos, Prosper Henri, 308 Dickens, Charles, 96 Dominique, Jean, 208, 210, 249 Drama, see Plays, Belgian Dumont-Wilden, Louis, 186 ff., 307, 358 ff. 380 Index Durendal, 237, 371 Dutch, 13, 16, 18 Dutch poetry, 330 Dwelshauers, Georges, 366 Dyck, Ernest van, 47 Ebers, Georg, 308 Edwards, Osman, 145 Eekhoud, Georges, 17, 22-23, 32, 53. 55. 62, 74, 85 fE., 277, 279, 281, 282, 289, 304, 323 Elskamp, Max, 14, 56, 153, 229 flE., 266-267 Emerson, R. W., 178 English literature, influence of, 22, 96, 99, 104, 162, 175, 203, . 304. 330. 333. 335 Etoile Beige, L' , 89, 306 Fierens-Gevaert, 365 Fitzgerald, Edward, 163 Flamingants, 14, 19,21,24,26, 39, 111, 115, 329 Flanders, 12, 31-32, 35, 41, jy S., 109, 146, 199, 229, 230 Flemings, the, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 31 ff., 104, 109 fE., 120, 219, 279 a., 289—290, 305, 314 fE., 329 fE. Flemish coast, 80 fE., 100, loi, 146, 265—267 Flemish language, the, 13, 15, 16, 18-20, 55, 87, 112-115 Flemish movement, 19, 22, 26, 45, 46, 219 Floreal, 225, 303 Folksongs, 160, 218, 339 Fonson, Franz, 299 Fontainas, Andre, 54, 56, 176, 245-247 Fransquillons, 14 Fredericq, Paul, 18 Free-thinking party, 19, 26, 39 French culture, 13, 14, 19, 22, 112, 220, 359 flE., 368, 369 French language, the, 12, 15, 19, 50, 55, III, 113 fiE., 329 Furnes, 80 fE., 146 Futurism, 76, 132, 147-148, 183- 184 Galileo, 205 Garnir, Georges, 59, 293 Gauchez, Maurice, 295, 364 Gautier, Theophile, 58, 63, 370 George, Stefan, 203, 225, 330 Gerardy, Paul, viii, 225—227 German culture, 13, 14, 19, 362 flE., 368 German literature, influence of, 124, 185, 286, 330, 7,iy Germany, 40, 109-111, 112, 115, 123, 154, 220, 225, 227, 239, 330-331. 367 Gevaert, Fierens, 365 Gezelle, Guido, 16, 23, 25, 26, 42, 43, 315 Ghent, 18, 22, 45, 118, 152, 154, 187, 190, 201, 212, 283, 284, 316, 324, 347, 367 Ghil, Rene, 223 Gilbert, Eugene, 265, 299, 364 Gilkin, Iwan, 14, 44, 47, 49, 53, 55. 56, 73. 124, 257 ff., 356 Gille, Valere, 55, 56, 58-59 Giraud, Albert, 45, 49, 53, 55, 56, 124, 153, 253-256, 309, 329 Glesener, Edmond, 311— 313 Goethe, J. W., 180 Gofhn, Arnold, 159, 357 Goncourt, Edmond de, 1 91 Gorky, Maxime, 107 Gosse, Edmund, 58, 224 Gourmont, Remy de, 364 Greenaway, Kate, 175, 176 Hannon, Theodore, 43, 57, 58, 89 Hardy, Thomas, 86 Harry, Gerard, 370 Hasselt, Andre van, 26—27 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 81, 180 Hellens, Franz, 282-285, 286 Heredia, J. M. de, 58 Herrick, Robert, 24 Herzog, Rudolf, 97 Heyse, Paul, 185 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 330 HoflEmann, E. T. A., 293 Holland, 13, 16, 18, 19, 24, 26, 36, 267 fE. Horrent, Desire, 370 Hugo, Victor, 26, 65, 148, 201, 304 Humour, 234, 299, 323 Huysmans, Joris Karl, vii Hymans, Louis, 43 Ibsen, Henrik, 287 Impressionists, 283, 347 381 Contemporary Belgian Literature Ingoyghem, 26, 318 Isi -Collin, 227-228 Italy, 28, 63, 132, 203-205 Jammes, Francis, 238, 239 Jeune Belgique, La, 52 flf., 60, 152, 153- 307 Jordaens, Jakob, 103, 106, 120 Keats, John, 46 Kermesses, 89, 90, 93, 280 Khnopff, Fernand, 213, 359 Khnopff, Georges, 231 Kinon, Victor, 237-239 Kistemaeckers, Henry, viii Krains, Hubert, 293-295 Kurth, Godefroid, 366 Lacomblez, Paul, 39 La Fontaine, Jean de, 268 Langendonck, Prosper van, 347- 349 Leblanc, Madame Georgette, 150, 181 Leclercq, Jules, 365 Ledeganck, Karel L., 22, 23, 330 Lemonnier, Camille, 39, 40, 41, 43, 60 fi., 89, 146, 151, 281, 289, 290, 314, 323, 354 Leonard, Franfois, 308 Leopold II, 227 Lerberghe, Charles van, 54, 56, 57. 152, 153. 157. 176. 200 fE., 212, 218, 223, 229, 249 Le Roy, Gregoire, 54, 152, 200, 212 2., 247, 370 Le Sage, A. R., 312 Lessing, G. E., 268 Liebrecht, Henri, 309 Liege, 15, 21, 219, 227, 304, 311, 366 Ligne, Prince de, 363 Lihencron, Detlev von, 337 Limbosch, Raymond, 263 Livingstone, David, 315 London, vii, 129, 130, 131, 145, 203, 358 Longfellow, H. W., 213, 330 Louvain, 28, 43 ff., 62, 85, 118 Louys, Pierre, 307 Loveling, Rosalie, 324 LoveUng, Virginie, 324 Macaulay, Lord, 367 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 27, 54, 56, 57, 76, 103, 104, 108, III, 112, 114, 115, 124, 150 ff., 192, 200, 201, 202, 205, 212, 265, 276, 283, 286-287, 300, 304, 307, 324. 354, 363, 365, 370 Mahutte, Franz, 53, 307 Malines, 85, 98, 99 Mallarme, Stephane, 153, 161, 191, 222, 245, 351 Mann, Thomas, 97 Marinetti, F. T., 148 Marlow, Georges, 247, 371 Marlowe, Christopher, 104 Masqtie, Le, 215, 371 Maubel, Henri, 53, 54, 55, 300 Maupassant, Guy de, 49, 311, 324 Meunier, Constantin, 71 Merrill, Stuart, 372 Meyere, Victor de, 346-347 Michaelis, Karin, 306 Minne, Georges, 213 Mirbeau, Octave, 1 61-162 Mockel, Albert, 65, 176, 202, 204, 207, 218, 227, 245, 260, 286 Mons, 109 Mont, Pol de, 26, 45-47, 266, 330 ff., 365 Montague, Victor de la, 342-343 Montenaeken, Leon, 59 Montfort, Eugene, 310 Morisseaux, Franfois Charles, 306, 309 Morris, William, 233 Mysticism, 17, 28, 32, 80 fif., 114, 169, 178, 190 ff., 231, 238, 280, 283 Namur, 64 Nautet, Francis, 14, 55, 363- 364 Nietzsche, F. W., 108, 211, 228, 361 Nieuport, 146 Nordau, Max, 162 Nothomb, Pierre, 238, 245 Offel, Edmond van, 343—346 Offel, Horace van, 281, 289 Ombiaux, Maurice des, 295—299, 308 Optimism, 182 Owlglass, Till, 33-34 382 Index Pan-Germanism, 40, 46, 330 Pantheism, 212, 228 Paris, vii, viii, 26, 49—50, 53, 54, 56, 84, 152, 154, 190, 201, 212, 219, 245 Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique, Le, 54 ff., 201 Parnassians, 53, 54, 56, 253 ff. Pessimism, 28, 57, 58, 123 ff., 159. 193. 318, 356, 357 Philip II, 36, 145 Picard, Edmond, 53, 62, 72>, 74. 119,264, 354-356, 359, 367 Pioneer Players, the, 228 Pirenne, Henri, 366—369 Pirmez, Octave, 28 Plays, Belgian, viii, 46, 104, 144- 146, 161 ff., 185-186, 211-212, 228, 277, 282-283, 286, 287- 288, 299-300, 305, 308, 309, 355 PUiade, La, 152, 201, 212 Pol de Mont, 26, 45-47, 266, 330 ff., 365 Potvin, Charies, 29, 43 Pre-RaphaeUtes, the, 175, 176, 245 Prosody, 27, 234 Rabelais, 30, 32, 296 Ramaekers, Georges, 238, 242-245 Rassenfosse, Armand, 222, 228 ReaUsm, 90, 98, 153, 318 Regnier, Henri de, 222 Rembrandt, 50. 114, 144, 271, 272, 278 Renard the Fox, 30, 33 Rency, Georges, 64, 84, 291, 307, 371 Revue de Belgique, La, 371 Rodenbach, Albrecht, 45 ff., 51 Rodenbach, Georges, 51, 53, 124, 153. 159. 190-200 Roidot, Prosper, 252 RoUinat, Maurice, 256 Romains, Jules, 147 Roman CathoUcs, 18, 23, 24, 26, 39, 112, 122-123, 130, 23s, 237 ff., 279, 316, 364-365. 372 Rooses, Max, 365 Rops, FeUcien, 29, 39 Rosny, J. H., viii Rossetti, D. G., 176, 203 Rosy, Leopold, 305, 371 Roulers, 23, 45, 46 Rousseau, Blanche, 300-303 Rouvez, Auguste, 308 Rubens, Peter Paul, 50, 103, 106, 122 Russia, 108, 324 Ruysbroeck, Jan, 115, 178 Sainte-Beuve, C. a., 26, 370 Satanism, 124, 256 ff. Satire, 224, 226—227 Scheldt, the, 12, 13, 21, 86, 87, 89, 115, 118, 266, 273 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 124, 286 Semaine des £tudiants, La, 49, 51-52, 55 Severin, Fernand, 56, 57, 253, 260-263 Shakespeare, 104, 162, 163, 181, 304 Shaw, G. B., 96, 98 Shelley, P. B., 201 Sociahsm, 77-79, 95, 144, 184, 281, 312, 327, 356 Sodomy, 99, loi ff. Souguenet, Leon, viii, 358 Spaak, Paul, 288 Spain, 31, 36-38, 71, 145, 270, 277 Spectateur Catholique, Le, 237, 238, 240 Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Charles de, 369 Steen, Jan, 3^, 265, 267, 268, 270, 278 Stendhal, 312, 363 Stiernet, Hubert, 307 Streuvels, Stijn, 26, 33, 310, 314 ff. Superman, the, 120 Suttner, Baroness von, 66 Symbolism, 91, 140, 169, 170, 290 Symbolists, 54, 55, 56, 153, 175, 190 ff., 270, 286 Symons, Arthur, 144, 227 Swarth, Hel^ne, 59 Swinburne, A. C., 39, 286, 333 Switzerland, viii, 88, loi Teirlinck, Herman, 328 Teniers, David, 50, 120 Tennyson, Lord, 330, 335 Termonde, 117 Thames, the, 127 Theatre, the, see Plays, Belgian Thompson, Vance, 53, 90 Thyrse, Le, 208, 305, 306, 371 Type, Le, 52 Till Eulenspiegel , 33-34 383 Contemporary Belgian Literature Toumai, 190 Travel, books of, 277, 355, 357- 358, 365 Universities, 366 Van de Velde, Henry, viii, 231- 232 Vandervelde, !l6mile, 144, 264 Vandrunen, James, 357—358 Van Nu en Straks, 316, 347, 372 Verhaeren, ^iSmile, 15, 44, 47-48, 49, 50-51, S3, 54, 56, 76. 83, 86, 92, 97, 98, 108 fE., 151, 153, 159, 183, 192, 194, 200, 201, 222, 229, 239, 329, 364, 371 Variant, Ernst, 51 Vermeersch, Gustav, 328 Vermeylen, August, 328, 347, 350- 351 Verriest, Hugo, 23, 25-26, 45 Vers lihres, 55, 56, 253 Vie Intellectuelle, La, 204, 292, 371 Viele-Griffin, Francis, 222 Vierset, Auguste, 219, 358 Villiers de I'lsle-Adam, 152 Villon, Fran9ois, 284 Virrds, Georges, 32, 279-281, 289 Vlaanderen, ^17, 372 Waleffe, Maurice de, 308 Waller, Max, 52, 54, 57, 58, 90 Wallonie, La, 56, 124, 157, 159, 201, 219, 222—223, 225, 303, 304 Walloons, the, 14, 15, x6, 17, 18, 21, 219, 289 ff. War, 65-66, 144, 362 Wells, H. G, 195, 308 Whitman, Walt, 134, 155 Wiart, Henry Carton de, 74, 304 Wicheler, Fernand, 299 Willems, J. F., 19—20 Wilmotte, Maurice, 366, 369, 371 Woestijne, Karel van de, 316, 347, 348, 351-353 Yeats, W. B., 170 Ypres, 298 Zola, ^vaile, ij, 66, 72, 95, 325 Zweig, Stefan, 127, 129, 135, 140, 142 Zype, Gustave van, 287-288 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson dr" Co., Ltd. Edinburgh 6* London uc SO- ^;='. =■;;,. :-,al library facility A 000 671 499 2