The Project Gutenberg eBook ofContemporary Belgian PoetryThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Contemporary Belgian PoetryEditor: Jethro BithellRelease date: March 8, 2011 [eBook #35524]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Christine Bell and Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN POETRY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Contemporary Belgian PoetryEditor: Jethro BithellRelease date: March 8, 2011 [eBook #35524]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Christine Bell and Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
Title: Contemporary Belgian Poetry
Editor: Jethro Bithell
Editor: Jethro Bithell
Release date: March 8, 2011 [eBook #35524]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Christine Bell and Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN POETRY ***
To Émile Verhaeren.Tout bouge—et l'on dirait lea horizons en marche.Now let the dead past fall into the deep,With all its sleepy songs and churching chimes,You are the Bell that gospels mightier timesO'er men who scale the Future's rugged steep,Not looking back to where the weaklings creep,But, with for battle-song your iron rimes,Marching front forwards to the visioned climesWhere hearts are steeled and furious forces sweep.Of Jewish idols and Greek gods they sang,But louder than their voice hard anvils rang,And o'er their gardens smoke trailed waving hair;But while the old was ruined by the new,You pointed to a City far more fair;And, Master, with glad hearts we follow You.
CONTENTS.
IntroductionSYLVAIN BONMARIAGE—Autumn Evening in the OrchardYou Whom I Love in SilenceTHOMAS BRAUN—The Benediction of the Nuptial RingThe Benediction of WineThe Benediction of the CheesesISI-COLLIN—To the MuseA DreamJEAN DOMINIQUE—Thou Whom the Summer Crosses, as a FawnThe Legend of Saint UrsulaThe Soul's PromiseA SecretMAX ELSKAMP—Of EveningFull of GraceFull of GraceComforter of the AfflictedComforter of the AfflictedComforter of the AfflictedComforter of the AfflictedTo the EyesTo the MouthFor the EarTo-day is the Day of Rest, the SabbathMary, Shed your HairAnd Mary Reads a Gospel-pageAnd Whether in Gray or in Black CopeANDRÉ FONTAINAS—Her VoiceCophetuaDesiresAdventureLuxurySea-scapeA Propitious MeetingThe HoursAwake!Life is CalmFrontispieceInvitationTo the PolePAUL GÉRARDY—SheEvil LoveThe OwlOf Sad JoyOf AutumnOn the SeaIWAN GILKIN—PsychologyThe CapitalThe Penitent"Et Eritis Sicut Dii"VengeanceThe Song of the ForgesHermaphroditeThe Days of YoreVALÈRE GILLE—ArtThermopylæA Naval BattleALBERT GIRAUD—The TribunesCordovansFloriseHecateIn the Reign of the BorgiasAbsorptionThe Youth Among the LiliesResignationVoicesVICTOR KINON—The Resurrection of DreamsMidnightHiding from the WorldThe Gust of WindThe Setting SunCHARLES VAN LERBERGHE—Errant SympathyThe Garden InclosedThe TemptationArt Thou Waking?All of White and of GoldThe RainAt SunsetA Barque of GoldLilies that SpinGRÉGOIRE LE ROY—The Spinster PastRoundel of Old WomenHandsMy EyesMy HandsSilencesMAURICE MAETERLINCKThe HothouseOrisonHot-house of WearinessDark OfferingThe Heart's FoliageSoulLassitudeTired Wild BeastsLustrelessThe HospitalWinter DesiresRoundelay of WearinessBurning GlassLooks of EyesThe Soul in the NightSongsGEORGES MARLOW—Women in ResignationSouls of the EveningALBERT MOCKEL—The GirlThe Song of Running WaterThe GobletThe ChandelierThe AngelThe Man with the LyreSong of Tears and LaughterThe Eternal BrideThe Bride of BridesGEORGES RAMAEKERS—The ThistleMushroomsGEORGES RENCY—What Use is Speech?The SourceThe FleshFERNAND SÉVERIN—The ChapletThe Lily of the ValleySovran StateThe Kiss of SoulsHer Sweet VoiceThe RefugeNatureThe Humble HopeEleonora D'EsteThe ThinkerA SageThey Who are Worn with LoveThe CentaurÉMILE VERHAEREN—The Old MastersThe CowherdThe Art of the FlemingsPeasantsFogsOn the CoastHomageCanticlesDying MenThe Arms of EveningThe MillIn Pious MoodThe FerrymanThe RainThe FishermenSilenceThe Rope-MakerSaint GeorgeIn the NorthThe TownThe Music-HallThe Butcher's StallA Corner of the QuayMy Heart is as it Climbed a SteepWhen I was as a Man that Hopeless PinesLest Anything Escape from our EmbraceI Bring to You as Offering To-nightIn the Cottage where our Peaceful Love ReposesThe Sovran RhythmBIBLIOGRAPHYNOTES
Otto Hauser refers the Belgian renascence in art and literature to the influence of the pre-Raphaelites. The influence of painting is at all events certain.[1]That of music is not less marked.[2]Baudelaire has been continued by Rodenbach, Giraud, and Gilkin. Verlaine's method inFêtes galantesis imitated inGiraud'sHéros et Pierrots(Fischbacher, Paris). The naturalistic style of Zola was independently initiated in Belgium by Camille Lemonnier, who directly influenced Verhaeren. But the most potent influence is that of Mallarmé, whose symbolism has transformed contemporary poetry. It was a feature of the symbolists to return to the free metres and the simplicity of the folk-song; and there are echoes of popular poetry in the verse of Braun, Elskamp, Gérardy, Kinon, van Lerberghe, and Mockel.
Belgium is a country of mixed nationalities. The two languages spoken are Flemish and French. Flemish is a Low German dialect, the written form of which is identical with Dutch. Practically all educated Flemings speak French, which is the official language; the French Belgians, who rarely know Flemish,[3]are called Walloons. Only those authors who write in French are represented in the present volume, and they may be classed as follows:
Flemings:—Elskamp (French mother), Fontainas (French admixture), Giraud, Kinon (Walloon admixture),van Lerberghe, Le Roy, Maeterlinck, Ramaekers, Verhaeren.
Walloons:—Bonmariage (English mother), Braun (German grandfather), Isi-Collin, Jean Dominique, Gérardy (Prussian Walloon), Gilkin (Flemish mother), Gille, Marlow (English grandfather), Mockel (distant German extraction), Rency, Séverin.
The Belgian poets are again divided into two very hostile camps with regard to metrical questions. The Parnassians (the term is used for want of a better) cling to the traditional forms of French verse (what Byron called "monotony in wire"), and to the time-honoured diction; whereas theverslibristesuse the free forms of verse imported into France from Germany by Jules Laforgue, and perfected by (among others) the American Vielé-Griffin. It must be noted, however, that there is a tendency among theverslibristesto return to the classical style: Verhaeren, who wrote invers libresafter his first two volumes, has, in his last book,Les Rythmes souverains,approximated to the regular alexandrine. Van Lerberghe, in a letter written in 1905, condemns thevers libre; but his own work is an immortal monument of its practicability.[4]The chief Parnassiansare Giraud, Gilkin (whoseProméthée,however, is invers libres), Gille, and Séverin, Max Elskamp is averslibristeonly in his use of assonance.
Belgian literature begins, for all practical purposes, with Charles de Coster's national epicUylenspiegel. De Coster died young, and was followed by the novelist Camille Lemonnier (1844-). Then comes the flood-tide, not in literature only, for Fernand Khnopff, Georges Minnes, Théo van Rysselberghe (the bosom friend of Verhaeren), and Constantin Meunier are as distinguished in painting and sculpture as, for instance, Georges Eekhoud and Joris-Karl Huysmans are in the novel.
The beginnings of the modern movement, which was directed, in the first instance, against Philistinism, may be traced back to the group of bellicose students who were gathered together at the University of Louvain about 1880.[5]Some of them, among whom were Émile Verhaeren and Ernest van Dyk (the famous Wagner tenor) founded a magazine,La Semaine des Etudiants,which was soon suppressed by the University authorities. Other students who later became famous were Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud; andEdmond Deman, who was to become Verhaeren's publisher and a maker of beautiful books. Another student, Max Waller, who, till his early death in 1889, was the imp of mischief in the literary world of Belgium, founded, in rivalry withLa Semaine,the magazineLe Type, which was also suppressed. Later on Max Waller founded, in 1882, at Brussels, together with Georges Eekhoud and Gilkin,La Jeune Belgique, a review to which all the young bloods contributed, making common cause until they divided intoverslibristesand Parnassians, after which the review was carried on, under the successive editorship of Waller, Gille, and Gilkin, as the organ of the French party ("l'art pour l'art et le culte de la forme"[6]). Other reviews which provided a battling-ground wereL'Art Moderne[7]to which Verhaeren contributed, andLa Wallonie,which Albert Mockel founded at Liège in 1884.
The exuberant vitality of these students, though it often led them into extremes, laid the foundation of a literature which is in many respects the most remarkable of contemporary Europe. Now that Tolstoy is dead, Maeterlinck and Verhaeren standat the head of the literature of the whole world; and they are, as Johannes Schlaf has maintained, the perfect types of the "new European." It is absurd to consider them as Frenchmen; they are as much the product of their country as Ibsen is of Norway.
Modern Belgium, "between ardent France and grave Germany," the focus of all the roads of Europe, is as rich in intellectual gifts as it is teeming with material wealth. "The vitality of the Belgians," says Stefan Zweig in his splendid book on Verhaeren, "is magnificent. In no other part of Europe is life lived with such intensity, such gaiety. In no other country as in Flanders is excess in sensuality and pleasure a function of strength. The Flemings must be seen in their sensual life, in the avidity they bring to it, in the conscious joy they feel in it, in the endurance they show. It was in orgies that Jordaens found the models of his pictures: in every kermesse, in every funeral feast you could find them to this very day. Statistics show us that Belgium stands at the head of Europe in its consumption of alcohol. Out of every two houses one is an inn. Every town, every village has its brewery, and the brewers are the richest traders in the country. Nowhere else are festivals so animated, so noisy, sounrestrained. Nowhere else is life so loved, and lived with such superabundance, at such fever-heat." It is a land that has conquered the sea, and Spain, and is still unspent, raging with greedy appetites of body and brain. Verhaeren has vaunted it in himself:
"Je suis le fils de cette raceDont les cerveaux plus que les dentsSont solides et sont ardentsEt sont voraces.Je suis le fils de cette raceTenace,Qui veut, après avoir voulu,Encore, encore et encore plus."[8]
The greatest of all French poets, past and present, is Émile Verhaeren. He was born in 1855 at Saint Amand, a village on the Scheldt to the east of Antwerp. He has described the impressions of his childhood among the polders in his charming bookLes Tendresses premières(1904), the processions of ships sailing, like a dream plumed with wind, down the river under the stars, the dikes, "la verte immensité des plaines et des plaines"; and in the superb symbolism ofLes Villages illusoireshe has magnified the villagers at their trades. He was educated at the Jesuit schoolSainte-Barbe in Ghent, with Georges Rodenbach for a schoolfellow. Then he studied law at Louvain, made some feint of practising at Brussels, and, in 1883, burst upon his countrymen with his audacious bookLes Flamandes, the fruit of close study of Flemishgenre-painting and the poetry of Maupassant. An indignant critic called him "the Raphael of filth"; but he rehabilitated himself by "Les Moines" (1886), sonorous poems mirroring life in a Flemish monastery, painting monks whose asceticism is as savage and voluptuous as the huge joy in life illustrated inLes Flamandes.
These two books glow with health. But the poet had impaired his constitution by riotous living; and the trilogy which now followed,Les Soirs(1887),Les Débâcles(1888), andLes Flambeaux noirs(1890), form one long elegy of disease. These years, his "pathological period," were full of the blackest pessimism and despair. He was much in London at this time, in isolation all the more desperate as he could not speak English. He was fascinated by the atmosphere of the English capital, its immensity, its desolation, its fogs, identifying his own mind with all of it: "O mon âme du soir, ce Londres noir qui traîne en toi!" "Je suis l'immensément perdu," he cries out in despair; he yearns for his brain to give way:"When shall I have the atrocious joy of seeing madness, nerve by nerve, attack my mind?" But the very keenness of his self-observation gradually brings him healing: a mastery of the body by the brain. This intense wrestling with disease is full of significance, and one of the lessons which Verhaeren has to teach is that new conditions of existence, the din and dust of great cities, the never-resting activity of modern brains, will create a new man whose nervous system will be able to bear the strain imposed upon it. And when one sees Verhaeren turning from self-torture to lose himself in the energy of the restlessly progressing world, one thinks of John Addington Symonds growing stronger over "Leaves of Grass." His recovery and reconciliation with life are symbolized in his poemSaint George, one of the collectionLes Apparus dans mes Chemins(1891).
In his first two books he had been a realist and a Parnassian. The volumes which follow are invers libres, and they are, to a certain extent, symbolistic.Les Villages illusoires(1894) is all symbolism: the ferryman is the stubborn artist with the green reed of hope between his teeth; the fishermen symbolize the selfish society of to-day; the ropemaker weaves the horizons of the future.
Les Campagnes hallucinées(1893) describes thedesolation of the country, deserted to glut the cities;Les Villes tentaculaires(1895) is a cinematograph of the town, while the playLes Aubes(1898) completes the trilogy, and prophesies the dawn of a better day after a cleansing with blood. In these three books contemporary life is visualized, reviled, condoned, explained, and reconciled with beauty. Poets (except Walt Whitman, whom Verhaeren continues) have turned their eyes away from the present to the past, and sung of rural quiet rather than of urban roar. When Henley's poem on the motor-car appeared, there was a cry of derision; but the only thing that was wrong with the poem was that it was not poetry. Verhaeren, however, has smitten poetry out of workshops, anvils, locomotives, girders, braziers, pavements, gin-shops, brothels, the Stock Exchange—out of all that is monstrous and ugly to those who look at material things, as Ruskin did, with the eyes of the past. The accepted ideal of beauty is Grecian; but to Verhaeren the beauty of a thing is not in its outward form, but in the idea that moves it. In Greece the athlete was beautiful; but strength to-day is in the nerves; to-day we see more beauty in a face moulded by mind than in the thews of a discus-thrower. Smoke is beautiful in the pictures of Whistler and Monet; the toil ofgrimy workmen is sublime in the sculpture of Constantin Meunier.[9]For Verhaeren, as Stefan Zweig says, "a thing is the more beautiful the more finality, will, power, energy it contains. The whole universe at the present moment is overheated; it is straining in throes of endeavour; our great towns are nothing but centres of multiplied energy; their machines are the expression of forces tamed and organized; their innumerable crowds are joined together in harmonious action. Thus to Verhaeren all things appear full of beauty. He loves our epoch because it does not disperse effort, but condenses it, because it is not scattered, but concentrated for action. All that has will, and an aim in view, man, machine, crowd, town, capital; all that vibrates, works, hammers, travels; all that bears in itself fire, impulse, electricity, and feeling—all this rings in his verse. Everything lives its minute; in this multiple gear there is no dust, no useless ornamentation; but everywhere is creation; the feeling of the future directs all action. The town is a living being."
Verhaeren knows the great cities of Europe. He has felt the spell of Hamburg, as well as of Hildesheim and of little towns in Spain. We have seen him during his period of depression isolatedin London, and while in England he was fascinated by the reek of soot and tar in Liverpool and Glasgow. In London he would take a ticket to anywhere on "the underground," and roll along for hours; he wandered about the docks, and dreamed among the mummies in the British Museum. And though the town of his poems may be any town, it is no doubt, at the back of his mind, London.
InLes Heures claires(1896) andLes Heures d'après-midi(1905), Verhaeren sings the "douce accalmie" of his wedded life. To translate some of the poems in these collections would be like forcing one's way into a sanctuary. As this:
"Très doucement, plus doucement encore,Berce ma tête entre tes bras,Mon front fiévreux et mes yeux las;Très doucement, plus doucement encore,Baise mes lèvres, et dis-moiCes mots plus doux à chaque aurore,Quand me les dit ta voixEt que tu t'es donnée, et que je t'aime encore."
In another trilogyToute la Flandre(Les Tendresses premières, 1904;La Guirlande des Dunes, 1907;Les Héros, 1908) he sings his native province. Of his plays,Le Cloître, in the translation of Osman Edwards, was staged, with honourand glory to all concerned, by the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester in 1910.
The reputation of Verhaeren's schoolfellow, Georges Rodenbach (1855-98), has waned considerably since his death. He trails such weary Alexandrines as:
"Aux heures du soir morne où l'on voudrait mourir,Où l'on se sent le cœur trop seul, l'âme trop lasse,Quel rafraîchissement de se voir dans la glace."
Verhaeren and Rodenbach were followed on the benches of the Collège Sainte-Barbe at Ghent by Charles van Lerberghe, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Grégoire Le Roy. Van Lerberghe's first work,Les Flaireurs(1889), is in a style which is said to have suggested that of Maeterlinck's first plays. His comedyPan(1906) is full of devilment. In his lyric verse there is no sediment; all is clear and rippling like a beck dancing down a hill-side in the sunshine of summer dawn. If poetry is music, he is a poet unparalleled. He sings
"Avec des motsSi frais, si virginaux,Avec des mots si purs,Qu'ils tremblent dans l'azur,Et semblent dits,Pour la première fois au paradis."
What a gem is this poem:—
Elle dort dans l'ombre des branches,Parmi les fleurs du bel été.Une fleur au soleil se penche....N'est ce pas un cygne enchanté?Elle dort doucement et songe.Son sein respire lentement.Vers son sein nu la fleur allongeSon long col frêle et vacillant.Et sans qu'elle s'en effarouche,La longue, pâle fleur a mis,Silencieusement, sa boucheAutour du bean sein endormi.
"Ce que nous enseigne Charles van Lerberghe," says Albert Mockel in his masterly book on his friend, "c'est la puissance de la grâce. Le charme de ses vers est unique; le sentiment dont ils nous pénètrent a une sorte de plénitude heureuse qui console le cœur en appelant l'âme vers la clarté. Une onde invisible nous rafraîchit, nous pacifie ... Mais la force des plus grands peut seule se fléchir à une pareille douceur, et il faut la sûreté d'un incomparable artiste pour faire de la parole écrite cette chose lumineuse et impondérable qui semble autour de nous comme une poussière d'or suspendue."
It is scarcely necessary to enter into details hereabout Maeterlinck; he needs no introduction to English readers. He has only published one volume of lyrics,Serres Chaudes(1889), which is now printed with the fifteen songs he wrote later. In a music laden with sleep rise the faint, forced lilies of a super-sensitive soul, looking through glass darkly at a world whose contradictions seem irreconcilable. Verhaeren has characterized these poems as follows: "C'était d'une inattendue angoisse, d'une extraordinaire et infinie tristesse, d'une plainte profonde et simple sortie de l'instinct scellé au fond de nous-mêmes. Cela ne s'expliquait pas, mais cela perforait le fond de notre âme et trouvait sa justification dans tout l'inexplicable et dans tout l'inconnu. L'inconscient ou plutôt la subconscience y reconnaissait son langage, ou plutôt son balbutiement...."
Grégoire Le Roy has been an electrician, and is now Librarian of theAcadémie Royale des Beaux-Artsat Brussels. He is the poet of retrospection, as Maeterlinck is the poet of introspection. His heart "pleure d'autrefois." He is the hermit bowed down by silver hair, bending at eventide over the embers of the past, visited by weird guests draped with legend. The weft of his verse is torn by translation, it cannot be grasped, it is wafted through shadows.
Max Elskamp is a poet who reminds one that Mariolatry is Minnesong. There is no reason why the devout should not be edified by his poems, but his intention is rather to give a subtle idealization of Flemish life. Those who know Flemish painting will easily read themselves into the enchanting version of Flanders that he gives us, a Flanders how different to that of Verhaeren and yet how equally true!
"Et c'est alors un pays d'ailesAux hirondelles,Flandres des toursEt de naïf et bon séjour;Et c'est alors un pays d'ailesEt tout d'amour."
Thomas Braun, Victor Kinon, and Georges Ramaekers are fervent Roman Catholics. Braun'sLivre des Bénédictionsis a beautifully printed book illustrated by the quaint woodcuts of his brother, who is a Benedictine monk. It is a thoroughly Flemish book; but a volume of verse which he has just published,J'ai plié le genou(published by Deman), is Walloon in feeling. His other volume,Philatélie(Bibliothèque de l'Occident, Paris, 1910) is poetry for stamp-collectors! Braun and Kinon are bucolic poets, somewhat in the manner of the French poet Francis Jammes, who aims atuncompromising fidelity to nature and the utmost simplicity of diction. But part of Kinon's work is in the style of Max Elskamp, fascinating poetry concerning pilgrimages,[10]and the devotional life of Flanders. Ramaekers, the editor ofLe Catholique,is inspired "par la vision si riante et si forte du Brabant jovial, intime, et monastique."Le Chant des Trois Règnesis a forest of mysticism. The "Three Reigns" are those of the Father = the cult of minerals; the Son = of plants; the Holy Ghost = of Love. Some of the poems would delight an architect. His knowledge of paintings appears equally well in his other volume of verse,Les Saisons mystiques(Librairie moderne, Brussels, 1910).
André Fontainas is a symbolist of the symbolists. Mallarmé himself could not have bettered the following exciting sonnet:
Le givre: vivre libre en l'ire de l'hiver,Rumeur qui se retrait au regard d'une vitreOù, peut-être, frémit éphémère l'élytreDe tel vol ou d'un souffle épais de menu-vair.Le ciel gris s'est, fanfare! à soi-même entr'ouvert:N'est-ce pas qu'y ruisselle au front morne une mitre?Non! sénile noblesse où nul n'élude un titreA se mentir moins vil que ne rampe le ver.L'heure suit l'heure encore, aucune n'est la seule:Pareille à soi, voici venir qui l'enlinceulePour brusque naître d'elle et pour mourir soudain.Un chardon bleu, pas même, au suaire, ni cirseOffrant, rêve chétif et dédain du jardin,Ne fût-ce qu'une épine à s'en former un thyrse.
But the great mass of his poetry is perfectly intelligible. He is a romanticist, but in a new sense; for whereas the old romanticists turned from the sordid present to the motley middle ages and the choral pomp of Rome, Fontainas haunts the labyrinths of his soul, and projects his conscience beyond the bounds of space and time. In Fontainas, as in Gérardy, knights ride through pathless forests, but these are not the knights of Spenser. TheFaëry Queenis a record of events in the outer world; Fontainas is achevalier errantin the inner world of the spirit, and his castles are only settling-places for the dove of thought winging out of the unknown.
Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud are Satanists. Gilkin'sLa Nuit, "une vision terrifiante des turpitudes humaines," is the most interesting book in Baudelaire's style since Baudelaire. He began it with the intention of continuing his pilgrimage in two following books through Purgatory andParadise; but, as he warns his readers in the preface toLa Nuit: This is Hell!Gilkin seems to have had no aptitude for Purgatory and Paradise after Hell; at all events, his following works have nothing to make an Englishman blush.Le Cérisier Fleuri(1899) is a collection of verse in the classical style; but Gilkin has since given his best work to the drama:Prométhée(1899),Etudiants russes(1906),Savonarole(1906).Jonas(1900) is a satire predicting the conquest of Europe by Asia.
Albert Giraud is undoubtedly a poet of high rank. His colouring is marvellous. Above all, he is a very personal poet; one can always hear the beating of his heart—"À maint endroit le sentiment mal contenu crève l'enveloppe de sérénité."[11]He is a pessimist and a Baudelairian: "Il se plaît," says Désiré Horrent, "à remuer le fond vaseux des âmes, à goûter le charme morbide des voluptés rares et raffinées."
Albert Mockel is one of those very rare cases in which a good critic is at the same time a good poet. As a critic[12]he has probably no rival exceptRemy de Gourmont. His hall-mark is subtlety; but his learning, too, makes one gasp. (He might, no doubt, have been a professor if he had not been so brilliant). His poetry is philosophy; and the wonderful thing is that it should be such poetry. It is as light as a breeze, and like a deep river that shows its pebbles. He has in preparation a book of verse,La Flamme Immortelle, which will be a magnificent realization of his doctrine ofAspiration.Verhaeren interprets the outer world, Mockel the inner world as reflected in the outer world: for existence is double, form and shadow. Mockel has written, too, a child's story-book,Contes pour les enfants d'hier[13]which should not be given to children.
Paul Gérardy is a well-known German poet as well as a French one. He belongs to the school of Stefan George.
In Georges Marlow's poetry the prevailing note is refinement. He has written little, but what he has written is of the first water. Some of the verse in his collectionL'Ame en Exilis like Brussels lace:
Aline, au fil de l'eau tremblanteOù les tourelles réflétéesParlent d'une ville noyée,Pourquoi baigner tes mains dolentes!Princesse trop frêle surgieD'un recueil de miniatures,Gracile fée aux lèvres puresDu vain prestige des magies,Ta peine étrange quelle est-ellePour qu'en cette onde puérileMirant ta candeur infantileTu songes aux fleurs immortellesDu jardin vague où les éphèbesNimbés d'équivoques lueurs,Sur l'autel d'or de la langueurImmolent l'ange de leurs rêves?
Fernand Séverin, who is lecturer in French literature at the University of Ghent, is a poet of great charm. His diction is apparently that of Racine, but in substance he is essentially modern. "Virginal" is the epithet the French critics apply to him, and it describes his chaste, transparent poetry very well. "Tout y est en nuances, mystérieusement fuyantes et fondues" (Victor Kinon). He dreams:
"les mains pleines de rosesEt le cœur enlacé de longs rameaux de lys."
He is full of languor:
"Car mes rêves sont las comme de blancs oiseauxEn qui verse l'ennui de l'azur et des eauxLe suprême désir de dormir sur les grèves."
Isi-Collin'sLa Vallée heureuseis full of fine things. In such a poem asLa Mort d'Ophéliethe influence of pre-Raphaelite paintings may be discerned. There is Wordsworthianism in his verse (especiallyLe Pâtre), as there is in Severin's; not a voluntary absorption into the outer world, but a passing reflection of it in the inner being; no direct message, but a statement of a state.
The only poetess in our collection is Jean Dominique. BesidesL'Anémone des Mersshe has publishedLa Gaule BlancheandL'Aile Mouillée(Mercure de France, 1903 and 1909). Her verse is exquisitely feminine, shimmering like shot silk, intimately personal, and perfect in form. "She notes the very shadow that roses cast on her soul." She has written poems which are worthy of Sappho, as that which begins:
"Dans la chaleur muette le ciel lisse ses plumesComme un grand épervier aux ailes floconneuses;Mais ce soir, l'oiseau d'or entravé dans les brumes,Blotti contre la terre humble et délicieuse,Dormira sur le cœur des femmes amoureuses."
Georges Rency's Pegasus was a delicate steed with iridescent blue wings when he took it out into the shadows, and the moonlights, and the dawns, and recorded its flights on excellent paper.Since then it seems to have died of inanition, but he himself has produced a robust body of novels and criticism.
As to Sylvain Bonmariage, he is a prodigy. He is twenty-four years of age, and he has written twelve books. Every one of his plays has seen the footlights. "Précoce à épouvanter le diable et candide à ravir les saints," is Albert Giraud's description of him.
Our collection does not exhaust the poetry of Belgium. Perhaps no poem we have selected has so good a chance of immortality as a snatch of song by Léon Montenaeken:
La vie est vaine:Un peu d'amour,Un peu de haine....Et puis—bonjour!La vie est brève:Un peu d'espoir,Un peu de rêve ...Et puis—bonsoir!
J. BITHELL.April 1911.