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 in
_Fetes galantes_ is imitated in Giraud's _Heros 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 Mallarme, 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, Gerardy, 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, Gerardy (Prussian Walloon), Gilkin (Flemish
mother), Gille, Marlow (English grandfather), Mockel (distant German
extraction), Rency, Severin.
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
the _verslibristes_ use the free forms of verse imported into France
from Germany by Jules Laforgue, and perfected by (among others) the
American Viele-Griffin. It must be noted, however, that there is a
tendency among the _verslibristes_ to return to the classical style:
Verhaeren, who wrote in _vers libres_ after 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 the
_vers libre_; but his own work is an immortal monument of its
practicability.[4] The chief Parnassians are Giraud, Gilkin (whose
_Promethee,_ however, is in _vers libres_), Gille, and Severin, Max
Elskamp is a _verslibriste_ only in his use of assonance.
Belgian literature begins, for all practical purposes, with Charles de
Coster's national epic _Uylenspiegel_. 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,
Theo 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 Emile 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; and Edmond 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 with _La Semaine,_ the magazine _Le 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 into _verslibristes_ and 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
were _L'Art Moderne_[7] to which Verhaeren contributed, and _La
Wallonie,_ which Albert Mockel founded at Liege 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 stand at 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, so unrestrained. 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 race
Dont les cerveaux plus que les dents
Sont solides et sont ardents
Et sont voraces.
Je suis le fils de cette race
Tenace,
Qui veut, apres avoir voulu,
Encore, encore et encore plus."[8]
The greatest of all French poets, past and present, is Emile 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 book _Les Tendresses premieres_ (1904), the
processions of ships sailing, like a dream plumed with wind, down the
river under the stars, the dikes, "la verte immensite des plaines et des
plaines"; and in the superb symbolism of _Les Villages illusoires_ he
has magnified the villagers at their trades. He was educated at the
Jesuit school Sainte-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 book _Les Flamandes_, the fruit of close study of Flemish
_genre_-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 in _Les 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 Debacles_ (1888), and _Les 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 ame du soir, ce Londres noir qui traine en toi!_" "Je
suis l'immensement 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 poem _Saint George_, one
of the collection _Les Apparus dans mes Chemins_ (1891).
In his first two books he had been a realist and a Parnassian. The
volumes which follow are in _vers 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 hallucinees_ (1893) describes the desolation of the
country, deserted to glut the cities; _Les Villes tentaculaires_ (1895)
is a cinematograph of the town, while the play _Les 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 of grimy 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 isolated in 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.
In _Les Heures claires_ (1896) and _Les Heures d'apres-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:
"Tres doucement, plus doucement encore,
Berce ma tete entre tes bras,
Mon front fievreux et mes yeux las;
Tres doucement, plus doucement encore,
Baise mes levres, et dis-moi
Ces mots plus doux a chaque aurore,
Quand me les dit ta voix
Et que tu t'es donnee, et que je t'aime encore."
In another trilogy _Toute la Flandre_ (_Les Tendresses premieres_, 1904;
_La Guirlande des Dunes_, 1907; _Les Heros_, 1908) he sings his native
province. Of his plays, _Le Cloitre_, in the translation of Osman
Edwards, was staged, with honour and 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 ou l'on voudrait mourir,
Ou l'on se sent le coeur trop seul, l'ame trop lasse,
Quel rafraichissement de se voir dans la glace."
Verhaeren and Rodenbach were followed on the benches of the College
Sainte-Barbe at Ghent by Charles van Lerberghe, Maurice Maeterlinck, and
Gregoire 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 comedy _Pan_ (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 mots
Si frais, si virginaux,
Avec des mots si purs,
Qu'ils tremblent dans l'azur,
Et semblent dits,
Pour la premiere fois au paradis."