THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 CONTEMPORARY 
 BELGIAN LITERATURE
 
 CONTEMPORARY 
 BELGIAN LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 JETHRO BTTHELL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
 
 College 
 bra 
 
 Q. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 I. BELGIAN LITERATURE TILL 1880 n 
 
 II. THE STANDARD OF REVOLT 42 
 
 III. CAMILLE LEMONNIER 60 
 
 IV. GEORGES EEKHOUD 85 
 
 V. MILE VERHAEREN 108 
 
 VI. MAURICE MAETERLINCK 150 
 
 VII. THE SYMBOLIST POETS 190 
 
 VIII. THE PARNASSIAN POETS 253 
 
 IX. EUGENE 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 Ge"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 
 
 viii
 
 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, plattdeutsch, 
 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 
 
 13
 
 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 flamingants 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 I wan 
 Gilkin had a Flemish mother. 
 
 That part of Belgian literature which is French 
 in expression, "la litterature beige d'expression 
 franchise," 1 is mostly the work of the Walloons, a 
 race of Celtic extraction the descendants of the old 
 Galliae or Belgae who were Romanised at an early 
 
 1 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 Lie"ge are 
 Walloon with the town of Lie"ge 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- 
 str&v, eschewed the pure Danish of Copen- 
 hagen to write what they considered to be the 
 Norwegian tongue, so Guido Gezelle, and with 
 him a tribe of " regional " writers, have preferred 
 to write the language they heard spoken about 
 them rather than lose sap and vigour by adapting 
 their local idiom to written Dutch. Their inten- 
 tions were justifiable, and the results have approved 
 them ; for Flemish literature, far from striking 
 literary Dutchmen as an uncouth patois, turns out 
 to have much the same charm as kaleyard has 
 for readers in the south of England. To foreign 
 readers, however, there is one great drawback : the 
 Dutchman can guess the meaning of a vocable, 
 but the foreigner who is learning the language has 
 to rely on a Dutch dictionary, and here he will look 
 in vain for many words which are purely Flemish. 
 There is the greatest difference between the 
 
 spirit of the literature written by the two races. 
 
 16
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 Generalisations are always subject to exceptions, 
 but one may venture to adapt an idea of Balzac 
 and say that while the literature written by Walloons 
 is a literature of ideas, the literature written by 
 Flemings, whether in French or Flemish, is a 
 literature of images. The Walloons think; the 
 Flemings paint. The Walloons are logicians, 
 masters of the correct outline ; the Flemings are 
 dreamers and colourists. The Walloons have pro- 
 duced no realists of distinction, for they are too 
 speculative and selective for that form of art ; the 
 Flemings, with their ideal of matter magnified, 
 have flung themselves into realism and out-Zolaed 
 Zola, but their realism is almost always a dream- 
 realism, in which dirt itself ferments with poetry. 
 The play of fancy, the scintillation of ideas of 
 the Walloons is opposed by the monumental vision, 
 the glowing ecstasy of the Flemings. On the one 
 side, philosophy ; on the other, mysticism. In the 
 Walloons there is the cult of exquisite form ; in 
 the Flemings there is a formlessness which often 
 (as in Georges Eekhoud's novels) swamps a 
 grandiose conception. In the Walloons there is 
 
 the inevitable ; in the Flemings, the sublime. 
 
 17 B
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 A few words are necessary as to the use in 
 Belgium of the two languages. When, after the 
 taking of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma in 1585, 
 Belgium entered on a period of intellectual listless- 
 ness, the Flemish language, which had been illus- 
 trated by poets, artists, and scholars, fell into disuse ; 
 and when Napoleon incorporated Belgium in the 
 French Empire he eliminated it altogether and 
 made French the only official language. It was not 
 till after the Battle of Waterloo, which Professor 
 Paul Fredericq of Ghent calls " the dawn of the 
 revival in the Flemish districts," that the Flemings 
 began to take an interest in their mother tongue. 
 The union with Holland helped them little, for by 
 their arrogant bearing and direct injustice the Dutch 
 alienated both Flemings and Walloons. There 
 was, moreover, bound to be a complete misunder- 
 standing between the Protestants of Holland and 
 the Roman Catholics of Belgium. Literary influence 
 there could be none, for to the Belgian catholics 
 Dutch literature, by the mere fact that it was Pro- 
 testant literature, was anathema, and the clergy did 
 all they could to prevent the reading of Dutch 
 
 books. After the revolution of 1830, which resulted 
 
 18
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 in the separation of Belgium from Holland, the 
 Belgian Government made French the official 
 language again ; but as time went on the Flemings 
 awoke to a consciousness of their rights, and 
 the " Flemish Movement " began. In this fierce 
 struggle against the supremacy and over-estimation 
 of the French language, as of French ideals, the 
 first hero was J. F. Willems (1793-1846). It was 
 to Holland, and not to France, that the flamin- 
 gants, or at all events the free-thinking enthusiasts 
 among them, looked for intellectual support ; it was 
 Teutonic, that is, Dutch and German culture, not 
 French culture, that was held out as the natural 
 ideal of the Flemings. An old saw of the Middle 
 Ages, that what is French is false, 1 was revived ; 
 while a comparison was made between the licentious- 
 ness of French literature and the domestic purity 
 and healthfulness of Teutonic books. The French 
 were corrupt ; the Teutons were sound. These 
 complacent main ideas of the Flemish movement 
 were set in currency by J. F. Willems in his news- 
 paper articles. He has left no work worthy of 
 mention ; the groundwork even of his philology has 
 
 1 " Wat walsch is, valsch is." 
 19
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 given way : he must be remembered, however, as 
 the herald of the Flemish renaissance. 
 
 But the man who, in the words sculptured on 
 his monument at Antwerp, taught the Flemings to 
 read, was Hendrik Conscience (1812-1 883). There 
 had been no popular literature before his novels 
 appeared ; and it would not be wrong to call him 
 the father of Modern Flemish literature. It is 
 curious that so Flemish a writer should be half 
 French by birth. At the time when Napoleon I 
 was pointing a pistol at the heart of England by 
 turning Antwerp into a dockyard, Pierre Conscience, 
 a French boatswain who had suffered a long 
 captivity on British hulks, settled in the Flemish 
 port as a foreman in the shipbuilding yards. He 
 married a native of the town, a Flemish woman ; 
 and Hendrik Conscience was their son. The boy 
 had no education worth speaking of, but he read 
 all the books he could lay his hands on, including 
 many an old tome hauled out of the rubbish heaps 
 of his father, who, after the fall of Napoleon, had 
 established himself in business as a paper dealer. 
 Hendrik's health was delicate, and he was left very 
 
 much to himself : he swam like a water-rat in the 
 
 20
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 Scheldt, and ran about the streets of Antwerp, 
 picking up the legends of old Flemish life which 
 had never died out among the people. This out- 
 door life, full of the stuff of stories, ended when, 
 in his teens, it became necessary for him to earn 
 his keep as an usher in a school, a thankless posi- 
 tion, in which his abnormal shyness, which troubled 
 him throughout life and amounted to a disease, 
 cost him great suffering. When the revolution of 
 1830 broke out, he enlisted with the rebel forces, 
 and, in spite of his delicate constitution and dreamy 
 nature, he would seem to have acquitted himself 
 fairly well in actual fighting. He has related his 
 experiences vividly in his De Omwenteling van 
 1830 (The Revolution of 1830.) His best known 
 work is De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of 
 Flanders), a historical novel written round the Battle 
 of the Spurs of Gold. Conscience has been cele- 
 brated by the flamingants as one of the heroes of 
 their movement ; he was anything but one-sided, 
 however, and his novel The Mayor of Lige, with its 
 glorification of the Walloons, is an adequate counter- 
 poise to his Lion of Flanders. Conscience was no 
 partisan : he was a Belgian patriot. From the 
 
 21
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 point of view of international literature, his novels 
 have little value : they have the maudlin sentiment- 
 ality and the stereotyped romantic characters of 
 immature literature ; they are, in the least compli- 
 mentary sense, books for the people. 
 
 The Flemish Movement drew vigour from a 
 number of poets who are still read. The influence 
 of English poetry is glaringly manifest in the work 
 of Karel L. Ledeganck (1805-1847). He is known 
 in his own country as "the Flemish Byron," but 
 there is nothing of Byron in this amiable, hard- 
 working Philistine except a few tricks of style. 
 However, Ledeganck is the classical Flemish poet 
 to people who do not read poetry ; his collected 
 verse in a gorgeous binding may be seen, with 
 The Lion of Flanders, on the centre table of the 
 Flemish salon. The best known poem in the 
 Flemish tongue was written by Ledeganck : it is 
 De Drie Zustersteden (The Three Sister Cities), 
 a tribute of sounding rhetoric to the poet's native 
 city of Ghent and her rivals Antwerp and Bruges 
 Flemish cities these, so runs the moral, no sinks of 
 iniquity as in the South. (All depends on the point 
 
 of view : according to another Fleming, Georges 
 
 22
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 Eekhoud, Antwerp at all events has never in the 
 course of its history lagged behind Sodom and 
 Gomorrha.) 
 
 Ledeganck is the classical poet, but on the shelf 
 or the costly table-cover. In the mouths of men it 
 is Guido Gezelle (1830-1899) who is most frequently 
 quoted. Ledeganck is praised, but Guido Gezelle 
 is loved. " Guido Gezelle is the soul of Flanders," 
 says a Flemish poet of our days, Hugo Verriest. 
 Gezelle was born, a gardener's son, at Bruges ; he 
 was trained as a priest at Roulers, and learned 
 English from the English students there. He was 
 appointed professeur de commerce, teacher of com- 
 mercial subjects (of which he knew absolutely 
 nothing) at Bruges. Later on he received a more 
 congenial post, that of teacher of literature, but his 
 popularity with the students and his independent 
 ways of teaching were offensive to his superiors, 
 and it was found convenient to remove him to other 
 duties. After filling various minor posts, he was 
 given a curacy at Courtrai, where he spent twenty- 
 eight years in what to him was exile. He had been 
 in his element as a teacher of literature, and his 
 
 heart is said to have been broken by his unmerited 
 
 23
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 disgrace. Not till he was in his sixty-ninth year 
 was he recalled to Bruges to fill a position more in 
 keeping with his distinction, and here he died in 
 1899. Before his disgrace he had published various 
 volumes of verse, which had been favourably noticed 
 but had not become widely known. Two years 
 after his death a volume of his verse was published 
 at Amsterdam, and the Dutch immediately hailed 
 this obscure Flemish priest as a poet of the first 
 magnitude. Since then his popularity has grown 
 continually, and his best poems are now part and 
 parcel of Flemish (and Dutch) culture. Unfortu- 
 nately, political considerations have something to 
 do with his vogue : persecuted by the orthodox 
 party in his lifetime, he has been set up since his 
 death as the idol of the Roman Catholic flaming-ants, 
 and the result is that something more than justice is 
 done to him. He was often inspired, but some- 
 times he was merely a headlong rhymester. At 
 his best he was a most delicate poet he had 
 something of the grace and lightness of that 
 other parson in a far village, Herrick, as witness 
 this playful hymning : 
 
 24
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 A MAY DAY 
 
 The cherry-tree, as you may see, 
 
 Has donned a robe of pride : 
 For it is May, and she to-day 
 
 Must be a happy bride. 
 
 Her every bough is hiding now, 
 
 All in the sunshine bright, 
 Behind a veil so pure and frail 
 
 Of blossoms shining white. 
 
 When glittering rime in winter time 
 
 Bedecked her, she was fair : 
 But fairer far her blossoms are 
 
 Than frosted branches bare. 
 
 Her beauty then might show to men 
 
 How their existence soon 
 Must pass in pain, as cold and vain 
 
 As shadows under the moon. 
 
 But no disguise to cheat the eyes 
 
 Is this her bridal dress : 
 O she is dressed indeed in blest 
 
 And living loveliness. 
 
 Gezelle's pupil Hugo Verriest has published verse 
 of distinction, and he is to-day one of the most dis- 
 tinguished men in Belgium : famous as orator, and 
 
 25
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 as head of the Roman Catholic Flemish movement. 1 
 Like his master, he has been relegated by his 
 superiors to obscurity : he is the curate of Ingoy- 
 ghem, "the remotest village in the Flemish pro- 
 vinces," a village which is doubly famous, because 
 of its curate, and because it is the home of Guido 
 Gezelle's nephew, the novelist Stijn Streuvels. 
 Hugo Verriest, unlike Gezelle, has not been broken 
 by the disgrace into which a Church that hates 
 originality has sought to plunge him ; indeed he has 
 turned it into strength, and there is no Cardinal in 
 the land who looms larger in the eyes of intelli- 
 gent Roman Catholics than the fighting curate of 
 Ingoyghem. 
 
 Of the French-writing poets before 1880, the 
 most important is Andre" van Hasselt (1806-1874). 
 Born at Maestricht, he was by birth a Dutchman, 
 and he learned French by dint of hard work. 
 During a visit to Paris he made the acquaintance 
 of Victor Hugo and Sainte-Beuve, and was by 
 
 1 The Flemish Movement is split into two hostile camps. The 
 Roman Catholic section hate Holland as the land of heretics ; the 
 liberal and free-thinking section, the heads of which are Pol de 
 Mont and Cyriel Buysse, hate the Roman Catholic Church and are 
 Dutch (if not German) in sympathy. 
 
 26
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 them converted to the Romantic programme. His 
 masterpiece is the philosophical epic Les Quatre 
 Incarnations du Christ. Van Hasselt explains 
 his intentions as follows : " This work is but the 
 development of several verses of Isaiah (chapters 
 xv., v., 6-9), a simple expose of the successive 
 phases of the progress of humanity as determined 
 by the manifestation of the Christian spirit in 
 the main events of history, until the complete 
 realisation on earth of the Saviour's teaching." 
 This conception would repel most modern readers, 
 though there are some whom it would attract ; but 
 in any case it is the idea rather than the execution 
 which forces attention. Andre" van Hasselt has at 
 all events some importance in the history of French 
 versification by virtue of his metrical experiments. 
 He made determined attempts to write French 
 accentual poetry, that is to say, verse constructed, 
 as in English and Teutonic poetry, by the regular 
 iteration of accents, instead of, as in French, by 
 the counting of syllables. 
 
 Maeterlinck is not the first "popular philo- 
 sopher " produced by Belgium. Much of the 
 
 charm of Maeterlinck's first essays was contained 
 
 27
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 in the gentle pessimism of Octave Pirmez, "the 
 hermit of Agoz," as he is called, from the castle 
 in the Ardennes where he spent his days in medita- 
 tion and in the contemplation of nature. At Agoz 
 he wrote his H cures de Philosophies. His Jours 
 de Solitude were inspired by his rambles in Italy. 
 Pirmez was a Walloon mystic. His way of tran- 
 scribing his thoughts and sensations reminds one 
 of Amiel. 
 
 There is one Belgian writer before 1880 of 
 whom it cannot be denied that he is of equal rank 
 with the best men of to-day. This is Charles de 
 Coster. He was born at Munich in 1827, in the 
 house of the Apostolic Nuncio Count Mercy 
 d'Argenteau, Archbishop of Tyr, who stood god- 
 father to him. According to some investigators, 
 the Archbishop was himself the boy's father, the 
 mother being a servant in the Apostolic household. 
 At all events no expense was spared in De Coster's 
 education, and in the natural course he would have 
 studied at Louvain, and advanced to high distinc- 
 tion, if his character had not been wayward. He 
 was for a time a bank clerk, but ran away and 
 
 struggled along at the democratic University of 
 
 28
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 Brussels, where he came under the influence of 
 Eugene van Bemmel, a professor of literature who 
 is remembered for a meritorious novel, Dom Placide, 
 In 1854 van Bemmel launched the Revue Trimes- 
 trielle (1854-68), to which De Coster contributed 
 his first prose. In another Brussels review, Uylen- 
 spiegel, which had Felicien Rops for an illustrator, 
 appeared one of the short stories of De Coster's 
 Legendes Flamandes, a book which was hailed with 
 enthusiasm by discerning critics. These legends, 
 the subjects of which were taken from Flemish 
 folklore, were written in an old French style, the 
 only idiom which in De Coster's opinion was fitted 
 to reproduce the atmosphere of old Flemish life. 
 The entanglement of a love affair cost the hand- 
 some and elegant young author the suffering which 
 can be read in his Lettres & Elisa, published after 
 his death by Charles Potvin. The old French of 
 Les Legendes Flamandes was so like the real thing 
 that it won De Coster the reputation of a medise- 
 valist ; and in 1860 he was appointed to the Royal 
 Commission which had been created to publish 
 old laws. This gave him a chance of studying 
 
 old manuscripts, which he did with such profit 
 
 29
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 that old French became to him as natural a vehicle 
 of thought as the French of his own day. Old 
 Flemish, too, he knew thoroughly ; he was versed 
 in old Flemish authors such as Marnix van St. 
 Aldegonde. If he had had staying power, his 
 position would have assured him a competence ; 
 but he was too restless, and in 1864 he resigned, 
 to find that literature was a slave-driver, and to 
 feel more than ever what he called "the horrible 
 power of money." In 1861 he had published 
 Contes Braban$ons (in modern French) ; this book 
 helped to establish his reputation, but did not 
 materially help his financial position. 
 
 With the old French classics Roman de 
 Renard, Montaigne, Rabelais he had long been 
 familiar, and he was able to imitate their style with 
 far greater sureness than Balzac had done in his 
 Contes Drolatiques. He had fortified his lingu- 
 istic knowledge by solid studies in mediaeval his- 
 tory, and during his employment at the Archives 
 du Royaume he had excerpted many old French 
 and Flemish documents relating to the sixteenth 
 century. He had studied the old chroniclers ; van 
 
 Meteren's Flemish chronicle in particular he had 
 
 30
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 read ten times. He needed all his learning for the 
 masterpiece of his life, La Le"gende et les Aventures 
 heroiques.joyeuses et glorieuses dUlenspiegel et de 
 Lamme Goedzak au pays de Flandres et ailleurs, 
 which took him ten years to complete. During 
 the period of composition he roamed about in the 
 Netherlands, familiarising himself with the locali- 
 ties of his story, visiting the kermesses, listening 
 to the racy conversation of the peasants in the 
 taverns. 
 
 The Legend of Ulenspiegel is a complex book. 
 Its main purpose is superb : to write the epic of the 
 Flemish race, to take a Flemish hero and in him to 
 celebrate the deeds of the Flemings. But not in 
 verse, for that would take away the sting of reality. 
 It should be full of the immense sadness of Flemish 
 history, and yet not be sad : Flanders should not 
 show its wounds and ask for pity, it should jest at 
 them. It should not so much curse the Spanish 
 tyrant as mock him ; it should show him impotent 
 to quell the joy in life of a virile people. It should 
 be a book of glaring contrasts : Fleming and 
 Spaniard, tolerance and bigotry, should be opposed 
 as black is to white. All the life of Flanders should
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 be concentrated on this its most heroic period, on 
 the sixteenth century. Flanders should lose all, 
 and yet be unconquered (was there some prophetic 
 vision here ?) ; the hero should not die for the 
 spirit of Flanders cannot die but rise again from 
 the grave. De Coster was fain to sacrifice position 
 and comfort to live for this task alone : to create 
 an atmosphere of poetry and legend in which his 
 countrymen should see themselves idealised and 
 yet true ; and (since Flemish has no international 
 significance) he would write in the old French of 
 Rabelais. 
 
 There is room for different conceptions of the 
 Fleming. It is possibly a misconception to think 
 of him as a taciturn mystic, with all his fires burning 
 inward, but ready to burst forth on provocation. 
 This may be true of the Dutchman ; it may be true 
 of the peasants of the Campine as we see them in 
 the novels of Eekhoud and Virres. But it is not 
 universally true ; or at all events taciturnity is only 
 one side of the Flemish character. Such a con- 
 ception could not serve De Coster for the purpose 
 of his epic, for it was to be Rabelaisian, not 
 
 Calvinistic. The quality which struck him most 
 
 32
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 in the Fleming was that habit of cunning which 
 we observed in the Boers, and which became 
 familiar to us by its Dutch term, " slim." To call 
 it " foxy " would be incorrect ; for that would imply 
 meanness ; and the Fleming is hardly mean. He 
 has an eye to the main chance at all times ; but 
 the typical Fleming, though never frank and trans- 
 parent, only develops cunning to a fine art when 
 he is threatened by superior force. This side of 
 his nature is turned forth at epic length in the old 
 poem of Renard the Fox, which was fashioned 
 mainly in Flanders. De Coster was bound to 
 be influenced by this poem in planning his book. 
 But (though a Fleming so modern as Stijn 
 Streuvels has re-written Renard the Fox and 
 kept the old shape) modern thought is too direct 
 to be placed in the mouths of animals. De Coster 
 knew better than do that. He knew another 
 old Germanic legend which satirises the follies 
 and vices of the rich and shows the weak using 
 cunning to baffle those set above him. This 
 was the German chapbook of Till Eulenspiegel, 
 which, in its Flemish dress of Thyl Ulenspiegel, 
 
 had become so well known that the arch wag and 
 
 33 c
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 arrant rogue who gives the book its name had come 
 to be claimed as a native of Damme, near Bruges. 
 The genesis of Eulenspiegel was due to the same 
 conditions as those which gave rise to Renard the 
 Fox: the political helplessness of the serf in the 
 Middle Ages except in so far as he could outwit his 
 legal masters, the grasping lord of the manor and 
 the corrupt priest. But whereas in the beast-epic 
 there is bitterness, in the wag's itinerary there is a 
 laughing superiority which mocks while it cheats. 
 Renard is a venomous rogue ; Eulenspiegel is an 
 irresistible jester. It occurred to De Coster to 
 fuse these two old tales, to blend the proverbial 
 characters of Renard and Eulenspiegel, to give a 
 valid reason for the trickery and make it work for a 
 noble purpose, at the same time mellowing it by 
 a luxuriant humour. 
 
 The legend of Till Eulenspiegel, which first 
 appeared at the end of the fifteenth century, is 
 sufficiently well known in its English form as Till 
 Owlglass. De Coster takes over a number of the 
 episodes bodily ; others he modifies to suit his 
 purpose. The great part of the book, however, 
 
 is the heir of his own invention. 
 
 34
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 If Thyl had been merely a wag or a schemer, 
 he would not have been the complete Fleming, 
 for there is another salient trait in the Flemish 
 character : that noisy mirth and joy in good things, 
 that almost frenzied sensualism which runs riot in 
 Eekhoud's and Demolder's novels, the Rabelaisian- 
 ism of the old genre pictures, the rubicund gluttony 
 of Jan Steen. But this quality is burlesque, not 
 heroic ; and Thyl was to be a hero. De Coster, 
 therefore, detached this Flemish feature from Thyl 
 and concentrated it in the person of Lamme 
 Goedzak, a great eater, a sensualist who cannot 
 live without his wife. This character was also 
 proverbial, and De Coster took it from a series of 
 old broadsides coarsely illustrating the story of a 
 henpecked man. Thyl was to represent the brain 
 and soul of Flanders, Lamme its stomach. 
 
 The story opens with idylls of childhood. Thyl 
 grows up as the weeds grow, and plays his pranks 
 and lives his idle life until his father, the very 
 incarnation of unsuspecting innocence, is burnt at 
 the stake and his mother put to the rack by the 
 fiends of the Inquisition. He collects his father's 
 
 ashes, and ever after wears them on his breast 
 
 35
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " My father's ashes are beating on my heart " is now 
 the watchword to fortify him in his mission of 
 vengeance, in his crusade to redeem the land. He 
 joins the Gueux, and roams the Netherlands, with 
 Lamme Goedzak (since the brain cannot exist 
 without the stomach) accompanying him, fomenting 
 rebellion, recruiting soldiers, acting as a spy and 
 messenger. 
 
 As in all tales of adventure, against the shape 
 of light the shape of darkness is projected, hero 
 faces villain. The villain is Philip II of Spain. 
 De Coster had already pilloried the tyrant in 
 Smetse Smee, a masterpiece of satire and merri- 
 ment, one of his Ltgendes Flamandes. Thyl and 
 Philip are contrasted in their doings from the 
 cradle onwards. While Thyl is growing up by 
 the canals and the hedgerows, amid the cackle of 
 the busy guilds, with Nele, his foster-sister and his 
 love to be (the symbol of the devotion of Flemish 
 women), growing up along with him, a curtain is 
 lifted at the Escorial and we see : 
 
 " Now the Emperor, home from the wars, questioned 
 wherefore his son Philip had not come to greet him. 
 
 " The Archbishop who was tutor to the child answered 
 
 36
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 that he had refused to do so, for he loved only books 
 and seclusion. 
 
 " The Emperor inquired where he was at that moment. 
 
 " The tutor answered that they might seek him wher- 
 ever it was dark. Which they did. 
 
 " And when they had passed through a goodly number 
 of rooms, they came at last to a kind of closet, with an 
 earth floor, and lit by a sky-light. Here they beheld a 
 stake driven into the ground, and thereto a "she-monkey 
 was bound, most small and frail, which had been sent from 
 the Indies to gladden the heart of His Royal Highness 
 by its youthful antics. At the foot of the stake lay sticks, 
 red, and still smoking ; and in the closet there was an evil 
 smell of singed hair. 
 
 " The pretty beast had so cruelly suffered as it perished 
 in this fire that its delicate frame seemed to be, not that 
 of an animal that had lived, but rather the fragment of a 
 wrinkled and twisted root ; and in its mouth, that was open 
 as though crying in the death agony, foam specked with 
 blood was to be seen, and its face was still wet with tears. 
 
 " ' Who has done this ? ' asked the Emperor. 
 
 " The tutor durst not reply, and both stood and spake 
 not, being sad and wrathful. 
 
 " Suddenly, in this silence, the feeble sound of a cough 
 was heard coming from a corner of the darkness behind 
 them. His Majesty, turning round, perceived the infante 
 Don Philip, clothed all in black and sucking a lemon. 
 
 " ' Don Philip,' he said, ' come forth and salute me.' 
 
 " The infante did not stir, but looked at him with his 
 timid eyes in which there was no love. 
 
 37
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " ' Hast thou burnt this little beast in this fire ? ' asked 
 the Emperor. 
 
 " The infante bowed his head. 
 
 " But the Emperor spake again : 
 
 " ' If thou in thy cruelty hast done this thing, have the 
 courage to confess it.' 
 
 " The infante made no reply. 
 
 " His Majesty snatched the lemon from his hands, and 
 cast it to the ground, and was about to beat his son, who 
 was pissing with terror, but the Archbishop stayed his 
 hand, whispering in his ear : 
 
 " ' His Royal Highness will some day be a great burner 
 of heretics.' 
 
 " The Emperor smiled, and both went out, leaving the 
 infante alone with his she-monkey." 
 
 The vividness of this scene, with its vital detail 
 of the lemon, will not be disputed, and picture 
 after picture of this kind is flashed across the pages. 
 There is no consecutive narrative, no painstaking 
 stringing together of dates and events : this is a 
 cinematograph show, not an ordered story. The 
 variety is astounding ; each episode is distinct ; 
 and the scene shifts from Flanders to Spain, from 
 Brussels to Nuremberg. The lightness of touch 
 is wonderful : the words seem to float in the short 
 
 sentences, the rhythm is without a jolt. 
 
 38
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 The book had been eagerly expected, and it 
 was adequately noticed when it at last appeared. 
 But it was not a bookseller's success. It was an 
 edition de luxe, enriched by the drawings of dis- 
 tinguished artists, Felicien Rops among others, 
 and its price was prohibitive. Moreover it was in 
 old French, and though this archaic diction had 
 added a charm to the more legendary poetry or the 
 more fantastic buffoonery of the Ldgendes Flam- 
 andes, in so long and ambitious a book as Thyl 
 Ulenspiegel it proved an obstacle. It was not till 
 the Legende was issued in a cheap edition by 
 Paul Lacomblez in 1893 that it began to make 
 headway. Camille Lemonnier calls the book 
 11 the Bible of the Flemings." This is Swin- 
 burnian praise. Thyl Ulenspiegel is to this day 
 not widely known in France, where up to the 
 present there has been a prejudice against all 
 Belgian literature ; in Belgium it is known but 
 unread. To the Roman Catholics, of course, 
 it is a work of the devil ; to the flamingants it 
 is poison, for it is in French. There only remain 
 the Walloons and the freethinking Flemings to 
 
 do justice to this great work ; but it may be 
 
 39
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 doubted if to many even of them it is a " Bible." 
 It is, perhaps, too long. It lacks unity some of 
 the episodes, for instance, which are taken from 
 the Till Eulenspiegel chapbook, are quite ex- 
 traneous. Then there are some allegorical chapters 
 which glow with colour but lend themselves to 
 interpretation somewhat as does the Book of 
 Revelation. Only in one country has this prose 
 epic been justly appreciated as a book to be 
 read : the Germans, with their well-known logic, 
 claim it as a German work, as a book which 
 glorifies the sterling Germanic character (in the 
 spirit of Pan-Germanism) and shows the wicked- 
 ness and inferiority of the Latin races. 
 
 The book, then, did not definitely improve De 
 Coster's financial position, and in 1870 he was glad 
 to accept the professorship of history and French 
 literature at the Military School in Brussels. His 
 salary was ample ; but it was so much booty for 
 his creditors. Broken by misfortune and the work 
 of a galley-slave, he died in 1879, at Ixelles, a 
 suburb of Brussels, where in 1911 a monument 
 was raised to him. At this ceremony Camille 
 
 Lemonnier delivered the oration which is now 
 
 40
 
 Belgian Literature till 1880 
 
 the preface to the third edition of Thy I (1912). 
 Lemonnier's praise was burning with enthusiasm. 
 " Love breathed," he said, "and the wind of battle 
 arose, and carried everything away in the holy 
 intoxication of creating a new native land ! . . . Here 
 a people died, and freed themselves ; freed a soul 
 that was tortured in vain by tyrants, a soul that, 
 like fire, flames the higher the more it is repressed. 
 Everywhere the stake, the wheel. . . . And yet the 
 good song, the song of love and courage, ends 
 never. It bursts forth as life does, like the soul of 
 the bravest of nations. From the vaults of death 
 itself it ascends and defies death. ... It is the 
 great lesson, never to despair. . . ."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE STANDARD OF REVOLT 
 
 IT has been said that from 1830 to 1880 Belgium 
 "enjoyed liberty, tranquillity, and . . . sleep." 
 There is point in the epigram, so far as concerns 
 the intellectual activity of the general public. But 
 the statement that Belgium before 1880 was "a 
 literary desert," is not strictly correct. It would 
 be correct to say that in the years in question 
 Belgian literature was unknown outside of Belgium ; 
 it would be correct to say that what was good in 
 Belgian literature was little read in Belgium itself 
 before 1880. Before that year Belgian literary 
 productivity was certainly meagre. Compared 
 with any of the three Scandinavian countries, for 
 instance, Belgian literature before 1880 had little 
 claim to the attention of the world ; and from the 
 international point of view it might be said that 
 of all the writers who were at their best between 
 
 1 860 and 1 880 only De Coster and Guido Gezelle 
 
 42
 
 The Standard of Revolt 
 
 survive. It might of course be urged that these 
 two writers were during their lifetime kept in the 
 shade by such occasional and official versifiers as 
 Louis Hymans, in whose epithalamium to the 
 Princess Stephanie the following stanza occurs : 
 
 " Vous allez nous quitter, princesse, 
 Pour devenir archiduchesse 
 Et sur le trone des Habsbourg 
 Faire asseoir le sang des Cobourg." 
 
 Charles Potvin is another favourite of those days ; 
 he is now hardly known except by what he did 
 for De Coster. In the shade, however, fighting 
 their way as literary hacks, or writing masterpieces 
 (like Guido Gezelle) in utter renunciation, men of 
 real genius were preparing the way for the new 
 generation. Camille Lemonnier, the great path- 
 finder, had plunged into journalism in 1863; and 
 by 1875 the term " Jeune-Belgique," which was to 
 be the watchword of the new movement, had ap- 
 peared in L* Artiste, a review (edited by Theodore 
 Hannon) which called for a programme of " natural- 
 ism and modernity." 
 
 It was at the University of Louvain that the 
 
 new voices were first heard. Here in 1880 and 
 
 43
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 the following years a group of students were 
 gathered together who were nearly all of them to 
 become famous. One of them was fimile Verhaeren, 
 already conspicuous by his grande tignasse blonde 
 (shock of fair hair) and his long drooping mous- 
 tache. Another, I wan Gilkin, was so deeply 
 moved when he first heard Verhaeren recite at the 
 Literary Society of the University that he hurried 
 off to his lodgings and there and then indited a 
 sonnet to the elder student. This he promptly 
 dropped into Verhaeren's letter-box, and was de- 
 lighted the following morning to receive a return 
 sonnet, equally complimentary. "In fourteen tor- 
 tured lines," Gilkin relates, " I had said : ' You 
 are a poet ! ' and Verhaeren responded in the 
 same terms : ' You are another.' We were great 
 friends after that." 
 
 The greatest light among the students, as they 
 then considered, was Emile van Arenbergh, "an 
 excellent young man, with a grave, slow voice, 
 solemn gestures, and a soul candid and serene." 
 Magnificent as his verse was his superb fur coat 
 with a wide Astrakhan collar, clad in which he once 
 
 appeared at the Police Court in the heats of July, 
 
 44
 
 The Standard of Revolt 
 
 to answer for an escapade. The youngest of the 
 group was Albert Giraud : he was about eighteen 
 at the time. He was timid and nonchalant ; but 
 he spoke magnificently when he caught fire at the 
 debates of the Literary Society then, " the words 
 leapt from his mouth like roaring lions." 
 
 Very intimate with the French-writing students 
 was Albrecht Rodenbach. Born in 1856 at 
 Roulers, he had been the pupil of Hugo Verriest 
 at the Little Seminary in that town, which 
 figures largely in the history of the Flemish 
 revival. Before his arrival in Louvain, he had 
 corresponded with another young Flemish-writing 
 poet of great ambition, Pol de Mont, a native 
 of Brabant (born near Ternath, 1857). Both 
 looked far ahead to the same ideals of a great 
 national literature in Flemish, and both wished 
 to make a beginning of the revival by creat- 
 ing a strong Students' Union. In this they suc- 
 ceeded : the first meeting of Flemish students was 
 held at Ghent in 1877, and by the time these 
 two heralds of a revolution which was to run par- 
 allel with that of the French-writing students, and 
 
 to have far-reaching political consequences, had 
 
 45
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 become fellow-students in Louvain, their first books 
 had been launched. Albrecht Rodenbach's Eerste 
 Gedichten (First Poems) had appeared at Roulers 
 in 1878; Pol de Mont's first volume of verse, 
 KlimopkranksenS) had been published in 1876. 
 Unfortunately, Albrecht Rodenbach died of con- 
 sumption in 1880; his was the tragic fate, but 
 also the immortality of regret, of Keats. He 
 would never have been a great poet ; he had no 
 depth. But he had a boundless enthusiasm for 
 the Flemish cause, and it is rather as the prophet 
 of the Flemish revival, who might have led the 
 chosen into the Promised Land, than as a poet 
 that his memory is kept green. There is (or was, 
 before the war) a statue to him in Roulers. Strange 
 to say, there is a particularly virile note in the 
 lyrics of this doomed consumptive, as in his am- 
 bitious verse play Gudrun y which appeared two 
 years after his death. Albrecht Rodenbach's death 
 left Pol de Mont the undisputed leader of the 
 Flemish revival a revival which he was to lead 
 more and more in the direction of Germany. An- 
 other of the Flemish students who was to become 
 
 a pillar of the movement was Jan Blockx, the 
 
 46
 
 The Standard of Revolt 
 
 future director of the Conservatoire at Antwerp, 
 and after Peter Benoit the greatest of Flemish 
 musicians. He died in 1912. 
 
 These students, French and Flemish, lived the 
 true Bohemian life. Pol de Mont and Albrecht 
 Rodenbach, with their flowing locks and the prac- 
 tised poetic expression of their features, were a 
 public spectacle when they took their afternoon 
 constitutional through the town. As to the French- 
 writing students, we know by Gilkin's confessions 
 that they were addicted to " beer, coffee, punch, 
 and hot wine." They studied in the summer 
 holidays exclusively (most of them law, which they 
 seem to have considered a great bore) ; and they 
 passed their examinations (or failed in them) in 
 October. Once they got into difficulties with the 
 police by unearthing a signpost and carrying it 
 through the streets of Louvain in the dead of night 
 between a double row of lugubrious candles, while 
 they sang De profundis and Dies ires. This music 
 may have been well worth listening to, for one of 
 the singers was Ernest van Dyck, who was to 
 become a famous Wagner tenor at Bayreuth. 
 
 Verhaeren lodged in the third story in the house 
 
 47
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 of a cutler named Joris, and if a visitor called he 
 would leap on to the landing and shout downstairs 
 at the top of his voice : " Madame Joris ! Madame 
 Joris ! A cup of tea, please ! " Sometimes the 
 visitors followed each other fast, but Verhaeren 
 called for a cup of tea for each new-comer. The 
 friends were careful not to suggest any alteration of 
 this " immutable rite, which gave his lodgings some- 
 thing sacred." They lent books to one another, 
 but Verhaeren could only be trusted with books of 
 no value, on account of his "savage enthusiasms." 
 When he was struck by a particularly fine passage 
 he had a habit of screaming, " Nom de Dieu ! que 
 c'est beau ! " (Good God ! how fine it is !), and the 
 volume would then bring the plaster down from the 
 ceiling. This violent handling of books scandalised 
 another member of the group, who was already 
 possessed with a mania for collecting rare editions : 
 this was Edmond Deman, who in the course of time 
 became a celebrated bibliophile and publisher of 
 beautiful books, including the first lovely editions of 
 Verhaeren's books. " He is a Red Skin ! " Deman 
 used to say of Verhaeren in those days. 
 
 On the 1 8th of October 1879, in the streets of 
 48
 
 The Standard of Revolt 
 
 Louvain the newsboys were crying a new students' 
 magazine. This was La Semaine des lltudiants, 
 and at first it sold like hot cakes. Its first verses, 
 Rimes davant-poste, were signed " Rodolphe." 
 This was the pen-name of Verhaeren, whose con- 
 tributions show that at that time he was one of the 
 least revolutionary of the group ; he was inclined 
 to imitate Fra^ois Coppe"e, and the ideal he pro- 
 claimed was : to live peaceably in his village, near 
 a river with a singing tide, to have wife and 
 children. But one day he read Maupassant's Vers> 
 and he wrote no more domestic idylls from that 
 moment he was a realist. 
 
 If Maupassant's volume of verse was the coup de 
 foudre for Verhaeren, Baudelaire's Fleurs de Mai 
 was the same thing for I wan Gilkin. Albert Giraud 
 made him read it at the critical moment ; and through 
 these two poets it was destined to turn a large part 
 of the poetry of young Belgium into gloomy channels. 
 It was Gilkin who, in the thirteenth number of 
 La Semaine des Etudiants^ signed a sensational 
 manifesto. After pointing out that hitherto Belgian 
 literature had looked to Paris for approval, and that 
 
 no Belgian man of letters had been acknowledged 
 
 49 D
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 at home until he had been recognised in the French 
 capital, he urges that the best way to create new 
 things is to aim at local colour. Little matters as 
 to the language, he says, whether it be lyrical or 
 correct, Gothic, or French of Paris : all that is 
 needed is that it should smack of the soil. Let it 
 be wild and dishevelled ; let it murder syntax and 
 writhe in orgies of solecisms ; what does it matter if 
 it leaps at the throat of reality ? Flanders and the 
 Walloon provinces are there, offering their flanks 
 swollen with delightful and curious customs. And 
 when the first fire is calmed, there are golden legends 
 to gather. There must be a Flemish school of 
 poetry just as there was a Flemish school of paint- 
 ing ; there must be poets in the manner of Teniers, 
 Ruysdael, Brauwer, Van Ostade to begin with ; and 
 they must lead the way to a Rembrandt and a 
 Rubens of verse. 
 
 We shall see that the programme was realised 
 to the full. How startling it seemed at the time, 
 however, is evident from the fact that Verhaeren, 
 who was destined more than any one else to carry 
 it out, sent in an article of timid protest against " the 
 
 crimson excesses of this new doctrine that sought 
 
 50
 
 The Standard of Revolt 
 
 to break through the dykes." But the aims of the 
 new movement " un petit quatre-vingt-neuf in- 
 tellectuel," someone called it were settled when 
 another of the students, Ernst Verlant, who was 
 later a critic of distinction and rose to be Directeur- 
 Ge"neral des Beaux Arts, read a paper in which he 
 tried to establish that the aim of art is the realisa- 
 tion of a moral and religious ideal. His arguments 
 were refuted, and the formula was proclaimed which 
 was to remain the first commandment in the pro- 
 gramme of young Belgium : F Art pour I' Art (Art 
 for Art's sake). The adoption of this doctrine was 
 too much for the University. The conservative 
 students began to look upon the plotters as the 
 agents of Satan. Wordy battles raged. Peace 
 was restored for a moment, however, when a young 
 Belgian author, Albrecht Rodenbach's elder brother 
 and an old schoolfellow of Verhaeren's, paid a visit 
 to the University to recite his poems. This was 
 Georges Rodenbach, who had already had some of 
 his verse published in Paris. 
 
 La Semaine des tudiants had not attained a 
 great age when, on their return from the summer 
 vacation, the iconoclasts heard the newsboys crying :
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Le Type ! Buy Le Type ! " What was their horror 
 on finding that this new magazine was an exact 
 copy of their own, printed by their own printer, and 
 displaying the advertisements they themselves had 
 captured ! They found another printer, and attacked 
 the new-comer, especially its editor, a certain Olivier, 
 with might and main. But Le Type asked for no- 
 thing better than war to the knife. The combat 
 deepened ; other magazines were launched to join 
 in the fray; and in the beginning of 1881 the 
 University authorities were forced to suppress 
 them all. 
 
 The abominable Olivier was a mystery. At 
 last his true name was discovered. " He was 
 quite a young man, almost a boy, handsome 
 as a dream, charming, brilliant, exquisite in his 
 waggishness and grace : his name was Maurice 
 Warlomont." 
 
 A few months later a new magazine appeared, 
 this time at Brussels. Maurice Warlomont, hence- 
 forth to be known by his pen-name of Max Waller, 
 had acquired an interest in La Jeune Revue, a 
 magazine of the students of Brussels, and had re- 
 christened it La Jeune Belgique. He had at once 
 
 52
 
 The Standard of Revolt 
 
 recruited Georges Rodenbach, Verhaeren, Giraud, 
 Gilkin, Georges Eekhoud, Franz Mahutte, Henri 
 Maubel ; and with these contributors, who entered 
 literature, says Vance Thompson, like a band of 
 Sioux, the review soon became the chief organ of 
 the new literary life. 
 
 But the doctrine of Art for Art's sake which 
 was preached by 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 " (Fart 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 LArt 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 Lon 
 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 Andre" 
 Fontainas, Charles van Lerberghe, Gre"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 libres 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 Iitudi- 
 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, Se"verin, and others were " Parnassians " ; 
 Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, van Lerberghe, Fontainas, 
 Elskamp, and others were vers libristes and sym- 
 bolists. The Parnassians rallied round La Jeune 
 Belgique, while the vers libristes and symbolists 
 wrote for L* 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 pictures : as that of lemons 
 bursting through thin paper, which make him 
 think of the pale gold breasts of Japanese girls. 
 
 Max Waller's Fl&te a Sicbel 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 
 H^lene Swarth began with French poetry in a 
 Belgian anthology ? Who in these days knows the 
 name of Le"on 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 r6ve . . . 
 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 ' Hyst&rique 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 Lou vain, was born at Ixelles near 
 
 62
 
 Camilla Lemonnier 
 
 Brussels in 1844. The name is Walloon, but both 
 father and mother were Flemish. A glance 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 
 Athe'nee 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 jBruxelles, 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
 
 Camilla 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 pe>ir!" (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 began 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." 1 Lemonnier expressed his horror 
 of war in a book of more permanent import, Les 
 
 1 A. Mockel, 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 Arms and Zola's La Dtbdcle, " 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 Charniers, Lemonnier's first masterpiece, 
 may be said to open his first creative period. 
 Le"on Bazalgette, in his authoritative monograph, 1 
 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 
 
 1 Camille Lemonnier (one of the series Les Cdttbrite's 
 jourd'hui\ 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. His 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 lying 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 with 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 Mori 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 drawn-out agony of remorse of two 
 
 70
 
 Camilla Lemonnier 
 
 brothers, who have been driven by avarice to 
 murder. 
 
 The psychological series opens with L'Hysttrique 
 (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 headlong man of action. 
 
 L? Hysttrique 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
 
 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 
 btguinage, sordid, and centred in creature comforts, 
 in UHysMriqut 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 Me"dan ; 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 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 Lemonnier 
 
 L* 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 was 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. L 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 Posse'dt (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 L Hysterique 
 to La Faute de Madame Chaivet, 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. Le Possede shows the genesis 
 
 73
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 and rapid growth of perverted sex instincts in an 
 old man, a magistrate who has lived 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, UHomme 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 L? Homme 
 en Amour (1897) ; 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 Claudine 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 UArche: 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 Llle 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 ; in Au Cceur Frais de la For$t 
 
 (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 Moulins (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 
 
 77
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 attacked with stones at their meetings, have more 
 of milk and honey than of gall. 
 
 Le Vent 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 Vent 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 
 
 81 r
 
 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
 
 Camilla 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. 
 
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 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 1913. 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. 
 
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 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 " Climate'rie," one of the short stories collected 
 in Mes Communions, 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- 
 
 88
 
 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 again. 
 He went to Brussels and joined the staff of the 
 ctoile 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 
 
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 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 Jeune 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 campagne 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
 
 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-Franfois (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 Nouvelle 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 Liibeck 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 Fusillds 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 
 
 i 
 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 
 Fumes ; she runs away to him and follows him 
 about on the dunes like a faithful dog. 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- Vigor (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 
 
 101
 
 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 
 Reed 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 Libertins d'Anvers something very 
 
 much like sexual mania runs riot. Ostensibly, it 
 
 103
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 is a picturesque re'sume' 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 
 d Amour and U Autre Vue, He has written con- 
 siderably on the Elizabethans ; his Au 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 //; 
 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 Nouvelles 
 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 muscle's," "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, 
 106
 
 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 dnd 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.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 EMILE 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 
 fimile 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) can to t^ 5 day on ^y 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
 
 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 1000 
 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 Belgique 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
 
 ]mile 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 
 
 in
 
 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
 
 6mile 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
 
 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
 
 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 toujours monies 
 jours, meaning les jours qui sont toujours les 
 mmes. 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 mmes 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 ; 
 
 116
 
 6mile 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 Illusoires. 
 
 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 
 
 118
 
 limile 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 Flam- 
 andes (Flemish Women) in 1883 the way was clear. 
 The book was hailed with abuse (one critic said 
 the young poet had "burst like an abscess," and 
 another called him the " Raphael of dirt "), but 
 it was hailed, and henceforth Verhaeren had a 
 name. 
 
 Verhaeren himself has in his riper years more 
 or less disowned this first book of his. He is 
 wrong ; and those critics of his are wrong who 
 regard it as a mere collection of juvenilia. It 
 has faults ; but they are only the faults of un- 
 restraint, and there is unrestraint in Verhaeren's 
 ripest work. The poems are packed with vigour 
 in Verhaeren's own language they are gorged 
 with sap, they are explosions of energy. The 
 
 only question for the critic is whether they are 
 
 119
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 not too pictorial. But Les Flamandes is not 
 more a succession of pictures than many another 
 Flemish book which is praised as such. Ver- 
 haeren's idea at the time he wrote it was to 
 produce in verse exactly such pictures as Teniers, 
 Jordaens, and other Flemish artists had produced 
 on canvas, in other words, genre pictures. Now 
 in a picture gallery a picture is a picture ; it need 
 not necessarily suggest an idea. And anything 
 that can be seen can be painted. As far as painted 
 pictures are concerned, there is little restriction of 
 subject. But, say the critics, if you write a word- 
 picture, the picture must suggest an idea. And 
 you cannot write word-pictures of anything you 
 like : you must confine yourself to what is pleasant. 
 As for the first objection, there is an idea 
 behind the pictures of the book, the idea that 
 the Flemings of olden times were a much more 
 robust race than the Flemings of our own days. 
 Verhaeren was already unconsciously occupied 
 by the idea of the superman ; only, instead of 
 placing the superman in the future, he found 
 him in the past. The old Flemish artists were 
 
 supermen, because they were such tremendous 
 
 120
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 eaters and drinkers, because they created master- 
 pieces between two drinking-bouts. (The idea 
 is naive ; but Verhaeren, it may be said at once, 
 is essentially naive.) Apart from the idea, however, 
 the poems are rich with the very thing that makes 
 a poem with the something we have no word for 
 and which the Germans call Stimmung. There 
 is a mood of the greatest artistic refinement in 
 some of the poems (L'Abreuvoir, for instance a 
 picture of cattle being watered at sunset), and even 
 where the diction is coarse to the last limit of 
 decency there is a brazen strength in the raw 
 images which lifts the poem above vulgarity. Take 
 the sonnet : 
 
 THE BAKING OF THE BREAD 
 
 The servants for the Sunday bake the bread, 
 
 Of the best milk and wheat ; their brows bent low, 
 
 And elbows bared and at an angle, shed 
 
 The sweat with which they steam into the dough. 
 
 Yea, they are wet all over in their haste ; 
 The sweat is running down their dangling breasts ; 
 Their two huge fists are wading in the paste, 
 And moulding it in rounds like flesh of breasts. 
 
 121
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 The bakehouse heats its crimson flames outside ; 
 And from a plank's end, two by two, they slide 
 The soft, white loaves into their proper places. 
 
 But when the door is opened, like a pack 
 
 Of hot, red hounds, the flames force out a track, 
 
 And, roaring, leap to bite the wenches' faces. 
 
 Or that of the pigs running through the 
 orchard close, and filling it with their grunting's 
 hollow din, while their milky paps dangle in rows 
 and trail along the grass ; rooting in the midden 
 and sniffing the simmering liquid that makes their 
 skins " dither and glimmer like a crimson rose." 
 . . . Such a sonnet as this may be called "un- 
 pleasant " by squeamish critics ; but it might well 
 be justified as a Flemish idyll an idyll of pigs. 
 And after all, these fleshy swine bathed in burning 
 sunshine are not more provocative than some of 
 the glaring canvases of Rubens pigs or Greek 
 goddesses, it is all a matter of flesh in the end. 
 
 There is not a trace of coarseness in Les 
 Moines (1886). Here the exaltation is ascetic. 
 After the "explosion of life" that Les Flamandes 
 had been for Verhaeren, a reaction had come. 
 
 Not exactly a religious reaction (the faith of his 
 
 122
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 fathers had gone for ever), but a return to the 
 romance of the ritual, to the symbols of mystic 
 fervour. 
 
 In Les Moines actual experiences of monastery 
 life are drawn upon : the poet had spent three 
 weeks in the monastery of Forges, near Chimay. 
 He shared the life of the monks, and it was hoped 
 in the monastery itself that he would remain. 
 But all the evidence available shows that Ver- 
 haeren, having collected his stock of impressions, 
 was very glad to get away to more substantial 
 fare than the monks' table afforded ; and there is 
 further evidence that he made up for lost feasts 
 by very copious eating. The result was a ruined 
 digestion, which is perhaps the main cause of the 
 appalling pessimism which blackens the pages of 
 the next collections of his poems. 
 
 The German theorists have taken up the poet's 
 legend here, and from the poems of his three 
 books Les Soirs (1887), Les Debacles (1888), and 
 Les Flambeaux Noirs (1890), made out a case for 
 what they call his "pathological period." He 
 was evidently ill for a long time ; but one may 
 
 doubt whether the exasperated despair and the 
 
 123
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 pretence of madness which make the atmosphere 
 of the books have more than a literary genuine- 
 ness. The fact is that this kind of thing was 
 the fashion at the time. One has only to read 
 the reviews of those days to find a pessimism and 
 maladies quite as excruciating as those of Ver- 
 haeren. A notorious example is Maeterlinck's 
 Serres Ckaudes^ a most dismal display of dirges 
 by a man who perhaps never felt ill in his life, 
 but who had great business ability and the knack 
 of supplying the demand. Georges Rodenbach 
 was another sick man who popularised poetic 
 disease. The Satanism of Giraud and Gilkin 
 was another phase of the fashion. The truth is, 
 Schopenhauer was in the air. . . . Some of the 
 poets had actually read him. ... It was the fin- 
 de-siecleism of which we have read so much. In 
 the March- April number of La Wallonie in 1891 
 appeared a kind of prose-poem by Verhaeren, 
 which contains the essence of all the " patho- 
 logical " poems: 
 
 " I had arrived at such a susceptibility," runs the 
 sketch, " that I would rush home like one demented, 
 shut myself up in my room, thrust my fists into my 
 
 124
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 eyes and remain a long time in this posture, to drive 
 more and more darkness into my eyeballs. I worked 
 myself into sadnesses of ink, into rages of gimlets 
 through a thousand metals; not only my eyes, but my 
 ears, my sense of touch, of taste, my whole body, was 
 torture to me : I felt acids under my tongue and thorns 
 under my nails. . . . 
 
 " I did not dare to look at myself in the mirror. 
 Was I not myself infected with that universal disease 
 which exasperated me in others ? My room, happily, 
 was old and quite dislocated with departed memories, 
 rather a thought than a thing to me. I only contem- 
 plated it through some dream or other dreamt in such 
 and such a corner. . . . My room was thus a precious 
 retreat, in which I cloistered myself for days together. . . . 
 
 " One evening, a song ascending from the deserted 
 street, so desperately incoherent and void of sense that 
 any dream-spider whatsoever might have woven its web 
 in the threads of it, I had the curiosity to look out, all 
 of a sudden. Fever was whipping my pulse ; I felt 
 myself burning, tell me, towards what madness ? Below, 
 under an oblique slash of gas, near a gas-lamp, a pale 
 face, with a hole of blood for a mouth, was groaning up 
 to me notes broken like its teeth. And in that face 
 in the air I saw distinctly two holes on each side of 
 the nose, two holes that had been stopped, as though 
 hastily mended. The blind man stared without seeing 
 me, with his head obstinately lifted towards the alms 
 that might rain on him from the windows, a head lament- 
 ably stretched at the top of his neck, his head, oh ! this 
 
 125
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 head of distress and misery as old as a century and 
 beaten with wind and scraped with rain and as though 
 of stone against death. 
 
 " Temptation suddenly scorched me with its red iron. 
 I ran towards my dressing-table : ' This man, he at 
 least no longer felt all the horror of his life, he saw it 
 no longer, all the hideousness of his body, all the 
 monstrous ugliness of the world.' And without reflect- 
 ing, without the courage to do it, in an extreme fit of 
 exasperation I seized my scissors and more immediately 
 still, frantic, with I know not what pride in myself, I 
 gouged my eyes out like two marbles in front of the 
 mirror." 
 
 The extravagance of this nightmare is so 
 obvious that there can be no question of taking it 
 seriously as an indication of Verhaeren's physical 
 and mental state at the time he wrote it. It has 
 not the sincerity of certain prose poems inspired 
 by opium. It is simply a flaunting display of 
 " spleen," that very artificial condition of mental 
 distress which the poets of the hour had distilled 
 from a poem by Baudelaire. In the poems of 
 Verhaeren's trilogy, however, there is a sustained 
 coherence of the impression which lends an air of 
 reality to the philosophical structure which critics 
 
 have reared by taking a passage here and there, 
 
 126
 
 6 mile Verhaeren 
 
 Stefan Zweig's analysis of the poet's longing for 
 death and approach to madness is itself a poem. 
 The German critic rightly points out the leitmotiv 
 of the trilogy: the will to suffer (" To suffer for 
 oneself, alone, but voluntarily"). But this very 
 insistence of the will betokens vigorous intel- 
 lectual activity : here is none of the apathy of 
 disease. The poet carefully notes all the phases 
 of his exasperation, notes them with inspired 
 imagery, in rhythms new to French poetry : 
 
 " Mes jours toujours plus lourds s'en vont roulant leur 
 cours." 
 
 He whips himself into an illusion of madness, 
 watches the corpse of his reason floating down 
 the Thames, and cries out: "When shall I have 
 the atrocious joy of seeing madness attacking my 
 brain nerve by nerve ? " 
 
 " He has measured all the deeps of the spirit," Stefan 
 Zweig interprets, " but all the words of religion and 
 science, all the elixirs of life, have been powerless to 
 save him from this torment. He knows all sensations, 
 and there was no greatness in any of them ; all have 
 goaded him, none have exalted or raised him above 
 himself. And now his heart yearns ardently for this 
 
 127
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 last sensation of all. He is tired of waiting for it, he 
 will go out to meet it : ' I will go out to meet madness 
 and its suns.' He hails madness as though it were a 
 saint, as though it were his saviour; he forces himself 
 'to believe in madness as in a faith.' . . . Here the 
 highest state of despair is reached ; the black banner of 
 death and the red one of madness are intertwined. With 
 unprecedented logic Verhaeren, despairing of an inter- 
 pretation of life, has exalted senselessness as the sense 
 of the universe. But it is just in this complete inversion 
 that victory lies. . . . It is just at the moment when 
 the sick man cries out like one being crucified, ' I am he 
 who is immensely lost,' that he is redeemed and de- 
 livered. Just this idea, ' to violate one's disease every 
 hour, to curse it, and to love it,' is nothing else than 
 the idea of his life, to master all resistance by a bound- 
 less love, ' to love fate in its very rage ' ; never to shun 
 a thing, but to take everything and enhance it till it 
 becomes creative, ecstatic pleasure; to welcome every 
 suffering with fresh readiness." 
 
 It may well be that Verhaeren in this trilogy 
 has created the classic epic of disease. This may 
 still be true even if it should be proved by some 
 future biographer that Verhaeren never had a 
 pathological period except on paper. Certain it 
 is that individual poems are magnificent in their 
 
 metallic imagery, their raw colouring (as with 
 
 128
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 great dabs of red and black and gold), the daring 
 onomatopoeia of their rhymes. What a landscape 
 this tortured visionary, this " sick wolf," unrolls ! 
 
 " It can hardly be called a landscape of earth," says 
 Zweig. " It is a grandiose landscape of dreams, horizons 
 as though on some other planet, as though in one of 
 those worlds which have cooled into moons, where the 
 warmth of the earth has died out and an icy calm chills 
 the vast far-seen spaces deserted of man. . . . Here all 
 the colours of life are burnt out, not a star shines down 
 from this steel-grey metallic sky ; only a cruel, freezing 
 moon glides across it from time to time like a sardonic 
 smile. These are books of pallid nights, with the im- 
 mense wings of clouds closing the sky, over a narrowed 
 world, in which the hours cling to things like heavy and 
 clammy chains. They are works filled with a glacial 
 cold. ' It is freezing . . . ' one poem begins, and this 
 shuddering tone pierces like the howling of dogs ever 
 and ever again over an illimitable plain. The sun is 
 dead, dead are the flowers, the trees ; the very marshes 
 are frozen in these white midnights : ' And the heart is 
 gripped by the fear of an immortal winter and of a great 
 God of a sudden, glacial and splendid.' " 
 
 It is of particular interest to us in England 
 that a great part of these three books was written 
 in London, where Verhaeren spent some time in 
 
 great loneliness, knowing no English, and collect- 
 
 129 i
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 ing impressions, not only for the trilogy of disease, 
 but also for the greater trilogy of the tentacular 
 city which was to come later. One of his favour- 
 ite occupations in London is said to have been 
 travelling to problematic destinations on the under- 
 ground : this, no doubt, was as near as he could 
 get to Hell. 
 
 In " Les Villes," one of the poems of Les Flam- 
 beaux Noirs, the poet, after describing London, 
 exclaims : " Here is the City in gold of red 
 alchemies, where thou canst melt thy mind in a 
 new crucible." 
 
 This poem is a first expression of the new ideas 
 which were to end his pessimistic phase. Verhaeren 
 is by his very nature an optimist ; it is a need of 
 his nature to be able to believe and to worship 
 with fervour. His break with the Roman Catholic 
 faith caused him great suffering. There was an- 
 other source of his malady. He had been brought 
 up in the country, he had been reared on the open 
 air. But when he settled in Brussels, the life of 
 the city began to tell on him. He had to adapt 
 his constitution to town life, and for a long time 
 
 his constitution refused to be adapted. Then when 
 
 130
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 he fled from Belgium altogether to see the great 
 cities of the world, he felt like a child astray in 
 the wilderness. Even to-day there is something 
 of an astonished child about Verhaeren. Every- 
 thing is wonderful to him ; these streets of London, 
 for instance, through which we pass mechanically, 
 are to him colossal manifestations of human power ; 
 motor-cars, shops, factories, canals, museums, the 
 passing of crowds "poured as from a bent full 
 bottle's neck" railway stations, docks, ships 
 what ordinary, meaningless words these are to us, 
 and to him what storehouses of romance ! But in 
 the days of his illness he walked about among all 
 this romance in absolute bewilderment. It was too 
 immense for him to grasp the meaning of it. 
 
 It is perhaps not easy for the normal town- 
 dweller to understand why Verhaeren should have 
 fallen a prey to mental exasperation when he was 
 plunged into the conditions of modern cities. And 
 yet, if we were to think of it, what an awful thing a 
 great city is ! A modern city is something absolutely 
 terrible ! Probably most of us are awed and over- 
 whelmed by Mont Blanc ; but if dimensions are 
 measured by terms of power, what a pigmy Mont
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Blanc is! If we were suddenly transplanted to 
 some pathless forest in Central Africa we should 
 be bewildered, overwhelmed ; but we walk through 
 London without feeling in the least upset. Ver- 
 haeren, however, had to become conscious of the 
 horror of great cities in order that he might inter- 
 pret them to coming generations, in order that he 
 might make others in their turn conscious of the 
 magnitude and the sublimity of modern conditions. 
 
 For we have got to become conscious of them. 
 We do not sufficiently realise that ideals are chang- 
 ing, that the epic of the past cannot be the epic 
 of the future. We need not go as far as the Italian 
 futurists who in their zeal for the future demand 
 the utter destruction in men's memory of the past, 
 who demand that the greasy leprous palaces of 
 Venice shall be razed to the ground we do not 
 need to deny the past, but we do need to see 
 that the pace of change is in our days so rapid 
 that in one generation the face of the universe 
 is transformed. Verhaeren's task has been to teach 
 us to look at the change without fear, knowing 
 that whatever mechanical inventions accelerate the 
 
 pace of living the human organisation can adapt 
 
 132
 
 Emile Verhaeren 
 
 itself infinitely, and that if the world changes, man 
 will change too. All is well ; because it cannot 
 be otherwise. 
 
 But Verhaeren is first and foremost a poet, and 
 one might think : it is well to be reconciled with 
 mechanical inventions, to believe that "factories 
 thundering in the unseizable rhythm of petrified 
 exertion," workshops, motor-cars, and all these in- 
 expressibly ugly things are necessary in the chain 
 of human progress, but by all the teaching of the 
 ancients and moderns, what is to become of poetry ? 
 Poetry is the expression of beauty ; and therefore 
 ugly things cannot be expressed in poetry. But 
 modern inventions and the results of them are 
 ugly, cries out the aesthete : they are impossible in 
 poetry. For poetry we must go to the classical, 
 the romantic, the idyllic past. The falseness of 
 this attitude Verhaeren by his example proved. 
 He too had turned to the past for the inspiration 
 of his Flemish genre-scenes and the pathetic figures 
 of his monks. But in the cosmopolitan searchings 
 which followed he had learned to look at the world 
 with different eyes. He had discovered new ideals 
 
 of beauty. The beauty of a thing does not lie in 
 
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 its outward form, but in the power it expresses. 
 For Verhaeren, henceforth, the motive spring of 
 poetry is energy. Poets had sought harmony ; 
 Verhaeren now seeks energy. To the old poets 
 a roaring factory was repulsive, grotesque ; to 
 Verhaeren the panting in multiplied effort of the 
 machinery has the rhythms of stupendous poetry. 
 Viewed from this standpoint, all that had bewildered 
 him in the modern City becomes intelligible, and 
 inevitable in the progress of man to godhead ; he 
 sees that a modern poet must not only be recon- 
 ciled with modern conditions but must discover 
 their epic grandeur, and hail mechanical inventions 
 as the poets of old hailed great victories. Follow- 
 ing unconsciously in the track of Walt Whitman 
 (his great forerunner whom he had not read), 
 Verhaeren now turns his cosmic pain into cosmic 
 joy, and strikes out into new paths of poetry which 
 are destined to be the great highways of the verse 
 to be. 
 
 The books in which Verhaeren sang his in- 
 spired vision of the new city are Les Campagnes 
 Hallucinees (1893) and Les Villes Tentaculaires 
 
 These are, probably, his most important, 
 134
 
 Emile Verhaeren 
 
 as they are his most suggestive, books. Les Cam- 
 pagnes Hallucinees, " the hallucinated countryside," 
 describes the desertion of the country for the town. 
 The villagers can always at night see the glare 
 of the city on the horizon, and Verhaeren per- 
 sonifies this City as an octopus stretching out its 
 tentacles to drain the life's blood of the country. 
 It is a magnificent and lurid vision. 
 
 "Cities have sprung up like mushrooms," says Stefan 
 Zweig again. " Millions have conglomerated. But where 
 have they come from ? From what sources have these 
 immense masses suddenly streamed into the mighty 
 reservoirs? The answer is quick to come. The heart 
 of the city is fed with the oozing blood of the country. 
 The country is impoverished. As though they were hal- 
 lucinated, the peasants migrate to where gold is minted, 
 to the town that in the evenings flames across the 
 horizon ; to where alone riches lie, and power. They 
 march away with their carts, to sell their last stick of 
 furniture, their last rags ; they march away with their 
 children, to let them perish in the factories ; they march 
 away to dip their hands in this roaring river of gold. 
 The fields are deserted. Only the fantastic figures of 
 idiots stagger along lonely paths ; the abandoned flour- 
 mills are empty, and only turn when the wind smites 
 against them. Fever rises from the marshes, where the 
 water, no longer gathered into dikes, spreads putrefaction 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 and pestilence. Beggars drag themselves from door to 
 door, with the country's barrenness reflected in their 
 eyes ; and to these last lingering cultivators come the 
 emigration agents, and entice them to seek a far-distant 
 hope." 
 
 The villages die. Everything streams to Oppido- 
 magnum, as Verhaeren calls the great city. " All 
 the roads lead to the town," he sings : 
 
 tl This is the many-tentacled town, 
 This is the flaming octopus, 
 The ossuary of all of us. 
 At the country's end she waits, 
 Feeling towards the old estates. 
 
 " Meteoric gas-lamps line 
 Docks where tufted masts entwine ; 
 
 A river of pitch and naphtha rolls 
 By wooden bridges, mortared moles ; 
 And the raw whistles of the ships 
 Howl with fright in the fog that grips : 
 With a red signal light they peer 
 Towards the sea to which they steer. 
 Quays with clashing buffers groan ; 
 Carts grate o'er the cobble-stone ; 
 Bridges opening lift a vast 
 136
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 Gibbet till the ships have passed ; 
 Letters of brass inscribe the world, 
 On roofs, and walls, and shop-fronts curled, 
 Face to face in battle massed. 
 
 " Wheels file and file, the drosky plies, 
 Trains are rolling, effort flies ; 
 And like a prow becalmed, the glare 
 Of gilded stations here and there ; 
 And, from their platforms, ramified 
 Rails beneath the city glide, 
 In tunnels and in craters, whence 
 They storm in network flashing thin 
 Out into hubbub, dust and din. 
 
 " This is the many-tentacled town. 
 
 " The street, with eddies tied like ropes 
 Around its squares, runs out and gropes 
 Along the city up and down, 
 And runs back far enlaced, and lined 
 With crowds inextricably twined, 
 Whose mad feet beat the flags beneath, 
 Whose eyes are filled with hate, whose teeth 
 Snatch at the time they cannot catch. 
 
 Lust roars and leaps from breast to breast, 
 Whipped to a rage uproarious, 
 To a blind crush of limbs in quest 
 Of the pleasure of gold and phosphorus ; 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 And in and out wan women fare, 
 With sexual symbols in their hair. 
 The atmosphere of reeking dun 
 At times recedes towards the sun, 
 As though a loud cry called to Peace 
 To bid the deafening noises cease ; 
 But all the City puffs and blows 
 With such a violent snort and flush, 
 That the dying seek in vain the hush 
 Of silence that eyes need to close. 
 
 " Such is the day and when the eves 
 With ebony hammers carve the skies, 
 Over the plain the City heaves 
 Her shimmer of colossal lies ; 
 Her haunting, gilt desires arise ; 
 Her radiance to the stars is cast ; 
 She gathers her gas in golden sheaves ; 
 Her rails are highways flying fast 
 To the mirage of happiness 
 That strength and fortune seem to bless ; 
 Like a great army swell her walls ; 
 And all the smoke she still sends down 
 Reaches the field in radiant calls." 
 
 It is a terrifying vision, this of the City as a 
 whole ; and in other poems Verhaeren paints 
 pictures no less horrific of the various phases of 
 
 the City's activity the Exchange, the brothel, the 
 
 138
 
 limile Verhaeren 
 
 bazaar, the music hall, factories and workshops, 
 machinery, labour. But, while showing us things 
 as they are, the poet proclaims their necessity. 
 The City, loathsome as some of its manifestations 
 are, is necesssary ; for the City is progress. The 
 Country, with its idylls and its old-time peace and 
 beauty, must die, or only exist at a slave's ransom, 
 for it is the foe of progress. In herself the City 
 concentrates energy, " red strength and new light," 
 to inflame with fever and fecund fury the brains 
 of those (heroes, scholars, artists, apostles, adven- 
 turers) who pierce the wall of mystery that glooms 
 the world, discover new laws, and subdue the vast 
 forces of life imprisoned in matter. 
 
 This the necessary conquest of the Country 
 by the City is the main idea of Verhaeren's riper 
 work. It proved a very fertile idea, and led, in a 
 further series of famous books (Les Visages de la 
 Vie, 1 899 ; Les Forces Tumultueuses y 1 902 ; La 
 Multiple Splendeur, 1906 ; Les Rythmes Souverains, 
 1910; Les Bles Mouvants, 1912), to the develop- 
 ment of various poetic themes the beauty of 
 mechanical things, the gospel of admiration, salva- 
 tion by ecstasy, and other doctrines, all of which 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 have been patiently tabulated and pigeon-holed by 
 Stefan Zweig (the authorised interpreter). 
 
 Les Villages Illusoires (1895) is a P art f tne 
 series in so far as it symbolises, in some of its 
 poems, Verhaeren's reconciliation with the world. 
 But it is rather different in style to the other books 
 less inspired perhaps, but more restrained and 
 more full of the matter of poetry as traditionally 
 conceived. It is the only book of Verhaeren's in 
 which he is a symbolist ; but his symbols are so 
 clear and broadly outlined that they need no inter- 
 pretation. There is, for instance, the poem of the 
 ferryman, who struggles manfully against the storm 
 to reach the opposite bank whence he is pitifully 
 hailed, only to find, when his oars are broken and 
 his rudder is gone, that he is still where he started 
 from. Beaten as he is, however, he has not let 
 go of the green reed between his teeth. How 
 inspiriting is this picture of will-power that clings 
 to hope ! More desolate in the murk of its land- 
 scape is the symbol of the fishermen hopelessly 
 befogged in the night of ignorance and selfishness : 
 the dank fog chokes everything and buries the 
 
 moon : 
 
 140
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 " But flickering lanterns now and then 
 Light up and magnify the backs, 
 Bent obstinately in their smacks, 
 Of the old river fishermen, 
 Who all the time from last sunset, 
 For what night's fishing none can know, 
 Have cast their black and greedy net, 
 Where silent, evil waters flow. 
 
 And never helping one another, 
 Never brother hailing brother, 
 Never doing what they ought, 
 For himself each fisher's thought : 
 And the first draws his net, and seizes 
 All the fry of his poverty ; 
 And the next drags up, as keen as he, 
 The empty bottoms of diseases ; 
 Another opens out his net 
 To griefs that on the surface swim ; 
 And another to his vessel's rim 
 Pulls up the flotsam of regret. 
 
 " The river churns, league after league, 
 Along the dikes, and runs away, 
 As it has done so many a day, 
 To the far horizon of fatigue ; 
 Upon its banks skins of black clay 
 By night perspire a poison draught : 
 The fogs are fleeces far to waft, 
 And to men's houses journey they. 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Why in the dark do they not hail each other ? 
 Why does a brother's voice console not brother ? 
 
 " No, numb and haggard they remain, 
 With vaulted back and heavy brain, 
 With, by their side, their little light 
 Rigid in the river's night. 
 Like blocks of shadow there they are, 
 And never pierce their eyes afar 
 Beyond the acrid, spongy wet ; 
 And they suspect not that above, 
 Luring them with a magnet's love, 
 Stars immense are shining yet." 
 
 
 Verhaeren is essentially a masculine poet, and 
 women do not understand him. Many of his 
 poems which deal with women and love are vio- 
 lently, outrageously erotic ; but they are not love- 
 poems. It was not till after his marriage that 
 Verhaeren wrote love- poems ; and from these (Les 
 Heures Claires, 1896 ; Les Heures d! Apres-midi, 
 1905; Les Heures du Soir, 1911) violence is ex- 
 cluded. 
 
 " These little pages," says Zweig, " are the privacy 
 of his personal life, the confession of a passion which is 
 great indeed, but veiled as it were with a delicate shame. 
 . . . And in truth, it is impossible to imagine anything 
 
 142
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 more touching than the sight of this mighty fighter here 
 lowering his resonant voice to the soft breathings of 
 devotion. These verses are quite simple, spoken low, as 
 though wild and too passionate words might imperil so 
 noble a feeling, as though a strong man, a brutal man, 
 who is afraid of hurting a delicate woman with a touch 
 accustomed to bronze, should lay his hand on hers only 
 softly, most cautiously." 
 
 They are poems of love sequestered : 
 
 "In the cottage where our peaceful love reposes, 
 With its dear old furniture in shady nooks, 
 Where never a prying witness on us looks, 
 Save through the casement panes the climbing roses, 
 
 " So sweet the days are, after olden trial, 
 
 So sweet with silence is the summer time, 
 I often stay the hour upon the chime 
 In the clock of oak-wood with the golden dial. 
 
 " And then the day, the night is so much ours, 
 That the hush of happiness around us starts 
 To hear the beating of our clinging hearts, 
 When on your face my kisses fall in showers." 
 
 Verhaeren is a lyrist pure and simple. Where- 
 ever he has tried his hand at anything else than 
 
 poems he has, comparatively speaking, failed. His 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 art criticism, especially his book on Rembrandt, is 
 often interesting as a revelation of himself. His 
 literary criticism is generous and all-embracing ; 
 he has no eyes for faults or littleness, but his com- 
 plete intelligence of all literary genres inspires him 
 with illuminating touches. His dramas have not 
 conquered the stage, and they never will, though 
 several of them have been performed with a fair 
 measure of success. Even Arthur Symon's trans- 
 lation (The Dawn) could not make Les Aubes 
 (1898) more than passably interesting, though it 
 has some importance in the chain of Verhaeren's 
 work as completing Les Campagnes Hallucine'es 
 and Les Villes Tentaculaires by showing the final 
 reconciliation of the town and the country, after a 
 siege of Oppidomagnum. At the present moment, 
 too, The Dawn has points of interest in its 
 prophecy of the ending of war by the triumph 
 of socialism : only when war disappears, says the 
 great tribune (apparently modelled on Verhaeren's 
 friend and fellow-worker Emile Vandervelde) who 
 is the hero of the tragedy, will all other injustices 
 disappear too the hate of the country for the city, 
 
 of poverty for gold, of distress for power. Only 
 
 144
 
 Emile Verhaeren 
 
 when races learn to embrace each other will the 
 world cease to bristle with nations, armed and 
 tragic and deadly, on the frontiers. Le Cloitre 
 (1900) has dramatic moments of some power, and 
 it is a pity that the melodramatic acting during its 
 recent production in London should have created 
 a wrong impression. Miss Horniman's production 
 in Manchester of Osman Edwards's rendering was 
 a more genuine success, and was approved by the 
 not easily satisfied critics of the Manchester Guar- 
 dian. In Philippe II (1904) Verhaeren had (after 
 De Coster) a great opportunity of contrasting the 
 black asceticism of Spain with the rubicund joy in 
 life of Flanders ; he shows us Philip, a religious 
 maniac, spying on his son, while he himself is spied 
 upon by the monks of the Inquisition. Helene de 
 Sparte is fine in conception : he would show us 
 Helen returned to Sparta with a heart sick of the 
 love she has inspired and endured, longing to end 
 her days in peace, " a woman who tends a hearth 
 with slow and gentle hands " ; but peace is denied 
 her (for she is Beauty) all hands stretch out to 
 seize her, lust flames round her, and when she 
 
 cries out for death the satyrs of the woods and 
 
 145 K
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 the nymphs of the rivers assail her, and Jupiter 
 himself snatches her up to the sky. 
 
 Verhaeren is a world-poet ; his theme is the 
 cosmos. But for one part of his work at least his 
 native province of Flanders claims him as her own 
 and calls him her national poet. Toute la Flandre 
 is a series of five books (Les Tendresses Premieres, 
 1904 ; La Guirlande des Dunes, 1907 ; Les Htros, 
 1908; Les Petit es Villes a Pignons, 1909; Les 
 Plaines, 1912) in which he celebrates his native 
 land in the present and in the past. La Guirlande 
 des Dunes has now (like Lemonnier's Le Petit 
 Homme de Dieu] an absorbing and pathetic in- 
 terest. The dunes that in these poems are a " gar- 
 land " are now soaked with blood ; multitudinous 
 cannon have thundered for months over these 
 canals ; and " this sad but sweet corner " is now 
 a desert. One poem rolls out the saga of the 
 immemorial towers of Nieuport and Lisweghe and 
 Furnes, the towers that rise out of the sea-mists 
 " like widows weeping in the winds of old winters." 
 Wars with the rolling thunder of their guns raged 
 round them, very long ago, and yet they stand. . . . 
 
 They symbolise, these hoary, battle-stained towers, 
 
 146
 
 Verhaeren 
 
 the indestructible heroism of Flanders, the measure- 
 less mourning of her departed days, all the his- 
 tory of a tenacious land. 
 
 Great claims are made for Verhaeren by his 
 admirers, and it is perhaps inevitable that he should 
 run the risk of being over-estimated. In England 
 at the present moment he is certainly read a 
 great deal ; and he is sure to become more famous 
 during the next few years. The great danger is, 
 not so much that he will be over-estimated, as that 
 those parts of his work which have comparatively 
 little value will be excessively lauded to the detri- 
 ment of his vital poems. It may be questioned 
 whether, as far as ideas are concerned, he has 
 contributed anything indisputably original to that 
 body of poetic material which passes into the public 
 consciousness and becomes commonplace, except 
 his great visualisation of the contest between the 
 City and the Country. This one aspect of his 
 work, however, is far-reaching, and it is continued 
 in the chief revolutionary phases of contem- 
 porary poetry. From Verhaeren's spiritualisation 
 of matter and his ecstatic hailing of the future 
 
 proceed both the unanism of Jules Remains and 
 
 147
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 the extravagances of Marinetti. Verhaeren's in- 
 fluence is perhaps just beginning. Whether he will 
 always be considered at his present value may 
 be doubted. He has often, and rightly, been 
 compared with Victor Hugo. He has Hugo's 
 international fame ; he has Hugo's rhetoric and 
 sweeping gestures. Like Hugo, he is a spectacular 
 poet, a poet whose words can be unrolled as 
 banners and carried along by parties with a pro- 
 gramme. But Victor Hugo, who was all this 
 and perhaps more, has fallen into disrepute. His 
 poetry was rhetoric, we are told. However, it 
 has not yet been definitely fixed to what extent 
 rhetoric may be allowed in poetry ; and if the 
 investigation were mathematically made it would 
 probably be found that the greater part of the 
 poetic masterpieces of the world consists of rhetoric. 
 The likelihood is that when all deductions are 
 made Verhaeren will remain ; as Victor Hugo 
 remains. 
 
 In one respect Verhaeren is vastly inferior to 
 Victor Hugo : the range of his vocabulary is ex- 
 ceedingly narrow. His stock words recur with a 
 
 frequency that is almost entertaining. But, after 
 
 148
 
 Emile Verhaeren 
 
 all, words are of less importance than sensations, 
 images, emotions ; and in these Verhaeren is 
 rich indeed. He is so much the richer in these 
 essentials of poetry as his domain was practically 
 undiscovered : he has been the first to mint the 
 poetry of a new world. But even here we must 
 be careful not to claim too much for him. The 
 very fact that he was a discoverer implies that he 
 is a stranger ; he is not native-born in the new 
 world, and there is always the feeling that he is 
 not quite acclimatised. Critics have not sufficiently 
 realised the fact that Verhaeren is so astonished 
 by the beauty of action, of mechanical force, that 
 he stands outside it. He sees it with the eyes 
 of the spectator, of the painter. It has so much 
 the greater effect on him as he has not the depth 
 of a philosopher, but the naivete" of a wondering 
 child. To him it is all a miracle. The mightier 
 poet of the new world will have grown up in it, 
 and will have eyes for manifestations which are 
 less obvious. 
 
 149
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 IT is said that Madame Maeterlinck has a con- 
 siderable library, all her own, which consists en- 
 tirely of works written about her husband in all 
 languages. Undoubtedly Maeterlinck has been 
 one of the most discussed writers of modern times ; 
 and though of late years there has been a reaction 
 against the over-estimation in which he was held 
 for a period, he still remains one of the great 
 forces of international literature. His books are 
 translated, sometimes before they appear in 
 French, into the chief languages of the world ; 
 and even when what he writes is feeble, it is 
 discussed everywhere as though it were the pro- 
 nouncement of an oracle. From the selling point 
 of view, his position is impregnable. He has 
 been attacked, by the venom of Jesuits, the innu- 
 endoes of the envious, and the sarcasm of critics 
 
 who object on principle to literature that has a 
 
 150
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 popular appeal ; but Maeterlinck sits secure behind 
 his vast public, a mandarin rich and petted and 
 spoiled. He is in some quarters the target of 
 poisoned darts merely because, as one of his 
 critics says, he is "glutted with glory and 
 gold," as though this taunt of a too great fond- 
 ness for the world's goods could not be hurled 
 at nearly all Belgian men of letters, who are 
 apt to be business men first and literary men 
 after. 
 
 There is a modicum of truth in the belief that 
 a writer whose genius is profoundly original is not 
 likely to find an extensive public ; but, on the 
 other hand, permanent residence in Grub Street 
 is not an essential criterion of literary merit, and 
 there are several cases in our own times, beside 
 Maeterlinck, of great writers who have amassed 
 riches. In Belgian literary circles, it is true, there 
 is a feeling that Maeterlinck has been unduly suc- 
 cessful, while Lemonnier and Verhaeren, writers 
 of at least equal value, have been condemned to 
 comparative poverty. However, Maeterlinck may 
 here be taken at his face value as a prince of 
 letters in the sense that such and such a business
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 man (it may be for adventitious reasons) is known 
 as a " merchant prince." 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck, the son of a retired 
 notary in easy circumstances, was born in Ghent 
 in 1862. His schooldays at Sainte-Barbe were 
 the most painful in his existence : he would not 
 begin life again, he has said, at the price of 
 another seven years at that Jesuit institution. 
 Maeterlinck, however, had congenial schoolfellows 
 in Charles van Lerberghe and Gre"goire Le Roy ; 
 and the three clubbed together and subscribed to 
 La Jeune Belgique, to which in 1883 Maeterlinck 
 contributed his first poem to be printed. After 
 Sainte-Barbe, Maeterlinck took his law degree at 
 the university of his native city, but, having in 
 those days neither voice nor presence, he soon gave 
 up his attempts to practise. In 1886 he resided for 
 seven months in Paris. He made the acquaintance 
 of Mallarme" ; and he courted Villiers de 1' Isle- 
 Adam. Of more immediate service to him were a 
 group of young writers who were just about to 
 launch La Ptiiade. To this review Maeterlinck 
 contributed Le Massacre des Innocents, the only 
 
 short story of his which has been published. It 
 
 152
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 is an excellent piece of work, and the manner of 
 it, if Maeterlinck had followed it up, might have 
 led to a new realism, coarser in outline and more 
 grotesque than the realism which Eugene Demolder 
 was to develop by a similar method of transposing 
 pictures. 
 
 On his return to Belgium Maeterlinck was in- 
 troduced by Georges Rodenbach to the directors 
 of La Jeune Belgique, to which he contributed 
 several of the poems published in 1889 under 
 the title of Serres Chaudes (Hothouses). Serres 
 Chaudes is still a famous book, and to many 
 people it represents one of the best collections of 
 Belgian verse. That, however, is an impossible 
 view ; the little volume has historical significance 
 in the history of the Symbolist movement, and it 
 is interesting as marking a stage in Maeterlinck's 
 career ; but as poetry, weighing its intrinsic value, it 
 is not to be mentioned in the same breath as any 
 volume of Verhaeren's, Charles van Lerberghe's, 
 Max Elskamp's, or Albert Giraud's. Serres 
 Chaudes may justly be called "decadent": these 
 are poems which consistently exploit a pretence 
 
 of disease. Maeterlinck, so far as is known, 
 
 153
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 was as healthy a man as ever shouldered a rifle 
 in the Garde Civique of Ghent ; but during his 
 stay in Paris he had seen in which direction the 
 wind was blowing, and his mind was sufficiently 
 adaptable to devise plausible lays of mental fever. 
 Indeed, the poems have so authentic a ring that 
 German theorists have inferred from them that 
 he, like Verhaeren, must have passed through a 
 period of mental crisis. In both cases, no doubt, 
 there was business method in the madness. But 
 a suspected insincerity need not detract from the 
 genuineness of the poems : most poetry is feigning, 
 and if the atmosphere is produced, biographical 
 agreement can be dispensed with. And there is 
 certainly an atmosphere in Serres Chaudes. 
 Maeterlinck chose to regard the human soul as 
 a lorn lily sweltering in a hothouse, amid the 
 fauna of remorse and the slow palms of longing. 
 The mood of listless apathy and sick brooding is 
 finely rendered by chaotic but appropriate images : 
 
 " O weariness blue in the breast ! 
 Wedding the better sight, 
 In the weeping, wan moonlight, 
 Of my blue dreams with languor oppressed ! 
 154
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 " This weariness blue evermore, 
 Where through the deep windows green, 
 As in a hothouse are seen, 
 With moon and with glass covered o'er, 
 
 " The mighty forests undying 
 Whose nightly forgetfulness, 
 Like a dream motionless, 
 On the roses of passion is lying ; 
 
 " Where rises a slow water-beam, 
 Mingling the moon and the sky 
 In a glaucous, eternal sigh, 
 Monotonous as a dream." 
 
 Other poems in Serres Chaudes are written in 
 a species of drawling blank verse directly imitated 
 from Walt Whitman's "barbarous yawp." They 
 aim at creating a new kind of poetry by stringing 
 successive images together. The effect is as a 
 rule rather silly : 
 
 " O bell-glasses ! 
 
 Plants from afar for ever sheltered ! 
 While the wind outside is blowing my senses about ! 
 All a valley of the soul for ever stirring not ! 
 And the heat shut in at noon ! 
 And images, glimpsed clinging to the glass ! 
 155
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Raise none of them ! 
 
 Some have been fixed above old rays of the moon. 
 Peer through their foliage : 
 There is a tramp, it may be, on the throne, 
 It seems that corsairs on the pond are waiting, 
 It seems that troglodytes are marching serried to 
 the siege of cities. 
 
 "And some are covering olden snows. 
 And some are covering olden rains. 
 (Pity the sweating sultriness !) 
 I hear the swell of festive anthems on a famished 
 
 Sunday, 
 
 There is an ambulance amid the harvest, 
 And the King's daughters all are straying in a 
 season of lean fare through fields ! 
 
 " But mostly look at those that dent the verge ! 
 Carefully they are covering olden tempests. 
 Oh ! Somewhere there must be a vast fleet on a 
 
 marsh ! 
 
 And I believe that swans have hatched out ravens ! 
 (You hardly glimpse things through the moistness), 
 A virgin with hot water waters ferns, 
 A troop of little girls is watching in his cell the 
 
 hermit, 
 My sisters slumber deep in a poisonous cave ! 
 
 " Wait for the moon and the winter, 
 On these bell-glasses scattered over the ice ! " 
 156
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 It is easy to laugh at such experiments as this. 
 But if nothing was achieved, much was attempted. 
 Maeterlinck's mind had considerable subtlety, and 
 the very failures of his youthful dreaming are to 
 this day 1 rich in suggestiveness. We know what 
 his intentions were in writing Serres Ckaudes, 
 for Charles van Lerberghe, the confidant and ac- 
 complice of his artistic schemes, revealed them in 
 La Wallonie for July 1889. 
 
 " His verses with their violet tones," says van Ler- 
 berghe, " white with electricity, full of phosphorus and 
 the wind of storm, opened out in our lovely evenings of 
 festival a succession of new horizons, sinister and silent. 
 . . . Here decadent sensations have reached the exasper- 
 ation of their strength, the last burst blooms of their 
 fever, and these poems of Serres Chaudes are the supreme 
 black flowers of our day's overheated and diseased spirit. 
 In the rays of this absolute radiance all is transformed. 
 The air is hot and stifling. The dreamer pales, and his 
 hands, moist with fever, palpitate ; he is on the confines 
 of a strange country of death and madness ; his eyes are 
 charged with a sulphuric light which discovers a world 
 of mysteries. . . . The poet's rare magic makes you see 
 and feel beyond sensations ; he has the intuition of sen- 
 sations ; in sensations he discovers symbols, analogies, 
 forebodings, sympathies, and antipathies hitherto unex- 
 plored. He pierces to the depth of things, sees joy in 
 
 157
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 grief, grief in joy, the supernatural in the natural, every- 
 where and always he finds horror, things unfinished and 
 things exhausted, the danger of living, the difficulty of 
 living. Instead of seizing the harmonies of things, he 
 hearkens to their intimate discordance, to their broken 
 relations. He renders the shadows that wrap every 
 mirage and which are indeed its very essence and cause, 
 and in the shadows he perceives the glittering of heavens 
 invisible. . . . To render this vision by a material image, 
 there seems to be, in the midst of a strange Dutch garden, 
 the basin of a warm fountain, motionless and inert and 
 suffering, flowered with the sublime nymphaeaceae of tor- 
 por : ' Et torpenti multa relinquitur miseria.' Here in a 
 night of tempest nature is reflected. Things appear to 
 emerge from the fountain's depths : they are only re- 
 fracted rays, but their obstinate images in the end have 
 poisoned the water, have troubled its essence, by mingling 
 with it : symbols of their griefs, the light of their dark- 
 ness. And this something above and beyond that we 
 perceive at the heart of the images, in and around them, 
 the mirror that shows more than it reflects, ' a glass which 
 shows us many more' this is the soul itself, warm, 
 motionless and suffering. . . . The soul, like Saint Cecilia 
 immured in her boiling bath, has said its prayer ; it grows 
 strangely pale, its eyes are in death, its hands are on the 
 waters of madness, but the orchids of its crown shall not 
 wither. They rejoice above it, a company of angels in 
 the raptures and perfumes of the firmament. 
 
 " Maeterlinck is no chlorotic lover of pale roses and 
 nightshades. His ideal is green rather. His style is 
 
 158
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 robust, bitter, harsh, without softness, without distinctions 
 of shade; it blends a barbarian polychrome with the 
 speckled dark of the styles of decadence. Most of his 
 verses are formed of contrasts, of elements which both 
 attract and repel each other. They are the positive and 
 the negative poles of things. . . . Some of the poems 
 have the heaviness of summer evenings ; they are the 
 warm rain ; the sky rolling up its thunder ; the odour of 
 hot harvests. Others have the cold fluctuations of mer- 
 cury, the phosphorescent skins of panthers, the poison of 
 hemlock and belladonna, the elasticity of breasts moist 
 and firm, the effervescence and the mephitic stagnation 
 of pools. . . ." 
 
 There could be no better interpretation, not 
 only of the dream of overcharged sensations which 
 Serres Chaudes purports to be, but of Maeterlinck's 
 early dramas, of Rodenbach's sick reveries, of 
 Verhaeren's pathological trilogy, and of all the 
 other phases of artistic perversion evolved by the 
 Belgian poets of those days. 1 
 
 Serres Chaudes as now published is aug- 
 mented by Quinze Chansons, fifteen songs, some 
 of them embedded in the dramas as well, which 
 
 1 Pessimistic books were so numerous in the 'eighties that Celestin 
 Demblon, in a review of Coffin's Impressions et Sensations (La Wai- 
 lonie, Aug. 1888) called them "a new plague of Egypt," and foresaw 
 the necessity of discovering an energetic insecticide.
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 have a languid distinction of their own. Veiled 
 with mystery as they are, several of them, like the 
 following, have the charm of folksongs : 
 
 " And if he come back some day, 
 
 What shall be said to him ? 
 One for him waited, say, 
 
 Until her eyes grew dim. . . . 
 
 " And if again he spake, 
 
 And did not know me more ? 
 Like a sister answer make, 
 
 He might be suffering sore. . . . 
 
 " And if he would be told 
 
 Where you are dwelling now ? 
 Give him my ring of gold, 
 
 And bend your silent brow. . . . 
 
 " And if he miss the clock's tick, 
 
 And see the dust on the floor ? 
 Show him the lamp's burnt wick, 
 Show him the open door. . . . 
 
 " And if his last he saith, 
 
 And ask how you fell asleep ? 
 Tell him I smiled in death,] 
 
 For fear lest he should weep. . . ." 
 
 Serres Chaudes would have remained the pos- 
 session of a few inquiring spirits if Maeterlinck had 
 
 160
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 not, on the 24th of August 1890, been skyrocketed 
 into fame by Octave Mirbeau in one of the most 
 astounding examples of puf on record. Mirbeau, 
 in Mallarm^'s study, had laid his hands on a copy 
 of Maeterlinck's La Princesse Maleine, the first of 
 the dramas, of which thirty copies had just been 
 turned out by Maeterlinck himself, with the aid 
 of a friend, on a hand-press. " What's this ? " 
 asked Mirbeau. " A masterpiece," Mallarme' an- 
 swered ; "you read it." Mirbeau read it, and 
 ere long his eulogy appeared in Figaro, a 
 newspaper to which Maeterlinck was destined to 
 contribute many of his essays ere they were 
 strung together to appear in book form. The 
 critique runs as follows : 
 
 " I know nothing of M. Maurice Maeterlinck. I 
 know not whence he is nor how he is. Whether he 
 is old or young, rich or poor, I know not. I only know 
 that no man is more unknown than he ; and I know 
 also that he has created a masterpiece, not a master- 
 piece labelled masterpiece in advance, such as our young 
 masters publish every day, but an admirable and an 
 eternal masterpiece, a masterpiece which is sufficient to 
 immortalise a name, and to make all those who are 
 a-hungered for the beautiful and the great rise up and 
 
 161 L
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 call this name blessed ; a masterpiece such as honest 
 and tormented artists have sometimes, in their hours of 
 enthusiasm, dreamed of writing, and such as up to the 
 present not one of them has written. In short, M. 
 Maurice Maeterlinck has given us the greatest work of 
 genius of our time, and the most extraordinary and the 
 most simple also, comparable and shall I dare to say 
 it? superior in beauty to whatever is most beautiful 
 in Shakespeare. This work is called La Princesse 
 Maleine. Are there in all the world twenty persons 
 who know it ? I doubt it." 
 
 Probably Max Nordau was as near the truth 
 when he called the drama "a Shakespearean 
 anthology for children or Patagonians " ; but 
 Mirbeau's praise, though injudicious, was sincere. 
 It made Maeterlinck, who before long was being 
 discussed in two hemispheres as " the Belgian 
 Shakespeare." The label was of course absurd, 
 but as an advertising medium it struck the eye. 
 There are, it is true, points of similarity between 
 La Princesse Maleine and several of Shakespeare's 
 plays, especially with Hamlet, but they are merely 
 external. Maeterlinck's play is boyish enough, 
 but it is original both in conception and execution. 
 Maeterlinck was already obsessed by the ideas 
 
 which caused him to christen his early plays 
 
 162
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 " Little Dramas for Marionettes " : human beings 
 are puppets moved to and fro by Fate, the Show- 
 man behind the scenes. (Fitzgerald's Omar had 
 put the matter in a stanza.) It is no use struggling 
 against the Showman's manipulation. The puppets 
 do not act, they are made to act. They them- 
 selves are hardly conscious of what they do : they 
 move " like deaf somnambulists constantly being 
 roused from a nightmare." The language Maeter- 
 linck puts into their mouths (how far removed 
 from Shakespeare's sonorous rhetoric !) is delicately 
 adapted to this conception : they stammer short 
 sentences, which hostile critics have compared 
 with Ollendorfian dialogue. It would be unfair 
 to take a passage at haphazard to afford an ex- 
 ample of this marionette manner ; but there can 
 be no objection to detaching a scene which in 
 itself is genuinely dramatic, the murder scene in 
 the play : 
 
 Princess Maleine's room. The princess is sitting motionless 
 on her bed, listening in terror; enter the King and 
 Queen Anne. . . . The storm grows louder. 
 
 THE KING. Let us go away ! I can hear her heart 
 beating here ! 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 ANNE. Proceed ; . . . are you losing your wits ? 
 
 THE KING. She is looking at us, oh ! oh ! 
 
 ANNE. Come, she is a little girl ! . . . Good evening, 
 Maleine. . . . Don't you hear me, Maleine ! We have 
 come to bid you good night. . . . Are you ill, Maleine ? 
 Don't you hear me ? Maleine ! Maleine ! 
 
 [Maleine makes a sign that she hears. 
 
 THE KING. Ah! 
 
 ANNE. What a fright you give me ! ... Maleine ! 
 Maleine ! Have you lost your voice ? 
 
 MALEINE. Good . . . eve . . . ning ! . . . 
 
 ANNE. Ah ! So you are alive ; . . . have you all 
 you need ? . . . I must take my cloak off. (She lays her 
 cloak on a piece of furniture, and approaches the bed.) . . . 
 Let me see. . . . Oh ! this pillow is very hard. . . . 
 Let me arrange your hair. . . .Why do you look at me 
 like that, Maleine ? Maleine ? . . . Let me fondle you 
 a little. . . . Where does it hurt you ? You are shivering 
 as though you were going to die. . . . Why, you are 
 making the whole bed tremble ! . . . I have only come 
 to fondle you a little. . . . Don't look at me like that ! 
 You ought to be fondled at your age ; I am going to be 
 your poor mama. . . . Let me arrange your hair. . . . 
 Come, lift your head up a little ; I will tie your hair with 
 this. . . . Lift your head a little. . . . So. 
 
 [She passes a siring round her neck. 
 MALEINE (jumping down from the bed). Ah ! What 
 have you put round my neck ? 
 
 ANNE. Nothing ! Nothing ! It's nothing ! Don't 
 
 scream ! 
 
 164
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 MALEINE. Ah ! Ah ! 
 
 ANNE. Stop her ! Stop her ! 
 
 THE KING. What? What?. 
 
 ANNE. She is going to scream ! She is going to 
 scream ! 
 
 THE KING. I can't ! 
 
 MALEINE. You are going to ! ... you are going to ! ... 
 
 ANNE (seizing Maleine). No ! No ! 
 
 MALEINE. Mother ! Mother ! Nurse ! Nurse ! Hjalmar ! 
 Hjalmar ! Hjalmar ! 
 
 ANNE (to the King). Where are you ? 
 
 THE KING. Here ! Here ! 
 
 MALEINE (following Anne upon her knees). Wait ! 
 Wait a little ! Anne ! Madame ! King ! King ! King ! 
 Hjalmar ! . . . Not to-day ! . . . No ! No ! Not now ! . . . 
 
 ANNE. Are you going to follow me round the world 
 on your knees ? [She pulls the string. 
 
 MALEINE (falling in the middle of the room). Mother ! 
 ... Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! [The King sits down. 
 
 ANNE. She doesn't stir. It's all over. . . . Where 
 are you ! Help me ! She is not dead. . . . You have 
 sat down ! 
 
 THE KING. Yes! Yes! Yes! 
 
 ANNE. Hold her feet ; she is struggling. She is 
 going to get up. . . . 
 
 THE KING. Which feet ? Which feet ? Where are they? 
 
 ANNE. There ! There ! There ! Pull ! 
 
 THE KING. I can't ! I can't ! 
 
 ANNE. Come, don't make her suffer needlessly ! 
 
 [Here the hail rattles suddenly against the windows, 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 THE KING. Ah ! 
 
 ANNE. What have you done ? 
 
 THE KING. At the windows ! . . . They are knocking 
 at the windows ! 
 
 ANNE. They are knocking at the windows ? 
 
 THE KING. Yes ! Yes ! With millions of fingers ! 
 oh ! millions of fingers ! [Another squall. 
 
 ANNE. They are hailstones ! 
 
 THE KING. Hailstones ? 
 
 ANNE. Yes. 
 
 THE KING. Are they hailstones ? 
 
 ANNE. Yes, I saw them. ... Her eyes are glazing. 
 
 THE KING. I want to go away ! I am going away ! 
 I am going away ! 
 
 ANNE. What? What? Wait! Wait! She is 
 dead. [Here a gust of wind blows a window open 
 violently and a vase containing a lily falls 
 noisily down into the room. 
 
 This passage will serve to show how naively 
 Maeterlinck piles up the horror. Princess Maleine 
 is thoroughly immature in its dependence on ex- 
 traneous effect, but the half a dozen plays which 
 follow are stripped clean of theatrical business and 
 rely on a concentrated simplicity and naturalness 
 of diction to bring out the anguish of a single 
 tragic situation. Of L ' Intruse (The Intruder), 
 
 Les Aveugles (The Sightless), Interieur (Interior), 
 
 166
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 and La Mort de Tintagiles (The Death of Tinta- 
 giles) it cannot be exaggeration to say that they 
 are masterpieces for all time. Maeterlinck himself 
 in his preface to his collected plays (Theatre, 
 1901-02), defines his aims: 
 
 " In these plays faith is held in enormous powers, 
 invisible and fatal. No one knows their intentions, but 
 the spirit of the drama assumes they are malevolent, 
 attentive to all our actions, hostile to smiles, to life, to 
 peace, to happiness. Destinies which are innocent but 
 involuntarily hostile are here joined, and parted to the 
 ruin of all, under the saddened eyes of the wisest, who 
 foresee the future, but can change nothing in the cruel 
 and inflexible games which Love and Death practise 
 among the living. And Love and Death and the other 
 powers here exercise a sort of sly injustice, the penalties 
 of which for this injustice awards no compensation 
 are perhaps nothing but the whims of Fate. . . . 
 
 " This Unknown takes on, most frequently, the form 
 of Death. The infinite presence of Death, gloomy, hypo- 
 critically active, fills all the interstices of the poem. To 
 the problem of existence no reply is made except by the 
 riddle of its annihilation." 
 
 In The Intruder the members of a family are 
 in a room next to one in which the mother, who 
 has just been confined, is lying. One of them 
 
 is the blind grandfather. He is restless, irritable. 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 There are strange noises : all of them can be 
 explained by natural causes, and yet, in the sus- 
 pense of the hour, they are eerie. The sharpening 
 of a scythe is heard outside ; it must be the 
 gardener about to mow the grass. The lamp 
 burns badly. The house-dog crouches at the back 
 of his kennel. The grandfather is sure someone 
 has come in, and is sitting among them. Midnight 
 strikes, and they seem to hear somebody hastily 
 rising. In a few seconds the door of the adjoin- 
 ing chamber is opened, and the Sister of Charity 
 appears on the threshold and makes the sign of 
 the Cross to announce that her patient is dead. 
 
 In The Sightless the curtain rises on a group 
 of blind people, six men and six women, who are 
 sitting round an old priest. His face is as livid 
 as wax ; his lips are violet and half open ; his 
 eyes seem to be bleeding. The blind people talk, 
 querulously, and we learn that the emaciated old 
 priest is their guide, without whom they are 
 helpless. He has brought them into the forest, 
 because he wanted to see the island for the last 
 time before the sunless winter set in. He has 
 
 left them for a time, they think, and they are 
 
 168
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 impatiently waiting for him to return and take 
 them home. He may have lost his way, they 
 fear. It is night; they hear the wind raging in 
 the tree-tops, and the sea thudding on the rocks. 
 Now there is a noise of pattering feet in the dead 
 leaves, and the asylum dog comes and lays its 
 muzzle on the knees of one of the blind men. 
 He feels that it is pulling him, and when he rises 
 it leads him to the priest. He touches the priest's 
 face, and knows that the guide is dead. 
 
 The symbolism of The Sightless is not hard to 
 unravel. We are prisoners on a little island, where 
 we can hear the mighty waters of the Ocean of 
 Infinity roaring evermore. We had a guide 
 Religion that still seems to be present among 
 us, but is dead. . . . We are lost in the dense 
 dark forest of enigmas. . . . 
 
 The inner meaning of Les Sept Princesses (The 
 Seven Princesses) is as difficult to decipher as that 
 of The Sightless is easy. In this drama Maeter- 
 linck has taken his symbols, not from the problems 
 of everyday life, but from the arcana of ascetic 
 mysticism. Seven sisters are sleeping in a marble 
 
 hall whose doors are locked. A Prince comes, 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 home returning from long exile, and through the 
 thick window panes he gazes in rapt longing at 
 the loveliest sister, who sleeps in the middle 
 of the others, Ursula, whom he has loved since 
 boyhood. He finds his way into the hall through 
 an underground passage, past the tombs of the 
 dead. Six princesses awaken, but not Ursula. 
 She has died of her long waiting. . . . Maeter- 
 linck may have had the idea of the Buddhists in 
 his mind, according to which the soul consists of 
 seven elements, the central one being Psyche, that 
 is, the real self, the deepest and most essential part 
 of our being, which is unknowable, which no earthly 
 ideal can awaken from its slumber. 
 
 Pelleas et Melisande, on the other hand, though 
 like the other plays it is the dramatisation of a 
 mystical idea, the idea that Fate drives his pup- 
 pets, like a flock of sheep, over the mazy roads 
 of Love to the bourne of Death, almost reaches 
 human characterisation. It may still be said of 
 the characters, as Mr. Yeats said of them, that 
 they are " naked and pathetic shadows already half 
 vapour, and sighing to one another upon the last 
 
 abyss." But Love humanises even disembodied 
 
 170
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 spirits (what could be more human than the clinging 
 together of Paola and Francesca in the Inferno ?) ; 
 and it is possible in this drama of Maeterlinck's to 
 disregard the philosophic idea altogether, and read 
 the story as another and equally poignant version 
 of those famous tales in which a young wife wedded 
 to a crabbed and ageing husband loves that hus- 
 band's brother. " Hostile destinies are joined in 
 innocence and parted to the ruin of all." But in 
 the conception of Maeterlinck as a mystic there 
 is no question of adultery in the loves of Pelleas 
 and Melisanda : the soul is inviolately pure and 
 cannot sin ; and in harmony with the conception 
 there is a childlike chastity in all the converse of 
 the lovers. This remoteness from the flesh makes 
 Pellea3 and Melisanda unactable ; and though it 
 has been frequently played it shapes itself on the 
 stage, fatally, as melodrama. It is excruciating 
 to see it debased in this country even by some 
 of the best actors we have : the symbolism is 
 coarsened into absurdity, and the gentle words, 
 as of souls feeling out to each other through the 
 dark, are shouted and whined with the traditional 
 
 accents and weighted with sensational vulgarity. 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Attempts have been made to preserve the atmos- 
 phere of the dramas for marionettes by stretching 
 a gauze curtain between the audience and the 
 players; but it would need more than that to save 
 such a scene as the following from outright murder. 
 Pelleas surprises Melisanda combing her hair at 
 the window of a tower : 
 
 PELLEAS. Come out of the shadow, Melisanda, so that 
 I may see your hair undone. 
 
 [Melisanda bends down from the window. 
 
 PELLEAS. Oh ! Melisanda ! . . . oh ! you are beauti- 
 ful ! ... you are beautiful like that ! . . . Bend down ! 
 Bend down ! Let me come nearer to you. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. I cannot come nearer. ... I am bend- 
 ing down as far as I can. . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. I cannot climb higher. . . . Give me at 
 least your hand this evening . . . before I go away. . . . 
 I am going away to-morrow. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. No, no, no. . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. Yes, yes ; I am going away, I shall go 
 away to-morrow. . . . Give me your hand, your little 
 hand on my lips. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. I will not give you my hand if you are 
 going away. . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. Give it to me, give it to me. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. You will not go away ? . . . I see a rose 
 
 in the dark. . . . 
 
 172
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 PELLEAS. Where ? . . . I only see the branches of 
 the willow overhanging the wall. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. Lower down, lower down, in the garden ; 
 down there, in the dark green. 
 
 PELLEAS. It is not a rose. ... I will go and see 
 by and by, but give me your hand first ; your hand 
 first. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. Here then, here then. ... I cannot 
 bend down farther. . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. My lips cannot reach your hand. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. I cannot bend down farther. ... I am 
 near falling. . . . Oh ! oh ! My hair is going down the 
 tower ! . . . 
 
 [Her hair overturns all of a sudden, while she 
 is bending down, and floods Pelleas. 
 
 PELLEAS. Oh ! oh ! what is this ? . . . Your hair, 
 your hair is coming down to me 1 ... All your hair, 
 Melisanda, all your hair has fallen from the tower ! I 
 am holding it in my hands, I am touching it with my 
 lips. ... I am holding it in my arms, I am winding it 
 round my neck. ... I shall not open my hands again 
 this night. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. Let me go ! let me go ! ... You are 
 going to make me fall ! . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. No, no, no. ... I have never seen hair 
 like yours, Melisanda ! . . . See, see ; it comes from so 
 high, and it floods me to the heart. ... It is warm and 
 gentle as though it were falling from the sky ! . . . I 
 cannot see the sky through your hair. . . . Look, look, 
 my hands cannot hold it. ... It is fleeing from me, it 
 
 173
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 is fleeing from me into the willow branches. ... It is 
 escaping from me on all sides. ... It is trembling and 
 stirring and palpitating in my hands like a golden bird ; 
 and it loves me, it loves me a thousand times more than 
 you do ! 
 
 MELISANDA. Let me go, let me go, somebody might 
 come. . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. No, no, no ; I will not set you free this 
 night. . . . You are my prisoner for this night ; all the 
 night, all the night. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. Pelleas ! Pelleas ! . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. You shall not go away any more. ... I 
 kiss all your body when I kiss your hair, and in the 
 midst of its flames I suffer no longer. . . . Do you hear 
 my kisses ? . . . They rise along a thousand meshes of 
 gold. . . . 
 
 MELISANDA. I hear steps. . . . Let me go ! ... It 
 is Golaud ! . . . 
 
 PELLEAS. Wait ! Wait ! . . . Your hair is caught 
 in the branches. . . . Wait, wait ! . . . It is dark. . . . 
 
 [Enter Golaud. 
 
 GOLAUD. What are you doing here ? 
 
 PELLEAS. What am I doing here ?...!... 
 
 GOLAUD. You are children. . . . Melisanda, do not 
 bend down in that way from the window, you will 
 fall. . . . Do you not know that it is very late ? . . . 
 It is near midnight. ... Do not play like this in the 
 dark. . . . You are children. . . . (Laughing nervously.} 
 What children ! . . . What children ! . . . 
 
 [Exit with Pelleas. 
 174
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 Scenes of this nature, from which passion is 
 banned and where only the stirrings of the soul, 
 fathoms below consciousness, are suggested, are not 
 dramatic in the accepted sense of the dramatic. 
 Any other dramatist would have made the husband, 
 Golaud, act violently ; but the clash of words would 
 be physical, and with the physical the dramas for 
 marionettes are not concerned. It will escape no 
 one that the picture of the girl with her long golden 
 hair falling down the tower and into the branches 
 of the willow is saturated with the atmosphere of 
 the Pre-Raphaelites, and the same is obvious of 
 many other pictures in the marionette dramas. 
 This is not astonishing, for Maeterlinck had covered 
 the walls of his study (a friend of his in those 
 days tells me) with pictures from Walter Crane's 
 books for children ; and he had brought them 
 nearer to his own dream by framing them under 
 green-tinted glass. It is astonishing altogether 
 what an influence Walter Crane and Kate Green- 
 away have had on the Belgian symbolists ; to this 
 very day the Belgian poets, if they are discussing 
 British art, will speak first of these two artists. 
 
 It would be easy to exaggerate the influence of 
 
 175
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 the Pre-Raphaelite poetry : so far as my own 
 knowledge goes, only Maeterlinck, Charles van 
 Lerberghe, Mockel, and Andre Fontainas knew 
 English sufficiently well to be able to appreciate 
 Rossetti's poetry. But some scholar should write a 
 thesis on the influence of Walter Crane and Kate 
 Greenaway, whose art needed no translation. . . . 
 
 Alladine et Palomides symbolises the idea that 
 man is apt to dream himself into an unreal world. 
 Happiness is a mirage. We seem, in our moments 
 of enchanted delight, to be prisoned in a great blue 
 vault ablaze with jewels and wreathed with roses ; 
 but let a ray of the pitiless light of truth shine in 
 through the roof and the jewels lose their glitter 
 and the roses are seen to be the phosphorescent 
 stains of decaying rubbish. Far more successful 
 in execution is Interior, a dramatic tour de force 
 which dispenses with action and is somewhat in 
 the nature of a peep-show interpreted by outsiders 
 as the pantomime proceeds. It is probably the 
 best thing that Maeterlinck has done : less charged 
 with poetry and mystery than several of the other 
 dramas, but more compact and poignant. From 
 
 a garden we look into a lamp-lit room where a 
 
 176
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 family are sitting, resting in the peace of the 
 evening. One of the daughters of the family has 
 drowned herself, and an old man has come in 
 advance of the corpse to break the news. From 
 the garden we see him enter the house, and by 
 the movements of the family we see the effect of 
 his news. 
 
 The Death of Tintagiles is the most harrowing 
 as it is the most eerie of Maeterlinck's dramas. 
 In an old castle in a deep valley whelmed with 
 shadow (the Valley of the Shadow of Death) 
 dwells an old Queen. She has sent over the sea 
 for Tintagiles, a little boy whose two sisters, who 
 have always lived in the castle, guess that she in- 
 tends to kill him. Even in sleep they hold him 
 in their arms ; and it is when they are asleep that 
 the Queen's servants snatch the child from them. 
 One of the sisters follows to the end of a corridor, 
 which is closed by a massive iron door, on which 
 in her desperation she smashes the lamp she carries 
 and scratches the nails from her fingers. Behind 
 the door she hears the boy crying that hands are 
 at his throat; and then she hears the fall of a 
 
 little body. We are in exile here in the Valley 
 
 177 M
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 of the Shadow of Death, the play suggests ; we 
 are at the mercy of a grim and silent force, against 
 whose cruel will the most frenzied resistance is 
 vain. We must trail our existence blindly, with- 
 out daring to understand what happens. 
 
 The mysticism which inspired these dramas 
 of Maeterlinck forms the weft of his collection of 
 essays Le Trtsor des Humbles (The Treasure of 
 the Humble), which was published in 1896. The 
 essays, if they do not carry conviction, have a 
 dreamy charm and sometimes a wistful beauty. 
 Maeterlinck, following Emerson, preaches the 
 heroism of everyday life ; unfolds his theories 
 of active and passive silence the latter is silence 
 sleeping, the former is the language of the soul ; 
 and revives the doctrines of quietism to absolve 
 the soul of man from the transient sins of the body. 
 Such passages as the following would not seem 
 so illogical as they do if they could be interpreted 
 by a learned commentary locating the theory in 
 the ecstatic reveries of the mystics proper very 
 remote dreamers such as Ruysbroeck, whose 
 Ornament of the Spirit's Marriage Maeterlinck 
 
 translated from the old Flemish : 
 
 178
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 " What would happen if our soul suddenly became 
 visible and had to advance in the midst of her assembled 
 sisters, despoiled of her veils, but charged with her most 
 secret thoughts, and trailing behind her the most mys- 
 terious acts of her life that nothing could express ? What 
 would she blush for ? What would she wish to hide ? 
 Would she, like a modest woman, cast the long mantle 
 of her hair over the numberless sins of the flesh ? She 
 knew nothing of them, and these sins have never reached 
 her. They were committed a thousand leagues away from 
 her throne, and the soul of the Sodomite even would pass 
 through the midst of the crowd without suspecting any- 
 thing, and bearing in its eyes the transparent smile of a 
 child. It had taken no part in the sin, it was pursuing 
 its life on the side where light reigns, and it is this life 
 alone that it will remember." 
 
 One of the essays deals with "interior beauty," 
 and this doctrine is hunted to death in Aglavaine 
 et Selysette, the first of Maeterlinck's plays into 
 which the . senses intrude, the first of his plays 
 which, in spite of some lingering beauty in the 
 character of Selysette, must be rejected as inclin- 
 ing to be meretricious. In this play and in most of 
 those which follow the chief character is an eman- 
 cipated female with a mouth full of very boring 
 talk about "beauty," "wisdom," and "happiness." 
 
 Maeterlinck has turned the corner ; come out of 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 the dark into the sunshine, say some ; left his 
 ivory tower of poetry for the dusty mart of inter- 
 national commonplace, say others. At all events, 
 his appeal is henceforth more popular ; his artistry 
 is less exclusive. Aglavaine and Selysette is a 
 problem play : like Hauptmann's Lonely Lives, 
 or (to go farther back) like Goethe's absurd Stella, 
 it poses the question whether it should not be 
 possible for a man to have two wives. Maeterlinck, 
 or rather Aglavaine, sees a happy solution if the 
 two women can manage to love each other as well 
 as the man ; in the present play, it is true, the 
 plan does not prove feasible, although the two 
 women are on billing and cooing terms, for Sely- 
 sette, the good little wife, kills herself to make way 
 for the emancipated monstrosity. It was disastrous 
 for Maeterlinck's art that Selysette did not act as 
 the wronged woman on the stage is entitled to do, 
 for if she had poisoned or stabbed her rival perhaps 
 Aglavaine would not have cropped up again as 
 Ariane, as Monna Vanna, as Mary Magdalene. 
 Nothing could demonstrate Maeterlinck's insuffi- 
 ciency as a dramatist (in the ordinary accepta- 
 tion of the word) more than his utter failure, 
 
 180
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 as soon as he abandoned his symbolic puppets 
 and attempted characters of flesh and blood, to 
 create any other woman than this barrel-organ 
 of wisdom. 
 
 It would appear that these roles were created 
 for Madame Georgette Leblanc, a French opera- 
 singer who made her debut as an actress as Monna 
 Vanna. To her Maeterlinck dedicated his second 
 book of essays, Sagesse et Destinee (Wisdom and 
 Destiny), which appeared in 1898. It is a chain 
 of thoughts many of which contradict the substance 
 of The Treasure of the Humble. Whereas the latter 
 book had been concerned with the unconscious 
 and the subconscious, Wisdom and Destiny deals 
 mainly with the conscious. In The Treasure of 
 the Humble the essayist had spoken of " the 
 august, everyday life of a Hamlet . . . , who has 
 the time to live because he does not act " ; in 
 Wisdom and Destiny we read of " the miserable 
 blindness of Hamlet," who was responsible for the 
 tragedy because of his failure to act. Action 
 hinders life in the first book ; in the second, action 
 is accelerated thinking. " Life has no other object 
 
 than death," we had been taught ; now we hear 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 that life is more important than death, and that 
 misfortune is less important than happiness. 
 Happiness was what humanity was made for, 
 and we ought to have doctors to cure misery, 
 just as we have doctors to cure illness. One 
 of the essays of The Treasure of the Humble 
 had taught ( in harmony with the dramas for 
 marionettes) that all existence is subject to fate, 
 and that there is no star of happiness, no destiny 
 of joy. Now we hear that if predestination 
 exists, it only exists in character, which can be 
 modified. 
 
 There is a tendency among the higher critics 
 to accept, condescendingly, The Treasure of the 
 Humble, as an expression of philosophic lyrism, 
 but to reject Wisdom and Destiny and the essays 
 collected in later books, as an effeminate optimism 
 quite as illogical as the mysticism of the earlier 
 essays. Maeterlinck's optimism is certainly languid, 
 and often unconvincing ; and optimism should be 
 invigorating and proof against the assaults of 
 amateur argument. Nevertheless, Wisdom and 
 Destiny, and all Maeterlinck's popular philosophy, 
 
 has a distinct, if transient value. It sets up a 
 
 182
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 plausible code of conduct which can be partly 
 followed even by people who do not want to make 
 themselves ridiculous by posing as " sages." It 
 fights deep-rooted prejudices. It is anti-ascetic 
 a morbid virtue may be more harmful than 
 a healthy vice, it tells us. It makes for will- 
 power : if we cannot divert events, we can at 
 all events decide what form these events shall 
 take within ourselves. We are the masters of 
 our fate. . . . 
 
 In Le Temple Enseveli (The Buried Temple), 
 Le Double Jardin (The Double Garden), L? Intelli- 
 gence des Fleurs (Life and Flowers), this unctuous 
 optimism (for all his hatred of the Jesuits Maeter- 
 linck has never rid himself of their manner) is 
 developed in the direction of a faith in the future 
 which tallies with that of Verhaeren. The future 
 is full of bounties which the genius of man shall 
 bring to the light. The pivot of the world seemed 
 to us of old to be formed of spiritual powers ; to- 
 day we know that it is made of purely material 
 energies. We shall solve the riddle of existence 
 by studying concrete things. We shall do as the 
 
 flowers do, strain upwards from the dark soil to 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 a blossoming in the light. What religions call 
 divine is the brain of man. 
 
 But in animals and flowers and plants we can 
 trace the intelligence which is supreme in ourselves ; 
 and in La Vie des Abeilles (The Life of the Bee) 
 Maeterlinck shows us what is most important in our 
 own substance, that extraordinary matter of the 
 brain which transfigures blind necessity, organises 
 and multiplies life and makes it more beautiful, and 
 checks the obstinate force of death. The bees are 
 socialists, for in the hive the individual is nothing. 
 The hive of to-day is perfect, though pitiless ; it 
 merges the individual in the republic. The bees 
 have will-power, which subordinates everything to 
 the future. 
 
 La Mori (Death) is probably the least satisfy- 
 ing of Maeterlinck's books of essays, though it 
 procured him the honour (and the advertisement) 
 of being placed on the Index. He shocked many 
 people by pleading that doctors should have power 
 and discretion to end a patient's life wherever hope 
 was impossible, and others by proclaiming that 
 if the punishment for not believing in the God of 
 
 the Bible is eternal damnation, this is a far less 
 
 184
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 punishment than being compelled to endure the 
 presence through eternity of such a tyrant. 
 
 Of Maeterlinck's plays other than those which 
 have been discussed only Monna Vanna (1902) 
 and L! Oiseau Bleu (1909) deserve study. Joyzelle 
 (1903) is a tangle of absurdities ; Mary Magdalene 
 (1910) is even worse than Paul Heyse's play on the 
 same subject, from which it unblushingly borrows. 
 
 Monna Vanna owes a great deal of its reputa- 
 tion in this country to the fact that its production 
 is forbidden. The reason is apparently that in 
 one scene the heroine is understood to be naked 
 under her cloak, which the course of the action 
 may compel her to cast off at any moment. Of 
 course the Lord Chamberlain would know, if he 
 read the play, that she does not go farther than 
 making a movement to throw her cloak aside ; 
 but the audience might have to endure an un- 
 healthy tension. Whether Maeterlinck calculated 
 on this tension or not, is not clear ; but the ascetic 
 Maeterlinck of the first period would not have 
 conceived the situation. The motive of the play, 
 that a woman may nobly sacrifice her chastity to 
 
 save a beleaguered city, is repulsive, but sufficiently 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 harmless in its presentation ; and Monna Vanna 
 must be condemned rather on the score of being 
 tedious than of being obscene. 
 
 As to The Blue Bird, opinions differ strangely. 
 To some it is a charming allegory, full of the 
 deepest meaning and of truths forcefully conveyed 
 even to simple minds ; to others it is a hodge- 
 podge of commonplace and obese complacency. 
 It is at all events a palatable epitome of the doc- 
 trines elaborated by Maeterlinck in his essays, spun 
 round the main theme that the blue bird of happi- 
 ness, often sought in the distances of romance, is 
 only to be found at home. 
 
 One should be chary of attaching too much 
 importance to the attacks on Maeterlinck which 
 are the fashion in certain places. It is not neces- 
 sarily a hall-mark of mediocrity to have been 
 awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, although, 
 it is true, there would be some grounds for the 
 assertion. But neither must the reaction be ignored 
 as transient, for there is point in many of the 
 arguments by which the Maeterlinck of the second 
 phase is assailed. The greatest blow was dealt 
 
 by Louis Dumont - Wilden, in an essay which 
 
 186
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 appeared in La Nouvelle Revue Franfaise, and is 
 now reprinted in UEsprit Europe'en. Literary 
 glory, says this most pungent of Belgian critics 
 (who, by the way, is like Maeterlinck himself a 
 native of Ghent), is conferred by an elite of readers ; 
 but the elite has gradually escaped from Maeter- 
 linck's seductive influence. The mysticism and 
 pessimism of the earlier books had the fascination 
 of rare poetry ; but the optimism which so con- 
 fidently pervades the later essays is a soothing 
 syrup which is no food for men. Maeterlinck had 
 for a time dreamed himself into the poetic atmos- 
 phere of the symbolists, but the formula of his art, 
 distinguished and new as it was, only permitted 
 him a restricted range of very simple and primitive 
 feelings which were soon exhausted, and in the 
 end the comfortable complacency of the Belgian 
 middle classes drew him back into his native ele- 
 ment. Now he settled down to grind out his 
 " philosophy without tears " to a public whose 
 dearest wish is to believe "that the first of all 
 duties is to be happy." "Of course," continues 
 Dumont-Wilden, "one must do justice to his ample 
 
 rhetoric laden with images, and admit that it has 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 sometimes the cradling charm of a beautiful sermon. 
 However, as the work proceeds, the design takes 
 shape. All that is painful is avoided. Maeter- 
 linck, very wise by this time, has become the 
 moralist of the very wise. He is the charitable 
 sage of ordinary days and ordinary people. To 
 those who do not go to mass his books are what 
 manuals of devotion are to the pious. He is the 
 Doctor All's-for-the-Best of souls without piety. 
 He satisfies that need of religion which survives 
 the decadence of religions ; by means of a vague 
 idealism purged of faith he fabricates an ideal for 
 positivists, offers a shadow of the divine to those 
 who have resolved to dispense with the divine." 
 
 All this is not without plausibility ; but it is 
 evidently quite as easy to under-estimate Maeter- 
 linck as to over-estimate him. The fact probably 
 is that Maeterlinck an ascetic, even if a calcu- 
 lating ascetic, by nature has been unfortunate 
 in the shaping of his life, and too submissive in 
 temperament to preserve the originality which un- 
 doubtedly marks his work as far as The Treasure of 
 the Humble. Aglavaine and Selysette was nothing 
 
 less than a catastrophe. It ended him as a dramatist 
 
 188
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 in the running for a front place among the world's 
 dramatists. To put the matter in a nutshell, his 
 genius was killed by "happiness." His doom as 
 an artist was sealed when he gave up dreaming 
 in order to " live." Since then the world has been 
 too much with him.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE SYMBOLIST POETS 
 
 THERE is no distinction to be made between the 
 Belgian symbolists and the French symbolists 
 except that the Belgians, true to the doctrine of 
 individualism which is one of the main tenets 
 of the symbolist school, write poetry which is 
 unmistakably Belgian. The poetry of the Belgian 
 symbolists is the poetry of Belgian moods. 
 
 Of no Belgian poet is this more true than of 
 Georges Rodenbach, although he was the only 
 Belgian poet who has been accepted in Paris at 
 his actual value. Born at Tournai in 1855, he was 
 brought up at Bruges and Ghent, and took his 
 doctor's degree in jurisprudence in the latter city. 
 He practised for some time in Brussels, but left 
 Belgium in 1887, and settled in Paris, where he 
 died in 1898. A handsome man, a dandy, an 
 aesthete, a causeur^ he had become a favourite in 
 
 Parisian drawing-rooms ; he was an intimate friend 
 
 190
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 of Edmond de Goncourt and Stephane Mallarme ; 
 and his melancholy poetry, which kept the Par- 
 nassian form while creating a new atmosphere by 
 a discreet symbolism, had a wide circle of admirers 
 among those to whom the more uncompromising 
 symbolist poets were stertorous barbarians. 
 
 But though he made himself at home in Paris, 
 he remained a Fleming to the end ; and his poetry 
 is Flemish through and through. He is a Flemish 
 mystic, quite as much as Maeterlinck was in his 
 early years. He is haunted by Flemish images ; 
 his soul is ever dreaming in an old Flemish city 
 where the stricken stone of the grey houses is 
 mirrored in green canals lit by the white plumage 
 of stately swans ; he longs for the infinite silence 
 of Bruges-la- Morte, the city that was buried in 
 the tomb of her quays when the pulse of the sea 
 was stayed in her and the arteries of her canals 
 grew cold ; he has lost his religious faith, but at 
 heart he is still a worshipper in the old Catholic 
 fanes whose steeples in their stone frocks project 
 their shadow along the cobbled streets, in the city 
 where from innumerable convents there breathes a 
 
 cold scorn of the secret roses of the flesh, where 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 at every street corner, in shrines of glass or wood, 
 stand statues of the Virgin clad in velvet cloaks. 
 " Toute cit est un tat d'ame," he says ; and his 
 own soul he identifies with Bruges. Above all, 
 he finds a dream-peace in the bdguinages, those 
 sanctuaries within the sanctuary, those haunts of 
 quiet in the quiet town, with their red-paved en- 
 closures, where the priest, when the bell calls the 
 b6guines to evensong, seems like the Saviour in a 
 garden of virgins. 
 
 With such an obsession as this, his books could 
 not be other than morbid. It is poetry in a closed 
 room, where the light only filters through muslin 
 curtains ; it is a music awed by the foreboding of 
 death ; it is a gallery of grey tints. It is all filled 
 with that sickness of life which was an attitude of 
 the symbolists ; with the pessimism which fermented 
 into a fever of hallucination in Maeterlinck and 
 brought Verhaeren to the verge of (literary) mad- 
 ness. Le Regne du Silence (1891) and Les Vies 
 Encloses (1896), the volumes in which the best of 
 Rodenbach's poetry is contained, must ever be 
 monuments of Belgian art by the side of Serres 
 
 Chaudes and the three volumes of Verhaeren's 
 
 192
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 pathological period, even though the cult of virility 
 and optimism, which has in our days overcome 
 that fin-de-siecle despondency of the symbolists, 
 refuses to be spellbound by the subtle imagery 
 and trailing rhythms of this poet of yesteryear. 
 What fascination there is in Rodenbach's lethargic 
 reveries may be gathered from this one poem : 
 
 " You are my sisters, souls that dwell apart, 
 *In dreams half dreamt in listlessness of heart, 
 Cloistered in towns whose glories have grown pale, 
 Old towns that drowse along their rivers frail ; 
 O souls whose silence is a worshipping ; 
 Souls pierced by noise ; who love no other thing 
 Save that which might have been and shall not be ; 
 Fed with the Host and Holy Chrism are ye, 
 Mystics whose sad youth dreamed of sailing hence 
 To some far city, fabulous, immense, 
 But now dream only with these waters wan, 
 These waters slow that silence swoons upon. . . . 
 
 And round you rolls itself the angelus, 
 
 As round a spinning-wheel the soft wool does ! 
 
 Sisters of mine more than of any other, 
 
 Sisters of mine are you in Silence, our Mother ! " 
 
 Rodenbach sings only of depressing things. 
 
 He yields to his depression in the same measure 
 
 193 N
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 as Verhaeren resists his. Characteristic of each 
 poet are the verses they have dedicated to the 
 rain. In Verhaeren's vision the rain is a force 
 sinister but wild with energy : 
 
 " The water drips hour after hour, 
 The spouts gush, and the trees shower. . . . 
 
 x 
 
 Rivers o'er rotten dikes are brimming 
 Upon the meadows where drowned hay is swimming ; 
 The wind is whipping walnut trees and alders, 
 And big black oxen wading stand 
 Deep in the water of the polders, 
 And bellow at the writhen sky. . . ." 
 
 Rodenbach's vision is weary and anaemic : 
 
 " O the rain ! O the rain ! O the slow water thread, 
 Which Time unwinds from his black spindles still, 
 As though the years had kept their tears to shed, 
 While on young autumn leans the evening, sick and ill! 
 O the rain ! O the slow skeins of the water thread ! 
 
 "Who shall say the sombre mourning of the firmament ? 
 Cemetery road where like dirge verses 
 Murk clouds move somnolent, 
 Corpses of stars jumbled along in hearses, 
 
 Who shall say the sombre mourning of the firmament ? 
 
 194
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " On dark and empty streets of mourning the rain drips, 
 Dripping for ever through our chill remorse, 
 Like tears for dead things ever on our lips, 
 Like tears falling from the closed eye of a corse, 
 On dark and empty streets of mourning the rain drips. 
 
 " The rain is over our old dreams a net, 
 And in its water meshes prisoner takes 
 Their wings, until these songsters die of fret, 
 Of longing for the light, of lingering aches, 
 The rain is over our old dreams a net. 
 
 " Like a wet flag drooping against its pole, 
 With griefs awakening that have long been quenched, 
 The dark rain penetrates and soaks our soul, 
 Until it is a rag discoloured, drenched, 
 Like a wet rag drooping against its pole." 
 
 This last image, of a soul like a wet rag, is 
 sufficiently curious ; and Rodenbach's work teems 
 with such ideas, which as a rule, however, are 
 rendered tolerable by the general mood of the 
 poem. To say, for instance, that the moon in the 
 clouds is like a bosom peering forth from white 
 linen seems to be as extravagant as that jocular 
 comparison of one of Mr. Wells's heroines who, 
 
 when she first donned evening dress, felt like a ham 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 in its frill ; but in his poem " The Milky Moon " 
 Rodenbach makes the idea plausible enough : 
 
 " The moon is showing, in the sky of night, 
 A chaste bosom, as a nurse might do, 
 To feed the caprice of those dreamers who 
 Love to be drinking in its milky light. 
 
 " Enough to nourish me, who also lie 
 And sleep by night upon this ample breast 
 Of recommencements ruined and distressed. . . . 
 And like fresh linen round it is the sky." 
 
 Rodenbach's best poems are those in which he 
 can take his images from the architecture and the 
 specific atmosphere of Flemish towns, as in this 
 of " Belfry Petals " : 
 
 " In the languorous morning of a country town 
 The belfry chimes, chimes with the tender dyes 
 Of the dawn looking with a sister's eyes, 
 The belfry chimes, and on the roofs throws down 
 Its pale, diaphanous music flower by flower, 
 Crumbling them on black gables like handfuls 
 Of dewy sounds the wind sweeps up and culls, 
 Music of morning falling from the tower, 
 Like faded wreaths far falling wet with tears, 
 Invisible lilies falling from the yore, 
 In such slow petals, petals pale and frore, 
 They seem shed on the dead brow of the years." 
 196
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 Or in "Old Bells": 
 
 " Bells I have known that noiseless went their way, 
 Poor bells that lived in little sordid turrets, 
 And seemed to be lamenting that their spirits 
 Could never be at rest by night or day. 
 
 " Bells of a suburb, coughing, broken down ; 
 Old women visiting at evening's hour 
 Each other, you had said, from tower to tower, 
 Tottering along in their worn-out bronze gown." 
 
 Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Morte is a famous novel. 
 Everybody who visits Bruges is supposed to have 
 it with him, in order to read himself into the 
 Stimmung of the town. The book does indeed 
 suggest an atmosphere, but only by violent images, 
 too vivid and rare for prose. Thus, slander in 
 dead cities grows like the grass among the cobble- 
 stones ; all day long the belfry bells swing their 
 black unseen censers, whence a smoke of sound 
 unrolls ; the church organ spreads out a dark 
 velvet ; the gables of the houses are in the shape 
 of crosses ; the wind is filled with bells ; the shadow 
 of the church towers is too heavy ; the hero goes 
 
 to the hospital of St. John to bathe his feverish 
 
 197
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 retina in its white walls ; the gardens in the court- 
 yards of the hospital are padded with box. These 
 images (some of them absurd in translation, but 
 not unnatural in the setting of the original) are 
 varied with a true poet's skill ; they change as the 
 moods change. 
 
 As to the theme of the novel, it is negligible. 
 It is for the sake of the poetry that the book is 
 read. Nay, the theme is more than negligible, 
 it is ridiculous. Hugues has lost his wife, whom 
 he loved passionately. While she was lying dead 
 he had cut off the long plaits of her hair ; and, 
 settling with his mourning in Bruges, he keeps 
 the hair in a glass case. After five years he meets 
 a woman in the streets who seems to him the very 
 image of his dead wife. He accosts her ; and 
 soon she is his mistress. But if she has the 
 body, she has not the soul of his dead wife. He 
 denies her admittance to the house where he keeps 
 the plait of hair ; but at last she finds a pretext 
 to inspect the mysterious rooms, sees the hair, 
 lifts the glass case, and brandishes the plait aloft. 
 To Hugues it seems a sacrilege that this vulgar 
 
 actress should touch the relic of his dead saint ; 
 
 198
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 and he strangles her with the tresses she has 
 profaned. 
 
 The scene of another novel of Rodenbach's, 
 Le Carillonneur> is likewise in Bruges. The hero, 
 Joris Borluut, is an architect, whose life is devoted 
 to restoring the crumbling masonry of the city. 
 In his love of its far-famed chimes he also acts as 
 a bellringer. His wife's sister is in love with him, 
 and one day she yields to her passion when under 
 the influence of religious suggestion. The rest 
 of the book describes her repentance, and that 
 of Borluut. 
 
 There was for some years a cult of Rodenbach. 
 It was followed by the inevitable reaction ; and 
 some of us in recent years have been told not to 
 read him at all. His best friends have not been 
 loyal to his memory ; they have allowed him to 
 fall into neglect without protest. He is one of 
 those poets who lend themselves to cheap criti- 
 cism ; he wrote a great deal of poor stuff, as all 
 pampered poets do ; but he has written a certain 
 number of flawless poems ; he has created a 
 legend, the legend of "the dead city," of an ideal 
 
 Flanders dying in devout prayer ; and he (great 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 talker as he was) devised before Maeterlinck a 
 ritual of silence which is ever a quiet refuge for 
 hearts sick of what sometimes seems the blatant, 
 dusty optimism of the present fashion. Some day, 
 when people are sick of violence, there will be a 
 Rodenbach revival. 
 
 Georges Rodenbach, as everybody knows, was 
 Verhaeren's schoolfellow at the College of Sainte- 
 Barbe in Ghent. A few years later three other 
 future poets were schoolfellows in the same un- 
 willing nursery of Belgian verse. These were 
 Maurice Maeterlinck, Charles van Lerberghe, and 
 Gregoire Le Roy. 
 
 Charles van Lerberghe will perhaps never be 
 appreciated as he should be in English-speaking 
 lands. He is a poets' poet. . . . While we are 
 lauding Maeterlinck and Verhaeren to the skies, 
 the other Belgian poets smile. Ask a Belgian 
 writer who is the greatest poet of his nation, and 
 the answer is pretty sure to be : Charles van 
 Lerberghe. / 
 
 Of course, it is rather foolish to fix the values 
 of poets in superlatives. So much would depend, 
 
 for instance, on what one means by "poet." Ver- 
 
 200
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 haeren, no doubt, is a greater writer than van 
 Lerberghe he has a vaster sweep, he is nearer 
 the beating heart of the present, he appeals to 
 multitudes, whereas van Lerberghe is the poet of 
 a few. The great mass of Verhaeren's poetry is 
 rhetoric ; in Charles van Lerberghe, on the other 
 hand, there is not a trace of rhetoric. Van Ler- 
 berghe's lyrics cannot be recited, they can only 
 be sung. Victor Hugo and Verhaeren are im- 
 mense poets ; Verlaine and van Lerberghe are 
 intense poets. . . It is the eternal rivalry between 
 the popular poet and the divine poet, between 
 Byron and Shelley. 
 
 Charles van Lerberghe was born in Ghent in 
 1 86 1. His parents died while he was quite a boy, 
 and Maeterlinck's uncle then acted as his guardian. 
 He first attracted attention by the verses he con- 
 tributed to La Pltiade in 1886; and the most 
 fascinating poems in Le Parnasse de la Jeune 
 Belgique are his. In Paris he became known 
 when, in 1892, his little play "for marionettes," 
 Les Flairenrs, was acted at the Theatre d'Art. 
 It had appeared in La Wallonie for 1889, just a 
 
 year before Maeterlinck's L Intruse appeared in 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 the same review. The two dramas have much in 
 common : the dialogue is vaguely similar, though 
 much more rapid and energetic in van Lerberghe's 
 play ; and the main idea, the coming of Death to 
 a sick person, is the same in both. Charges of 
 plagiarism have been made against both writers, 
 but particularly against Maeterlinck, who accord- 
 ing to the innuendoes of some writers derived all 
 that makes his originality from his bosom friend. 
 The truth is known only to Maeterlinck himself 
 and to Albert Mockel, the custodian of van 
 Lerberghe's memoirs. The truth no doubt is that 
 the two friends discussed the idea, and treated it 
 by common accord each in his own way. As a. 
 matter of fact, Maeterlinck helped van Lerberghe 
 in the composition of his play : one of the most 
 vivid touches the stage direction : " The blind is 
 raised, the window is lit up, and the shadow of 
 the hearse is projected on the wall " is by 
 Maeterlinck. 
 
 Van Lerberghe was a desultory student, but 
 his mind was very scholarly. He had periods of 
 intense and chambered study, and, apart from his 
 
 university degree of Doctor of Philosophy, ac- 
 
 202
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 quired at Brussels, his reading of the ancients had 
 made him a good classic. (Most of the Belgian 
 writers are hardly scholars in the English sense, 
 though practically every one of them has all the 
 history of art at his fingers' ends.) In 1898 
 appeared his first volume of verse, Entrevisions, 
 which at once placed him in the front rank of 
 contemporary lyrists. They are lyrics which by 
 a selection of titles suggest the atmosphere of the 
 Song of Songs. But they are more than love- 
 songs. In Entrevisions Love himself is prisoned 
 in music. It is all a music of suggestion ; nothing 
 is clearly expressed. The images are sensuous ; 
 but the feeling they awaken is not sensuous. Love 
 is etherealised ; the body is a shadow ; here soul 
 calls to soul. 
 
 After the publication of Entrevisions van Ler- 
 berghe travelled considerably. He stayed in 
 London, "and there, probably, he read Rossetti, 
 whose influence on his work is discernible. But 
 the chief formative influence in his mature work 
 is that of his stay in Italy. On his way there he 
 made a halt in Berlin, where Stefan George took 
 
 him about. Some of the letters he wrote on this 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 tour have been published ; l they are exceedingly 
 interesting, full of malice and very much to the 
 point, not in the least nebulous, as from his poetry 
 one would have expected them to be. Here is an 
 impression of Berlin : 
 
 " I rather like Berlin. It is what they call in German 
 eine grosse Stadt ; freely translated, a gross town. The 
 monuments are pompous, classical, imperial ; the streets 
 are symmetrical, populous, interminable, stupid, but amus- 
 ing. The famous ' Under den Linden ' is a vast boule- 
 vard where I did in fact notice various trees. This 
 morning I saw something fine : soldiers returning from 
 the Kaiser's palace, but what soldiers ! Giants (at least 
 they seemed so in the fog) wrapped in long cloaks, and 
 with metal helmets surmounted by eagles with spread 
 wings. They were carrying white banners with golden 
 eagles, which were crowned, I don't know why, with 
 laurel leaves. A scene from the middle ages. And this 
 is the twentieth century. But all that relates to the army 
 here has a real greatness. They have put a lot of their 
 genius into that." 
 
 In Rome, where he stayed seven months, he 
 worked at his new volume of verse, La Chanson 
 (fve (The Song of Eve), and his comedy Pan. 
 Albert Mockel joined him, and they went to- 
 
 1 La Vie Intellectuelle, Jan., Feb., March 1913. 
 204
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 gether to Florence, where, in the beautiful sur- 
 roundings of an old manor where Galileo once lived, 
 La Chanson d 'Eve made progress. One of van 
 Lerberghe's letters throws light on the composition 
 of his masterpiece : 
 
 " All my poems, as Maeterlinck and other people have 
 said, are pictures. My Song of Eve is just as much 
 painted as it is sung, so they say, and they are quite 
 right. I used to spend hours in the morning, hours of 
 ecstatic adoration, before paintings like Botticelli's Birth 
 of Venus or Leonardi's Annunciation, and then I would 
 return to my Eve's garden at the Torre del Gallo with 
 my eyes dazzled." 
 
 On his return to Belgium he obtained an 
 appointment under the Government as an attache 
 at the Muse"e du Cinquantenaire, with the magnifi- 
 cent salary of 1200 francs per annum! He very 
 soon scandalised his family by relinquishing this 
 position. 
 
 The Mercure de France treated him generously 
 enough when, on the publication of La Chanson 
 dlive in 1904, they gave him 500 francs for the 
 first edition ; but evidently he could not hope to 
 
 live by literature. Pan was acted at the Theatre 
 
 205
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 de 1'CEuvre and published by the Mercure in 
 1906, and the comedy attracted attention at home 
 and abroad ; but in September of the same year 
 van Lerberghe was struck down by the mental 
 illness which ended in a tragically early death 
 a year later. His family were mainly concerned 
 with saving his soul, which, as they thought, had 
 been lost by the blasphemies of Pan, and accord- 
 ing to their account he was " converted " on his 
 deathbed. 
 
 Some day, it is to be hoped, a detailed 
 biography of van Lerberghe, together with his 
 correspondence and memoirs, will be issued. (His 
 delightful Contes, too, of which several have ap- 
 peared in Vers et Prose and other journals, need 
 collecting.) None of the Belgians is more inter- 
 esting as a man. He was not at all the angel, 
 the ethereal dreamer one would imagine him to 
 be from his poems. 
 
 He was a grown man, not at all an eternal 
 cherub ; he was big of bone, with the frame of an 
 athletic Englishman, a great eater and drinker, 
 and (apparently) a great lover. Those who have 
 
 read his verse and imagined their own picture of 
 
 206
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 him are bound to be shocked when they first see 
 his portrait. He had the appearance of a big, 
 awkward farmer ; and he had a habit of blushing 
 when spoken to. 
 
 La Chanson d"ve is the purest work of poetry 
 in Belgian literature. There is not a line which 
 could be rendered in verse ; there is not a stanza 
 which could even approximately be translated into 
 any language. The poem must be taken as it is, 
 with its incomparably musical rhythms, its visions 
 of white limbs emerging for a moment from the 
 morning mists in an enchanted garden, its delicate 
 suggestions of the rapture and sadness of human 
 life as determined by the awakening and the 
 blossoming and the withering of love. It is the 
 song of Eve, because Eve was woman, and woman 
 is the flower of Paradise, the fate of man. "It is 
 the divine youth of the first woman," says Albert 
 Mockel in his masterly critique, " but it is at the 
 same time the eternal legend of the maiden who 
 awakens from innocence to love, to the intoxication 
 of understanding and the sadness of knowledge." 
 We have at the commencement Eve awakening 
 
 in the Garden of Eden to the things around her, 
 
 207
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 with which she is one : she is the sun that dazzles 
 her eyes, she is the flowers she breathes, and she 
 does not know where she ends and where she 
 begins. She is the angel spirit come to a be- 
 wildering earth from where she knows not, and 
 we do not ,see her in the full light of day she is 
 a voice sweetly singing the mysteries of existence ; 
 we do not see Eve, we see her shadow : 
 
 " In a perfume of white roses 
 She sits, dream-fast ; 
 
 And the shadow is beautiful as though an angel there 
 were glassed. 
 
 " The gloam descends, the grove reposes ; 
 The leaves and branches through, 
 On the gold Paradise is opening one of blue. 
 
 " A last faint wave breaks on the darkening shore. 
 A voice that sang just now is murmuring. 
 A murmuring breath is breathing . . . now no more. 
 
 " In the silence petals fall. . . ." 
 
 " Eve is everywhere present," says Jean Dominique, 1 
 " radiant, innocent, and beautiful. Angels guide her feet, 
 and they are so eager to guard her from ill that their 
 encircling wings meet round her shoulders. She speaks, 
 and her voice, like that of princesses in fairy tales, breathes 
 
 1 Le^Thyrse, March 1913. 
 208
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 roses ; and her laughter rings out in radiance. She 
 kisses the ashes on a bed of leaves, and her scented 
 breath kindles the flame again. . . . Then Eve meets 
 the bird of Desire. She cannot help but follow it, she 
 is weary, but as she approaches the bird, it flies farther 
 away, ever farther among the tree-tops. For the first 
 time she feels that her smile withers, and the chaste 
 shadow of melancholy falls across her girl's voice." 
 
 This is the hour of temptation. Danger is lurk- 
 ing in the woods and waters, but his hyacinthine 
 hair is wreathed with roses, and his face is like the 
 face of Love. She knows that her own body is a 
 garden of Eden flowered with all perfumes to call 
 thither the Elect : 
 
 " Art thou waking, my perfume sunny, 
 My perfume of gilded bees, 
 Art thou floating along the breeze, 
 My perfume of sweet honey ? 
 
 " In the hush of the gloam, when my feet 
 Roam through the rich garden-closes, 
 Dost thou tell I am coming, thou smell 
 Of my lilies, and my warm roses ? 
 
 " Am I not like in this gloam a 
 Cluster of fruit concealed 
 By the leaves, and by nothing revealed, 
 
 Save in the night its aroma ? 
 
 209 O
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Does he know, now the hour is dim, 
 That I am half opening my hair, 
 Does he know that it scents the air, 
 Does its odour reach to him ? 
 
 " Does he feel I am straining my arms ? 
 And that the lilies of my valleys 
 Are dewy with passion-balm 
 That for his touching tarries ? " 
 
 Men come to her, and she says, full of pity 
 and tenderness : 
 
 " They can speak nothing yet, 
 But often their eyes are wet : 
 I am all things they ever have desired . . . 
 A dewy rose in the dawn am I. ... 
 They are tired, so tired. . . . 
 They have long been coming to where I lie. . . ." 
 
 " Thus," to continue Jean Dominique's interpretation 
 (which is all a-tremble with a loving penetration), " though . 
 nothing has troubled the unconsciousness and the sim- 
 plicity of the man and the woman, by the same miracle 
 of nature that in virgin forests bends down the flowering 
 crown of a tree over another that it is to fertilise thus, 
 in this landscape of Eden a sacred song unites those who 
 were created for Love and Death and for our sister, 
 Melancholy.' 5 
 
 The third book, La Faute, bears this maxim 
 210
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 of Nietzsche : All is innocence. Eve has not 
 sinned, she has fulfilled the destiny of woman 
 and man. Before, her eyes had seen the outer 
 world ; now her soul finds the inner world. She 
 is complete, and she has completed her mate. But, 
 having reached the height of her ascent, she must 
 descend to Death. The shadows fall over Eden, 
 and the angel Azrael comes. 
 
 It is a thankless criticism of La Chanson d* Lve 
 to say that it is nebulous, that the intention does 
 not emerge clearly. To those who have an ear 
 for verbal music but who are too mentally idle to 
 unravel the runes of a symbol, it might have the 
 effect of music without words. Even that would 
 be something ; but those who do not care for the 
 obvious in poetry find much more than subtle 
 melodies in this masterpiece of a great poet. 
 
 There is no obscurity in Pan, at all events. 
 The obscurantists were quick to find the meaning, 
 and to denounce it. By this comedy, far and away 
 the best in Belgian literature, van Lerberghe made 
 himself impossible in official Belgium and in ortho- 
 dox society (to which by upbringing he belonged). 
 
 And yet the play is no more than a rollicking pre- 
 
 211
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 sentation of Pantheism. Perhaps van Lerberghe 
 was the only Belgian poet of his generation who 
 might have developed into a great dramatist ; the 
 characters of Pan at all events, including the de- 
 lightful bouc communal, have the red life's blood 
 of the stage. But owing to its risky character 
 Pan can never be a repertory play. 
 
 The name of Grdgoire Le Roy is indissolubly 
 associated with those of Maeterlinck and van Ler- 
 berghe. It was at his house that van Lerberghe 
 was struck down in September 1906 ; and it was 
 Le Roy who revealed Maeterlinck to the circle of 
 La Pltiade in Paris, when he read his friend's 
 story The Massacre of the Innocents to them. 
 Gre"goire Le Roy, who was born in 1862 in Ghent, 
 has had many irons in the fire, and it is only in 
 recent years that, obtaining an appointment (after 
 official insults) as Librarian of the Academic Royale 
 des Beaux-Arts at Brussels, he has settled down 
 to write poems and tales. He abandoned juris- 
 prudence to study painting (for a time in Paris) ; 
 he abandoned painting to be an electrical engineer 
 ("Gre*goire 1'electrique " van Lerberghe calls him 
 
 quizzingly in his correspondence) ; and he aban- 
 
 212
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 doned that profession, apparently to be a dreamer. 
 In 1887 appeared his little volume of verse, La 
 Chanson du Soir (edition of twenty copies avis 
 aux amateurs /). Mon Cceur pleure (Tautrefois fol- 
 lowed, in an Edition de luxe? in 1889. These two 
 volumes are now united in La Chanson du Pauvre, 
 a not voluminous yellow-back published by the 
 Mercure de France. It would be idle to claim 
 too much importance for these poems. They have 
 a distinctive charm, a cachet of pensive melancholy. 
 But, with the exception of a few, they are not 
 markedly original in phrasing or rhythm. Gregoire 
 Le Roy is the poet of an attitude : he is (even in 
 his earlier years) "the silvery sentimentalist of old 
 age " dreaming of the things of the past, an eman- 
 cipated moralist offering sage counsels to incon- 
 siderate youth. One of his poems, Le Passe" qui 
 File (The Spinster Past), is the favourite poem of 
 Belgian reciters ; it is as ubiquitous as Longfellow's 
 Psalm of Life; more than any other Belgian poem 
 it has become a folksong. It is that rare thing, 
 a poem of simple and popular appeal written by 
 
 1 With drawings by Fernand Khnopff and a frontispiece by 
 Georges Minne. 
 
 213
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 a Primitive Symbolist (but Gregoire Le Roy never 
 wrote Mallarmese he adopted the stock figures 
 of speech and the assonances of the symbolist 
 tribe, but not their remoteness and complexity) : 
 
 " The old woman spins, and her wheel 
 Is prattling of old, old things ; 
 As though to a doll she sings, 
 And memories over her steal. 
 
 " The hemp is yellow and long, 
 The old woman spins the thread, 
 Bending her white weary head 
 Over the wheel's lying song. 
 
 " The wheel goes round with a whirl, 
 The yellow hemp is unwound, 
 She turns it round and round, 
 She is playing like a girl. 
 
 " The yellow hemp is unwound, 
 She sees herself a girl, 
 As blonde as the skeins that whirl, 
 She is dancing round and round. 
 
 " The wheel rolls round with a whirr, 
 And tHe hemp is humming as well, 
 She hears an old lover tell 
 And whisper his love for her. 
 214
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " Her tired hands rest above 
 The wheel, her spinning is done ; 
 And with the hemp are spun 
 Her memories of love." 
 
 For about twenty years Le Roy published no- 
 thing new. Then he became editor of Le Masque ; 
 and his talent seemed to take on a new lease of 
 youth, which enabled him to revive his legend of 
 dreamful eld. La Couronne des Soirs (1911) has 
 a new note of wise tenderness, of contentment with 
 nature under the very wings of Death. 
 
 This legendary greybeard's recollections of 
 olden days have now a dulled regret of physical 
 sensations : 
 
 " My poor hands, so wan and faded, 
 Agile once as a bird, 
 My rhythms of speech you aided, 
 And by my brain you were stirred ; 
 
 " Poor wrinkled hands, like two 
 Old women worn and wizened, 
 My thoughts run on, but you 
 In listlessness are prisoned. 
 
 " Yet I bless you, my hands, now that strife 
 Is done, and the heart reposes ; 
 You taught me the touch of roses, 
 And the caresses of life." 
 215
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 But it needed Le Rouet et la Besace (The 
 Spinning- Wheel and the Wallet) to discover 
 all the fascination of Grdgoire Le Roy's mystic 
 Muse. This Edition de luxe is ornamented by the 
 poet's own drawings wonderful pictures which 
 actually seem to be more laden with poetry than 
 the poems themselves. Here is the hearth corner, 
 with the cane-bottomed chair and the spinning- 
 wheel and the wallet ; and the wallet, dreaming of 
 all the roads of the earth, chides the spinning- 
 wheel for its love of the hearth-corner. Here is 
 the picture of a lonely cottage half hidden behind 
 a row of poplar-trees, set in the midst of bare, flat 
 fields that seem to stretch to infinity, and the 
 legend is : " Will he come ? " Somebody is wait- 
 ing for somebody to come, watching the horizon, 
 wearily. Here are Flemish houses, all higgledy- 
 piggledy with their gables and their skylights, 
 overshadowing a Flemish river, where boats are 
 gliding on to the sea in an endless procession : 
 perhaps 'one of them will bring happiness to the 
 watcher at the window ; perhaps happiness has 
 already glided past. . . . Here is the end of a 
 
 village with a broken-down old pilgrim come home 
 
 216
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 at last : do you remember, lady, the pensive poet 
 who was your guest long ago ? He has pilgrimed 
 round his heart and the world, and now he is the 
 old man who has come back to you. . . . Here 
 are the black masts of a great ship against the 
 setting sun, and serried ranks of emigrants marching 
 thither the poet has seen them passing and passing 
 to their far adventures ; as for him, he has never 
 left his home and his little garden. But he has 
 seen everything, and his wandering soul is tired 
 of everything, and his ship, his little barque, is 
 waiting to take him to the farther shore. Here a 
 drawing of almost unendurable sadness is an old 
 man playing a guitar in a deserted, cobbled street ; 
 his cloak and beard are ragged, his face is haggard 
 with hopeless despair and he is singing of love. 
 
 If Le Rouet et la Besace is an old man's book, 
 it proves that Gre"goire Le Roy had to grow old 
 before he could realise his legend. It is stronger, 
 because it is sadder, than the books of the poet's 
 youth. After all, in those days, autrefois was the 
 future. 
 
 There is a sage's gentle philosophy, too, in 
 
 Joe Trimborn (1913), the collection of short stories 
 
 217
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 which must have come as a surprise to those 
 who thought Le Roy was a lyrist pure and 
 simple. They would be among the most remark- 
 able of Belgian short stories if only by virtue of 
 their quaint humour. Perhaps it is not betraying 
 too much of a secret if one mentions, too, that 
 Contes d'Apres Minuit (Brussels, 1913), a book 
 of grotesque stories with a satirical vein, are by 
 Gregoire Le Roy. If one may read between the 
 lines of the preface, they owe something to the 
 collaboration of Charles van Lerberghe. 
 
 Albert Mockel is as complex as Gregoire Le 
 Roy is simple. There is an outward show of 
 simplicity in his learned verse, due to his imitation 
 of old folksongs, but the appearance is very de- 
 ceptive. His first volume of verse, Chantefable 
 un pen naive, which had considerable influence on 
 the symbolist movement, is as difficult to explore 
 as a virgin forest. But if it is a virgin forest of 
 packed and tufted ideas, there is a delirious music 
 singing in the branches, and to the strayed reveller 
 who is lost therein and beguiled it does not seem 
 to be at all important to find a path out of the 
 
 wood. 
 
 218
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 Mockel was editor, at Liege, of La Wallonie 
 when Chantefable un pen na'ive gave him his 
 captaincy in the symbolist army. La Wallonie 
 was one of the most important of the symbolist 
 reviews, for France as well as for Belgium. In 
 its pages are to be found poems by the most 
 distinguished French and Belgian poets of the 
 day, side by side with the promising work of Bel- 
 gian writers Auguste Vierset, Hector Chainaye, 
 Ce*lestin Demblon, Jules Destre"e who have since 
 been more or less lost to literature in the busy 
 tides of journalism or politics. With Lige 
 Mockel's whole life is connected : he was born in 
 the province (1866), he was educated there, and, 
 though for some years he has resided in Paris 
 and the neighbourhood, he has returned periodi- 
 cally to conduct his Walloon campaign. With 
 Jules Destre"e he is a leader of those Belgians 
 who see a national peril in the machinations of 
 the Flemings ; and in the interest of the cause he 
 has so much at heart he has written and set to 
 music his famous Chant de la Wallonie^ a party 
 cry which may yet (unless the war brings sager 
 
 counsels) become a battle cry. Strange to say, 
 
 219
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 this ardent champion of French culture against 
 Germanic culture is himself of German descent ! 
 
 Mockel's ripest verse which has so far been 
 published in book form is contained in Clartis 
 (1902), though fragments have appeared from time 
 to time in journals of a new volume, La Flamme 
 Immortelle. One of the best poems in Clartts is 
 the " Song of Running Water." It sings the 
 transitoriness of all that is : everything flows away 
 like a river, impelled beyond the bounds of time 
 by resistless desire. 
 
 The symbols of some of the other poems are 
 more transparent. "The Goblet," for instance, 
 is Woman, or (more narrowly) the Courtesan : 
 
 " Every hand that touches me I greet 
 With kisses welcoming, caresses sweet. 
 
 " Thus in my crystal's naked beauty, I 
 With nothing save a little gold as on my lips a dye 
 Give myself wholly to the mouth unknown 
 That seeks the burning of my own. 
 
 " Queen of joy, queen and slave 
 Mistress that taken passes on again, 
 Mocking the love she throws to still 
 Desire, I have blown madness at my pleasure's will 
 To the four winds that rave. 
 
 220
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " Say you that I am vain ? 
 List! 
 
 I am feeble, scarcely I exist. . . . 
 Yet listen : for I can be everything. 
 
 " This mouth, that never any kiss could close, 
 Capriciously in subtle fires it blows, 
 The jewelled garlands of a shadowy blossoming. 
 
 " For the lover drunken on my lips that burn, 
 Whether he pour in turn 
 
 The wines of gold and flame or love's wave to my rim, 
 Drinks from my soul for ever strange to him 
 A queenly splendour or the radiance of the skies, 
 Or fury scorching where the harmful ruby lies 
 In the bitter counsel of my jealous topazes. 
 
 " And, tears or joy, delirium, daring drunkenness, 
 From all this passion that to his is married 
 Nothing of me will gush unto his arid 
 Lips, save the simple and the limpid light 
 Whose gleam is wedded to my empty chalice. 
 
 " What matter ? I have given Desire his cloudland palace, 
 And on my courtesan's bare breast 
 Love lets the hope of his diaphanous flight 
 Languish, and softly rest. . . . 
 And I laugh, the fragile, frivolous sister of Eve ! 
 For me in nights of madness drunken hands upheave 
 
 221
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Higher than all foreheads to the constellated skies, 
 And then I am the sudden star of lies, 
 That into troubled joys darts deep its radiant gleam 
 The sweet, perfidious happiness of Dream." 
 
 Mockel's prose is more widely read than his 
 verse. Unfortunately, much of the good prose he 
 wrote for La Wallonie and other journals, at the 
 time when he was described by CeUestin Demblon 
 as " a Walloon dandy, outrageously intellectual and 
 despotically symbolistic," has not been quarried by 
 the publishers. A little book of his in which he 
 caricatured his colleagues and himself, Les Fum- 
 istes Wallons, appeared in 1887; but, like Chante- 
 fable, this book cannot now be got for love or 
 money. (It is doubly a collector's book: it is a 
 document in the history of the symbolist move- 
 ment, and its very beautiful frontispiece was the 
 first published work of Armand Rassenfosse.) His 
 volumes of criticism which still remain on sale are 
 Propos de Littdrature (1894), a meticulous com- 
 parison and interpretation of Henri de Re"gnier and 
 Francis Viele-Griffin ; mile Verhaeren (1895); 
 StZphane Mallarmt (1899), the most authoritative 
 
 criticism extant of the origins and aims of sym- 
 
 222
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 holism ; Charles van Lerberghe (1904), adequate 
 as an interpretation but not sufficiently extensive 
 as biography ; and Victor Rousseau, a book on the 
 great Belgian sculptor who during the war has been 
 the guest of Lord Milner. Very rarely indeed has 
 Mockel written criticism which has been belied by 
 time. What he has once said, holds good in spite 
 of all apotheoses and reactions. 
 
 The prose-writers of La Wallonie affected Mal- 
 larmese. In other words their style was affected. 
 Mallarmese prose as written by Mallarme" was a 
 miracle of Stimmung, something absolutely original, 
 the weft and woof of a rare personality ; but the 
 imitative prose of his admirers, tainted often by a 
 farther aberration in the direction of Rene" Ghil, is 
 sometimes curious, sometimes diverting, and some- 
 times appalling. Albert Mockel and several others, 
 however, became great virtuosos in this " symphonic 
 prose," although it should be noted that in their 
 riper years they returned to a saner style. What 
 they were trying to do was to write poetry in 
 prose : even Mockel's criticism is often in the 
 nature of a prose poem, and that is what gives 
 
 it a more permanent value than the voluminous 
 
 223
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 academic criticism of such lucid and shallow writers 
 as Faguet. Mockel is as much a stylist as Walter 
 Pater was. 
 
 " Nothing is nearer a very lyrical song," says 
 Mockel in the preface to his Contes pour les En- 
 fants cPHier (1908), "than a violently burlesque 
 tale." This is a theory, by the most logical and 
 conscientious theorist of Belgian literature, a theorist 
 whose works are usually exemplifications of his 
 theories. But the Contes pour les Enfants d'Hier 
 (Tales for the Children of Yesterday) have not the 
 appearance of having sprung from a theory ; they 
 seem rather to have been born of sheer delight 
 in the burlesque ; and in this case probably the 
 theory was deduced from the completed work. 
 The symbolists, it must be admitted, rode theories 
 to death indeed, some of the most gifted of them 
 theorised themselves to death ; but these tales of 
 Mockel at all events are fresh with the greenness 
 of the tree of life. From Edmund Gosse they 
 won Mockel the title of "a Belgian Ariosto"; and 
 there is adventure enough in them to justify the 
 
 praise, but it is the playful Gallic wit and the 
 
 224
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 scintillant satire that make the great merit of the 
 book. 
 
 La Wallonie lasted seven years a long life 
 for a review which printed nothing but literature. 
 As it declined, another Liege journal, Floreal, 
 founded in 1892 by Paul Ge"rardy, progressed 
 apace, cheered on and congratulated even by its 
 dying rival. Paul Ge"rardy is a curious case. He 
 is a Prussian subject, born in the year of blood at 
 Saint- Vith near Malme'dy. His culture is certainly 
 half German. One of his best books, A la Gloire 
 de Bdcklin, is lyric praise of a German painter. 
 And he has written German poetry of distinction, 
 which is all gathered into the harvest of that 
 masterful chief of formalists, Stefan George. 
 And yet Gdrardy hates Prussia, like a true Belgian ; 
 and his French poetry is more likely to live than 
 his German poetry. His verses, which are col- 
 lected in Roseaux (1898), have the naivete" of folk- 
 songs. How simple and subtle is " Of Sad Joy " : 
 
 " I am angry with you, little girl, 
 Because of your gracious smiles, 
 And your restful lips, and teeth of pearl, 
 And the black glitter of your great eyes. 
 
 225 P
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " I am angry with you, but on my knees, 
 For when I went away, in happy wise, 
 Far from you, far as goes the breeze, 
 I could think of nothing but of your eyes. 
 
 " I was timid, I never looked back, 
 And I went singing as madmen do, 
 To forget your eyes, alack ! 
 But my song was all about you." 
 
 " Some Song or Other " is a little snatch of 
 music that holds all the melancholy of the symbolist 
 attitude : 
 
 " The song of moonlight all 
 That trembles as aspens shake, 
 The thrush sang it at the evenfall 
 To the listening swan on the blue lake. 
 
 " It is all of love and distress, 
 And of joy and love, and then 
 There are sobs of gold and weariness, 
 And ever comes joy back again. 
 
 " Far, far away flew the thrush, 
 And the swan went pondering 
 All the new words, by lily and rush, 
 With his head underneath his wing." 
 
 G^rardy is the one satirist of the Belgians. 
 
 (Courouble deals rather in caricature ; and the satire 
 
 226
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 of Mockel's Contes pour les Enfants d Hier is 
 softened by the grotesqueness of burlesque). Les 
 Carnets du Roi (1903) is a delightful satire on the 
 late King Leopold so delightful that his Majesty 
 himself is said to have read it with immense gusto. 
 Le Chinois tel quon le parle (1903) shows up the 
 Belgian magistracy. A satire which will no doubt 
 be reprinted and have a long lease of life is S. 
 M. Patacake, Empereur dOccitanie ( 1 904) ; the 
 hero is the German Emperor. Gerardy, by the 
 way, is the editor of the new Belgian paper, La 
 Belgique Nouvelle. 
 
 Another poet of Lie"ge is Isi-Collin, who founded 
 the review Antee, which published much new work 
 of importance, including translations of Arthur 
 Symons. Antee was the organ of the "ide"o- 
 realiste " school. Isi-Collin's La ValUe Heureuse 
 (1903) garners the harvest of a quiet eye: here 
 are notations of nature pregnant with the very 
 essence of poetry. The verse has a stately build 
 (Isi-Collin, like Paul Gerardy, has learnt much 
 from Mockel these three might be grouped to- 
 gether as the Liege school) ; it has the music of 
 
 an organ heard from afar. 
 
 227
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 La Vallee Heureuse, with its frontispiece by 
 Armand Rassenfosse, is a book for collectors of 
 beautiful editions (those true bibliophiles who handle 
 their treasures with loving fingers and rarely risk 
 soiling the thick pages by reading them). For 
 these people Isi-Collin's La Divine Rencontre, pub- 
 lished by Desoer at Li6ge in 1913, is a prize 
 beyond estimation. The printing and the orna- 
 mentation are so beautiful that the contents almost 
 seem to fade into insignificance. And yet there 
 is purport in this chiselled prose : a pantheist 
 steeped in modernism goes forth into the forest 
 and meets Pan himself. They have some con- 
 versation, but the pantheist does not understand 
 Pan, and he returns to town, to the pantheism 
 of his three-franc-fifty yellow-backs ... for your 
 modern pantheist is "sincerely artificial and arti- 
 ficially sincere." (" If you were an animal, well 
 and good," says Nietzsche, " but to be an animal 
 you would have to be innocent.") Sisyphe et le 
 Juif Errant, finally, is a dramatic dialogue pub- 
 lished in 1914, and produced by The Pioneer 
 Players in London on March 7th, 1915. 
 
 When literary men are gathered together and 
 
 228
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 the futile question is asked : Who is the greatest 
 of Belgian poets ? there would be some who would 
 leap over Charles van Lerberghe and give the 
 highest rank to that tender and delicate dreamer 
 cloistered in Antwerp, Max Elskamp, he whose 
 voice, once vibrating with a very frenzy of happi- 
 ness, has now grown silent in sadness. Elskamp 
 is not so powerful as Verhaeren, for he sings in 
 a tower of ivory, not in the roaring world ; he is 
 not so perfect a melodist as van Lerberghe, but 
 by how slight a degree does he come second ! And 
 he has qualities which no other poet has : if van 
 Lerberghe shadows forth the soul of Man and 
 Woman, the sources of being, the rapture of con- 
 summation, the sadness of knowledge, Elskamp 
 images the universe in his own happy Flanders, 
 the Flanders of Holy Church, mirrors his own 
 soul (which is the soul of Man) in that of his native 
 city of Antwerp. All the joy of pure and contrite 
 hearts wells up in the verse of Max Elskamp, in 
 his anthems of the Sabbath for the Sabbath is 
 joy ; and when he weaves, like a black thread in 
 a golden woof, the weariness of the working-days 
 
 (which are death) into the singing ecstasy of his 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 fervour, it is only such a weariness as a saintly 
 worshipper feels in the week's dust, because the 
 Sabbath with its peace and devotion is long in 
 coming, and even so he consoles with the promise 
 of a Sunday that shall aye endure, "and all at 
 the heart of a far domain." No one can mistake 
 the very passion of ecstasy there is in the darkest- 
 coloured of Max Elskamp's songs : 
 
 " Oh, Mary Mother, be a black-robed nun . . . 
 Now is the season of all suffering come . . ." 
 
 is not that a call to the ecstasy of suffering, 
 suffering which is a source of joy eternal, and 
 therefore itself a joy? Sunday bells ring all 
 through the melodies of this dizzily dreaming 
 mystic, in Flanders with its poplar-shaded ways 
 by the sea that kisses the yellow dunes. 
 
 The highest praise that can be given to any 
 poet is to say that he is original, that he himself 
 and no other man is all he has sung. Of Max 
 Elskamp this can be said with confidence. An 
 academic critic with his ferreting nose and unseeing 
 eyes might trace the outward shape of the stanzas, 
 
 some of the tricks of diction, the enchanting asson- 
 
 230
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 ances which disgust one for ever with the formalist's 
 welter of close-fitting rhymes, to the quaint irregu- 
 larities of the folksong. It needs no great read- 
 ing to find out that Georges Khnopff, another 
 Flemish mystic on whose frail verse the dust of 
 neglect is gathering now, had fashioned such sym- 
 bolist hymns before Elskamp ; but the inner music, 
 all the miracle of meaning, all the fervour of the 
 song rising to a height where the human voice can 
 go no farther and must rest all this is Elskamp's 
 own, and there is nothing at all like it in any other 
 man's verse. 
 
 Max Elskamp was born of a French mother 
 and a Flemish father in 1862 in Antwerp, in a 
 street where the flags of the Consulates tell of dis- 
 tant lands whence come the ships " clustered like 
 a choir " in the harbour. He grew up among 
 merchandise (for his grandfather was a shipper) ; 
 and commerce was a dream to him. Dominical 
 (1892) was his first book. It was a beautiful edition 
 with a cover ornamented by Henry Van de Velde, 
 that great Flemish artist who, finding scant en- 
 couragement in his own country, emigrated to 
 
 Germany and there, continuing the work of William 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Morris, inaugurated a new era in decorative art.* 
 Van de Velde, too, ornamented the next three 
 volumes of Elskamp : Salutations, dont dAngel- 
 iques (1893) ; & n Symbole vers FApostolat (1895) ; 
 and Six Chansons de Pauvre Homme (1896). 
 These four books are collected in La Louange de 
 la Vie, published by the Mercure de France in 1898. 
 The next volume of verse, Enluminures (1898), is 
 illustrated by the poet himself. 
 
 Few symbolist authors need interpreting more 
 than Max Elskamp. It is not that his symbols 
 are recondite as a matter of fact they are so 
 restricted that a little familiarity makes them 
 seem quite natural and clear. The difficulty is 
 that he makes use of local customs and of 
 fragments of old ballads. As an example of his 
 difficulty, a famous poem from Dominical might 
 be taken : 
 
 " And the town of My thousand souls, 
 
 Do you sleep, do you sleep ? 
 It is Sunday, My women folks, 
 And My town, do you sleep ? 
 
 1 Henry Van de Velde's most important criticism is in German 
 (Essays, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1910). 
 
 232
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " And you Jews, the shame of My alleys, 
 
 Do you sleep, do you sleep ? 
 Antiquities and Laces 
 
 Even the Jews, do you sleep ? 
 
 " And you, My gentle candle-merchants, 
 
 Do you sleep, do you sleep ? 
 While Her litanies soar to the Virgin, 
 Do you sleep, do you sleep ? 
 
 " Steeples, your hours have been stolen, 
 
 Do you sleep, do you sleep ? 
 
 Friar Jacques, in the habitation 
 
 Of what sleep do you sleep ? 
 
 " Good people, this is the Sabbath 
 
 And the windows with frost are hoar, 
 In the city that the flags of 
 
 The Consulates are hanging o'er." 
 
 The general sense, even in the rude transla- 
 tion, should be clear at first reading. The Virgin 
 is bending over a Flemish city, which the last line 
 localises as Antwerp ; it is a Sabbath morning 
 bright with hoar-frost ; and the virgin is waiting 
 for the bells to begin and ring Her good people 
 to Church. That is the mood, a mood of glad 
 expectancy of the joys of the Sabbath, the first 
 
 hush of the ecstasy of worship. But the essence 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 of this poem is its blending of the mood with a 
 most delicate humour. That gay words and posi- 
 tive chaffing should be placed in the mouth of the 
 Holy Virgin is quite in the spirit of the old Flem- 
 ish songs which are ever at the back of Max 
 Elskamp's mind in the folksong the humour would 
 very likely have been coarse : Elskamp refines it, 
 that is all. The virgin, then, waiting for the incense 
 of Her bells, chides Her women for lying abed ; 
 She mocks the Jews in the old curiosity shops 
 in the side streets ; nay, the very merchants of Her 
 holy candles are still sleeping ; the steeples seem 
 to think that their bells have gone on their 
 annual pilgrimage to Rome ; and even Friar Jacques 
 is sleeping yet, he of the old song that every- 
 body knows : 
 
 " Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, 
 
 Dormez-vous, dormez-vous ? 
 Sonnez les matines, 
 
 Bim ! Bam ! Bourn ! " 
 
 (Notice the assonance in the folksong vous: 
 Bourn: Elskamp has many such.) The last stanza 
 has the superb musical climax of so many of 
 
 Elskamp's songs : at this moment, one imagines, 
 
 234
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 the bells ring out, Friar James having run up 
 into the belfry tower three steps at a time at 
 the Virgin's gentle chiding ; and now the good 
 burghers' dames come forth, and the candle-mer- 
 chant is ready with his wares, and the Jews in 
 the by-streets peer out over the curios and the 
 old lace in their shop-windows, and the sun shines 
 out on the hoar-frost and the waving banners of 
 the Consulates. 
 
 That is the manner of the poems in La Louange 
 de la Vie. You must know the key-words; then 
 your heart can dance along with the verse, dance 
 as the very trees dance when joy (or Sunday) is 
 in the land. 
 
 There is not in Elskamp's verse the sudden 
 shock of the sublime, but there is the continuous 
 thrill of images full of grace and charm. Poem 
 sings to poem ; the music swells and sinks ; the 
 whole book is a peal of belfry bells. Everything 
 is in harmony with the Roman Catholic ritual ; 
 and the good Catholics find nothing offensive in 
 the playful spirit that makes symbols of the Virgin 
 and Jesus, and expresses an artist's disgust with 
 
 ugly things by dreaming that the Mother of God 
 
 235
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 looks down on drunken soldiers reeling through 
 the streets of Antwerp and mourns : 
 
 " And I am sad as with the brandy 
 Which brings the soldiers late to barracks, 
 Upon the Sunday drunk with brandy, 
 Within My streets all full of soldiers, 
 I have the sadness of much brandy." 
 
 Enluminures is merely a continuation of La 
 Louange de la Vie. All Elskamp's work is this 
 Song of Praise ; all his poems illuminate the manu- 
 script of Life in its holy moods. One of the 
 poems of this volume seems to me to be the very 
 finest of those songs which ring rhymes on a 
 religious anachronism : 
 
 " And Mary reads a Gospel-page, 
 With folded hands in the silent hours, 
 And Mary reads a Gospel-page, 
 Where the meadow sings with flowers. 
 
 " And all the flowers that star the ground, 
 In the far emerald of the grass, 
 Tell Her how sweet a life they pass, 
 With simple words of dulcet sound. 
 
 " And now the angels in the cloud, 
 And the birds too in chorus sing, 
 While the beasts graze, with foreheads bowed, 
 The plants of scented blossoming. 
 236
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " And Mary reads a Gospel-page, 
 The pealing hours She overhears, 
 Forgets the time, and all the years, 
 For Mary reads a Gospel-page. 
 
 " And masons building cities go 
 Homeward in the evening hours, 
 And o'er gilt cocks on belfry towers 
 Clouds and breezes pass and blow." 
 
 There may be people to whom these symbols 
 may seem childish. They are not childish, but 
 they are childlike. What a naive symbol is that 
 of the Jews "Jews of shame with grey hair" 
 eyesores in a world where Jesus is all rosy and 
 the sky all azure. Elskamp is not necessarily an 
 anti-Semite all that he does is (for the purpose 
 of poetry) to look at Jews "as those in Brittany 
 and childhood do." The jaundiced Protestant, 
 too, would be wrong if he thought the Gospel 
 that Max Elskamp preaches a glaringly Roman 
 Catholic gospel. Let it be whispered that Max 
 Elskamp is a freethinker. . . . 
 
 But orthodox Roman Catholic poets there are 
 in Belgium, the poets who have written for Le 
 Spectateur Catholique and Durendal. The chief 
 
 of them are : Victor Kinon, Thomas Braun, 
 
 237
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Georges Ramaekers, and Pierre Nothomb. Victor 
 Kinon was associated from its first number with 
 Le Spectateur Catholique, a review started by the 
 essayist Edmond de Bruyn, who with Max Elskamp 
 established the Museum of Folklore at Antwerp. 
 Kinon's lyric verse is collected in L?Ame des 
 Saisons (1909). The prevailing note is (if an 
 epigram may be risked) one of realistic mysticism. 
 There are songs which outwardly are in Elskamp's 
 manner ; but the world they move in is real, not 
 Elskamp's dream-world. Kinon's religious fervour 
 has almost the directness of a Salvation Army 
 preacher : 
 
 " Boiled, boiled again, and carbonized 
 Be the old serpent of sin and lies ! 
 
 Pulverized, trod under feet, 
 Be the old serpent of deceit ! " 
 
 But there is another note : that of simplicity in 
 the description of nature, the simplicity of which 
 Francis Jammes is the great master. Kinon (who 
 in spite of his surname is a Fleming) has the 
 
 vivid colouring of his race : 
 
 238
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " The stainless snow and the blue, 
 Lit by a pure gold star, 
 Nearly meet ; but a bar 
 Of fire separates the two. 
 
 " A rime-frosted black pinewood, 
 Raising, as waves roll foam, 
 Its lances toothed like a comb, 
 Dams the horizon's blood. 
 
 " In the tomb of blue and white 
 Nothing stirs save a crow, 
 Unfolding, solemnly slow, 
 Its silky wing black as night." 
 
 Some of his literary criticism (though he is one 
 of the acknowledged mouthpieces of his Church, 
 his verdicts are never intolerant) is collected in 
 Portraits d Auteurs (1910). 
 
 The influence of Francis Jammes is obvious 
 and confessed in the poetry of Thomas Braun, 
 who has, moreover, written a little book on the 
 master of Orthez (Des Poetes Simples: Francis 
 Jammes]. Braun is a Walloon of German descent, 
 but he must be part Fleming, for Verhaeren is 
 his uncle. The fine flower of his genius blooms 
 
 for evermore in his Le Livre des Benedictions^ a 
 
 239
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 beautifully printed and illustrated book produced 
 in 1900 under the auspices of Le Spectateur Catho- 
 lique. These quaint benedictions of the nuptial 
 ring, of the child, of the house, of bread, wine, 
 beer, cheese, &c., summon up all the technical 
 details of the subject to make them sing a robust 
 poetry. Over the Benediction of Beer is a foam- 
 ing mug wreathed with the Flemish legend " Bier 
 in de voile Pot," and the invocation to the Lord, 
 " Quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es." 
 
 What a jolly religion this Roman Catholicism 
 of Flanders is! Here is an invocation full of 
 reverence hands folded by the foaming mug 
 which rolls out the names of the national brews 
 as though the Great Brewer of all for His are 
 the malt and the hops and the glucose and all the 
 other ingredients were personally familiar with 
 the taste of each. There is the same monk's 
 humour (as of a genuinely pious Friar Tuck) in 
 " The Benediction of the Cheeses " : 
 
 " When from the void, good Lord, this earth You raised, 
 You made vast pasture-lands where cattle grazed, 
 Where shepherds led their flocks, and shore their fleeces, 
 And scraped their hides, and cut them into pieces, 
 
 240
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 When they had eaten all their nobler flesh, 
 Which with earth's virgin odour still was fresh. 
 O'er Herve's plateaux our cattle pass, and browse 
 The ripe grass which the mist of summer bows, 
 And over which the scents of forests stream. 
 They give us butter, curds, and milk, and cream. 
 God of the fields, Your cheeses bless to-day, 
 For which Your thankful people kneel and pray. 
 Let them be fat or light, with onions blent, 
 Shallots, brine, pepper, honey; whether scent 
 Of sheep or fields is in them, in the yard 
 Let them, good Lord, at dawn be beaten hard ; 
 And let their edges take on silvery shades 
 Under the most red hands of dairymaids ; 
 And, round and greenish, let them go to town 
 Weighing the shepherd's folding mantle down ; 
 Whether from Parma or from Jura heights, 
 Kneaded by august hands of Carmelites, 
 Stamped with the mitre of a proud abbess, 
 Flowered with the fragrance of the grass of Bresse, 
 From Brie, hills of the Vosges, or Holland's plain, 
 From Roquefort, Gorgonzola, or from Spain ! 
 Bless them, good Lord ! Bless Stilton's royal fare, 
 Red l Cheshire, and the tearful, cream Gruyere ! 
 Bless Kantercaas, and bless the Mayence round, 
 Where aniseed and other grains are found ; 
 Bless Edam, Pottekees, and Gouda then, 
 And those that we salute with ' Sir,' 2 like men." 
 
 1 The Dutch cheese which goes by the name of " Cheshire " 
 is red. 
 
 2 Refers to the French cheese called " Monsieur fromage." 
 
 241 Q
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 There is a more cosmopolitan strangeness in 
 Philatelic (1910). It is a rhymed catalogue of 
 stamps, that is all ; but there is poetry in the 
 rhymes. How playful and tender is this Dutch 
 stamp : 
 
 " Pauvre petite Wilhelmine, 
 tulipe des pays des Cimbres, 
 eus-tu toujours si fraiche mine 
 et tant de joie que sur ces timbres ? " 
 
 In Fumee cTArdenne (1912) we have a Thomas 
 Braun who has grown elegiac. It is good verse, 
 but it has not the strangeness and the almost un- 
 conscious humour of the Benedictions. It is a 
 hunter's book, written in the Ardennes during the 
 long vacation of the Law Courts. For Thomas 
 Braun is not some portly abbot with a well-stocked 
 cellar, he is a busy lawyer in Brussels. He is 
 represented in the British Museum catalogue by 
 a learned book on commercial law by this and 
 no other. . . . And yet he is poet sufficiently im- 
 portant to have had a book written on him 
 Thomas Braun, by Albert de Bersaucourt (Paris, 
 
 Symbolism runs riot in the verse of Georges 
 242
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 Ramaekers (Le Chant des Trots Regnes, 1906; 
 Les Saisons Mystiques, 1910). His Roman Catho- 
 lic fervour knows no bounds ; but the poetry he 
 reads into his sectarian symbols is so striking that 
 he may well be read with pleasure by the very 
 heretics he denounces as mushrooms : 
 
 " In the autumnal thicket, thinned 
 Along its mournful arches by the wind, 
 No longer to dead twigs but sapwood quick, 
 Corrupting trunks that time left whole, 
 The reeking parasites in millions stick, 
 Like to the carnal ill that gnaws the soul 
 Of those who at the feet of women fawn. 
 
 " And Hell has blessed their countless spawn. 
 
 " And though they cannot reach the surging tops 
 Of the unshaken columns of the Church, 
 In spreading crops 
 The parasites with poison smirch 
 And mottle with strange stains the fruits 
 The Monstrance ripens in the groves of Rome. 
 
 "Trusting that ancient orchard's sainted roots, 
 Whoever of the leprous apples eats 
 Shall feel his faith grow darkened with a gloam 
 That filters heresy's corroding sweets. 
 243
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " More hideous than saprophytes, 
 And therefore for the sacrilege more fit, 
 Upon the Corn and Vinestock sit 
 Minute and miserable parasites ; 
 And o'er the Eucharist their tiny bellies, 
 To eat and crimson it, have crept. 
 Their occult plague has for three hundred years 
 Eaten the very hope of mystic ears, 
 Wherever the Christian harvester has slept." 
 
 (This admission must surely be rather encouraging 
 to the heretics whose venene putrescence Ramaekers 
 would no doubt like to burn with a flame more 
 consuming than that of his verse. But note now 
 how he trounces the German higher critics, who 
 breed the spawn :) 
 
 " And while, in the land of heavy, yellow beers, 
 In the brewing-vat of barren exegeses 
 Some new-found yeast for ever effervesces, 
 The saints whose blood turns sick and rots, 
 Waiting till a second Nero shall 
 For their cremation light a golden carnival, 
 Behold their bodies decked with livid spots." 
 
 Ramaekers has such a command of the most 
 unexpected and rash images, which create a style 
 
 as though in his heart-felt sincerity he had made 
 
 244
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 all the extravagances of burlesque seem the simple 
 and inevitable expression of his fervour, that 
 one would wish him to write an epic denuncia- 
 tion of the German invasion of his country. 
 There would be more force in his indignation 
 than there is in Pierre Nothomb's Les Barbares 
 en Belgique (1915). Nothomb's Notre Dame 
 du Matin is comparatively restrained in its mys- 
 ticism, though the poems seem to blend the 
 Virgin Mary and some earthly maiden. They 
 are poems of religious exaltation troubled, as 
 spring proceeds to summer, by the first stirrings 
 of a shy sensuality. It is a book for the pure in 
 heart. 
 
 The most Mallarmean of the Belgian symbolists 
 is Andr Fontainas. He settled in Paris in 1888, 
 and was (like Mockel) a close friend of Mallarme'. 
 His poems, which are collected in Crepuscules (1897) 
 and La Nef Desemparee (1908) are Pre-Raphaelite 
 in colouring : 
 
 " With right arm on the open casement rim, 
 The negro king Cophetua, with sad mien, 
 And eyes that do not see, looks at the green 
 Autumnal ocean rolling under him. 
 245
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " His listless dream goes wandering without goal ; 
 He is not one who would be passion's slave ; 
 And no remorse, nor memory from its grave 
 May haunt the leisure of his empty soul. 
 
 " He does not hear the melancholy chaunt 
 Of girls who beg before him, hollow, gaunt 
 With fainting, coughing in the mellow sun, 
 
 "And unawares, he knows not how it came, 
 He feels within his hardened heart a flame, 
 And burns his eyes at the eyes of the youngest one." 
 
 It is not the subtle and gorgeous colouring of his 
 verse, however, which makes Fontainas one of the 
 most permanently interesting of Belgian poets : he 
 is past master of that mystery, that breathed in- 
 tangible suggestion, for which the symbolists lived 
 charmed lives. The utmost refinement of the 
 theme, the most floatingly musical expression of 
 the idea, the rarest words, the most hidden " corre- 
 spondencies " all this, for which the symbolists 
 most fervently strove, Fontainas achieved. What 
 magic there is in his " Sea-scape : " 
 
 " Under basaltic porticoes of calm sea-caves, 
 Heavy with alga and the moss of fucus gold, 
 246
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 In the occult slow shaking of sea waves, 
 
 Among the alga in proud blooms unfold 
 
 The cups of pride of silent, slender gladioles. . . . 
 
 " The mystery wherein dies the rhythm of the waves 
 In gleams of kisses long and calm unrolls, 
 And the red coral whereon writhes the alga cold 
 Stretches out arms that bleed with calm flowers, and 
 
 beholds 
 Its gleams reflected in the rest of waves. 
 
 " Now here you stand in gardens flowered with alga, cold 
 In the nocturnal, distant song of waves, 
 Queen whose calm, pensive looks are glaucous gladioles, 
 Raising above the waves their light-filled bowls, 
 Among the alga on the coral where the ocean rolls." 
 
 A poet who has published surprisingly little 
 (L'Ame en Exil, 1895), but who is yet in the inner 
 circles of poets ranked with the best, is Georges 
 Marlow. He is of English descent. One might 
 say of him that he writes too well to write much. 
 Some of his poems are saturated with an almost 
 intolerable pain. He is a true brother in song of 
 Gregoire Le Roy : both poets express a melancholy 
 which verges on helplessness, Marlow with more 
 intensity and less artlessness. Marlow's Souls of 
 
 the Evening evokes some street in a dead Flemish 
 
 247
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 city near a canal ; and the weary poet wandering 
 there (weary with a heart pent full of Christian 
 charity and tender regret) hears the voices of old 
 women singing hymns while they spin : 
 
 " While the spindle merrily sings, 
 Old women sing your complaint, 
 The gas-lamps are misty and faint, 
 And the night to the water clings. 
 
 " Now Jesus walks where greens 
 The dark, cobbled alley, and rests 
 His poor, pierced hands on the breasts 
 Of dreaming Magdalenes ; 
 
 " And of every orphan child, 
 And of houses holy with prayer, 
 Mary Mother has care . . . 
 Sing, Jesus meek and mild 
 
 " Stands in your doorways' gloom, 
 And hears your hymn beseech. . . . 
 Let the honey of his speech 
 Your desolate hearts perfume ! . . . 
 
 " The Shepherd of straying sheep 
 Shall lead you home to the fold . . . 
 But your soul, old women, must weep, 
 Remembering its wounds of old, 
 248
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 " Love, and the heart's long burn, 
 The wounds of hope ever sick, 
 And childhood's dreams falling quick, 
 Shed and dead turn by turn. 
 
 " Lord, on old women have pity, 
 Whose soul, fair fragile toy, 
 Touched by the kiss of the city, 
 Dreams of the Sun of Joy ! " 
 
 There is one Belgian woman poet. This is Jean 
 Dominique, who has published : La Gaule Blanche 
 ( I 93); L' Anemone des Mers (1906); TJAile 
 Mouillee (1909) ; and Le Puits d* Azur (1912). The 
 name, of course, is a pseudonym, but it is common 
 knowledge that she who has made it famous is an 
 elementary teacher in Brussels a willing teacher 
 of little children, for she loves them. Like her 
 great master, Charles van Lerberghe, she is a 
 poets' poet ; the masses will not pierce her secrets. 
 How should the reading public understand such 
 delicate tracery as: 
 
 " My sylvan soul, so full of nests and warm, 
 Remembering thy flown birds with pangs how keen, 
 Shalt thou not ever, in parched summer's breath, 
 Hang like a humming heart and keep the swarm 
 Of gilded bees bearing their golden queen 
 Upon their orphan heart more sad than death ? . . . 
 
 249
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " And shall thou ever of ecstatic nights, 
 And of the royal Summer crossing earth, 
 Know but the printed foot in amorous flights 
 Of the red fawn, and shadow-dappled mirth ? . . . 
 
 " Soul whom the Winter too shall cross ere long, 
 And, after, Passion's Spring as bindweeds strong, 
 More sad than death shalt thou not ever seize 
 This little orphan, golden queen, in state 
 Borne round the world upon the eddying breeze 
 By many a thousand longings that vibrate ? . . ." 
 
 Of recent collection^ of verse by the younger 
 men, one of the most outstanding is Chant Provin- 
 cial (1913) by Jules Delacre. With tender melan- 
 choly it sings the aspects of a provincial town : 
 the loneliness of hearts that dream of distant voy- 
 ages but are cabined in musty rooms ; the waste 
 places where nettles grow by factories; religious 
 processions with ridiculous people sweating along 
 in their finery ; taverns rich and poor, taverns filthy 
 and luxurious taverns everywhere ; convents and 
 schools ; the lives of young mothers dulled by 
 maternity ; misery and snatched happiness and the 
 ache of longing. All this the poet sings : 
 
 " For the young teacher's sake 
 Who, in the new pinewood of the primary school, 
 250
 
 The Symbolist Poets 
 
 Where chromos glare, 
 
 Leads the long chorus of the alphabet, 
 
 And dreams, in the warm reek of wretchedness. . . . 
 
 " And for the conscript's sake 
 
 Come from his village where the heather clothes the rock. 
 He chooses in the stationer's shop, 
 A heart made of forget-me-nots, upon a cloud. . . . 
 
 " And for the servant's sake 
 Whose shining hands are worn with water, 
 And for the iron bed where rests her heart 
 Under the attic window of the loft 
 Full of the moon and of the scent of soap. . . . 
 
 " And for the sake of old maids in the afternoon 
 Endlessly mending meagre things 
 In rooms for ever closed, 
 Among old birds that warble, 
 Dogs in wool and family spites. . . . 
 
 " And for the sake of clerks in livid offices 
 That smell of acrid ink and dust ; 
 And for the bankrupt manufacturer 
 Who, on the threshold of his ruin, hears 
 The motor stopping in his factory. . . . 
 
 " And for the station-master in the rain, 
 With not a hope of travel whistling trains away ; 
 And for the young bride's sake whose life runs weary 
 In the new furniture of a dull marriage : 
 For all your sakes, you whom I love 
 
 251
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Because your happiness is buried hopelessly 
 In flats and basement dwellings self-contained ; 
 For this black labourer's sake who has no profit 
 Of any of the joys of heaven and earth 
 And calls to me and says he is my brother. . . . 
 
 " Yes, for the sake of all these things. . . ." 
 
 Finally, there is a vein of rich ore in the wilder- 
 ness of Prosper Roidot's verse (Les Poemes 
 Pacifiques ; La Lumiere des Buis). He is a poet 
 who is nearer genius than talent ; but his genius 
 is troubled, and only flashes with a dark, spasmodic 
 flame. 
 
 252
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE PARNASSIAN POETS 
 
 AN interest almost pathetic attaches to the poets 
 who upheld the banner of the Parnassian School. 
 The vers libre, we are told, is as dead as a 
 door-nail : even Verhaeren has now returned to 
 the traditional metres. This may be true ; but 
 the fact remains that the great poetry, the poetry 
 that will remain, in Belgian literature, was written 
 by the verslibristes in their prime. At least one 
 of the Parnassian poets, Albert Giraud, is a poet 
 of the first rank, while Fernand SeVerin has an 
 evasive distinction which will always keep some of 
 his poems in the anthologies ; but one feels that 
 even these poets have been hampered and held 
 down by the shackles of an arbitrary prosody. 
 
 Giraud is first and foremost a colourist : it is 
 not for nothing that he is a Fleming. There is 
 almost an orgy of colouring, for instance, in his 
 
 poem "Cordovans" : 
 
 253
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " You leathers red with autumn's, victory's dyes ! 
 In some old oratory's night you blaze, 
 Where sleeps the heavy splendour of dead days ; 
 You with your hues of epic, evening skies, 
 Mysterious as fiery meres of gold, 
 
 You dream of those who trailed their swords, and bowed 
 Above your cushions stamped with wafers proud 
 Their gashed tanned faces in the days of old, 
 With an odour of adventure in their capes. 
 Red leathers whom the peace of hangings drapes, 
 You are like tragic sunsets ! Worn were ye 
 By legendary heroes, who enriched 
 The kings they served, and all the world bewitched, 
 And who upon a copper, kindled sea, 
 You Cordovans dyed deep with war and pride, 
 Embarked in summer cool of eventide ! 
 You are chimerical with gathered lives ; 
 Of new Americas you guard the gleams, 
 You sunk in dazzled and vermilion dreams, 
 In you the soul of ancient suns survives ! " 
 
 Giraud is a poet who is home-sick for the past. 
 In Hors du Siecle (1888), La Guirlande des Dieux 
 (1910), and La Frise Empourprde (1912), he 
 evokes the magnificence of the Renaissance, 
 mourns its dead glories, purples his canvas with 
 pictures of its vice. Pride is the keynote of his 
 
 music a contemptuous pride which is far removed 
 
 254
 
 The Parnassian Poets 
 
 from the austere impassibility of the French Par- 
 nassians. "The abject multitude I detest," cries 
 out the poet; "no cry from the present shall 
 cross my threshold ; and I will build myself a 
 monument of pride wherein to bury myself from 
 the godless crowd. I will work alone, in austere 
 silence, nourishing my mind with ancient truths, 
 and I will sleep, with my mouth full of earth, in 
 the purple of the days I have called to life again." 
 There is a great personal grief in these nobly 
 chiselled poems of Giraud : a grief deepened by 
 bitter experience after the playful melancholy of 
 his first books, Pierrot Lunaire and Pierrot Nar- 
 cisse, which show his consummate mastery of intri- 
 cate measures. Fitted to the poet's pride and 
 grief is the full-mouthed resonance of his vocabu- 
 lary : "under the pride of his blood proud and 
 splendid words rear in his voice like stallions." 
 He has interpreted himself in his poignant poem 
 " Resignation " : 
 
 " I have fought against myself, I have cried in pain, 
 Writhed breathless in my wounded spirit's night, 
 And with my life in rags, a piteous sight, 
 I come out of the Hell which is my brain. 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " I know full well to-day, my dream was mad ; 
 My love of autumn was a crime, no doubt ; 
 And like a nail I tear the yearning out 
 That my too simple heart for childhood had. 
 
 " My cross ! Lance in my side ! I bring to you 
 This verse like Christmas evenings white and calm, 
 When the sovran palpitation of the palm 
 Hovers against the heaven's freezing blue ; 
 
 " This verse whereinto all my grief shall pass, 
 Verse of a man resigned, misunderstood, 
 Verse into which my love must shed its blood, 
 Long bleeding, like a sunset in stained glass." 
 
 Poetry like stained glass windows ! Nothing 
 else could characterise Giraud's style so well. 
 
 But the stained glass windows of his poems are 
 not filled with saints. His characters are by pre- 
 ference voluptuous and vicious princes, cardinals, 
 soldiers. His scenes of vice haVe a seductive 
 glamour, and under their envelope of impersonal 
 description peers the vehement and audacious ap- 
 proval of the poet. Giraud is an unashamed 
 Satanist, the most brilliant heir of Baudelaire. 
 
 Belgian Satanism the most intellectual ex- 
 pression of Satanism (for Maurice Rollinat's poetry 
 
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 The Parnassian Poets 
 
 is mere dirt) derives directly from Baudelaire's 
 Fleurs du Mai. It was a fateful day for I wan 
 Gilkin when Albert Giraud at Louvain thrust this 
 most eventful of modern books of verse into his 
 hand. Giraud had saturated his mind with the 
 exhalations of these poisonous flowers ; Gilkin was 
 overwhelmed by them. Giraud found a refuge 
 from the horror of the present (which to him was 
 only horrible because it was ugly) in the spectacular 
 depravity of the Renaissance ; Gilkin burrowed 
 himself into the poisoned present, and dreamed 
 a vision of Hell on Earth by the side of which 
 all the other pessimistic books of the period are 
 feeble and tame. He declares his purpose in 
 "Psychology": 
 
 " A surgeon, I the souls of men dissect, 
 Bending my feverish brow above their shameless 
 Perversions, sins, and vices, all their nameless 
 Primitive lusts and appetites unchecked. 
 
 " Upon my marble men and women spread 
 Their open bellies, where I find the hidden 
 Ulcers of passions filthy and forbidden, 
 
 And probe the secret wounds of dramas dread. 
 257 R
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Then, while my arms with scrofulous blood are 
 
 dyed, 
 
 I note in poems clear with scrupulous art 
 What my keen eyes in these dark deeps descried. 
 
 " And if I need a subject, I am able 
 To stretch myself on the dissecting table, 
 And drive the scalpel into my own heart." 
 
 He describes himself as a wicked gardener 
 casting his seeds into hasty brains and watching 
 the flowering of his poison. His denunciation of 
 the modern city is absolutely without relief " Un- 
 clean city," he hails it, " thou sewer wherein, with 
 mud between their teeth and leprosy in their 
 bodies, fetid carcasses croak, grimacing rites 
 grotesque with age. ..." He calls the capital " a 
 dolorous fruit whose bursten skin and too ripened 
 pulp dye their rich rottenness with green gold, 
 violet, and red phosphorus ; a fruit oozing a sickly 
 sweet, thick, cancerous juice. . . ." He reviles the 
 city, but his chiding hints of a perverse love : 
 
 " The penitent of cities damned am I. 
 In shameful taverns where rank liquors flow, 
 And in new Sodoms viciously aglow, 
 Where outrage hides its lusts with murder nigh, 
 258
 
 The Parnassian Poets 
 
 " I watch in flaring nights with mournful eye, 
 And shuddering hear what monsters still we grow. 
 And all the crimes of men oppress me so 
 I call for vengeance to the angered sky. 
 
 " Wrathful as prophets went in Holy Writ, 
 I walk with haggard cheek in public places, 
 Confessing sins that I do not commit. 
 
 " And the Pharisees cry out with upturned faces : 
 I thank Thee, God, that I am not as this 
 Infamous poet by Thy judgment is ! " 
 
 Unhappiness is to him a mental rapture : " Be 
 sad ; love unhappiness," whispers to him the black- 
 winged angel that bends over his pillow, "un- 
 happiness has the savour of a noble and impure 
 virgin." His view of man's activity is withering : 
 man, crawling through his native mud, is a vulgar 
 tool of flesh perpetuating flesh, a mere ring of 
 the vital Beast that writhes its long snake's belly 
 through the infinite. 
 
 A hint of these exasperated images is sufficient 
 to show that they overshoot the mark of poetry. 
 Gilkin's La Nuit (his only book of verse that 
 counts) is exceedingly interesting as the most out- 
 spoken elaboration of Satanistic pessimism ; but it 
 
 has about the same relation to poetry as very 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 good scene-painting has to the painting of an artist 
 it has glamour and great effect when seen from 
 a distance and in its proper historical perspective ; 
 but it will not bear too close inspection. At all 
 events it has one great quality it proves the 
 absurdity (as a poetic system) of " Satanism," a 
 perversion of the mind which Baudelaire's and 
 Giraud's poetry almost seem to justify. 
 
 " Giraud has seen his beautiful poems," said 
 Albert Mockel in an old criticism, " Fernand 
 SeVerin has felt his." In other words, Giraud is 
 a Fleming ; Severin is a Walloon. To English 
 readers, SeVerin's exquisitely refined poetry must 
 seem somewhat morbid in its feeling. He is 
 another poet of an attitude : he is dowered with 
 "the gift of youth"; he is cloistered in his vir- 
 ginity ; he holds anaemic converse with his pale 
 visions. Did ever any poet declare his love of 
 studious solitude with a quainter pretentiousness 
 (which nevertheless reads poetically true) than 
 Severin in his "Sovran State"? 
 
 " In nights impure moans one with fever stricken : 
 ' Lord ! let a maiden bring me, for I sicken, 
 Water and grapes, and quench my thirst with them. 
 
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 The Parnassian Poets 
 
 " ' Spring water ! Fruits of a virgin vine ! And let 
 Her fresh and virgin hands lie on the fret 
 Of my King's brow burnt by its diadem.' 
 
 " O pitiful crown upon a head so lowly ! 
 Does the unquiet night allegiance show thee ? 
 Thou King of beautiful lands that never were. 
 
 " ' O stars among the trees ! O waters pale ! 
 Comes the expected dawn in opal veil ? 
 Pity the tired and lonely sufferer : 
 
 " ' And grant me, Lord, after the night out-drawn, 
 The sleep and boon of Thy forgiving dawn ; 
 And let Thy chosen heart no longer bleed ! ' 
 
 " But answer makes the Lord in stern denial : 
 ' Leave thou, for nobler verse, to pain and trial 
 Thy heart, the open book the angels read.' " 
 
 This is a proud conception, a poet-king doomed 
 by God to virginity for poetry's sake ; but SeVerin 
 has reached the opposite extreme of humility in 
 his "The Lily of the Valley": 
 
 " I feel my heart for ever dying, bruised 
 By all the love it never will have used, 
 Dying in silence, and with angels by, 
 As simply as in cradles infants die, 
 Infants that have no speech. 
 
 O God-given heart, 
 
 Guarded by vigilant seraphim thou art ! 
 
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 Nothing shall soil thy natal raiment ! Thou, 
 
 Rest thee content with no kiss on thy brow, 
 
 Save of maternal summer eves, and die 
 
 In thy desire and thy virginity. 
 
 Thy sacrifice has made thee shy and proud ; 
 
 Thy life with very emptiness is bowed. 
 
 Made to be loved, loved thou shalt never be, 
 
 Though many maids would stretch their arms to thee, 
 
 As to the Prince who through their fancies rides. 
 
 Alas ! and thou hast never known these brides ; 
 
 To thee they come not when calm evening falls, 
 
 The pensive maids to whom thy longing calls ; 
 
 And thou art dying of thy love unused, 
 
 Poor sterile heart, my heart for ever bruised ! " 
 
 These attitudinal poems (there is every evidence 
 that they are sincere) have a seductive charm ; 
 and they are rendered all the more fascinating by 
 the antique Racinian language in which they trail 
 their pathetic notes as though some neurotic 
 aesthete of our own days should write plaintive 
 poems of modern nerves in the diction of Pope. 
 And Severin's nature poems, though ostensibly 
 more mature, have the same note of shrinking 
 averseness from the world. His nearest approach 
 to a manly independence is crystallised in his 
 
 poem "A Sage " : 
 
 262
 
 The Parnassian Poets 
 
 " He knows dreams never kept their promise yet. 
 Henceforth without desire, without regret, 
 He cons the page of sober tenderness 
 In which some poet, skilled in life's distress, 
 Breathed into olden, golden verse his sighs. 
 Sometimes he lifts his head, and feeds his eyes, 
 With all the wonderment that wise men know, 
 On fields, and clouds that over forests go, 
 And with their calmness sated in his thought. 
 He knows how dearly fair renown is bought : 
 He, too, in earlier days of stinging strength, 
 Sought that vain victory to find at length 
 Sadness at his desire's precipitous brink. . . . 
 Of what avail, he thought, to act and think, 
 When human joy holds all in one rapt look ? 
 His mind at peace reads Nature like a book. 
 He smiles, remembering his youth's unrest, 
 And, though none know it, he is wholly blest." 
 
 Se"verin's poems are collected in one volume : 
 Poemes (1908). But this book, unfortunately, 
 does not include the first item in the poet's works, 
 Le Lys (1888), which is a collector's prize. 
 
 Of the young Albertian Parnassians, Raymond 
 Limbosch is at least one of the most promising. 
 His Faunesques (1914) contains verse of distinction. 
 
 263
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 EUGENE DEMOLDER 
 
 AFTER Lemonnier and Eekhoud the most dis- 
 tinguished of the Flemish novelists is Eugene 
 Demolder, of whom it might be said that he is 
 the greatest painter in Belgian literature. He 
 was for some time a juge de paix, and in his 
 memoirs, Sous la Robe, he has given us interesting 
 sketches of judicial and literary life in Belgium, 
 with portraits which live and breathe of eminent 
 colleagues Picard, Vandervelde, and others. 
 
 Demolder's style has already been referred to : 
 it consists from first to last in a most cunning 
 transposition of pictures. Demolder's knowledge 
 of painting must be immense ; and he is able to 
 reproduce in words not merely the outlines and 
 colours of a picture, but the very soul of its 
 meaning. 
 
 It is not difficult to find the models for the 
 
 book that made him known, Les Conies d'Yper- 
 
 264
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 damme (1891), now published in one volume with 
 another book, Les Rdcits de Nazareth, as La 
 Ltgende tfYperdamme; probably he derived in- 
 spiration from Maeterlinck's Massacre of the 
 Innocents (which is a transposition of Breughel's 
 picture of the same name) and Balzac's Jdsus- 
 Christ en Flandre. Yperdamme is some mythical 
 village on the Flemish coast. 
 
 " It is the curious city," says Eugene Gilbert, " that 
 we see in the pictures of Breughel and Jan Steen, the 
 city overlooked by its high cathedral whose delicate 
 tracery sparkles with hoar-frost, the city girdled with 
 moats over which, in hard frosts, red-faced skaters glide 
 along in their warm clothing." 
 
 To this old-world Flemish city the events nar- 
 rated in the Gospels are transferred in a series of 
 grotesque and naive anachronisms. Thus we have 
 the miraculous draught of fishes, and the fishermen 
 are Flemish, such fishermen as you may see to-day 
 on the dunes about Ostend. There is the eve of 
 the Nativity, with the farmers and fishermen coming 
 from Furnes and Coxyde and Dixmude to Beth- 
 lehem, and they are " mounted on great horses 
 
 without harness and without saddles, holding on 
 
 265
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 firmly " (as in pictures that everyone will remember) 
 "to the manes of the animals, whose nostrils are 
 steaming." At Bethlehem the church door is open, 
 and all the stained glass windows are flowered with 
 light ; midnight mass is being celebrated. On the 
 Flight to Egypt Joseph and Mary and the Child 
 come to the dunes, and then the farms with the 
 great red roofs fade from sight, and soon they come 
 to the mouth of the Scheldt and to Flushing. It 
 is at Yperdamme that the Massacre of the Inno- 
 cents begins, and as soon as the murdering bands 
 come into the streets of the city, the Black Virgin, 
 the fishermen's miraculous tutelary saint, weeps in 
 the cathedral. It is in the Campine that the 
 prodigal son tends swine, with his heart bleeding 
 to go back to his father's farm far away in fair 
 Brabant. Such a medley of quaint distortion may 
 seem absurd to those who do not know with what 
 delight the Flemish people love to familiarise the 
 Gospels. Flemish art and Flemish literature are 
 full of things of this kind keeping the gross realism 
 of mediaeval ignorance as in Pol de Mont's cycle 
 of ballads " Of Jesus," or subtly modernised and 
 
 the vehicle of a delicate symbolism as in Max 
 
 266
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 Elskamp's magic verses. There is only one charge 
 to be made against La Lkgende dYperdamme: it 
 postulates an attitude of naivety and the nawett 
 is strangled by the conscious and elaborate art 
 of the narration. Demolder was emerging ; but 
 he is not yet sufficiently master of his method to 
 hide the process of his labour. The same might 
 be said of Le Royaume authentique du grand 
 Saint Nicolas, ostensibly a Christmas tale for 
 children. 
 
 In La Route d Emeraude, surely one of the 
 most brilliant novels of this century, he is past 
 master of his manner. The book is an uninter- 
 rupted chain of pictures, the originals of which even 
 a layman can recognise. The scene is in Holland 
 in the seventeenth century. Kobus Barent, a 
 miller's son in a quiet village on the Meuse near 
 Dordrecht, is a born painter, and instinct teaches 
 him to draw. The old miller does not approve 
 of painting, but in the end he lets him go, and 
 finds a master for him at Haarlem. This is Frantz 
 Krul, a famous painter of portraits and genre 
 pictures. Krul is apparently modelled on Jan 
 
 Steen : 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 tl Frantz Krul, with his jovial face barred by a brown 
 moustache curled upwards at the ends, a ruddy face, large 
 laughing eyes rolling under his forehead, over which a lock 
 or so falls negligently, curved nose, sensual as a satyr's, 
 arched mouth, gluttonous and bantering the mouth of 
 a man who loves to make a festivity of life Frantz Krul, 
 with his square shoulders and broad trunk, is handling 
 the brush with agility in front of a huge canvas." 
 
 Lessing tried to prove that the painting of a 
 picture in words is an impossibility, for, he thought, 
 the mind can only take in one detail at a time, 
 and the parts of the picture fade from the interior 
 eye as the description proceeds. Lessing's reason- 
 ing was sound ; but his conclusion would seem 
 to be controverted by Demolder's transpositions. 
 Possibly it is because one almost always recollects 
 the canvas Demolder is transcribing. Who, for 
 instance, can read the description of Frantz Krul's 
 jovial face and burly figure without recalling Jan 
 Steen's portrait of himself? 
 
 At Haarlem Kobus pursues his studies, as 
 much in taverns as in the atelier,, for Krul and 
 his pupils are great drinkers, and lovers of rich 
 viands, "and 'the rest, 1 as La Fontaine said, in 
 
 a word of excessive shamefulness." (The joke is 
 
 268
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 from another tale of Demolder's, L'Agonie d! Albion, 
 the hero of which is a Dutchman who hates the 
 British, on account of the atrocities they committed 
 in the Boer War.) Kobus falls in love with Krul's 
 model Siska, a courtesan. She is a dark-skinned 
 woman of Spanish parentage, which is the reason 
 why she has not the short legs that the Haarlem 
 women have. She had been found wrapped up 
 in a brown rag, at the time of the war with Spain ; 
 and fishermen had reared her in the wind of the 
 sea, and she had grown up like a goat among the 
 sand-grasses. Her first lover was a sailor-boy 
 who was killed by an English bullet at the mouth 
 of the Thames. In the end she was carried off 
 by an officer of the Dutch fleet ; and after that 
 she wore silk. Kobus shuts his eyes to her past, 
 and goes with her to Amsterdam, where he ex- 
 periences all the raptures of passion and all the 
 agonies of jealousy and despair for Siska must 
 live, and live in luxury, and her lover earns little 
 or nothing. But what is the intrigue to the superb 
 evocation of Amsterdam, with its ramparts and 
 gables and towers, the forest of masts in the port, 
 
 its labyrinth of canals, its smells of turf and tar 
 
 269
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 and brine and spices, its herrings and smoked eels, 
 its warehouses and taverns and brothels, its mer- 
 chants and art-dealers ! Siska is wonderful ; here 
 is a woman of bad character painted with such 
 charm and freshness that one cannot be angry 
 with her at her worst. But it is an auspicious 
 day for Kobus when, deserting him, she sets sail 
 for the Spanish Main in the company of a Spanish 
 captain. Kobus, a sadder and a wiser man, returns 
 to his old father and the old mill, and achieves 
 fame as a painter while pursuing the nerve-reposing 
 avocation of a miller. (This is in the tradition : 
 Jan Steen was a brewer, Goyen sold tulips, Van 
 de Cappelle was a dyer, and Joost van den Vondel 
 wrote his poetry in the back parlour while his good 
 wife sold stockings in the shop.) 
 
 And the hidden meaning ? For Demolder was 
 a symbolist, one of the primitives, as may be seen 
 by the way he awakens sonorities on canvas. It 
 is this : the fate of Kobus is that of his country. 
 His childhood dreamed by the marshes, along the 
 banks of rivers, under the willows. Then he fought 
 his fight with the strange, dark woman, with Spain ; 
 
 and he was near being worsted. But when by the 
 
 270
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 strength of his nature he had overcome her, and 
 recovered from the poison of her, he returned to 
 his toil and his art, and became a rich burgher, 
 and married Ge"sina, the rich bailiffs daughter, 
 and had chocolate and peaches for breakfast every 
 morning, and lived happy ever after! "That is 
 the history of Holland." 
 
 La Route d 1 Emeraude (The Road to the Colours 
 of Hope) is packed with adventure : it is a novel 
 in the sense accepted by circulating libraries. The 
 characters (Rembrandt is one he is sold up in 
 the course of the story) are fascinating in them- 
 selves ; they are a gallery of living men and women. 
 But what is the adventure, what is the gallery of 
 men and women, to the gallery of paintings that 
 illuminate the book ? Paintings that are never 
 hung in the wrong place, but which seem to be 
 in the only place where they could possibly be. 
 Here is a picture of a soldier with the light on 
 his sword is it not more out of place in a frame 
 on a wall than seen as an episode in the daily 
 life of a street ? 
 
 " Farther on a soldier is walking. Planted in boots 
 widened at the knees, he throws his cloak over his 
 
 271
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 shoulder to show the broad embroidered belt that squeezes 
 his waist ; a plume waves from his bonnet ; his sword, 
 the handle of which he grips, resembles, as soon as he 
 leaves the shadow of the walls, a wand of fire." 
 
 Kobus has to choose between two schools of 
 painting, that of jolly Frantz Krul and that of the 
 man with the vague bitterness on his lips and the 
 eyelids swollen with long labour. Rembrandt 
 himself, in a conversation with Krul, contrasts the 
 two styles : 
 
 " Verily it is a joy to conjure forth sanguine glories, 
 flashes of rosy flesh. Your temperament drives you 
 to it, moreover. Nudity for you must be triumphant 
 and luxuriant. Your ideal is a Venus of firm out- 
 lines, born from the foam of the North Sea, and the 
 patroness of sturdy fisher folk and sailors. And you 
 love to immortalise drinkers in their cups, bedizened 
 banquets, festival costumes with orange-tinted scarves. 
 But don't you think, Krul, that an emaciated body hides 
 a beauty just as great ? It is a different beauty. I 
 swear to you, when a beggar-woman, feverish and trem- 
 bling, disrobes in my atelier, I experience an artistic 
 emotion just as great as if she were Helen or Cleopatra. 
 In the legend of her lean limbs I read the painful 
 chronicle of her life, her resignation in humble tasks, 
 the exhaustion come of her repeated maternity : I see 
 all human sadness, which is immense, in her tired spine 
 
 272
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 and wasted frame. And tenderly I apply myself, with 
 all the compassion that grips me, to interpret the sombre 
 lassitude of her muscles, the traces of her clothing, of 
 burdens she has carried, of diseases that leave marks of 
 grief as tears do on the face. I render the pale, yellow 
 tone of her skin, with the red spots that give it the 
 desolate tints of autumn, and with the folds that trace 
 lax curves in her flesh. And is not that life too ? Is 
 there nothing but joy in the world ? By the side of one 
 peony that blooms, is there not another that withers and 
 sheds its petals ? And does not a dying woman, amid 
 the wrinkled agony of her colours, perform a function 
 quite as deep as the harmony of things ? " 
 
 Les Patins de la Reine de Hollande is a highly 
 embroidered version, charged with symbolism, of 
 the old legend of a girl brought up in complete 
 ignorance of sex and from whom, when puberty 
 comes, the facts of life cannot be hidden. Through 
 all the bright colouring of the book runs like a 
 black thread the idea that Death skates along the 
 dizzy roads of life with Sex. Walburge, the 
 orphaned daughter of the Comte de Rupelmonde, 
 grows up in solitude in a castle on the Scheldt. 
 She is guarded by a faithful serving-woman, 
 Bertrane. They are sequestered from the world ; 
 
 temptation and danger are far away. But the 
 
 273 3
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 longing of awakened instinct comes to the girl, 
 and now the world seems to beleaguer the castle. 
 Walburge is assailed by vague desires. She sits 
 at her casement watching the sea-gulls flying to 
 the sea, which, Bertrane tells her, is as vast as 
 the sky. She sees caravans of merchants passing, 
 bearing perfumes of Araby, blades of Toledo, 
 carpets from Smyrna, Cordovan leather. They 
 are sunburnt under their silk turbans, and they 
 caress their beards nonchalantly. She would fain 
 see what they bear in their boxes ; but she is too 
 poor, Bertrane says. Walburge cannot be kept 
 any longer in imprisonment, and one day, when 
 the Scheldt is frozen hard, Bertrane brings her a 
 pair of magic skates which the Queen of Holland 
 used to wear when she was sixteen and went to 
 see her lover. Bertrane has another pair for her- 
 self. Now Walburge sets forth to see Flanders. 
 
 Soon they are aware that a companion has 
 joined them, and is skating along with them. It 
 is Death. They come to a city, which is filled 
 to overflowing with people making merry : it is 
 carnival time. Death picks up a flute, and, 
 
 dancing with a crimson galloon round his temples, 
 
 274
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 leads a troop of drunken revellers to the brothel. 
 It is the Dance of Death. Death blows his green 
 breath into the faces of the burghers, and they 
 fall down and die: it is the Plague. Walburge 
 skates on and on, to the Fairy Prince who is 
 coming to meet her. She cannot stay, for she is 
 Passion faring forth to the arms of Fate. But 
 Bertrane is left behind, for she is Resignation, 
 whom Passion must abandon. Walburge finds her 
 Prince, and he tells her how he has braved the 
 angry waves to seek her. "The wind," he says, 
 " lifted round my bark the furious lace that it tears 
 from the blue breast of the sea." He threw back 
 his cloak, and bared his cuirass, which shone like 
 a mirror. In it the young Countess of Flanders 
 saw her fair hair reflected, and her eyes that were 
 the colour of pale cornflowers, and her lips like 
 fresh coral : so that it seemed to her that she was 
 living in the very heart of her betrothed. And 
 they go to his castle in the Land of Spring. 
 
 Le Jardinier de la Pompadour may well be 
 flowered, for it is the book of the soul of a 
 gardener, who loves Madame de Pompadour, and 
 
 raises the flowers with which, and her own bloom, 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 she snares the heart of King Louis. Demolder 
 wrote this novel at Essonnes in the province of 
 Seine-et-Oise, and here he received an unexpected 
 visit from Maeterlinck, to whom he had sent the 
 first copy, and who had at once set out in his 
 motor-car to point out that dahlias were mentioned 
 among the flowers nurtured by Madame de Pom- 
 padour's gardener a flower which, as everybody 
 knows, had not been introduced into Europe at 
 that period. The flower-pictures are delightful. 
 Here is one, of tuberoses, a new flower, just 
 arrived from Italy : 
 
 "Jasmin stopped in front of two tuberoses. White 
 on their long green stalks and blushing, as though ashamed 
 of the voluptuousness that breathed from their corollas, 
 they offered themselves and their heady scent in the 
 midst of a group of streaked bromelias that seemed 
 smitten with the newcomers. 
 
 " ' Caress them ! They are nice to touch,' said M. 
 Leturcq. . . . 
 
 "Jasmin resumed his journey, greatly marvelling. 
 These tuberoses ! It seemed to him as though he had 
 been present at the deshabille of a princess on her 
 wedding day, in one of those fairy tales he read in the 
 evenings. And he was the bridegroom ! He had 
 touched the white flesh : his hand was still quite per- 
 fumed with it." 
 
 276
 
 Eugene Demolder 
 
 In the background the revolution smoulders ; 
 and there is a shadow over the gay scenes where 
 the monarch sports himself with his minions and 
 his dames. 
 
 Demolder's colouring is equally rich in his one 
 book of travel, L'Espagne en Auto. His playlet, 
 La Mort aux Berceaux^ which places the Massacre 
 of the Innocents in a mediaeval castle, is at least 
 curious. 
 
 At the lowest estimate, Demolder is a writer 
 of great power. No other Belgian prose-writer 
 has so brilliant a style. Perhaps there is not a 
 more luminous colourist in any literature. All his 
 works are flooded with light : they are illuminated 
 texts. There is shadow here and there ; but it is 
 only such shadow as you might have in an orchard 
 on a day of blazing sunshine. 
 
 He will probably never be translated into 
 English, for in this country he would be con- 
 sidered obscene. He revels in sexual images, and 
 (to English eyes) impossible situations. But he 
 is never filthy. Eekhoud is distinctly filthy; but 
 Demolder's obscenity is quite different. His is a 
 laughing effrontery, a most delicate idealisation of 
 
 sexual sensations. 
 
 277
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 For Eugene Demolder praise must not be 
 stinted. If he has faults, they are venial. He 
 disarms criticism by his debonair and unassuming 
 manner, by his jovial unconcern (he is the Jan 
 Steen of Belgian literature), as who should say : 
 " All this, ladies and gentlemen, is for your 
 pleasure, not your betterment. I leave preaching 
 to the jaundiced, while myself I laugh and grow 
 fat." Life is sad, he makes Rembrandt say: 
 but the lowering clouds bring storms, and the 
 storms pass, and the sun shines out again. Jan 
 Steen may listen to Rembrandt, and love and 
 reverence him, and yet remain Jan Steen, and 
 delight in God's warm sunshine, and in good 
 cheer, and " the rest "... 
 
 278
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FLEMISH NOVELISTS AND DRAMATISTS 
 
 GEORGES VIRRES is usually bracketed with Eek- 
 houd as a novelist of the Campine. This region 
 (but more to the east) is the invariable scene of 
 his tales ; and in the preface to La Glebe Htro'ique 
 he proclaims that he is as devoted as Eekhoud is 
 to these wastes of heather. But there is a great 
 difference between the two : while Eekhoud is a 
 rebel against all authority, including that of the 
 Church, Georges Virres is a pious Roman Catholic. 
 This fundamental difference in ideas would be 
 sufficient to prevent any great similarity in the 
 works of the two authors ; but they have the same 
 love of the Campine peasants, and in the main 
 details their conceptions of this primal race agree. 
 Both are full of sympathy for the hard lot of those 
 who spend their lives reclaiming the waste. Virres, 
 like Eekhoud, shows the Campine peasants in 
 
 their violent fits, and there is much of death and 
 
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 fatality in his work also ; but to him the peasants 
 of his race are in the first place mystics, as devoted 
 to pilgrimages and religious processions as they 
 are to kermesses. 
 
 The style of Virres is somewhat sluggish, but 
 his slow-moving periods lead to climaxes. He is 
 above all an observer of character and customs. 
 His Hommes et Choses d'Aujourd'hui, for instance, 
 is pre-eminently a collection of folklore, full of little 
 pictures illustrating quaint customs and beliefs, 
 as for instance that in certain Limburg villages 
 widows cling to the coffin and in the cemetery 
 go through an old pantomime of quarrelling for it 
 with the gravedigger. 
 
 Virres began his series of Campine tales with 
 En Pleine Terre. The book is warm with 
 affection for the land and its people, but the 
 style is too laboured and lyrical. The prose sings 
 too much ; the images are a medley. The same 
 holds good of La Bruyere Ardente, in which 
 the colours flame like sunsets over purple heaths. 
 L Inconnu Tragique tells of an epidemic which 
 carries off the cattle of a district in the Campine. 
 
 In their terror the peasants pray to God to avert 
 
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 Flemish Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 the plague, and it seems to be passing when, one 
 evening, one of them loses control of himself and 
 creates a scene in a tavern, with the result, as it 
 seems to them, that the Lord hardens His heart 
 and the wind of corruption blows over the land. 
 In La Glebe Hero'ique we follow the fortunes of 
 the peasants' rebellion which Eekhoud describes 
 in Les Fusillts de Malines. In Les Gens de Tiest 
 Virres paints with great precision and delicate 
 irony the little town of Tongres, where he has 
 lived for over twenty years. Tiest and the neigh- 
 bourhood appear again in Le Cceur Timide (1912), 
 the hero of which is a young squire of irresolute 
 character a Belgian type taken from actual life, 
 for many Belgians of good family are somnolent 
 and dreamy. The melancholy of the book is 
 relieved by the humorous episode of an electoral 
 campaign, in which the socialists cut a sorry figure. 
 Virres, himself a squire, has in this novel drawn 
 masterly portraits of the Belgian gentry. 
 
 Lemonnier, Eekhoud, Demolder, and Virres 
 belong to the older generation. Of the younger 
 generation of French-writing Flemings, two stand 
 
 out above the rest. These are Horace van Offel 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 and Franz Hellens, the first a native of Antwerp, 
 the second a native of Ghent. 
 
 I have quoted Eekhoud's corrosive satire on 
 the way the national army is regarded by the 
 Belgians. This impression is amply confirmed by 
 the military tales (Une Armde de Pauvres ; Les 
 Enfermds ; Le Retour aux Lumieres] of Horace 
 van Offel, this other Antwerp rebel, who derives his 
 knowledge from actual service in the army. He 
 sees the degradation of the conscript ; he paints the 
 longing of sensitive men whom the law of the 
 land forces into the position of pariahs. But the 
 tales are not all of military life : Van Offel feels for 
 the poor as well as for the conscript, and he is able 
 to describe the lower classes with first-hand know- 
 ledge, for he has worked as a labourer at Lille. 
 He has written excellent stories of low life in 
 Antwerp (houses of ill-fame, bars and barmaids, 
 etc.) The older generation produced very few 
 effective plays ; now in King Albert's reign there 
 are signs of a coming harvest, and Van Offel is 
 one of the most promising of the young dramatists. 
 His plays Les Intellectuels, LOiseau Mdcanique, 
 
 La Victoire, Le Loup, Une Nuit de Shakespeare 
 
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 Flemish Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 are far better plays than the dramatic efforts of 
 most of the veterans. Une Nuit de Shakespeare 
 is one of the most interesting and original of the 
 plays which have Shakespeare for a hero. 
 
 Franz Hellens is nothing if not original. He 
 is a new writer in every sense of the term. En 
 Ville Morte (1906), his first book, is a sombre 
 evocation of Ghent. Les Hors-le-Vent (1909) is a 
 strange book, Rembrandtesque, tortured a collec- 
 tion of studies in Gothic prose. Hellens never 
 makes any pretence of telling a story : he is a 
 painter, but a painter who thinks, and paints his 
 thought on the canvas. He does not paint things 
 as the eye sees them, but as the mood sees them ; 
 and in his case the mood is determined not by 
 the heart, but by the brain. In other words, he 
 is a cerebral impressionist. He does not belong 
 to the impressionist school : his impressionism is the 
 inevitable product of his character, which is a primi- 
 tive Flemish character, that is, a character made 
 up of mysticism. But Hellens' mysticism, deprived 
 of religion, appears in his first two books as a 
 Pagan fatalism full of glow and colour. Hellens 
 
 might be called a Maeterlinck in colours. 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Perhaps the best thing in Les Hors-le- Vent is 
 " Les Soirs de Gand," a chain of nocturnes giving 
 the aspects of Ghent by night. 
 
 In " Salles d'Attente," another chapter of the 
 book, Hellens symbolises the misery of life help- 
 less between dingy reality (the city) and the mystery 
 of the unknown (the bourne of the railway) : he 
 assembles a crowd of wretches navvies, porters, 
 strikers, soldiers in the waiting-room of a railway 
 station. Here the waifs of the city are waiting 
 for the things that never come, the things that are 
 lost in the mists of time, but forgetting their very 
 longing in the comfort of a public fire. Among 
 them is Valerie Droefkind, an old newsvendor. 
 The poor old woman sits there dreaming, with the 
 men spitting all round her (and what bitter thoughts 
 they must have, she thinks, to spit like that without 
 saying anything), and through her mind pass such 
 memories as Villon rhymed into his ballad of " La 
 belle Heaulmiere." 
 
 In Les ClarUs Latentes (1912) the colours are 
 brighter : the light that was hidden in the darkness 
 shines forth, and the world is beautiful. There 
 
 is less vehemence and greater concentration in the 
 
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 Flemish Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 style of this book : whereas in Les Hors-le- Vent 
 the images, troubled, grotesque, careered in a mad 
 dance to exhaustion, in Les Claries Latentes the 
 description is slow, clear, calm. A sunny joy in 
 life has taken the place of the angry fatalism of 
 the earlier books. There is a certain depth of 
 thought in Hellens, and there is a fund of ideas 
 veiled (and sometimes hidden from the searcher) 
 in the symbolism of Les Claries Latentes. But 
 (as is usually the case with Flemish writers) it is 
 the picture rather than the idea which remains in 
 the memory. 
 
 Of another Albertian writer, Ferdinand Crom- 
 melynck, I do not know whether he is a Fleming 
 or a Walloon, but the surname appears Flemish. 
 His father was a famous actor. Crommelynck is 
 one of those young men who write something or 
 other and are at once hailed as geniuses ; every- 
 thing that they write afterwards is discussed in 
 all its bearings and is famous in the literary cafes 
 (a feature of Brussels as of Paris) before it is 
 published. Crommelynck's much-praised poem 
 La Vengeance de Papillons^ is a throw-back, in 
 
 1 Le Masque, Oct.-Nov. 1910. 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Mockel's rhythms, to the manner of the symbolist 
 Primitives ; it is a very melodious jumble of Swin- 
 burnian colours and images from which no clear 
 sense emerges, though it seems to be an elabora- 
 tion of the commonplace from Schopenhauer that 
 when a flower blooms it is withering. It is in 
 the drama that Crommelynck has done his best 
 work. Beside an airy trifle, Nous ri irons plus au 
 bois, he has written three remarkable plays, Le 
 Sculp teur de Masques, Le Chemin des Conquetes, and 
 Le Marchand de Regrets. All the plays except 
 the last are in verse. They would be masterpieces 
 if it were not for a few slips or inconsistencies : 
 for instance, in Le Marchand de Regrets Anne- 
 Marie nestles close to the miller, who is quite 
 white with flour, and the flour does not come off 
 on to her clothes. Crommelynck's style bears 
 some relation to the earlier style of Franz Hellens : 
 it is a style intensely black in its lines, a Gothic 
 style, that is, imposing, and wreathed with gro- 
 tesque and vivid ornamentation. The atmosphere 
 is saturated with horror, much as in the murder 
 scenes of Maeterlinck's La Princesse Maleine 
 
 only, Crommelynck's horror grips, while Maeter- 
 
 286
 
 Flemish Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 linck's (in the play in question) never quite gets 
 away from the melodramatic. Crommelynck's 
 dramas have the great virtue of conciseness : there 
 is not a word too much, and every word tells. 
 
 In Belgium itself there is a consensus of 
 opinion that the most important Belgian dramatist 
 is Gustave van Zype. His dramas, as pessimistic 
 and realistic as those of Ibsen, deal with social 
 problems ; they betray a rather conservative bias. 
 Van Zype is a conscientious and interesting writer, 
 although (let us say the worst) he is a trifle stodgy. 
 His most important dramas are : Le Patrimoine, 
 Tes Pere-et-Mere, La Souveraine, Les Stapes, Le 
 Gouffre, Les Liens. The last play created a sen- 
 sation when it was produced at Brussels in 1912. 
 The problem is the heredity of disease. Grandal 
 is a scholar whose father and grandfather were 
 drunkards and maniacs. He himself has hitherto 
 escaped without scathe, but after an honourable 
 life of labour, and while he is still absorbed in 
 studies which will benefit mankind, he feels the 
 beginnings of mental disease. At this stage his 
 son falls in love with a girl who is herself neurotic 
 
 and the last of her race. The old scholar tries 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 to prevent the marriage, but his wife, determined 
 that her son shall not be robbed of his happiness, 
 persuades Grandal that he is not the father of her 
 son. This is more than his reason can bear. The 
 drama is not unfit to be ranked with Strindberg's 
 The Father. Van Zype's stories are preoccupied 
 with the same social problems as his dramas. La 
 Revelation, for instance, is an anti-Malthusian 
 novel. A young married couple agree to have 
 no children, but after a few years there is an 
 accident, and the baby is the revelation of 
 happiness. 
 
 The popular success which has been persist- 
 ently denied to Van Zype's terribly earnest dramas 
 was achieved by Paul Spaak's Kaatje. On its 
 first production it ran for fifty nights a stupendous 
 run in Belgium (Van Zype's Les Liens lasted 
 fifteen nights, and that was considered a gratifying 
 success). Spaak's other dramas are A Damme en 
 Flandre ; Baldus et Josina ; Camille. 
 
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 CHAPTER XI 
 WALLOON NOVELISTS AND DRAMATISTS 
 
 How unsatisfactory the term " Belgian " is when 
 applied to literature is seen at once when one com- 
 pares the Flemish novelists with their fellow-crafts- 
 men in the Walloon districts. In characterising 
 the Flemish novelist, it is not the substance of the 
 story, nor the handling of the plot, nor the psych- 
 ology that needs weighing, it is the quality of the 
 painting. This is not the case with the Walloon 
 novelists (or rather conteurs, for the short story is 
 the rule, and the novels are usually short stories 
 lengthened). With them, it is the sentiment and 
 the idea which must be considered. " Sentiment " 
 is the correct word ; " emotion " might mean too 
 much, and "feeling" would be too strong a term. 
 There is plenty of feeling in the Flemish novelists : 
 tender feeling in Lemonnier, Demolder, and Virres, 
 fierce feeling in Eekhoud and Horace van Offel. 
 
 The Walloon writers are too refined and cerebral 
 
 289 T
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 for feeling in this extreme sense : if they have 
 feeling, it is a gentle emotion, and they play with 
 it, analyse it, consider it in the light of memory, 
 mock at it with gentle irony. And they never lose 
 sight of the idea, which is the base of the work. 
 Their symbolism rolls itself round an idea and 
 invites interpretation, whereas Flemish symbolism 
 veils a mystery from profane eyes. But the Wal- 
 loons do not follow up a series of ideas till they 
 form a logical chain, a philosophical entity. There 
 is nothing in any Walloon tale-writer like the con- 
 ception of life which Lemonnier's warmth of feeling 
 engendered. The ideas which preoccupy the 
 Walloon writers are detached and evanescent. 
 But the ideas are there, in each separate tale, 
 bright and glancing. Louis Delattre, in his fasci- 
 nating Le Pays Wallon, has illuminated the Wal- 
 loon character by a fine image. At the end of 
 every Walloon village, he says, there is a quarry, 
 and to his mind the stone-cutters typify the quali- 
 ties of his race, their pleasure in bringing hidden 
 things to the light of day, in striking the white 
 light of the idea from the hard stone. 
 
 Louis Delattre, perhaps the most soberly bril- 
 290
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 liant of the Walloon conteurs, began, in the very 
 days when the pretentious prose of the symbolists 
 was the fashion, with recollections of childhood 
 narrated in a perfectly simple style. These tales 
 are somewhat intangible, but marked by a subtle 
 and delicate charm. His later work, La Loi de 
 Peche, Le Parfum des Buis y is more poignant. 
 Georges Rency has sketched Delattre's evolution : 
 
 "A chalky road in Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse, an or- 
 chard in blossom, a cottage on a hill, children playing 
 at marbles in the Church porch, an old woman smiling 
 at the westering sun. ... A whole host of images, with 
 exquisite godsends of feeling, this is Delattre in his 
 Contes de mon Village, Les Miroirs de Jeunesse, Une Rose 
 a la Bouche. The tales of these three collections are born 
 of the sap of instinct. The form may be somewhat 
 hazy, but there is no trace in them of effort. Every- 
 thing gushes forth from its source in the very life of 
 the writer. He draws with full hands from his heart, 
 which is overflowing with emotion and fragrance and 
 delicate memories : and it is as though he had plunged 
 his hands into a wicker basket full of green vegetables 
 and field flowers and ripe fruit. The confident optimism 
 of these first stories is in some sort unconscious, in- 
 voluntary. You would say that Delattre, when he wrote 
 them, had no knowledge of pain and wretchedness. He 
 is happy and he thinks that everybody is happy. His 
 conception of the world is like that of a child at play, 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 who imagines that playing is the great affair in life. 
 But the years pass. A crisis comes in this existence, 
 a moral crisis concerning which we shall never know 
 anything, for Delattre is one of those authors who fight 
 shy of personal confession. For some years there is 
 silence, complete silence : it seems as though the writer 
 were exhausted. Suddenly he reappears, begins to pub- 
 lish again. In a few years he issues fifteen volumes, 
 about two a year. . . . Now, you feel, Delattre knows 
 pain and wretchedness ; but he has weighed tears and 
 smiles, and it is the latter which are heavier in the scales. 
 Yes, suffering there is in existence, great suffering, but, 
 when all is said and done, life is better than non-exist- 
 ence, and suffering, however acute, is preferable to stag- 
 nation and weariness." l 
 
 Delattre is never exciting. Adventure would 
 seem trivial to this intelligent writer, who is an 
 interpreter of life, a poet of the heart, not a spinner 
 of yarns. The substance of La Loi de Peche, 
 which is a whole novel, not a tale, is merely this : 
 two cousins love each other, but the boy is timid, 
 and the girl is won by another man, whereupon 
 the boy returns to his native village to live on his 
 memories. One of the stories of Le Parfum des 
 Buis is typical of that love of the bizarre which 
 
 1 La Vie Intellectuelle> Jan. 1912. 
 292
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 sometimes leads Walloon writers astray : a bull 
 has killed the only son of a farmer, his mother 
 goes out of her mind, and her madness takes a 
 curious form : she has the beast led before her 
 every day, so that she can take hold of its head 
 and embrace it. This is not ridiculous in Delattre's 
 tale. 
 
 Georges Garnir situated the scene of his first 
 stories (Contes d Marjolaine, Les Charneux, La 
 Ferme aux Grives] in the Ardennes, round about 
 Liege. These tales have the sentimentality and 
 the simple charm of Delattre's early work. Later, 
 Garnir settled in Brussels, and wrote tales (A la 
 Boule Plate, Le Conservateur de la Tour Noire) 
 in which he encroached on Leopold Courouble's 
 province, and caricatured the Philistines of the 
 capital. 
 
 Hubert Krains began with fantastic tales of 
 horror (Histoires Lunatiques ; Les Bons Parents)^ 
 which read as though his ambition was to be the 
 Belgian E. T. A. Hoffmann. In " Croquis Noc- 
 turne," for instance, he describes a village hemmed 
 in with poplars in a hot night in August, an owl 
 
 peering from a barn, insects flitting against the 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 trees, while a woman slips out of a turreted castle 
 and glides, frightened by the rustling of her black 
 dress, through the park. It is the unexpectedness 
 of the ending which produces the thrill : 
 
 "In front of her the road, narrower and narrower, 
 streaks like a thin grey ribbon the mass of shadow 
 heaped between the arched branches of two parallel 
 hedges. With one hand she nervously presses her 
 breast as if to calm the palpitations of her heart, and 
 her eyes, uneasy and feverish, search the darkness where 
 vague things seem to wave silently to and fro. 
 
 " By and bye she can make out, on the right, emerging 
 from the thistles and brambles that choke the ditch, a 
 shapeless stone cross. 
 
 " Instinctively, the woman rushes forward : her feet 
 do not seem to touch the earth, her body sways stiffly 
 like a ghost, and her eyes, haggard and staring, express 
 a suffering more than human. Heavily she sinks down 
 into the brambles, which tear her dress but give way, 
 and, with her breasts crushed against the cold stone of 
 the cross, on which the moss has hung its silky fringes, 
 with writhing arms, with a frame shaken by the agony 
 of an infinite sorrow, with her head stretched upwards to 
 the impassible stars, she calls desperately for the lover 
 who for her sake has been slain." 
 
 Krains is often most successful in creating an 
 
 atmosphere of supreme horror, as in the story of 
 
 294
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 the old beggar who smashes a statue of Christ 
 and finds money hidden inside it, only to go mad 
 with remorse. His more mature work (Amours 
 Rustiques, Le Pain Noir) is marked by a minute 
 naturalism and a harrowing pessimism. He ex- 
 tracts the maximum of suffering from his subject. 
 "Not content with observing in order to under- 
 stand," says Maurice Gauchez, "he dissects in 
 order to explain." He would be the most cruel 
 and corrosive of Belgian authors if he did not 
 identify himself with the sufferings of his char- 
 acters, mostly broken-down people who are sick 
 to death with despair ; but he is not a realist 
 standing outside the world he creates he is in 
 it, heart and soul ; and his tenderness for his 
 creatures, his all-embracing charity, lift him above 
 sordidness. 
 
 Maurice des Ombiaux is the most prolific as 
 he is the gayest of the Walloon writers. He 
 would be flattered if he were called the most 
 Walloon of the Walloons ; for he is the apostle 
 of the Walloon country, in which he has situated 
 practically all his work. " The King of Entre- 
 
 Sambre-et-Meuse " someone has called him. Le- 
 
 295
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 monnier could not endure the idea of being " a 
 cow grazing its patch of grass round its stake." 
 This is just what des Ombiaux takes a pride in 
 being. He is the re'gionaliste a outrance. "You 
 cannot hope to be a Lamartine," he says to the 
 young Belgian writers, who in recent years have 
 broken away from the tradition of the milieu^ 
 "you can only be a Belgian Lamartine." Of set 
 purpose he has concentrated his studies on the 
 history, the architecture, the folklore, the scenery 
 of his native Hainault, and he has poured his 
 specialised knowledge (sometimes with monotonous 
 insistence) into the mould of his tales. But what- 
 ever mistakes his doctrine may have led him into, 
 no one could deny the immense variety of his 
 books : Contes dentre Sambre et Meuse, Mes Ton- 
 nelles, Tetes de Houille, Mihien cFAvene, Le Joyau 
 de la Mitre, La Maison dOr, Nos Rustres, Guidon 
 d Anderlecht, Le Maugre 1 , Contes d ' Avant F Amour > 
 Les Manches de Lustrine, Petit Traite de Havane, 
 etc. Some of his work is pronouncedly Rabelaisian, 
 but is too good-natured to be offensive. He has 
 the faculty of combining comedy with tragedy ; as 
 
 in Mihien d'Avene, the story of an idiot who falls 
 
 296
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 in love and murders his rival. Le Maugre is 
 perhaps the novel in which he has gone farthest 
 astray. It is all a study of local custom. It 
 would appear that in the district in question the 
 farmers deny their landlord the right of increasing 
 their rent, and still more that of evicting them. 
 If a landlord tries to exercise his legal rights, 
 he can find no tenant in the locality to replace 
 the farmer he has evicted ; and if he imports one 
 from another district, the immigrant's cattle are 
 maimed, and he and his family are murdered. 
 The conditions are obviously similar to those which 
 obtained in Ireland not long ago. Des Ombiaux 
 had a plenitude of excellent material to work in ; 
 but his obsession of elucidating local custom leads 
 him into the error of tracing this particular tra- 
 dition to the Middle Ages. The movement of the 
 story is excellent : we are hurried from event to 
 event. The characterisation is good : here are 
 Walloon peasants, good and bad, as they live and 
 breathe. And yet it is a monotonous book, and 
 it disproves the whole theory of excessive region- 
 alism. It proves that an inventory of customs, 
 
 however accelerated by action, does not make a 
 
 297
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 novel. But, in justice to des Ombiaux, it must 
 be pointed out that Le Maugrt is rather an ex- 
 periment in the direction of unrelieved tragedy, 
 whereas the real des Ombiaux is a jolly writer 
 who is scarcely tinged with the prevailing melan- 
 choly of the Walloon writers. There is another 
 thing in which he differs from the rest of his 
 Walloon compeers : he is a colourist. For instance, 
 he strings a series of pictures together in Demol- 
 der's manner in Guidon cT Anderlecht> an essay in 
 profane hagiography (the novel cheerily proposes 
 to relate the career of St. Guidon, one of the most 
 popular saints of Brabant, and the very date leaps 
 forward four hundred years). But a vital point 
 this rather careless writer (for at his best he is 
 a teeming improviser) splashes the colours about 
 in a way that Demolder would never dream of 
 doing ; he makes us see the colours, not the 
 picture. Describing the fair at Ypres, for instance, 
 he says : 
 
 " In the streets and the alleys the crowd swarmed 
 and swirled red, green, orange, white, violet, purple, with 
 blue shadows, while afar the blonde verdure of Flanders 
 laughed in the flat fields, under an indigo sky graced 
 
 298
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 with big white clouds as round as balls, like snowy 
 mountains." 
 
 Anyone who has seen Le Mariage de Made- 
 moiselle Beulemans knows that there is such a thing 
 as Belgian humour. But it is very, very rare. 
 Belgian authors take themselves so seriously. . . . 
 According to Eugene Gilbert, it was Leopold 
 Courouble who discovered Belgian humour ; and 
 Courouble is certainly the accredited Belgian 
 humorist. The book which first showed the 
 Belgians that a national humour was possible is 
 La Famille Kaekebroeck. Courouble makes his 
 good burghers of Brussels speak that dialect of 
 the French language which is known as " le parler 
 beige." Other books of his are: Mes Pandectes ; 
 Profils B lanes et Frimousses Noires ; Images 
 dOutremer; Pauline Platbrod; Les Noces d"Or\ 
 Le Mariage d'ffermance. In La Maison Espag- 
 nole, with its pictures of old Brussels life, he has 
 given us his autobiography. 
 
 Fernand Wicheler and Franz Fonson would 
 hardly have written their famous comedy, Le 
 Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans, if La Famille 
 
 Kaekebroeck had not showed them the way. Their 
 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 comedy is notoriously the most successful, financi- 
 ally, of all Belgian plays, and its characters have 
 become proverbial, but it is doubtful whether any 
 of the plays of these authors belong to literature. 
 
 Henri Maubel in his tales (Dans I 'fie, Ames de 
 Couleur) and plays (Etude de Jeune Fille, Les 
 Ratines, L? Eau et le Vin) studies the soul of girls 
 on the verge of womanhood. He is a philosophic 
 writer of the greatest refinement. He works 
 somewhat by Maeterlinck's gospel of silence : he 
 listens to the manifestations of the soul. Like 
 his own Abb6 Jacquelin he seeks " to bring 
 our own mystery home to us." Dreams may 
 reveal it : 
 
 " Dream," he says, " reality . . . these are words ; 
 the dream is real, or else we should have to deny the 
 brain where it is born. Dream is the light of the flames 
 that consume us. It is the blossoming of our desires 
 when they have been purified in the spirit, and it only 
 appears so strange and is only so powerful because it 
 reflects desires that the body does not seize." 
 
 Henri Maubel is the husband of Blanche 
 Rousseau, who has also in her dream-pictures 
 
 analysed the soul of young girls. Her volume of 
 
 300
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 short stories, Le Rabaga, is one of the most notable 
 books of recent years. An analysis of one of her 
 tales, " Grande Mademoiselle Fanny," will show 
 how cunningly she uses the atmosphere of fairy 
 tales to reveal feminine character. Angele and 
 Phlip are two little ragamuffins. Angele has a 
 doll whose name is Grande Mademoiselle Fanny. 
 " Shall we get married soon ? " Phlip asks one 
 day. " I am quite willing, if big Miss Fanny will 
 agree," Angele replies. They go to ask Miss 
 Fanny, but no answer can be got from the doll. 
 " She says you mustn't kiss me any more," Angele 
 interprets the doll's silence. " She says we must 
 wait. She says we can get married when you 
 bring me a money-box with some money in." 
 Phlip, nothing daunted, hires himself to a farmer, 
 and tends sheep for a long, long time, till he has 
 the money. He takes what he has earned to 
 Angele, and she puts the money in Miss Fanny's 
 pocket. "When shall we get married?" asks 
 Phlip. "Didn't I tell you?" answers the little 
 girl, "she wants a red petticoat. She wants the 
 red petticoat in Denis's shop-window. Be quick 
 
 and go and buy it!" "How can I," asks Phlip, 
 
 301
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " when I haven't got my money ? " " She says she 
 must have it," insists Angele. Phlip steals it, 
 and is put in prison. But all the time he 
 thinks that Angele is waiting for him, and that 
 when he gets back home they will be married. 
 When he is released, he walks a day and a night, 
 and a day again. And he arrives at the village. 
 It is an evening in May. He hides himself till 
 the moon comes out. Then he goes to the farm 
 and throws a handful of sand at the attic window. 
 Angele opens the window, and talks to him. She 
 is sorry he has had to eat dry bread. As for her, 
 she has had roast goose with chestnuts, and fig 
 jam. . . . She knows what he has come for, but, 
 she tells him, Miss Fanny has had another idea. . . . 
 now she wants the Blue Bird. Phlip sets out to 
 find it, crosses the ocean, and goes to where the 
 niggers and the Chinese live. As the years pass, 
 Angele sits at her window, and sometimes at night 
 she makes a sign to someone passing in the 
 shadow. Then a step is heard on the staircase 
 and some soldier or other pushes her door open. 
 He brings cakes and wine. But one evening 
 
 somebody came to the door when she was not 
 
 302
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 expecting anyone. He knocked twice. Angele 
 opened the door . . . and there stood Phlip. He 
 had grown very tall, and he was sunburnt. He 
 was dressed as a sailor, and a bird was perched 
 on his fist. He did not wait for her to invite him 
 to come in. "Here I am," he said, "and here's 
 the bird." Angele saw that it was the Blue Bird. 
 He tells her his experiences in strange lands, and 
 leaves her, saying he will come back the day after 
 and then they can get married. The morning 
 after he returns to the room, and finds her waiting 
 in her wedding dress. She has been stitching all 
 night. On her head she has a straw hat. And 
 on the straw hat something blue is stirring. It is 
 the Blue Bird, stitched alive on to the straw hat. 
 Its wing is still beating a little. . . . 
 
 Charles Delchevalerie is one of the few sur- 
 vivors yet writing of the group who wrote for La 
 Wallonie and Flortal. Journalism has left him 
 little time for literature, but the " landscape 
 studies" of his Decors (1895), his short story 
 La Maison des Roses Tremieres (1898), and Images 
 Fraternelles (1914), a collection of vivid impres- 
 sions splendidly illustrated by Auguste Donnay, 
 
 303
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 keep his name before the public. As a descriptive 
 writer, Delchevalerie is in the front rank. One of 
 his fellow-workers in the days of La Wallonie 
 was Ce"lestin Demblon, who wrote Contes Melan~ 
 coliques and Nouveaux Contes Melancoliques. 
 Since then he has devoted himself (like Georges 
 Eekhoud) to Shakespearean criticism, and (like 
 Maeterlinck) he has translated Macbeth. 
 
 Not all the Walloon writers are regionalists or 
 philosophers. The best are, decidedly. But there 
 is a sprinkling of romanticists not new-romanti- 
 cists, in the Viennese sense, but romanticists of 
 the good old school of Victor Hugo. There are, 
 then, historical novels in Belgian literature. The 
 most famous is La Cite Ardente, in which Henry 
 Carton de Wiart, the present Minister of Justice, 
 unrolls the epic of the city of Lie"ge. Opinions 
 differ as to the merit of the book, as of Les 
 Vertus Bourgeoises, another historical novel of 
 Carton de Wiart's ; but it is at all events certain 
 that the noblest of Belgian cities deserves a 
 greater epic than Henry Carton de Wiart can 
 write, although he got the quinquennial prize for 
 
 his production. 
 
 304
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 Another Belgian writer who owes much of his 
 success to official influence is Henri Davignon, 
 whose father is the present Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs. His drama La Querelle was played in 
 1914 in the presence of the King and the Queen 
 and six Cabinet Ministers (a record for " the 
 Belgian theatre "). The play is also remarkable 
 linguistically, as Leopold Rosy pointed out in Le 
 Thyrse, for (in the interests of local colour it is, 
 specifically, a " Belgian " play) it is written in three 
 languages French, Walloon, and Beulemans. 
 Henri Davignon is nothing if not patriotic. He 
 would reconcile the two warring races of his 
 country, he would fuse Fleming and Walloon. 
 How it can be done he shows in his much- 
 discussed novel Un Beige (1913): let orthodox 
 Flanders save the soul of free-thinking Wallonia, 
 and all will be well. The two races must inter- 
 marry, but there must be an end of all this Walloon 
 cynicism. This tendencious spirit guides the in- 
 trigue of Davignon's other novels (LArdennaise, 
 Le Prix de la Vie, Le Courage d? Aimer are read- 
 able) ; and this young aristocrat (personally very 
 
 charming, by all accounts) takes care that the 
 
 305 u
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Whig dogs and especially the blear-eyed socialists 
 get the worst of it. He has a sense of landscape ; 
 and anyone wishing to visit the Ardennes might 
 find suggestions in his novels for a profitable, 
 itinerary. 
 
 Belgium lost, in 1912, a promising writer in 
 Frangois Charles Morisseaux. He resigned a com- 
 mission in the army to devote himself to literature, 
 was director of the excellent Brussels review Le 
 Thyrse from 1905 to 1908, he wrote numerous 
 novels, tales, and plays, and he was barely thirty 
 when he died. As a member, for some time, of 
 the staff of LJ&toile Beige, he rejuvenated that 
 family journal's literary columns. His plays, for 
 all the lively wit he expended in them, are hardly 
 likely to survive ; his novels A Travers le Vitrail, 
 La Blessure et iAmour> Histoire Remarquable 
 cPAnselme Ledoux, and his volume of short stories 
 Bobine et Casimir are saved by their delicate irony. 
 
 Paul Andr6 is, like Henri Davignon, an author 
 who treats modern problems with an orthodox bias. 
 In Delphine Fousseret he hit upon an idea the 
 love-sick woman of forty which has been more 
 
 successfully handled by Karin Michaelis. It is, 
 
 306
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 however, rather as a regionalist writer, a devotee 
 of the Walloon country, that he has achieved 
 distinction (Le Prestige, L' Impossible Liberte). 
 His Chers Petits Anges are studies of children ; 
 his Contes de la Botte turn his recollections of 
 the army to account. 
 
 A sound critic of other men's work, a great 
 quarreller who never shows temper, even when the 
 hosts of the mighty move up against him (as when 
 recently he had the temerity to defend Maeterlinck 
 against the slashing onslaught of Louis Dumont- 
 Wilden), Georges Rency has written admirable 
 novels and tales {Madeleine, L'A'ieule, Contes de 
 la Hulotte, Frissons de Vie\ Franz Mahutte, one 
 of the old guard of La Jeune Belgique, is caustic 
 and sometimes sordid in his stories Gens de Pro- 
 vince, Sans Horizon, Feuilles au Vent. Hubert 
 Stiernet is known for his Histoires Hantees, and 
 Haute Plaine. 
 
 To return to the historical novel, there is a 
 Belgian Pierre Louys. Count Albert du Bois has 
 produced something akin to the French writer's 
 Aphrodite in his novels of ancient Greek life 
 
 Amours Antiques (the second edition was rebap- 
 
 307
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 tized L? Atktnienne) and Leuconoe. These are 
 novels for adults. The count is a rich amateur 
 who allows himself the luxury of writing, beside 
 his astonishing novels, plays in Alexandrines, 
 something like Racine's. If the Count is the 
 Belgian Pierre Louys, Maurice de Waleffe must, 
 by virtue of his ancient Egyptian novel Le Peplos 
 Vert, be called the Belgian Georg Ebers. To 
 complete the trio, Fran9ois Leonard (who has 
 written verse, plays, and criticism) must be called 
 the Belgian Wells : his Le Triomphe de I'Homme 
 is a terrific scientific vision of the future ; in the 
 last chapter, the Earth goes wrong, waggles about, 
 makes a rush for Vega . . . and bursts. 
 
 Prosper Henri Devos made a name by his 
 Monna Lisa, a novel of Bohemian life in Brussels : 
 two artists are rivals for the possession of a woman. 
 Devos leads a campaign against the regionalist 
 fashion, and he has dared to break a lance with 
 Maurice des Ombiaux. Auguste Rouvez, himself 
 an official in the Ministry of Science and Art, 
 has satirised the bureaucracy of the capital (as 
 des Ombiaux did in Les Manches de Lustrine] in 
 
 his novel Le Capitole. 
 
 308
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 Henri Liebrecht collaborated with Morisseaux 
 in writing plays (Miss Lili, L'Effrenee). Plays 
 of his own are : L?Autre Moyen, UEcole des 
 Valets, La Main Gauche, U Impromptu Persan, 
 Gil Bias chez Monseigneur. His drama Enfant 
 des Flandres is an adaptation of De Coster's 
 Legende a" Ulenspiegel. Liebrecht is greatly in 
 evidence in Brussels as a combative critic, very 
 busy in the interests of "the Belgian Theatre," 
 with which his own interests are involved. He 
 has compiled a Histoire de la Litterature Beige 
 d' Expression Francaise (Brussels, 1913); a livre 
 commande, but useful. 
 
 Sylvain Bonmariage (English on his mother's 
 side) is the enfant terrible of Belgian literature. 
 He is attacked to right and left, as an impudent 
 young coxcomb, as a farceur, as a sauteur, as a 
 prodigy. But Albert Giraud protects him. His 
 poems (Poemes, 1909) cannot be taken quite 
 seriously, though they are prefaced by Albert 
 Giraud, who describes his favourite as having 
 "lips Britannically shaved" and as "joining the 
 most English phlegm to the most French petu- 
 lance." The plays of this Belgian Alcibiades (Le 
 
 309
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Pelican, Tant va la Cruche a r Eau, U Automne) 
 have been acted at Paris. Of his recent novel 
 Les Caprices du Mattre a Parisian writer who is 
 beyond suspicion of partiality, Eugene Montfort, 
 has distinctly said (Les Marges, February 1914) 
 that it is pleasant and witty ; and the same may 
 be maintained of Bonmariage's other tales (L 'Eau 
 qui dort, Les Aventures Merveilleuses de r Abbt 
 de Lassus, Attitudes, Bobette petite Sceur de la 
 Lune. 
 
 A writer of meagre output but considerable 
 talent is Ferdinand Bouche". His long novel 
 Les Mourlon, which describes the tragic rivalry 
 of two old farmers for the love of a buxom 
 wench who turns out to be the daughter of 
 one of them (begotten on a beggar-woman in a 
 barn), has had the good fortune to be translated 
 into Flemish by Stijn Streuvels, which gives it a 
 a second (and probably more robust) life. Les 
 Mourlon admirably reproduces the life on a farm 
 in Hainault, Bouche's native province. His best 
 work, however, is contained in Chrysalides, a 
 collection of short stories some of which are 
 
 nothing less than masterpieces. 
 
 310
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 Beyond all doubt, of the younger generation 
 of Walloon writers it is Edmond Glesener from 
 
 whom the most is to be hoped. His novel Le 
 
 / 
 
 Cceur de Francois Remy is by some critics con- 
 sidered to be the best which has appeared in 
 recent years. It is a psychological novel of great 
 intensity, describing the character of a neurasthenic 
 weakling a modern type. The book is painful, 
 perhaps cruel. In Glesener's next novels, Mon- 
 sieur Honore and its sequel Le Citoyen Colette, 
 the cruelty is lightened by irony. The two novels 
 together (their secondary title is Chronicle of a 
 Little Country) give us a sorry picture of Belgium, 
 but Glesener has obviously a poor opinion of his 
 native country. " To Belgians," he says, " the 
 finest idea in the world was never worth a crown 
 piece." " In a country of illiterates," he says again 
 in Le Citoyen Colette, "it is natural that fools 
 should succeed." The protagonist of the two 
 novels, Honore" Colette, is a fool, and he succeeds. 
 He has good looks, and he has the success of 
 Maupassant's Bel Ami from the moment when, 
 a butcher employed at the Halles aux Viandes at 
 
 Lie"ge, he takes the first step upwards by marrying 
 
 3"
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 a rich widow. He is now a rentier; and has 
 plenty of spare time for philandering. He throws 
 one of his rivals into the Meuse, fishes him out 
 again, and is decorated for heroism. Another step. 
 . . . He enters the City Guard, seduces his chiefs 
 wife, is invited to a Court ball. He continues to 
 mount, till he is elected a socialist member of 
 Parliament. Here ends the first novel, which took 
 Glesener seven years to write. In Le Citoyen 
 Colette we witness the decline and fall of the hero, 
 who ends his days in wretchedness, deserted by 
 his followers. But the moral effect of his fall is 
 lacking one humbug goes, other humbugs take his 
 place. As ever in Belgium, Glesener would have us 
 believe. Evidently the satire must be taken with 
 a grain of salt. But it has its justification, as any- 
 one who has the least acquaintance with Belgian 
 life must know. Glesener has confessed that in 
 writing the Colette novels he always had Gil 
 Bias and Le Rouge et le Noir by him. Colette 
 is an adventurer, like the heroes of Le Sage's and 
 Stendhal's novels. But here the resemblance ends. 
 Colette is only the hero in the sense that the 
 
 novels are written round his career. In himself 
 
 312
 
 Walloon Novelists and Dramatists 
 
 he is a mean and miserable personage. He is 
 only interesting as a type. This, perhaps, according 
 to the orthodox criteria of criticism, is the defect of 
 the books. But Glesener did not aim at enlisting 
 his readers' sympathies for Colette. His idea was 
 to criticise Belgium, and this he does, exhibiting 
 pictures of each successive stage of society as 
 Colette ascends the ladder, giving us a synopsis 
 of Belgian life. And by his own showing all is 
 not bad in his " little country." In the hearts of 
 simple people he finds goodness ; in children he 
 finds a charm which is better than all the glitter 
 of high life. 
 
 If, as is expected, a new Belgium arises after 
 the war from the ruins of the old, a Belgium which 
 can no longer be charged with contempt of in- 
 tellect, Glesener's Chronicle of a Little Country 
 will perhaps assume the character of a historical 
 record by which the new regime will judge the 
 old. 
 
 313
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 NOVELISTS IN FLEMISH 
 
 IN Camilla Lemonnier's Le Vent dans les Moulins 
 there is a character, Piet Baezen, who is the son 
 of a baker and a baker himself. 
 
 " Every morning," says the tale, " Piet put his loaves 
 in the oven and then out of the town he went, walking 
 straight in front of him, away by the tiny farms with 
 their green shutters. That was the only way he had 
 ever had of writing his tales about the poor. Nobody 
 before him had expressed such humble and brotherly 
 things. Baezen was the only person who never seemed 
 to imagine that his books were better even than his 
 bread. He wrote his books just as he kneaded his 
 dough, with the same silent and gentle soul. . . . They 
 were so sad and gentle, these tales of poor folks, that 
 they almost made you want to suffer yourself, to have 
 your nose nipped by the frost while your two hands 
 were as far down in your pockets as they would 
 go " 
 
 Piet Baezen can be no other than Stijn 
 Streuvels. And no wonder that Lemonnier made
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 him a part of his book, for he had set himself 
 the task of singing the soul of Flanders, and the 
 soul of Flanders is in Stijn Streuvels. When all 
 is said and done, he is the true Fleming ; and all 
 the others, whether they write in French or 
 Flemish, cannot entirely get away from French 
 culture. 
 
 Stijn Streuvels's real name is Frank Lateur, 
 and he is the nephew of Guide Gezelle. His 
 father, after marrying Gezelle's sister, set up as 
 a baker at Heule, near Courtrai, and here Frank 
 was born in 1872. When he was about twelve 
 years old, the family removed to Avelghem, where 
 the future novelist grew up, and received such 
 schooling as could be had. As soon as his parents 
 allowed him, he stopped away from school. He 
 was sent to Bruges to learn baking, and when 
 his father died he took over the shop. He soon 
 acquired a great local reputation as a confectioner ; 
 the peasants from miles round came to him for 
 their fancy cakes. At four or five o'clock in the 
 morning he was up and working ; and in the pauses 
 during the baking he read and read, like David 
 Livingstone at the loom. His thirst for reading
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 was unquenchable ; he taught himself French, 
 German, English, and Russian, and spent every 
 available penny on books. He is said to have 
 read every number of the Reclambibliothek. To 
 save money for books, he never spent a penny 
 on amusements, never crossed the threshold of a 
 tavern (something incredible in a Flemish village !). 
 From his eighteenth to his twenty-eighth year he 
 lived like a monk. 
 
 In 1895 h e was twenty-five at the time he 
 began to contribute short stories to the papers. 
 Soon he was discovered by Karel van de Woestijne, 
 who with Cyriel Buysse and other writers had just 
 founded Van Nu en Straks, a review which was 
 planned to break new ground. After some corre- 
 spondence Streuvels met van de Woestijne in 
 Ghent, and henceforward he contributed regularly 
 to the new review. His first book, Lenteleven 
 (The Life of Spring) was denounced as obscene 
 by the Roman Catholic journal Belfort. There 
 was no justification whatever for the attack, but 
 the article was sent to the parish priest of 
 Avelghem, with the result that Stijn Streuvels 
 was subjected to much local persecution. How-
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 ever, the Church was powerless to injure him in 
 the larger world of literature ; and soon Streuvels 
 was able to join with other writers in launching 
 another review with modern ideals, Vlaanderen. 
 
 He continued to work in his bakery. He 
 would be busy till noon ; and in the afternoons 
 he would go for long walks in the neigh- 
 bouring villages (like Piet Baezen). At about 
 five o'clock he would return, shut himself up in 
 his cell, and work at his tales. He had nothing 
 to do with selling what he baked ; the shop was 
 attended to by the other members of the house- 
 hold. Gradually, in spite of his excellent cakes, 
 he came to have the reputation of being mad, or 
 what is worse, a heathen heretic. Here was a man 
 who avoided the taverns, and went for walks, with 
 no apparent object, every afternoon. And when 
 Streuvels began to go for his walks in the night- 
 time, there could no longer be any doubt. ... At 
 last, however, he showed some promise of recover- 
 ing his senses. He was going to get married. 
 But as it turned out his marriage provided the 
 " coffee- wives " with the greatest scandal of all he 
 came to church in a jacket and a soft felt hat. . . .
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 A short time before his marriage his mother 
 had inherited a few thousand francs, and Stijn 
 Streuvels himself was now earning a decent in- 
 come by his writing, so they sold the shop and 
 the goodwill, and Streuvels had a villa built at 
 Ingoyghem, a little village at a considerable dis- 
 tance from any railway, but in a lovely district. 
 " His life here is very lonely," says Andr de 
 Ridder in his book on the novelist. "He does 
 not travel, he does not receive callers, he makes 
 no friends ; he does not chat with anyone in the 
 village. All the families in the neighbourhood 
 would, of course, be only too glad to have him 
 at their parties and dinners, but he declines all 
 invitations." 
 
 Streuvels's work may be divided into three 
 periods, that in which he records the impressions 
 of his early youth at Heule, that for which his 
 life at Avelghem provides the material, and that 
 which centres round Ingoyghem. The scenes of 
 his stories, however, are not localised by name ; 
 it is interior evidence which gives the indication. 
 The realism of the first and second periods is 
 sometimes overshadowed by a vague pessimism ;
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 in the third period the happy conditions of the 
 novelist's own rural life prevail. But everywhere 
 there is sunshine and shadow ; more sunshine to- 
 wards the end. H is works are : Lenteleven ( 1 899) ; 
 Zomerland ( 1 900) ; Zonnetij ( 1 900) ; Doodendans 
 (1901); Langs de Wegen (1903); Dagen (1903); 
 Minnehandel ( 1 904) ; Dorpsgeheimen (1904); Open- 
 lucht (1905) ; StUle Avonden (1905) ; Het Uitzicht 
 der Dingen (1906); De Vlasschaard (1907), Of 
 these, Langs de Wegen and Minnehandel are 
 novels at least they appear to be so, though the 
 author has not actually called them "novels." In 
 any case, Streuvels (like so many of the Walloon 
 conteurs] is unable to write anything but short 
 stories, and what appear to be intended as novels 
 are really collections of independent impressions. 
 
 Even in his short stories Streuvels ignores the 
 exigencies of construction. "De Oogst " (The 
 Harvest), for instance, one of the tales in Zon- 
 netij, is really a couple of tales. If one detaches 
 the sentimental outlines, the first part is the love- 
 story of Rik and Lida ; but when Rik dies of 
 sunstroke the tale is artlessly continued by the 
 Jove-story of Lida's brother Wies, who had hitherto
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 been a subsidiary character. But the "story" is 
 nothing to Streuvels and this holds good of 
 all his work. He is concerned merely with the 
 impression, the reproduction of the mood ; and he 
 only makes use of the story in so far as it helps to 
 bring out the impression. In "The Harvest" the 
 purpose is to describe the annual migration of 
 Flemish labourers to reap, drove by drove, in the 
 vast cornfields of France. 
 
 " De Werkman " (The Labourer) is a tragic 
 picture of a reaper's return from France. Manse 
 has been having a hard struggle to keep the house 
 going during her husband's absence in the reaping- 
 fields. At last he returns, with his pockets full of 
 money ; but when a visit has been paid to the 
 village tradesmen to pay off what is owing, a big 
 hole has been made in Ivo's earnings. If he can 
 get work for the winter months, however, all will 
 be well. But Ivo is one of the last labourers to 
 return, and all the work in the neighbourhood has 
 been snapped up. There is nothing for Ivo, and 
 those who have returned with him, to do but to 
 set out without a moment's delay (lest they should 
 
 arrive too late here also) for the Walloon country 
 
 320
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 and seek work in the hated sugar factories, where 
 men are herded and penned like slaves. They 
 dare not stay a single night with their wives and 
 families. During the summer months husband 
 and wife have longed to be together with their 
 children ; but the children must be fed, and Manse 
 has hardly time to darn her husband's old clothes 
 before he and his mates set off again to a worse 
 slavery than before. This tragedy of disillusion- 
 ment is so simply told ; but the very simplicity of 
 the narration (there is no fine writing in Stijn 
 Streuvels) heightens the hopeless misery almost 
 beyond endurance. 
 
 Still more poignant is the realism of " Zonder 
 Dak " (Without a Rooftree), the first story in 
 Openlucht (The Air of the Open). It is early 
 morning in a tiny garden and a tiny hen-pen ; 
 Lowie, a Flemish labourer, is spending the 
 happiest hour of his day before he goes off to 
 work at the farm. The hens, the goat, the 
 rabbits in the hutch, the garden, the cottage 
 all these are his own. He had toiled and moiled 
 all his life, and scraped penny by penny together 
 
 to realise the ambition of his life to have a home 
 
 321 x
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 of his own. He had built everything, bit by bit, 
 with his own hands. " And now," he says to his 
 wife, " we can be happy ! " When Lowie, this 
 particularly fine morning, has had a look round 
 his domain, and smoked his pipe, he sets out for 
 the farm ; but at the corner of the alder-hedge he 
 turns round and stands looking at his cottage in 
 the open field, with its white-washed walls and 
 thatched roof, and the top of the hen-cote and 
 the goat's stable peering out over the green hedge 
 under the pear-tree. He thinks it looks so pretty 
 and it is such a pleasure to look at it, and it is all 
 his and then there is Wieze, his wife, and the 
 four children, the young rascals. . . . And off he 
 goes, as proud as a king, to his hard day's work. 
 The second part of the tale shows us Wieze dress- 
 ing the children and giving them their breakfast 
 a Flemish interior. Then she has to go to the 
 grocer's, and the children are left alone to play. 
 They play at riding in a coach on their parents' 
 bed, and when they are tired of this, they climb 
 up to the attic, though they have been forbidden 
 to go there. It is dark, and they try to open the 
 
 skylight, but their little fingers cannot lift the 
 
 322
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 frame. Then they fetch a matchbox and one of 
 them keeps striking matches till all at once the 
 thatch is on fire. The neighbours arrive in time 
 to save the children, but the house and the sheds 
 are burnt down. The mother does not think of 
 the house it is enough to have the children 
 unharmed ; but the father will not be comforted. 
 Nothing more must be expected of Stijn 
 Streuvels than such simple things as these simple, 
 but deep, told in the language of everyday life, 
 and yet with a mastery of style. In some of his 
 tales ("Een beroerde Maandag," " HetDuivelstuig") 
 he shows a sense of humour which comes as a 
 relief after his prevailing seriousness : it is a heavy 
 Flemish humour which gathers force very slowly, 
 but in the end is irresistible. One thing in 
 Streuvels is very noticeable after reading Eekhoud 
 and the other Belgian novelists who write in 
 French. The women of Eekhoud, Lemonnier, and 
 the rest are almost always sensual women who call 
 a spade a spade. There is no hint of such things 
 in Stijn Streuvels's tales ; and it is evident that 
 either the French-writing novelists brutalise their 
 
 characters, or Stijn Streuvels idealises his. Pro- 
 
 323
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 bably the truth is midway. Streuvels is not mealy- 
 mouthed, though the peasants of some of his later 
 tales are obviously too refined ; his realism is 
 genuine and convincing. He is certainly a very 
 original writer. The influence of the Russian 
 realists and of Bjornson (some of whose tales he 
 has translated) is perhaps discernible here and 
 there ; but it would be hard to bring it home. 
 He is weakest where he abandons the transcrip- 
 tion of things seen to attempt flights of imagi- 
 nation : Zomerland, for instance, is a most con- 
 fusing blend of poetry and reality it is hard to 
 know whether the scene is in South Africa or 
 Flanders, whether the period is prehistoric or in 
 our own days. 
 
 There is no trace of the maidenly chastity of 
 Stijn Streuvels in the one Flemish-writing novelist 
 whose merit comes near equalling his. This is 
 Cyriel Buysse, a writer whom Maeterlinck, ever 
 lavish of praise, has compared to Guy de Mau- 
 passant. Buysse is the nephew of Rosalie and 
 Virginie Leveling, two sisters whose Flemish- 
 written tales and poems are still widely read. 
 
 He was born in a village near Ghent in 1859, 
 
 324
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 and he was brought up to succeed his father, who 
 was a manufacturer. In his twenty-fifth year he 
 went to America in the interests of his firm ; and 
 it was during the return voyage, two years after, 
 that he determined to turn his back on commerce, 
 for which he felt no aptitude, and devote himself 
 to literature. He began at once to write tales, 
 which in due course were published. His first 
 novel, Het Recht van den Sterkste (1893) revealed 
 him as an uncompromising realist of great power. 
 
 The Right of the Strongest would have made 
 Zola blush. It is filthy. But the intention is clean : 
 Cyriel Buysse is an austere and noble artist, and if 
 he chooses to regard sexual passion as the most 
 destructive factor in life, he must be allowed the 
 liberty of his opinion, so long as he cannot honestly 
 be accused of pornography. The worst of Buysse 
 is not his filth, but his lack of humour. " Buysse 
 cannot smile," says a Dutch critic. And yet some 
 of the scenes in The Right of the Strongest, 
 the brawls in the streets of the vile slum, for 
 instance, are apt to raise a laugh by the grim- 
 visaged sternness of their narration. They remind 
 
 one of nothing so much as of The Police Gazette. 
 
 325
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 The purpose of the novel is sufficiently indicated 
 by its title. Buysse thinks that physical strength 
 is what shapes the life of the poor. To every 
 woman man is the superman. In a strange scene 
 where a number of women are weeding a field, 
 each one in turn tells, without a vestige of shame, 
 the story of her seduction. " All had been over- 
 come by force, deceit, or surprise ; and what they 
 recollected of it was not grief for the loss of their 
 honour, still less disgust at the brutality of the plot, 
 but rather an impression of having been fooled, 
 combined with an unconscious feeling of respect 
 for the man's strength, a feeling of necessary sub- 
 jection to the right of the strongest." Rape, 
 robbery, drink, fights, poaching, prison ; harridans 
 slanging one another at the doors of their filthy 
 hovels ; harlotry and incest is it indeed a true 
 picture of life, or is it the phantasmagoria of a 
 too heated imagination ? 
 
 Schoppenboer (The Knave of Spades) is not 
 less violent, though another passion, avarice, is 
 brought into play. Old farmer Joncke, whose farm 
 has been burnt down, implores his three sons on 
 
 his deathbed not to marry, but to live together 
 
 326
 
 Novelists in Flemish 
 
 and build up the prosperity of the farm again. 
 (The outlines of the novel have some likeness 
 to Ferdinand Bouchers Les Mourlon). The three 
 brothers carry out the old man's wishes. But Pol 
 Moeykens, the orphaned son of their sister, comes 
 to live at the farm. The brothers hate the lad, 
 but they cannot refuse to have him live with them, 
 for they fear he might claim his mother's part in 
 the common heritage. In course of time one of 
 the brothers, Jan, discovers that Pol has relations 
 with the servant, his own mistress. Jan broods 
 vengeance, and when Pol gets married and brings 
 his bride to live at the farm he lays his plans to 
 seduce her. He is caught in the act of assaulting 
 her, and is killed with a spade. 
 
 Sursum Corda (1894) is socialistic in tendency. 
 It is to some extent an autobiographical novel ; 
 the socialist hero is no doubt Buysse himself. 
 There is also autobiography in 'n Leeuw van 
 Vlaanderen (A Lion of Flanders) : the hero is 
 filled with longing to improve the lot of the 
 Flemish poor. His experiences in Parliament dis- 
 illusionise and disgust him, and he learns that what 
 
 good he is to do he must do in his private capacity, 
 
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 with none but his devoted wife to help him. Op 't 
 Blauwhuis (In the Blue House) is the old story of 
 a girl of noble birth brought up in seclusion and 
 in total ignorance of the facts of life. Nature and 
 the beasts teach her. Daarna (Afterwards) shows 
 that the higher classes are as corrupt as the lower 
 classes. Wroeging (Remorse), Te Lande (In the 
 Country), Uit Vlaanderen (From the Land of 
 Flanders), and Van Arme Menschen (Poor Folks) 
 are collections of short stories, many of them of 
 great power. 
 
 Another Flemish-writing novelist with a con- 
 siderable reputation is Herman Teirlinck, who 
 lives at Brussels, the scene of his Het Ivor en 
 Aapje (The Ivory Ape). August Vermeylen, 
 better known as poet and critic, has written a 
 notable novel, De Wandelende Jood (The Wander- 
 ing Jew). An Albertian novelist whose reputation 
 is growing, especially in Holland, is Gustaav Ver- 
 meersch (Het Rollende Leven> 1901). 
 
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 CHAPTER XIII 
 POETS IN FLEMISH 
 
 THE most important of the Flemish poets write 
 in French. It is useless for the flamingants to 
 claim that their Flemish-writing poets are little 
 known abroad owing to the mere accident that 
 they write in Flemish : and that on the other hand 
 poets like Verhaeren and Maeterlinck would have 
 been seen in their true proportion if they had 
 written in Flemish. The French-writing Flemings 
 do not necessarily write in French because they are 
 greater men than those who write in Flemish ; 
 but the fact remains, when values are dispassion- 
 ately compared by international standards, that 
 there are no Flemish-writing poets who reach the 
 height of Verhaeren or Giraud. That is not to say 
 that no Flemish-writing poet is worthy of the most 
 serious attention : as a matter of fact, the Flemish- 
 written poetry is often very beautiful ; and the very 
 
 qualities of the language give it a character of its 
 
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 own, a character rather of quaintness and idyllic 
 quiet than of strength and revolutionary ardour. 
 The greatest fault that can be charged against 
 Flemish (as against Dutch) poetry is its lack of 
 originality : no Flemish poet has invented a style 
 of his own or cogitated matter which cannot be 
 found at least in germ in other literatures. To 
 the same extent as Ledeganck imitated Byron, 
 Pol de Mont has imitated Tennyson and Long- 
 fellow and the German classics. Even the Im- 
 pressionists, the poets who in recent years have 
 denounced all the productions of their forerunners 
 to burn their brains out in a struggle for an un- 
 compromising originality, import the essence of 
 their manner from the German nebulousness of 
 Stefan George and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. 
 
 In Germany at all events one Flemish- writing 
 poet has had full justice done to him. Pol de 
 Mont has been translated into German, and his 
 lecturing tours in the Fatherland have helped to 
 make his name familiar. In his case, indeed, popu- 
 larity has been helped by the fact that he was one 
 of the acknowledged chiefs in Belgium of the Pan- 
 
 Germanist school, and that he has worked unceas- 
 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 ingly as a writer and as an orator to spread the 
 German idea. His political activity has probably 
 been nefarious ; but we shall do no harm if we follow 
 the Germans in giving him his due as a poet. 
 
 Pol de Mont, whose best verse is contained 
 in Claribella (1893) and Iris (1894), is a senti- 
 mental and a sensual poet. His sentimentality 
 often verges on the ludicrous, but at his best he 
 strikes poetry out of it a poetry which as a genre 
 claims a suggestive interest apart from its intrinsic 
 merit. We ought to admit that the very follies 
 of Continental poets often allow them to write 
 genuine poetry which our writers, restrained by a 
 saner but too severe tradition, could never have 
 conceived. An idea of Pol de Mont's sentiment- 
 ality and puerile images may be gathered from 
 his " Love lies Bleeding " : 
 
 " My love like a pale flower lies bleeding . . . 
 
 My love is withering away 
 Like a pale flower on stale water feeding 
 
 In a glass, for a day. 
 My love like a dim candle is pining, 
 
 Which, when the grey dawn flecks the skies, 
 Before Our Dear Lady still is shining, 
 All in a flowery Paradise. 
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 " Its delicate flame burned the night-tide through 
 
 A fiery lily 
 On a slender stem of a milk-white hue 
 
 But now morn is chilly, 
 
 And the light burns out amid Our Dear Lady's roses, 
 Like a glazing eye that for ever closes. 
 
 " Now like a royal maiden is my love, 
 
 The last child of a long line : shy and tender, 
 Poor bird to be slain, as the cold wind slays a dove, 
 Trembling and pale she is, alone, in the great 
 
 splendour 
 Of the old grey palace. . . . She sits by the window 
 
 pane, 
 
 And sees the flowers raising their gentle heads, 
 And opening, opening, opening, glad of the sun and 
 
 the rain, 
 Like children's eyes shining in the garden beds . . . 
 
 " She knows well, there are no flowers she will cull . . . 
 She folds her hands together, she knows not how 
 Her pining, weary heart is suffering now . . . 
 She is tired, so tired, now that the park is full 
 Of birds' voices ringing, ringing, ringing, in her ears, 
 And secretly she weeps her sorrow in hot tears . . . 
 She weeps for roses, that have never bloomed, 
 For the poor bird in the egg-shell entombed, 
 Haply for eyes that glowing sought her own, 
 Haply for kisses she has never known . . ." 
 
 He is a master of nature-painting, especially of 
 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 pastoral scenes. Take, for instance, his "Evening 
 Landscape" : 
 
 " Softly the day dies out behind the pines ; 
 
 Over the heathland still the red light blazes ; 
 But paler now and paler the sun shines 
 
 On the thin pastures dotted o'er with daisies. 
 
 " The plain is vast. The mists of evening lie 
 
 Spread at the verge in veils that shift and shimmer ; 
 Yonder a tree uprears to the azure sky 
 
 Its leaves that in the twilight faintly glimmer. 
 
 " Now listen ! Not a sound stirs far and wide. 
 
 The birds are silent in their leafy cover ; 
 Only a cricket chirps by the way-side, 
 
 And ghostly breezes o'er the landscape hover. 
 
 " Slowly, as though afraid of her own feet 
 
 On the parched grass, the shepherdess is leading 
 Home to the fold her flock too tired to bleat, 
 Red in the light the dying sun is bleeding." 
 
 One at least of his poems, "The Heart that is 
 Dead," reads like an echo of Swinburne : 
 
 " My heart is dead ! And who shall lay it 
 
 In its coffin ? My heart is dead ! 
 Its thirst was sore, and none would allay it ; 
 
 It was hungry, and no one brought it bread . . . 
 My heart is dead ! And who shall lay it 
 In its coffin ? My heart is dead. 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " My heart is dead . . . Let it rest from its anguish 
 In the first best grave that can be found. 
 
 Come, all ye dear ones that saw it languish, 
 
 Come nearer, and see it laid in the ground . . . 
 
 My heart is dead . . . Let it rest from its angush 
 In the first best grave that can be found. 
 
 " My heart is dead ... Ye that loved it, come nearer, 
 
 Come near it now, and never more. 
 Tell it, though dead it is dearer and dearer, 
 
 Speak to it tenderly as of yore. 
 My heart is dead ... Ye that loved it, come nearer, 
 
 Come round it now, and never more. 
 
 " You brownest of maidens, the first maid that filled it, 
 
 The first love it had and the purest aye, 
 Close with a soft kiss the broad wound that killed it, 
 
 Kiss all the ill that it did you away. 
 You brownest of maidens, the first maid that filled it, 
 The first love it had, and the purest aye. 
 
 " You with the sea-deep eyes that smoulder, 
 
 With the kisses of fire, you dark-haired maid, 
 
 Lift it up tenderly ere it grow colder, 
 
 Take it away like a lamb that had strayed. 
 
 You with the sea-deep eyes that smoulder, 
 
 With the kisses of fire, you dark-haired maid. 
 
 " And you, of all I have loved the sweetest, 
 
 You with the eyes that are gentle and mild, 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 Lay it to sleep in the grave that is meetest, 
 Lay it to sleep like a little child . . . 
 
 O you, of all I have loved the sweetest, 
 Lay it to sleep like a little child. 
 
 " Cover it over with cypress and throw ye 
 
 Softly the soil on the heart that is dead . . . 
 Then in solemn silence homewards go ye, 
 
 But never remember its weedy bed . . . 
 Cover it over with cypress and throw ye 
 Softly the soil on the heart that is dead." 
 
 Much of Pol de Mont's blank verse, such as 
 this poem of " Ophelia," reads like Tennyson : 
 
 " Even as in May a rustling shower at noon 
 While from the South the vernal sun bepaints 
 The falling drops with all his seven hues 
 Rains like a crystal cataract of light 
 On the green fields, and yet is melancholy, 
 As deeply melancholy as the face 
 Of a young wife that through her bridal veil 
 Weeps at her wedding for an earlier love ; 
 Even so paced the white maid of Elsinore, 
 Pale as a corpse, with eyes wept red, that stared 
 Into an empty space, and yet she smiled, 
 And yet she hummed a ballad, as she passed 
 Through the King's deer-park to the quiet brook. 
 
 " O sun and rain together, O joy and grief 
 In one poor heart, O sense and folly blent . . . 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 O bitter tears and pallor witnessing 
 
 A pain that is unconscious of itself . . . 
 
 But far more bitter broken song and laughter, 
 
 The wistful tokens of a mind diseased . . . 
 
 And ever laughing, ever singing, like 
 
 A little child that sings because a song, 
 
 So often heard and recollected half, 
 
 Echoes by chance along his memory 
 
 Even so, beneath high beeches from whose boughs 
 
 The dews of morning dripped, slowly she passed, 
 
 Onward without a will, and brake and culled 
 
 The wildflowers of the meadow like a child. 
 
 " But where the tufted grasses by the brook 
 Are hung with jewels of splashed foam, and surge 
 Like tiny waves when the west wind is blowing, 
 She stayed her listless feet and sang no more, 
 And, playing, she cast the wildflowers into the water, 
 With wide blue eyes watching them as they fell 
 And wakened shining circles in the waves 
 That rippled to the sedges of the shore. 
 
 " But the last wildflower of her gaudy bunch 
 A silver-hearted daisy with no scent 
 First pensively she held it to her nose, 
 And then she put the green stalk into her mouth, 
 Heaved a deep sigh and to her temples pressed 
 Her delicate hands, hummed the old ballad again, 
 And then stretching her arms out like a child 
 That fights with sleep she stared and stared at the sun 
 That shot his watery rays from the dull West. 
 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 " Then from the reeds a dragon-fly flew up, 
 With gold-green belly and black shining wings. 
 Laughing she snatched at it with shimmering hands . . . 
 Then she un braided all her golden hair 
 And shuddered . . . 
 
 With a loud splash she fell 
 On the still water. Gurgling bubbles rose 
 From the deep mud, and here and there a fish 
 Showed twinkling fins that swam to the farther shore. 
 
 " And all was silent, all the leaves were still ! 
 In blue dreams sank the evening, the soft gloam 
 Phantastically dimmed the shapes of things 
 Till wood and hill and house and castle tower 
 Faded afar in the half-dark of a dream, 
 And soon themselves seemed visions, empty dreams. 
 
 " But slowly in the clouded grey of the sky 
 A narrow moon ventured her pallid face 
 And wept her long pale argent rays upon 
 The white maid floating down the quiet brook, 
 Still with the daisy in her lips, the while 
 Around her head the glory of her hair 
 Was billowing like a golden aureole . . ." 
 
 But his blank verse has sometimes a more 
 German rudeness. His "Veteran of Wb'rth" 
 might have been written by Liliencron : 
 
 " It haunts my memory. 
 
 It was at Worth, 
 
 On the sixth of August in the year of blood. 
 337 V
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 At evening, six o'clock. We wandered through 
 The far-stretched battlefield to see if haply 
 Any yet lived amid so many dead. 
 Our quest was vain : cold, dumb, and motionless 
 Lay every body, as though bathed in blood. 
 
 " And in a field of hops we came upon 
 A sight of horror : in a sea of blood 
 I know the word is a commonplace, I know 
 There lay a whole battalion, man for man, 
 Of the blue soldiers from Bavaria, 
 Lying with upturned faces on their backs, 
 Mowed down, a whole battalion, dead, all dead. 
 Only the Colonel's horse, a dappled grey, 
 A big, strong horse, was fighting still with death. 
 It neighed, its voice seemed human in its pain, 
 Like a complaint, it rolled about in blood, 
 And stretched its twitching feet into the air. 
 
 " And see : quite near the dead, quite near the blood, 
 Nay, in the midst of it, there lay untouched 
 And freshly green, one patch of meadow land, 
 Hardly a foot across from side to side, 
 And over it a bright red poppy flower 
 Cradled its unstained petals, and in them, 
 Laden and drunk with honey, hummed a bee. 
 
 " And the frail poppy and the humming bee, 
 Full five miles round, were the only living things 
 That the wild battle had in pity spared/' 
 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 Perhaps Pol de Mont's best work is a series 
 of poems Of Jesus, in which he tells the story 
 of the Saviour's birth. These poems are imita- 
 tions of old Flemish ballads, and they keep the 
 unevenness and the absurd anachronisms of the 
 originals. Mary and Joseph are an honest Flemish 
 couple who talk and act just as such a couple might 
 do in our own day. Here is "The Journey to 
 Bethlehem " : 
 
 " Mary and Joseph in winter time 
 
 Were summoned to Bethlehem ; 
 His was a poor man's house, and there were 
 No shoes for either of them. 
 
 " It hailed and it snowed and the drifts lay high 
 
 'Twould have moved a stone to pity ; 
 Gentle Mary said with a sigh : 
 ' I shall never get to the city. 
 
 " ' My limbs feel so heavy, dear Joseph, 
 
 Farther I cannot win ; 
 Let us go to the farmhouse yonder, 
 And ask them to take us in.' 
 
 " They dragged their way through slush and snow ; 
 
 She was leaning on his arm. 
 She said : ' Do not let me fall, Joseph, 
 Before we reach the farm. 1 
 3ft
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " Now the farm was the burgomaster's house ; 
 
 He was locking the door for the night. 
 Joseph said : ' Do not turn us away ! 
 Have pity on our plight ! 
 
 " ' Grant us a place at your hearthstone, 
 
 And straw for our weary heads ! ' 
 
 Said the burgomaster : ' This is no inn ! 
 
 You must go to the inn for beds/ 
 
 " There was a stable a long mile away 
 
 Mary was moaning and crying. 
 Joseph cheered her : ' Take heart, dear wife ! ' 
 But she was almost dying. 
 
 " And when they came to the stable at last, 
 
 It was a wretched house ; 
 And at the manger, tethered fast, 
 There were asses and cows. 
 
 " It was cold, and Joseph heaped dry dung and straw, 
 
 And struck a fire with his steel. 
 Mary moaned : ' If we only had milk, 
 To make an evening meal ! ' 
 
 " Joseph went out to fetch water, 
 But the well was frozen up : 
 He brake the ice with his good long staff, 
 And so there was water to sup. 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 " But when he came back to the stable, 
 
 Bringing that water cold, 
 A Babe lay in our Dear Lady's lap, 
 Naked, sweet to behold. 
 
 " Mary said : ' My Babe, my Lord ! 
 Emmanuel Thy name shall be. 
 Kneel, Joseph, kneel, and worship the Babe ! 
 Now we are freed from poverty.' " 
 
 More reverently comical is "In the Stable," a 
 perfect example of a Flemish carol : 
 
 " He woke up his son at the dead of the night, 
 
 The burgomaster of Bethlehem : 
 ' Go now to the stable where beggars lodge, 
 And bring me news of them. 
 
 " ' An old man is there and a gentle maid : 
 
 We do not know who they are ; 
 Harmless they seem, but they may be thieves ; 
 We must not trust them too far ! ' 
 
 " The son loosed the mastiff from the chain, 
 
 Took his knotty stick in his hand, 
 
 And gripping his pipe between his teeth 
 
 Strode away o'er his father's land. 
 
 " And when he came to the Chapel, lo ! 
 
 Just over the stable shone 
 The brightest and the loveliest star 
 He ever had looked upon. 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " And when he came to the cross-roads, hark ! 
 
 A choir of cherubs was singing 
 All round that lowly stable there, 
 And viols and harps were ringing. 
 
 " And when he came to the stable door, 
 
 He heard great trumpets blowing, 
 And between the stable and the sky 
 Angels were coming and going. 
 
 " He turned him back to his father, and said : 
 
 ' Oh this is a happy morn ! 
 In the stable where cattle and beggars lie, 
 A Saviour to us is born ! ' ' 
 
 A contemporary of Pol de Mont is Victor de 
 la Montagne (born 1854). He writes charming 
 little songs such as " Love's Meandering " : 
 
 "As the purling brook to the sea goes, 
 
 As to my heart the blood, 
 So my every thought to thee flows, 
 To thee, my own true love. 
 
 " As the purling brook in the sea winds 
 
 Into a gulf of pride, 
 So my every thought in thee finds 
 Its meaning magnified. 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 " And as in my heart my blood is 
 
 Cleansed of the dross of its fire, 
 In thee my yearning studies 
 A pureness of desire. 
 
 " As the purling brook to the sea goes, 
 
 As to my heart the blood, 
 So my every thought to thee flows, 
 To thee, my own true love." 
 
 With what a strange familiarity the Flemish 
 poets "play in the straw with the infant of Beth- 
 lehem " may be seen again from the following 
 poem by Edmond van Offel (born at Antwerp 
 1871). He calls it simply " A Little Song " : 
 
 " Sweet Jesus jumps out of His little bed, 
 And sends all the bed-clothes flying. 
 
 " ' O Jesus dear, take my heart on Your breast, 
 My heart that is weeping and sighing ! ' 
 
 " Sweet Jesus robes the city in white, 
 In white like the bride at the altar. 
 
 " ' O Jesus dear, take my soul to Your side, 
 And never again shall it falter ! ' 
 
 " Sweet Jesus lays the fields to sleep, 
 The fields that are weary and ailing. 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " ' O Jesus, give me my innocence back, 
 And keep my poor feet from failing ! ' ' 
 
 In this "little song" there is of course more 
 than meets the eye, and generally Edmond van 
 Offel secretes himself in the panoply of a refined 
 symbolism. Atmosphere, not meaning : 
 
 " Afternoon broods o'er the green, 
 And everything were fain to sleep, 
 Because the sun will not be seen. 
 Over all a silence deep ; 
 All ears are closed, and there is not 
 One step upon the parched grass plot. 
 And everything were fain to sleep, 
 Because the sun will not be seen. 
 
 " The young woman does her hair, 
 But with no care, but with no will. 
 Great joy is lying stiff and still, 
 Still as the parched green carpet, where 
 The last flower lies sick and ill, 
 In dead, dry leaves and dusty green. 
 Great joy is lying stiff and still, 
 Because the sun will not be seen. 
 
 " The young woman does her hair, 
 But with no will, but with no care. 
 She fain would sleep, but cannot sleep ; 
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 Poets in Flemish 
 
 She fain would go, but knows not where, 
 And lays her fair young flesh in the green, 
 And cannot dream, and cannot weep. 
 
 " The sun to-day shall not be seen . . . 
 The young woman lays her limbs 
 Where the grey dust the greensward dims. 
 And when the purple satyr leaps 
 Out of the reeds that do not sway, 
 The listless nymph runs not away. 
 The satyr stands amazed, and creeps 
 Into the chilly reeds again, 
 His heart more heavy than with pain. 
 
 " And everything is sick and still, 
 Because the sun is tired and ill ..." 
 
 He can, however, strike the popular note, as in 
 " A Song of Praise," one of the best known of 
 modern Flemish poems : 
 
 " I hold my sweet young love so dear 
 
 With all the strength that fills me, 
 With all my will, with all the pride, 
 With all the fire that thrills me. 
 
 tl I hold my love so warmly dear 
 
 In earnest striving ever ; 
 Crowned she dwells by all my hope 
 At the heart of my endeavour. 
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 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 " She is a mother when I grieve, 
 
 A child to play with my leisure, 
 To my thinking she is a sweet sister, 
 And a good wife for my pleasure. 
 
 " Where'er she goes, she bears my heart 
 
 Close nested in her attire ; 
 Where'er she breathes, she lives in the light 
 Of my limitless desire. 
 
 " And all the building my hands do 
 Shall be my truelove's dwelling, 
 A Palace rising round my love, 
 Magnificent beyond telling. 
 
 " I hold my love so dear with all 
 
 For which my soul has striven ; 
 The deepest and the best of me 
 To her alone is given." 
 
 Victor de Meyere (born 1873), too, 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. 
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 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 were associated in the foundation 
 of the review Van nu en Straks in 1893. They 
 are impressionists rather than symbolists, and very 
 
 few of their countrymen understand them. But 
 
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 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 Langendonck : 
 
 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. 
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 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." 
 
 in 
 
 " In pain I bore you, but with double bliss 
 I have cherished you, arid 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, all the passion that my spirit boasts, 
 Your hopeless misery my affection thwarts ! 
 
 " 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 my thoughts ! " 
 
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 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 I 
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 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 Mallarm 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 . . . 
 
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 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 my 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 
 
 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 old 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 shuffling 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 Soyons 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 (Jericko, Psuke, Le 
 
 Jure, Fatigue de Vivre, Ambidextre Journaliste, 
 
 354
 
 Essayists, Critics, and Scholars 
 
 La Joyeuse Entree de Charles-le-Temerairi) 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 Congolie, 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 PAvocat ; 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 I'dme 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 Destree. He 
 began with poems in prose, Les Chimeres (1889), 
 a book full of the pessimism of the period, full 
 of disgust with life, a companion volume to Gilkin's 
 La Nuit. 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. Quelques 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 (1913). 
 Destr^e is also a distinguished art critic, and 
 he has done much to popularise art among the 
 masses. 
 
 Like Destree's Les Chimeres^ Arnold Coffin's 
 books are black with pessimism. His style is 
 iced with the hatred of the follies of our time. 
 His fiction (Journal cC Andre, 1885 ; Delzire 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. 
 
 Quillebozuf (1888) is a vieilierie en 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 (En Pays Walton, 1 900 ; Heures 
 Africaines, 1910). 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 Bai'e 
 {Epopee Flamande ; Sub Umbra et sub 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. Le"on 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 (A la 
 Dtcouverte de Londres, 1909), and in La 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 Khnopff}. His Les Soucis des 
 Demurs 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 Fame beige, he is more 
 French than the French themselves, and his book 
 of essays L' Esprit Europ&en 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 nationalised, humanism is international. 
 The history of literature 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 feeling ; 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 
 
 36i
 
 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 the graculus 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 Franfaise 
 
 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 of 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, 1912 ; Pay sages Suisses, 1913) is 
 laboured and cold. Eugdne 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 Franfaises dans la Belgique dAu- 
 
 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 Critique Catholique ; Les 
 Lettres 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 mille Lacs (1914); other books of 
 his are Les lies Fortimees, 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 Democracies dcs 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- 
 1911), 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 Lie*ge, 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 Culture 
 Franfaise en Belgique (1913) 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 (fun Roman de Balzac, Une Page 
 Perdue de H. de Balzac, Autour de H. de Balzac, 
 L Histoire des CEuvres de Tk. Gautier, Un Roman 
 d Amour, Les Lundis dun Chercheur, Sainte- 
 Beuve Inconnu, Trouvailles dun 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), Etudes et Portraits Litter air es by 
 M. J. Carez, Desire" Horrent's Ecrivains Beiges 
 d'Aujourdhui. 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 
 Gre"goire Le Roy and Georges Marlow. Its career 
 has been somewhat erratic, like its contributors, but 
 that is only a further claim on collectors. Georges 
 Rency's La Vie Intellectmlle 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 Thyrse, 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 Litteraire are competent in their 
 discussion of art and literature, while Durendal is
 
 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 
 Belgium 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., 1911. 
 Contemporary Flemish Poetry. Selected and Translated 
 
 by Jethro Bithell. " Canterbury Poets " Series. 
 
 Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 1915. (In 
 
 Preparation.) 
 Camille Lemonnier. Birds and Beasts. Translated by 
 
 A. R. Allinson ; Illustrated by E. J. Detmold. 
 
 London : George Allen & Co., Ltd., 1911. 
 mile 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. 
 
 1 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, 1915. 
 Belgium's Agony. Translated by M. T. H. Sadler. 
 
 London: Constable, 1915. 
 The Plays of mile Verhaeren. London : Constable, 1915. 
 
 (Contains The 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, 1915. 
 
 ANTHOLOGIES 
 
 Pamasse de la Jeune Belgique. Paris : Leon Vanier, 1887. 
 
 Poetes Beiges d'Expression Fran$aise, par Pol de Mont. 
 Almelo : W. Hilarius, 1 899. 
 
 Anthologies of the works of Edmond Picard, Camille 
 Lemonnier, mile Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach, 
 Octave Pirmez, Andre van Hasselt, Jules Destree, 
 Max Waller, Georges Eekhoud, Charles van Ler- 
 berghe, Albert Giraud, Iwan Gilkin, Eugene Deraolder, 
 and Fernand Severin are published by the Associa- 
 tion des ficrivains Beiges, Brussels. 
 
 Les Conteurs de Chez Nous. Brussels : Association des 
 ficrivains Beiges. 
 
 374
 
 Bibliography 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 Bazalgette, Leon. Camille Lemonnier. " Les Ce"le"brite"s 
 d'Aujourd'hui." Paris: F. Sansot & Cie., 1904. 
 
 Emile Verhaeren. " Les Cddbrite's d'Aujourd'hui." 
 
 Paris: F. Sansot & Cie., 1907. 
 
 Bersaucourt, Albert de. Thomas Braun. Paris : Les 
 Marches de 1'Est, 1913. 
 
 Conference sur Emile Verhaeren. Paris, Jouve, 
 
 1908. 
 
 Bever, Adolphe van. Maurice Maeterlinck. "Les Cele"- 
 brits d'Aujourd'hui." Paris: Sansot & Cie., 1904. 
 
 Bithell, Jethro. Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck. 
 "Great Writers" Series. London: Walter Scott 
 
 (I9I3)- 
 Bosch, Firmin van den. Essais de Critique Catholique. 
 
 Ghent: 1898. 
 
 Impressions de Literature 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. mile 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 Socidte Nouvelle, 
 
 1909, 1910, 1911. 
 Gilbert, Eugene. En Marge de Quelques Pages. Paris : 
 
 Plon, Nourrit et Cie., 1900. 
 
 France et Belgique. Paris : Plon, Nourrit et Cie., 
 
 1905. 
 
 Les Lettres Francises dans la Belgique d'Aujour- 
 
 d'hui. Paris: F. Sansot & Cie., 1906. 
 
 Iwan Gilkin. Ghent: I. Vanderpoorten, 1908. 
 
 Gilkin, Iwan. Les Origines Estudiantines de la " Jeune 
 
 Belgique " a F Universite' de Louvain. Brussels : Editions 
 de " La Belgique Artistique et Litte~raire," 1 909. 
 
 Guerin, Charles. Georges Rodenbach. Nancy : Cre"pin 
 Leblond, 1895. 
 
 Harry, Gerard. Maurice Maeterlinck. Brussels : Ch. 
 Carrington, 1909. {Le Massacre des Innocents, 
 otherwise only accessible in French in La Ple'iade 
 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, 1910. 
 
 Heumann, Albert. Emile Verhaeren. Avec onze dessins 
 par Georges Tribout. Paris : La Belle fidition. 
 
 Le Mouvement Litte'raire Beige a" Expression Francaise 
 
 depuis 1880. Preface par M. Camille Jullian, de 
 1'Institut. Paris: Mercure de France, 1913. 
 
 Horrent, Ddsire. Ecrivains Beiges d'Aujourd'hut. Brussels : 
 Lacomblez, 1904. 
 
 376
 
 Bibliography 
 
 Kinon, Victor. Portraits d'Auteurs. Brussels : Associa- 
 tion des ficrivains Beiges, 1910. 
 
 Lemonnier, Camille. La Vie Beige. Paris : Fasquelle, 
 1905. 
 
 Liebrecht, Henri. Histoire de la Literature Beige a" Ex- 
 pression Francatse. Deuxieme Edition. Preface 
 d'Edmond Picard. Brussels : Librairie Vander- 
 lenden, 1913. 
 
 Meyere [Meijere], Victor de. Un Romancier Flamand: 
 Cyriel Buysse. Paris: Sansot & Cie., 1904. 
 
 Mockel, Albert. Emile Verhaeren, avec une note bio- 
 graphique par F. Vield-Griffin. Paris : Mercure de 
 France, 1895. 
 
 Charles van Lerberghe. Paris : Mercure de France, 
 
 1904. 
 
 Nautet, Francis. Histoire des Lettres Beiges d Expression 
 
 Francatse. Brussels: Rozez, 1892. 
 Pasquier, Alix. Edmond Picard. Brussels : Association 
 
 des ficrivains Beiges, 1913. 
 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 ficrivains 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, 1910. 
 
 377
 
 Contemporary Belgian Literature 
 
 Rodrigue, G. M. Fernand S&wrin. Brussels : Editions 
 
 du "Thryse," 1908. 
 
 Souguenet, Le"on. Les Monstres Beiges. Brussels: 1904. 
 Thiry, Oscar. La Miraculeuse Aventure des Jeunes 
 
 Belgiques (1880-1896). Brussels: Editions de la 
 
 Belgique Artistique et Litteraire, 1912. 
 Thomas, Edward. Maurice Maeterlinck. London : Methuen, 
 
 191 1. 
 Verhaeren, Emile. Les Lettres Francises en Belgique. 
 
 Brussels: Lamertin, 1907. 
 Vermeylen, A. La Poesie Flamande de 1880 a 1910. 
 
 Ghent: Vanderpoorten, 1912. 
 Zweig, Stefan. Emile Verhaeren. Leipzig : Insel- 
 
 Verlag, 1910. 
 
 Traduit par Paul Morisse et Henri Chervet. 
 
 Paris : Mercure de France, 1910. 
 
 Translated by Jethro Bithell. London : 
 
 Constable, 1915. 
 
 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 
 lt 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 Roden bach'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, 269270 
 Anarchism, 96, 99, 101, 106, 107 
 Andre, Paul, 306-307 
 Antee, 227 
 
 Antwerp, 18, 20, 22, 23, 85, 87, 
 88, 94 ff., 103 ff., 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 Moderns, L', 53, 56, 371 
 Austria, 304, 330, 363 
 
 BAIE, Eugene, 358 
 
 Balzac, Honore de, 17, 30, 265, 
 
 370 
 Baudelaire, Charles, 49, 57, 58, 
 
 63, 126, 257 
 Bazalgette, Leon, 66 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 104 
 " Belgian," the term, viii, 5556, 
 
 289, 305, 355-356, 359, 367, 
 
 369, 37i 
 Belgique Artistique et Litter air e, 
 
 La, 371 
 
 Bemmel, Eugene van, 29 
 Berlin, 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, 310, 327 
 Braun, Thomas, 237, 239-242 
 Bruges, 22, 23, 24, 74, 83, 190 ff., 
 
 197 ff-, 315, 350-351 
 
 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 ff. 
 Byron, Lord, 22, 201, 330 
 
 CAMMAERTS, ]mile, 371 
 Campine, the, 32, 85-87, 89, 98, 
 
 99, 1 06, 279, 280 
 Carez, M. J., 370 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 116, 117 
 Chainaye, Hector, 219 
 Christianity, 81-82 
 Conscience, Hendrik, 20 ff., 93, 
 
 99 
 
 Coppee, Fran?ois, 49 
 Coster, Charles de, 28 ff., 42, 43, 
 
 63, 145, 39 
 
 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, 250252 
 Delattre, Louis, 290-293 
 Delchevalerie, Charles, 303-304 
 Deman, Edmond, 48 
 Demblon, Celestin, 159, 219, 222, 
 
 34 
 Demolder, Eugene, 62, 153,2642., 
 
 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, 1 6, 1 8 
 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 ff., 277, 279, 
 
 281, 282, 289, 304, 323 
 Elskamp, Max, 14, 56, 153, 229 ft., 
 
 266-267 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 178 
 English literature, influence of, 
 
 22, 96, 99, 104, 162, 175, 203, 
 
 .34, 33. 333. 335 
 Etoile Beige, L', 89, 306 
 
 FIERENS-GEVAERT, 365 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, 163 
 Flamingants, 14, 19, 21, 24, 26, 39, 
 
 in, 115, 329 
 Flanders, 12, 31-32, 35, 41, 77 ff., 
 
 109, 146, 199, 229, 230 
 Flemings, the, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 
 
 20, 31 ff., 104, 109 ff., 120, 219, 
 
 279 ff., 289-290, 305, 314 ff., 
 
 329 ff. 
 Flemish coast, 80 ff., 100, 101, 
 
 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, 1 60, 218, 339 
 Fonson, Franz, 299 
 Fontainas, Andr6, 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 ff., 368, 369 
 French language, the, 12, 15, 19, 
 
 50, 55, in, 113 ff., 329 
 Furnes, 80 ff., 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, 225227 
 German culture, 1 3, 14, 19, 362 ff., 
 
 368 
 German literature, influence of, 
 
 124, 185, 286, 330, 337 
 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 
 
 Goffin, 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, 282285, 286 
 Heredia, J. M. de, 58 
 Herrick, Robert, 24 
 Herzog, Rudolf, 97 
 Heyse, Paul, 185 
 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 330 
 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 293 
 Holland, 13, 16, 18, 19, 24, 26, 
 
 36, 267 ff. 
 
 Horrent, Desire, 370 
 Hugo, Victor, 26, 65, 148, 201, 
 
 34 
 
 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 Belgigue, La, 52 ff., 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, 
 
 33 
 Lemonnier, Camille, 39, 40, 41, 
 
 43, 60 ff., 89, 146, 151, 281, 289, 
 
 290, 314, 323, 354 
 Leonard, Fra^ois, 308 
 Leopold II, 227 
 Lerberghe, Charles van, 54, 56, 
 
 57, 152, 153, 157, 176, 200 ff., 
 
 212, 218, 223, 229, 249 
 Le Roy, Gregoire, 54, 152, 200, 
 
 212 fi., 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 
 Liliencron, 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 
 Leveling, Rosalie, 324 
 Leveling, Virginie, 324 
 
 MACAULAY, Lord, 367 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 27, 54, 56, 
 57, 76, 103, 104, 108, in, 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 
 Masque, 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, 161-162 
 Mockel, Albert, 65, 176, 202, 204, 
 
 207, 218, 227, 245, 260, 286 
 Mons, 109 
 Mont, Pol de, 26, 4547, 266, 
 
 330 ff., 365 
 
 Montagne, Victor de la, 342343 
 Montenaeken, Leon, 59 
 Montfort, Eugene, 310 
 Morisseaux, Fra^ois Charles, 306, 
 
 39 
 
 Morris, William, 233 
 Mysticism, 17, 28, 32, 80 ff., 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, 343346 
 Off el, 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, 3i8, 356, 357 
 Philip II, 36, 145 
 Picard, Edmond, 53, 62, 73, 74, 
 
 119,264, 354-356, 359, 367 
 Pioneer Players, the, 228 
 Pirenne, Henri, 366369 
 Pirmez, Octave, 28 
 Plays, Belgian, viii, 46, 104, 144- 
 
 146, 161 ff., 185186, 2ii 212, 
 
 228, 277, 282283, 286, 287- 
 
 288, 299-300, 305, 308, 309, 355 
 Pleiade, La, 152, 201, 212 
 Pol de Mont, 26, 45-47, 266, 
 
 330 ff., 365 
 
 Potvin, Charles, 29, 43 
 Pre-Raphaelites, the, 175, 176, 
 
 245 
 Prosody, 27, 234 
 
 RABELAIS, 30, 32, 296 
 Ramaekers, Georges, 238, 242245 
 Rassenfosse, Armand, 222, 228 
 Realism, 90, 98, 153, 318 
 R6gnier, Henri de, 222 
 Rembrandt, 50, 114, 144, 271, 
 
 272, 278 
 
 Renard the Fox, 30, 33 
 Rency, Georges, 64, 84, 291, 307, 
 
 37i 
 
 Revue de Belgique, La, 371 
 Rodenbach, Albrecht, 45 ff., 51 
 Rodenbach, Georges, 51, 53, 124, 
 
 153, 159, 190200 
 Roidot, Prosper, 252 
 Rollinat, Maurice, 256 
 Remains, Jules, 147 
 Roman Catholics, 18, 23, 24, 26, 
 
 39, 112, 122123, 130, 235, 
 
 237 ff., 279, 316, 364-365. 372 
 Rooses, Max, 365 
 Rops, Felicien, 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, 1 08, 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, 
 
 5I-S2, 55 
 Severin, Fernand, 56, 57, 253, 
 
 260-263 
 Shakespeare, 104, 162, 163, 181, 
 
 304 
 
 Shaw, G. B., 96, 98 
 Shelley, P. B., 201 
 Socialism, 77-79, 95, 144, 184, 
 
 281, 312, 327, 356 
 Sodomy, 99, 101 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, 35, 265, 267, 268, 270, 
 
 278 
 
 Stendhal, 312, 363 
 Stiernet, Hubert, 307 
 Streuvels, Stijn, 26, 33, 310, 3145. 
 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, Helene, 59 
 Swinburne, A. C., 39, 286, 333 
 Switzerland, viii, 88, 101 
 
 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 
 
 Tournai, 190 
 
 Travel, books of, 277, 355, 357- 
 358, 365 
 
 UNIVERSITIES, 366 
 
 VAN DE VELDE, Henry, viii, 231- 
 
 232 
 
 Vandervelde, Emile, 144, 264 
 Vandrunen, James, 357-358 
 Van Nu en Straks, 316, 347, 372 
 Verhaeren, ]mile, 15, 44, 47-48, 
 49, 5-5i, 53, 54, 56, 76, 83, 
 86, 92, 97, 98, 108 ff., 151, 153, 
 *59, !83, 192, 194, 200, 201, 
 
 222, 229, 239, 329, 364, 371 
 
 Verlant, Ernst, 51 
 Vermeersch, Gustav, 328 
 Vermeylen, August, 328, 347, 350- 
 
 35i 
 
 Verriest, Hugo, 23, 25-26, 45 
 Vers libres, 55, 56, 253 
 Vie Intellectuelle, La, 204, 292, 
 
 37* 
 
 Viele-Grimn, Francis, 222 
 Vierset, Auguste, 219, 358 
 Villiers de 1'Isle-Adam, 1 52 
 
 Villon, Franfois, 284 
 
 Virres, Georges, 32, 279-281, 289 
 
 Vlaanderen, 317, 372 
 
 WALEFFE, Maurice de, 308 
 Waller, Max, 52, 54, 57, 58, 90 
 Wallonie, La, 56, 124, 157, 159, 
 
 201, 219, 222223, 225, 303, 304 
 Walloons, the, 14, 15, 16, 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. f 170 
 Ypres, 298 
 
 ZOLA, fimile, 17, 66, 72, 95, 325 
 Zweig, Stefan, 127, 129, 135, 140, 
 
 142 
 Zype, Gustave van, 287-288 
 
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