Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
PETER LANG
An Anthology
of Belgian Symbolist Poets
Belgian Francophone Library
Vol. 15
PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
An Anthology
of Belgian Symbolist Poets
PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
An anthology of Belgian symbolist poets /
edited by Donald Flanell Friedman.
p. cm. (Belgian francophone library ; v. 15)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Belgian poetry (French)20th century. 2. Belgian poetry (French)19th century.
3. Symbolism (Literary movement)Belgium. I. Friedman, Donald Flanell. II. Series.
PQ3843 .A55 2003 841.80915dc21 2002011036
ISBN 0-8204-5594-6
ISSN 1074-6757
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
Printed in Germany
For my mother and father
This page intentionally left blank
NOTE TO THE RE-EDITION
I. GEORGES RODENBACH
Commentary 6
II.EMILE VERHAEREN
Commentary 32
The Corpse 34
La Morte 35
The Revolt 36
La Rvolte 37
The Blade 38
Le Glaive 39
The Ill 40
Les Malades 41
The Rain 44
La Pluie 45
Innitely 48
Inniment 49
Fatal Flower 48
Fleur Fatale 49
To Die 50
Mourir 51
London 52
Londres 53
Madmans Song 52
Chanson de Fou 53
Tenebrae 56
Tnbres 57
Vesperal 56
Un Soir 57
The Rock 58
Le Roc 59
The Abandoned Port 62
Le Port Dchu 63
Contents xi
I I I . M AU R I C E M A ET E R LI N C K
Commentary 68
Hot House 70
Serre Chaude 71
Nocturnal Orison 70
Oraison Nocturne 71
Foliage of the Heart 72
Feuillage du Coeur 73
Soul 74
Ame 75
Prayer 76
Oraison 77
Reections 78
Reets 79
Diving Bell 80
Cloche Plongeur 81
Round of Tedium 82
Ronde dEnnui 83
Touches 84
Attouchements 85
Bell-Glasses 88
Cloches De Verre 89
Weary Hunts 90
Chasses Lasses 91
Gazes 90
Regards 91
Amen 94
Amen 95
Hospital 94
Hpital 95
Hothouse of Boredom 98
Serre dEnnui 99
Afternoon 98
Aprs-midi 99
Soul of Night 100
Ame de Nuit 101
And if he were ever to return 100
Et sil revenait un jour 101
xii an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
I V. T H E Y O U N G B E L G I A N S
Commentary 110
M AX WA L L E R
Its Raining 112
Il Pleut 113
Love-Hotel 112
Amour-Htel 113
A L B E RT G I RAU D
Red Mass 118
Messe Rouge 119
Waltz of Chopin 118
Valse de Chopin 119
Initiation 120
Initiation 121
The Missal 120
Le Missel 121
VA L R E G I L L E
The Slumbers of Gold 126
Les Sommeils DOr 127
Legend 126
Lgende 127
Contents xiii
I WA N G I L K I N
Litanies and Prayer 132
Litanies et Prire 133
Prayer 136
Prire 137
Psychology 138
Psychologie 139
GEORGES KHNOPFF
A EveningLife: Serenity 142
SoirLa Vie: Srnit 143
J E A N D E LV I L L E
Magica 146
Magica 147
The Holy Book 150
Le Livre Sacr 151
Lunar Park 150
Parc Lunaire 151
The Horror of the Rain 152
LHorreur de la Pluie 153
The Marmorean Slumbers 152
Les Sommeils de Marbre 153
GEORGES MARLOW
At Evening I 158
Du Soir 159
FERNAND SEVERIN
She, Who Will Come 162
A Celle qui Viendra 163
xiv an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
GREGOIRE LE ROY
Wretchedness 166
Misre 167
The Fiance of Shadows 166
La Fiance de lOmbre 167
Dimmed Christmases 168
Les Nols teints 169
A L B E RT M O C K E L
Carmen 172
Carmen 173
To the Destroyer 172
A La Faucheuse 173
Intoxication 174
Enivrement 175
The Prey 176
La Proie 177
MARCEL WYSEUR
The Spinners 180
Les Fileuses 181
The Chapel in the Dunes 180
La Chapelle dans Les Dunes 181
A N D R F O N TA I NAS
Jealousy 186
Jalousie 187
The Virgins Look at Themselves in the Mirrors 186
Les Vierges se Mirent dans les Miroirs 187
The Estuaries of Shadows VI 188
Les Estuaires de lOmbre VI 189
The Estuaries of Shadows VIII 190
Les Estuaires de lOmbre VIII 191
Your Eyes 190
Tes Yeux 191
Contents xv
V. M A X E L S K A M P
Commentary 194
In Memorium 196
In Memoriam 197
Song of the Rue Saint-Paul no. 7 200
La Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul no. 7 201
Blue Night 202
Nuit Bleue 203
Silks 206
Soieries 207
The Islands 208
Les Iles 209
Salome 210
Salome 211
V I . C H A R L ES VA N L E R B E RG H E
Commentary 216
typies Belgian poetry of the turn of the century, in which exterior landscape
serves as the designation of the interior; the lineaments of the known may suggest
the artists hidden response to it; subjective deformation of a familiar environment
may transform it into an inner and private realm of poetic experience.
Belgian Symbolism is a poetry of strangeness and hallucination, precisely be-
cause of being rooted, much more so than the Symbolism of France, in a sense of
place. Whereas the French Symbolist coterie evoked endless articial dreamscapes,
somnolent, enchanted gardens inhabited by swans, princesses, and such (these are
also present in Belgian Symbolism, but to a lesser extent), the strongest of the Bel-
gian poets sought the dreamlike aspects of their own northern environment in
order to demonstrate the subtle, ambiguous inuence of atmosphere upon those
who absorb it. Spatial paradigms for the inner world are recurrent throughout
Belgian Symbolism and often take the form of actual cities, no longer sites of com-
munity, but the poets private realm of introspection. Bruges and Ghent, canal cit-
ies of mirroring water, are Georges Rodenbachs spaces of poetry and delving. A
black and labyrinthine London serves Emile Verhaeren as a concretization of spir-
itual dejection and madness, as do wintry planes and villages of Flanders. The port
of Antwerp is the pivot of Max Elskamps poetry. The polyglot life of the port is
conducive to dreams of distant islands outside of time. The port of Antwerp is
Elskamps entranceway to many other spaces, often to spaces within spaces, as in a
play of Chinese boxes. In number 7 of the Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul, the poets
native street leads him to a harbor brothel and, within the brothel, to two engrav-
ings, Vesuvius and the suspended Brooklyn Bridge, emblems of the re and wait-
ing which are the modalities of the place. In Salome, the space of a theater loge
and, beyond, the performance of ballerinas, merges with a fantasy of Herods for-
tress. A length of silk in Soieries gainsays entrance into a Persian garden, a world
of miniature illumination, evoked in tiny, mincing lines. Spatial paradigms are
used to suggest moods of disjunction, isolation, and suffocating disharmony in
the poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck. Hothouses, bell-glasses, diving bells, spaces of
protection and imprisonment, are models of interiority. Brief notations of aspects
of asylums, hospital wards, canal cities enter into uncanny conjunctions in
Maeterlincks world of confusion, a private theater in which nothing is in its place,
rien ny est sa place. Charles Van Lerberghe, who wrote La Chanson dEve from
a pastoral retreat in the Ardennes, evokes a series of Edens, distinct spaces, which
reect the moods of the poet-gure, Eve, who enters a state of symbiosis with the
world she is the rst to perceive, transforming it in her image. This marked pri-
macy of place and the centrality of spatial paradigms for the inner world in Belgian
Symbolism may be attributed to feelings of nascent national pride. In 1880, Bel-
gium was a fty-year-old nation state and, by 1885, Symbolism was the rst wide-
spread, multi-national literary movement in which Belgians played an active role.
Though sharing a common language with France and a common impetus to deny
the contingencies of the mundane world in their art, the Belgian writers could mit-
igate the force of French cultural imperialism and establish a Belgian presence in
the literary world, distinct from their neighbors, through cultivation of image
Belgian Symbolism: A Poetry of Place and Displacement 3
largely absent from Belgian poetry, although the presence of Narcissus is implied,
but unnamed in Rodenbachs city of reection. Instead, Rodenbachs world is
haunted by Ophelia, suggestive of drowning entrance into an amniotic state of
undifferentiated dream. Ophelia is also present in Verhaerens work, but as a gure
of madness, the corpse of reason, which trails across the Thames toward the en-
gulng abyss. Madmen are recurrent in Verhaerens Les Campagnes Hallucines, an-
alogues of the poet, engaged in subjective deformation of the world which they
perceive. Convalescents and invalids are present in the poetry of Rodenbach, Ve-
rhaeren and Maeterlinck. In Rodenbachs verse, the invalid is a being of silence
and introspection, cloistered from the tumult of the world. In Verhaerens poetry,
there are the skeptical ill, tormented by disbelief. Maeterlinck presents the fever-
ish invalid, weak, helpless, and lost in hallucination. The nun, engaged in lace-
making or the singing of canticles, is a prevalent gure in Rodenbachs poetry,
suggesting the pure and sacrosanct nature of artistic creation. Conversely, the nun
in Maeterlincks world is associated with hospitals, sickbeds, and premonitions of
death. In general, Catholicism as a source of decor and imagery is more markedly
present in Belgian than French Symbolism. Albert Girauds Pierrot becomes a
priest and offers his heart as the eucharist. Iwan Gilkin adapts the litany and rosary
forms to convey decadent erotic experiences. Litanies and orisons, hypnotic in
their repetitions, are also forms favored by Maeterlinck in the Serres Chaudes. Max
Elskamps In Memoriam, from Sous les Tentes de lExode, is similarly a litany of
dejection. Decaying, dank churches and all they contain become sources of im-
agery in the verse of Rodenbach and Verhaeren, who use fallen religious edices as
metaphors for spiritual malaise and the general ruination of a world in entropy.
Except in the Chanson dEve, the pagan, liberated climate of Mallarms artist-faun
seems excluded from the imaginary universe of Belgian Symbolism, where even
the gleaming, joyous isles of Lerberghes Eden alternate with crepuscular spaces of
death and disincarnation.
From the distance of a century, a great part of the fascination of Symbolist lit-
erature is its morbidity and thanatopsis, its emphasis of the nebulous rather than
the fulsome and solidly permanent, silence rather than speech, and states of immo-
bility and suspense rather than motion. Within the general matrix of this poetry of
detachment from the mundane, the Belgian Symbolists have created their own
worlds suffused with mystery. With their hallucinated fusions of the exterior and
the interior, literary fulcrums between the seen and unseen, the Belgians of the
turn of the century evoked lasting zones and magnets of the poetic imagination,
realms of Hypnos, the arbiter of dream.
Notes
Selections from:
The Reign of Silence
Le Rgne du Silence (1891)
The Enclosed Lives
Les Vies Encloses (1896)
The Mirror of the Native Sky
Le Miroir du ciel natal (1898)
Georges Rodenbach (18551898)
Commentary
Rgne du Silence (1891), Les Vies encloses (1896), Le Miroir du ciel natal (1898), as well
as his widely read novel, Bruges-la-Morte (1892), established the dead city as a
prominent and recurrent literary motif. Rodenbachs Bruges also inspired many
visual artists, foremost among them the Belgian, Fernand Khnopff (18581921).
Khnopff s imaginative reconstructions of Bruges emphasize the reected space of
the canal, moods of ineffable quietude, but also the fearful paralysis of suspended
animation. Depicted with pastel and pencil in faded, twilit hues, Khnopff s
Bruges, like Rodenbachs, is evanescent and diaphanous, a space of tenuous sug-
gestion and hovering mirage.
How all is aged and all grown poor. The high pillars
Seem tree-trunks in a dim forest, bereft of their branches.
A distant hint, the vague odor of a wound is sensed;
Could a crucix, somewhere, have begun to drip its blood?
Oui! tout est mort! Oui! tout se meurt sans cesse ici:
Lencens dans le nant, aujourdhui dans nagures;
Les visages des vieux tableaux meurent aussi;
Et chacun pense aux ossements des reliquaires . . .
14 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
During those hours of sad evening, when you wish you were dead,
When the heart is desolate and so weary, the soul,
How soothing to approach the mirror and gaze,
Calm waters of the mirror, impossible to exhaust,
Where you lose yourself, drifting from shore, in retreat . . .
Oh! to set out in the cooling water of the mirror,
To perish, somewhat, as if in the water of twilight,
Georges Rodenbach 23
La Nuit souffre!
Les rverbres en choeur
Dardent leur amme rouge et soufre
Comme des exvoto,
Comme des Sacr-Coeur,
Que le vent fait saigner avec ses froids couteaux.
La Nuit sexalte!
Les rverbres la le
Dploient leur amme bleue,
Dans les banlieues,
Comme des mes qui font halte,
Les mes en chemin des morts de la journe
Qui rvent de rentrer dans leur maison ferme
Et sattardent longtemps aux portes de la ville.
She sings! she says: The sweet retreat that I will give
To those much discouraged . . .
Ah! the gentle fascination of that heavenly voice!
For their fever, it offers the coolness of an eternal bed!
And many, lured by the benign call,
Paralyzed, enter the water as one enters an asylum,
And then die, for the water cleanses, enshrouds them
In her currents as fresh as ne linen;
Then, at last, they have found gentle death.
Meanwhile, the evening, all around the body at rest,
Will kindle, in the dark water, a bright catafalque of stars.
Selections from:
The Evenings (1887)
Les Soirs
Les Dbcles (1888)
The Black Torches (1891)
Les Flambeaux Noirs
The Hallucinated Countrysides (1893)
Les Campagnes Hallucines
The Illusory Villages (1895)
Les Villages Illusoires
The Cities with Pinions (1909)
Les Villes Pignons
Emile Verhaeren (18551916)
Commentary
Pignons (1910). There is a Verhaeren, the optimistic poet of the industrial metrop-
olis, but there is also Verhaeren, the consummate Symbolist, whose achievement
was to give expression to fragmented consciousness, using a French which is his
own distinctive language of poetry.
As the visual quality of his poetry would suggest, Emile Verhaeren was a subtle
critic of painting, who was among the rst to understand the work of Fernand
Khnopff and James Ensor. The symbolist artist, William Degouve de Nunques
(18671935) was Verhaerens close friend and brother-in-law. Degouves A Canal,
an uncommonly elongate, attened composition, visual analogue of Verhaerens
sytactical distortions, depicts a ruinous building, suggestive of shattered hopes,
nerves, dreams. The insistent repetition of broken windows and spiky trees, like
the obsessive refrain in Verhaerens poetry, is hallucinatory. In Degouves Flemish
snowscapes, as in Verhaerens polar Flanders in Tenebrae, there is no struggle,
there is no action in a world given over to absolute immobility.
The Corpse
from The Debacles (1888)
La Morte
The Revolt
from The Black Torches (1891)
La Rvolte
The Blade
from The Debacles (1888)
Your body, where has turned sour the blood of pure ancestors,
Weak and clumsy, will be broken with every effort;
You will be the feverish, bent at the window,
Helpless witness of the rushing of life and its golden chariots;
Emile Verhaeren 39
Le Glaive
You will set forth, outcast and alone, and all of the lost days
Of youth will be a worthless magnet
For your wide, distant eyesand the joyous thundering
Will herald the impetuous attack far from you, triumphantly!
The Ill
from The Evenings (1887)
Les Malades
The Rain
from Illusory Villages (1895)
An innitude of rain,
The long rain,
The rain.
La Pluie
The rain,
The long rain, with its long, grey threads,
With its damply hanging hair, its ripples,
The long rain,
Upon ancient lands,
Lethargic and eternal.
Emile Verhaeren 47
La longue pluie,
La pluieet ses ls identiques
Et ses ongles systmatiques
Tissent le vtement,
Maille maille, de dnment,
Pour les maisons et les enclos
Des villages gris et vieillots:
Linges et chapelets de loques
Qui sefloquent,
Au long de btons droits;
Bleus colombiers colls au toit;
Carreaux, avec, sur leur vitre sinistre,
Un empltre de papier bistre;
Logis dont les gouttires rgulires
Forment des croix sur des pignons de pierre;
Moulins plants uniformes et mornes,
Sur leur butte, comme des cornes;
La pluie.
La longue pluie, avec ses longs ls gris.
Avec ses cheveux deau, avec ses rides.
La longue pluie
Des vieux pays,
Eternelle et torpide!
48 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Infinitely
from The Evenings (1887)
Fatal Flower
from The Evenings (1887)
Infiniment
Fleur Fatale
To Die
from The Evenings (1887)
Mourir
London
from The Evenings (1887)
Madmans Song
from The Hallucinated Countrysides (1893)
Londres
Chanson de Fou
The rats,
They have worn away all the saintly haloes,
The joined hands
Of faith in days after,
The mystical tenderness
In the depth of ecstatic eyes,
And the kisses of prayer
Upon the mouths of poverty;
The rats,
They have stripped, worn away the entire town,
From all sides, like a warehouse.
Les rats,
Ils ont rong les auroles bnvoles,
Les jointes mains
De la croyance aux lendemains,
Les tendresses mystiques
Au fond des yeux des extatiques
Et les baisers de la prire;
Sur les bouches de la misre;
Les rats,
Ils ont rong le bourg entier
De haut en bas,
Comme un grenier.
Aussi
Que maintenant sen aillent
Les tocsins fous ou les sonnailles
Criant piti, criant merci,
Hurlant, par au del des toits,
Jusquaux chos qui meuglent,
Nul plus nentend et personne ne voit:
Puisquelle est lme des champs,
Pour bien longtemps,
Aveugle.
Tenebrae
from The Evenings (1887)
Vesperal
from The Black Torches (1891)
Tnbres
Un Soir
The Rock
from The Black Torches (1891)
Le Roc
Le Port Dchu
Selections from:
Hothouses
Serres Chaudes
1889
Fifteen Songs
Quinze Chansons
1900
Maurice Maeterlinck (18621949)
Commentary
Spiritual quest also marks Maeterlincks only other collection of verse, the
Douze Chansons of 1896, expanded to the Quinze Chansons of 1900. The poems are
brief and folkloric, often taking the form of alternating voices engaged in question
and answer. The songs are simple yet highly ambiguous in their reiteration of a
search which remains always undened, always failed, and always continued. Im-
agery of benightedness (blindfolded eyes, blindness, caverns, extinguished
torches), imprisonment (locked doors, lost keys), and sacrice of the meek is re-
current in the songs, which resume in miniature the atmosphere of uncertainty
and helplessness which pervades Maeterlincks theater.
Posies compltes. Edition critique tablie par Joseph Hanse. (Bruxelles: La Renais-
sance du Livre, 1965).
Oeuvres. (Bruxelles: Jacques Antoine, 1980).
70 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Hothouse
Nocturnal Orison
Serre Chaude
Oraison Nocturne
Vegetations of symbols,
Dismal water lilies of past pleasures,
Sluggish palm trees of desires,
Cold moss and slack vines.
Feuillage du Coeur
Vgtations de symboles,
Nnuphars mornes des plaisirs,
Palmes lentes de mes dsirs,
Mousses froides, lianes molles.
Soul
My soul!
My too much sheltered soul!
And those herds of my desires penned in a hothouse
Awaiting a tempest over the grasslands.
Ame
Mon me!
O mon me vraiment trop labri!
Et ces troupeaux de mes dsirs dans une serre
Attendant une tempte sur les prairies!
My soul!
And the sadness of it all, my soul, and the sadness of it all!
Prayer
Il y eut un jour une pauvre petite fte dans les faubourgs de mon me!
On y fauchait la cigu un dimanche matin;
Et toutes les vierges du couvent regardaient passer les
vaisseaux sur le canal, un jour de jene et de soleil.
Tandis que les cygnes souffraient sous un pont vnneux;
On mondait les arbres autour de la prison,
On apportait des remdes une aprs-midi de Juin,
Et des repas de malades stendaient tous les horizons!
Mon me!
Et la tristesse de tout cela, mon me! et la tristesse de tout cela!
Oraison
Reflections
Reflets
Diving Bell
Look out! the shadow of the great sailing ships glides over
the dahlias of submarine forests;
And, for a moment, I am in the shadow of whales leaving for
the pole!
In the port, others must now be unloading ships full of snow!
There was a glacier in the midst of July meadows!
They swim backwards in the green water of the creek!
They enter dark caverns at noon!
And the breezes of the open sea fan the terraces!
Look out! here are the aming tongues of the Gulf Stream!
Keep their kisses away from the walls of tedium!
They no longer place snow on the foreheads of the feverish!
The sick have lit res of joy
And toss handfuls of green lilies into the ames!
Cloche Plongeur
They are as pale as the ill who listen to the placidly falling
rain in hospital gardens.
They look like survivors who take their meal on the
battleeld;
They are like prisoners who are not unaware that the jailors
are bathing in the river,
And who hear the grass being mown in the prison garden.
Round of Tedium
Ronde dEnnui
Touches
Touches!
Darkness expands between your ngers!
Brass music beneath the storm!
Organ music in the sun!
All of the souls herds lost in a night of eclipse!
All of the sea salt in the grass of the meadows!
And those blue reballs on all of the horizons!
(Have pity upon this power of mankind!)
But those touches of your weak, damp hands!
I hear your pure ngers slipping between my ngers,
And streams of sheep ow in the moonlight along a warm river.
Attouchements
Attouchements!
Lobscurit stend entre vos doigts!
Musiques de cuivres sous lorage!
Musiques dorgues au soleil!
Tous les troupeaux de lme au fond dune nuit dclipse!
Tout le sel de la mer en lherbe des prairies!
Et ces bolides bleus tous les horizons!
(Ayez piti de ce pouvoir de lhomme!)
Mais ces attouchements plus mornes et plus las!
O ces attouchements de vos pauvres mains moites!
Jcoute vos doigts purs passer entre mes doigts,
Et des troupeaux dagneaux sloignent au clair de lune le long
dun euve tide.
Bell-Glasses
O bells of glass!
Uncanny plants forever sheltered!
While outside the crystal partitions, the wind stirs my senses!
An entire valley of the soul, forever motionless!
And so much mildness shut in toward midday!
And the strange images perceived through the crystal panes!
I would swear that the swans have found young ravens in their nests!
(A gaze can barely pierce the clouded glass.)
Cloches De Verre
O cloches de verre!
Etranges plantes jamais labri!
Tandis que le vent agite mes sens au dehors!
Toute une valle de lme jamais immobile!
Et la tideur enclose vers midi!
Et les images entrevues eur du verre!
Weary Hunts
Gazes
Chasses Lasses
Regards
Have mercy upon those that set forth with tottering steps like
a convalescent during harvest!
Have mercy upon those that look like lost children at the time
for repast!
Have mercy upon the gaze of the wounded man at the surgeon,
Like tents buffeted by a storm!
Have mercy upon the gazes of an enticed virgin!
(Oh! the rivers of milk have ed into the shadows!
And the swans are dead in the midst of serpents!)
Amen
Hospital
Amen
Hpital
Hothouse of Boredom
Afternoon
Serre dEnnui
Aprs-midi
Soul of Night
Ame de Nuit
Cantique de la Vierge
Et si lamour sgare
Aux sentiers dici-bas
Ses larmes me retrouvent
Et ne sgarent pas . . .
Commentary
Max Waller was the founder of La Jeune Belgique. His original program
was Art for Art, a severance from the social preoccupations and political
ideology which characterized Belgian literary reviews of the period.
Between 1881 and 1886, La Jeune Belgique was decidedly non-conformist in tone,
welcoming a variety of styles. It was during these years that Rodenbach and Ve-
rhaeren were major contributors. After 1887, the journal became biased toward a
parnassian clarity of style, causing many writers to give their allegiance to La Wal-
lonie, more accepting of symbolist innovations.
Max Waller was a rallying gure, convinced of the need for a strong Belgian
presence in the literary innovations of the time. His charisma as an editor has
eclipsed his considerable promise as a poet. Its Raining and Love-Hotel are
tender, sensual, and gently ironic examples of carpe diem. Perhaps the brevity of
Wallers life lends in retrospect a poignant quality to these knowing pleas for amor-
ous freedom. Max Wallers poems appeared in the 1887 Parnasse de la Jeune Bel-
gique, an anthology which introduced Maeterlinck and Lerberghe.
112 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Its Raining
from Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique (1887)
Love-Hotel
from Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique (1887)
Il Pleut
from Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique (1887)
Amour-Htel
from Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique (1887)
Albert Giraud is best known for his debut collection of poetry, the 1884
Pierrot lunaire (Paris: Lemerre), which in German translation, inspired
Schnbergs musical setting of 1912. The world of Girauds commedia
dellarte character, cruel and ironic, is closer in mood to Laforgue than to the suave
Bergamasque of Verlaines poetry. As an artist gure, Girauds Pierrot is an acrobat
who bounds from being into states of absence, mental alienation, and hallucina-
tion. Decapitations, suicidal hanging, and self-mutilation are recurrent themes in
Girauds Pierrot lunaire, a guignol in which a mocking and jaunty refrain accentu-
ates the bizarre subject matter.
In its brevity and in the tension between the jocose and shocking, the verse of
Pierrot lunaire is Girauds most successful. In the later collection, Hors du sicle
(1888), decadent themes are given a dense and traditional prosody. After the death
of Max Waller, Giraud assumed prominence at La Jeune Belgique and used his po-
sition to rail against the stylistic innovations of Verhaeren, whose work he mis-
understood and considered barbarous stammering. Girauds own verse in Hors du
sicle is Baudelairean, as are the themes. Initiation, with its emphasis on corrup-
tion and tormented self-awareness, echoes Baudelaires Femmes Damnes and
LHautontimoroumenos. Imagery of sacrilege, perversity, and damnation is
recurrent in the collection.
118 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Red Mass
from Pierrot Lunaire
Waltz of Chopin
from Pierrot Lunaire
Messe Rouge
from Pierrot Lunaire (1884)
Valse de Chopin
from Pierrot Lunaire (1884)
Initiation
from Hors du sicle
The Missal
from Hors du sicle
Initiation
from Hors du Sicle (1888)
Le Missel
from Hors du Sicle (1888)
Legend
from La Jeune Belgique 11 (1892)
Lgende
from La Jeune Belgique 11 (1892)
Litanies et Prire
from La Jeune Belgique 4 (1885)
Prayer
Prire
Psychology
from La Jeune Belgique 5 (1886)
Psychologie
from La Jeune Belgique 5 (1886)
EveningLife: Serenity
from La Jeune Belgique 3 (1884)
Both a painter and poet, Jean Delville was an animator of the cultural life
of Brussels at the turn of the century. During stays in Paris, Delville was
inuenced by the occultism of Villiers de lIsleAdam and especially
Josephin Pladan, founder of the Salon Rose-Croix for the exhibition of Idealist
art. Delville was also opposed to naturalist and realist painting, seeking instead to
present images culled from exterior reality but which refer to an ineffable experi-
ence of the mind. In 1892, Delville founded in Brussels the Salon Pour lArt, which
became an important exhibition space for artists creating under the aura of sym-
bolism. Among others, it welcomed Rodin, Gall, and Puvis de Chauvannes. In
1896, Delville opened the Salon de lArt Idaliste, which continued exhibitions of
art with evocative imagery. Jean Delville was a director of the Glasgow Academy
of Fine Arts and professor at the Brussels Academy until 1930.
Unlike the intimist, secretive work of Fernand Khnopff, Jean Delvilles paint-
ings have an imposing Wagnerian scope and grandeur, peopled by the persona of
myth and legend. Androgynous angels, freed from contingency, and clairvoyants,
surrounded by astral light, are also denizens of Delvilles painted universe.
Delvilles interest in the occult is revealed in the poems, The Sacred Book, and
Magica, a portrait of a clairvoyant, who transcends time and space and whose
word is allied to angels. Lunar Park suggests a Mallarmean landscape of evanes-
cence, where a dream of incense symphonies the lustral lake. The Horror of the
Rain, an evocation of a locus of dejection, a dismal city, long bereaved of sun,
reveals the stylistic and thematic inuence of Emile Verhaeren.
146 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Magica
from La Jeune Belgique 14 (1895)
Magica
from La Jeune Belgique 14 (1895)
And from the depth of the esh to the reaches of the azure,
You lift the veil, the enshrouder of souls,
To the sybilline breath of your enchanted word.
Lunar Park
from La Wallonie III (188990)
Le Livre Sacr
from La Jeune Belgique 14 (1895)
Parc Lunaire
from La Wallonie 3 (188990)
LHorreur de la Pluie
from La Wallonie 4 (189192)
Of British and Ligois descent, Georges Marlow was born and raised in
the Flemish city of Malines. He was a physician and a writer, elected to
both the directing committee of the College of Medicine and to the
Royal Academy of Letters. His principal literary activity was as a critic and cultural
ambassador, contributing a monthly Chroniques de la Belgique to the Mercure
de France between 191932 and 193640. He founded and edited Le Masque, one
of the last symbolist reviews, published 191114. He contributed poems in his own
name and as Paul Alriel, often in the same issue, to Le Reveil, the journal which
was the successor of La Wallonie.
In his 1895 collection, LAme en exil, Georges Marlow evokes Malines as a dead
city, an interiorized space of remembrance, using a gently musical, Verlainian style
to express the theme inaugurated by Rodenbach. As a city encompassed by the
soul, Marlows Malines is evoked in a series of diminutives. In At Evening I, it is
the little, desolate city, the slender city, where the bells are a bit melancholy
and all is dimmed. Marlows city seems remote and suggestive to the extent that it
is etherialized to the dimension of a delicate book illumination from the vanished
Flemish past.
158 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
At Evening I
from Le Reveil 3 (1893)
Du Soir
from Le Reveil 3 (1893)
Fernand Severin has tenuous ties with the literary revival in Belgium at
the turn of the century. During his student days in Brussels, Severin con-
tributed poems to La Jeune Belgique, published in 1888 as Le Lys, a series
having to do with unfullled waiting for an imagined beloved. Severin later repu-
diated the volume as juvenilia. During the twelve years he spent as a teacher at Vir-
ton in the Ardennes, Severin cultivated a classical style and direct discourse to ex-
press a romantic love of nature. The poetry published in the 1895 Un Chant dans
lombre, although dedicated to his friend, Charles Van Lerberghe, is distanced from
the symbolist creation of the author of La Chanson dEve.
Severins early poetry remains interesting, a juncture of Racine and Verlaine, as
his contemporary, Albert Arnay, commented in La Wallonie IV. In Severins 1886
She, Who Will Come, the poets desire for a private space of love leads to an im-
agined Liebestod in a shrine where the lovers sleep enlaced upon faded roses.
162 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Wretchedness
from My Heart Weeps for Days Long Past (1889)
Misre
from Mon Coeur Pleure dAutrefois
La Fiance de lOmbre
from Mon Coeur Pleure dAutrefois
Dimmed Christmases
from My Heart Weeps for Days Long Past (1889)
The old woman speaks far away and the story comes to an end,
Far away, in a manor, like an end of day,
While in a very vague corner, a spinning wheel dreams,
Like the heart of a princess exiled from love,
Carmen
from La Wallonie I (188687)
...
To the Destroyer
La Wallonie I (188687)
Carmen
from La Wallonie I (188687)
....
A La Faucheuse
from La Wallonie I (18861887)
Intoxication
from The Immortal Flame (1924)
He:
Enivrement
from La Flamme Immortelle (1924)
Lui.
The Prey
from The Immortal Flame (1924)
She:
...
La Proie
from La Flamme Immortelle (1924)
Elle:
...
The Spinners
from The Red Flanders (1916)
Les Fileuses
from La Flandre Rouge
Andr Fontainas was born in Belgium, but spent most of his childhood
and youth in Paris. During law studies in Brussels, Fontainas was actively
involved in the Belgian literary renaissance and gured prominently in
the 1887 Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique. After his return to Paris, Fontainas contin-
ued to contribute to the Belgian literary journals, La Jeune Belgique, Le Reveil, and
La Wallonie.
The Franco-Belgian writer is the most hermetic and Mallarmean of the group.
The Virgins Look at Themselves in the Mirrors, from the 1894 Nuits
dEpiphanies, is a powerful and original avatar of the recurrent symbolist mirror
reverie. A group of imprisoned maidens is forced to witness the eeting of life as it
passes in shadows across their mirror. Already, this evening, strange visions /
Slide pallid through the thick panes of our wJindows / And are dying in the gold
of our mirrors. In the manner of the prisoners of the platonic cave, the maidens
perceive an intangible, phantom disembodiment, a dream of life, but not life itself.
They are condemned to being seers, absorbed in unreal visions. The mirror is also
a privileged symbol in Fontainas recondite sonnets from the 1895 Les Estuaires
dOmbre, stygian verse haunted by the lusterless waters of oblivion. The central
image of Sonnet VI is a blackened mirror of obsidian and Sonnet VII is domi-
nated by the mirror barren of dreams: Lakes, where will not emerge toward fa-
bled shores, / The grey and heavy plumage of the swans of December. The dark
explorations of the Estuaires dOmbre are succeeded in the later verse of the 1926
Lumires Sensibles by a light-ooded world of ecstatic scintillation. In Your Eyes,
the vision of love mirrors the joy of the beloved as she witnesses the luminous
laughter of the hour, the brightness of blue waves and its ight of birds. The
rich and varied poetry of Andr Fontainas has been collected in Choix de Pomes
(Paris: Mercure de France; 1950).
186 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Jealousy
from La Jeune Belgique 4 (1885)
Jalousie
from La Jeune Belgique 4 (1885)
And You, for your heraldry was of ancient blue and gold,
Were they not yours, the ngers that scattered the treasure
Of their shining petals to the sea of lusterless water?
Your Eyes
from Palpable Light (1926)
Tes Yeux
from Lumire Sensible (1926)
Selections from:
Beneath the Tents of the Exodus
Sous les Tentes de lExode (1921)
The Song of the Rue Saint-Paul
La Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul(1922)
Aegri Somnia (1924)
Max Elskamp (18621932)
Commentary
Like Georges Rodenbach, for whom Bruges was the space of poetry,
Max Elskamp is also a poet of place. His realm of the imagination, ren-
dered mythic and interiorized, was his birthplace, the port city of Ant-
werp. Elskamp spent his early years in the parish of St. Paul and most of his life
in his familys vast mansion on Leopold Street, surrounded by the collections of
orientalia and old navigational equipment which fueled his reverie. In his early
collections, Enluminures and La Louange de la Vie, both published in 1898, Els-
kamp evokes an Antwerp which is a series of villages, inhabited by simple folk.
The language used in these poems is naive and archaic in mood, suffused with
the rhythms of folksongs. The seemingly simple style was intended to convey
the spiritual candor of the populace, living in a harmonious and natural world,
rooted in the religious calendar. Ten years of silence followed these volumes,
during which Elskamp collected Flemish folklore and engaged in study of Bud-
dhism. Following a bitter period of exile in Holland during the First World
War, Elskamp underwent a remarkable resurgence of poetic creation. The years
1920 1924 mark the appearance of successive volumes of symbolist poetry, Sous
les tentes de lexode (1921), La Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul (1922), Les Chansons
Dsabuses (1922), Les Dlectations Moroses (1923), Maya (1923), and Aegri Somnia
(1924). In these works, Elskamp, like the Verhaeren of the 1880s, has fashioned
a highly idiosyncratic French, rich in distorted syntax, ellipsis, neologisms, sup-
pression of articles, and succinct lines meant to convey moments of vision. The
purity of the legendary past gives way in the Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul to the
teeming life of the present. The atmosphere of the port is the prevailing theme,
but the ubiquity of the harbour also leads the poet to evoke distant and exotic
realms in a series of dream voyages. Spaces of suspended time are found at both
axes of Elskamps imagination. The brothel in the seventh poem of the Rue
Saint-Paul is a place of waiting, dominated by a poster of the Brooklyn Bridge
stretched in suspension. The violet islands found at the edge of the world in
Aegri Somnia are places where so many pasts are worn away / In dark oblivion
of everlasting presents. Throughout Elskamps late period, scenes of Flemish
life alternate with evocations of beloved women, oriental fantasies, and poems
inspired by objects, porcelains and silks, which are pieces of music for the
eye. The last ten years of Elskamps life were spent in syphilitic madness and
paranoid rage.
Max Elskamp 195
In Memoriam
from Beneath the Tents of the Exodus
In Memoriam
from Sous les Tentes de lExode
En ce pays, en ce pays,
Mon Dieu, o nous avons langui,
En ce pays de prdicants
Que nous avons mal couts,
En ce pays, en ce pays,
Ainsi o nous avons langui,
no. 7
Song of the Rue Saint-Paul
Irish Whiskey,
American rum,
Japanese sake,
Opium from India.
no. 7
from La Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul
Maisons rideaux
Baisss mais qui bougent,
Filtrant un jour clos
De lumire rouge,
Whiskey irlandais,
Rhum amricain,
Sak japonais,
Opium indien,
Et glaces mirant
En jaune et en noir,
Les cuivres luisants
Au dos du comptoir,
Blue Night
from Aegri Somnia
On voit le Vsuve
En feu qui se pme,
Ainsi quune cuve
Denfer et de ammes,
Et rouge et carmin
Plus loin appendu,
Le pont de Brooklyn
Dans lair suspendu.
Nuit Bleue
from Aegri Somnia
Et le jardin
O lon sen va,
Trouver demain
Et qui viendra.
204 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Silence in her,
Silence in yourself,
And then faith,
Which turns to gall,
Newborn doubts
Of love, which binds
Forever
And for life,
Il y a coeur
En soi quon porte,
Croyant sans leurre,
La douleur morte;
On ne sait point
A quoi, qui,
Mais jointes mains
Ainsi quon prie,
Et yeux monts
Haut vers le ciel,
Cherche, on dirait,
Comme des ailes.
Silence en elle,
Silence en soi,
Et alors foi
Qui se fait el,
Silks
from Aegri Somnia
Soieries
from Aegri Somnia
The Islands
from Aegri Somnia
Les Iles
from Aegri Somnia
Salome
from Aegri Somnia
It is in the evenings,
Sometimes harsh,
When, in theaters,
You kill time,
In the light,
And their aromas
Of owers of esh
Those who dance
To the music,
Quick or slow,
With rhythmic step,
And smiling,
Mimes, dancers,
And ballerinas,
Sweet, mocking,
Or sometimes feline.
Max Elskamp 211
Salome
from Aegri Somnia
Et quon se penche
Pour mieux les voir
Roses ou blanches,
Blondes ou noires,
Dans la lumire
Et leurs fragrances
De eurs de chair
Celles qui dansent,
Mimes, danseuses,
Et ballerines,
Douces, railleuses,
Ou bien flines.
212 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Sudden things
And those conjured
From distant times,
Without question,
A palace of gold
In the sunset,
Where horns sound,
Where songs climb,
Darkly, Antiphas,
With downcast eyes.
But dancing there,
Salome,
Lips offered,
Arms uplifted,
The breasts nude
And shadowed with gold,
While upon
A silver dish,
Following the white
Wall of the fortress,
A soldier approaches,
With rigid ngers,
Bearing in his hands
The head, once John.
Max Elskamp 213
Choses soudain
Et qui svoquent
De temps lointains
Sans quivoques,
Un palais dor
Dans le couchant,
O sonnent cors,
O montent chants,
Sombre, Antipas
Les yeux baisss.
Mais dansant l
Cest Salom
Lvres tendues,
Les bras dresss,
Et les seins nus
Et dor ombrs,
Un soldat vient
Et les doigts raides,
Portant aux mains,
De Jean, la tte.
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vi Charles Van Lerberghe
Selections from:
The Song of Eve
La Chanson dEve
1904
Charles Van Lerberghe (18611907)
Commentary
Mets ta parole
Virginale
Sur mes lvres.
Et sois,
Entre mes frles doigts
Que je lve,
O rayon,
Le sceptre de mon royaume!
220 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
Le sais-tu encore,
O ma Licorne?
Une nuit merveilleuse,
Au fond des grands bois,
Cest moi qui tai prise;
Jtais farouche comme toi.
A prsent, tu reposes,
O ma Licorne
En ce petit jardin,
Que jai clos de mes mains
Dune haie de roses,
Et quenveloppe lEden sans bornes.
We are cold.
Your soul,
That little ame of gold.
Ton me,
Cette petite amme dor.
Allow my soul
To be free as you are,
Like the breeze, like re,
Which ares where it will
And yields not even to God.
In the unseen,
Our songs, our dances, round you will twine;
Step by step; trace by trace,
We will glide into the space,
Where you will be.
Donnez mon me
Dtre libre comme vous,
Comme les airs, comme le feu,
Qui soufe o il veut,
Et nobit pas mme Dieu.
Dans linvisible,
Nos chants et nos danses vont te suivre.
Trace trace, et pas pas,
Nous serons dans lespace
O tu seras.
Mysteriously opened,
Like a deadly omen,
Upon the wave and the moon, they place
Their white candlesticks, slender and pale.
Mystrieusement closes,
Comme un mortel pressentiment,
Dans londe et la lune elles posent
Leurs longs et ples ambeaux blancs.
Hear as my song
Whispers in your ear,
Draw near and gather.
The angels drift in their dreams . . .
Be absolved by my decree . . .
Be absolved by my decree
Of all treachery
And of all malice,
O my lovely Serpent, and glide
In peace, a sinuous sunbeam
Among these roses.
coute ma chanson;
Elle murmure ton oreille:
Approche et cueille.
Les anges sommeillent . . .
..........
..........
....................................
Charles Van Lerberghe 239
..........................................
240 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets
O parle vite!
Ne me regarde pas de la sorte,
En silence! Jai peur;
Ne xe pas ainsi sur moi tes yeux avides,
Ma sombre soeur!
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