Emile Verhaeren, remarkable among of the brilliant group of writers
representing "Young Belgium," and one who has been recognized by the
literary world of France as holding a foremost place among the lyric
poets of the day was born at St. Amand, near Antwerp, in 1855. His
childhood was passed on the banks of the Scheldt, in the midst of the
wide-spreading Flemish plains, a country of mist and flood, of dykes and
marshes, and the impressions he received from the mysterious, melancholy
character of these surroundings, have produced a marked and lasting
influence upon his work. Yet the other characteristics with which it is
stamped--the wealth of imagination, the gloomy force, the wonderful
descriptive power and sense of colour, which set the landscape before
one as a picture, suggest rather the possibility of Spanish blood in the
poet's veins--and again, his somewhat morbid subjectivity and tendency
to self-analysis mark him as the child of the latter end of our
nineteenth century.
Verhaeren entered early in life upon the literary career. After some
time spent at a college in Ghent, he became a student at the University
of Louvain, and here he founded and edited a journal called "_La
Semaine_," in which work he was assisted by the singer Van Dyck, and by
his friend and present publisher, Edmond Deman. He also formed, about
this time, a close friendship with Maeterlinck. In 1881, Verhaeren was
called to the Bar at Brussels, but soon gave up his legal career to
devote himself entirely to literature. In 1883 he published his first
volume of poems, and shortly afterwards became one of the editors of
"_L'Art Moderne_," to which, as well as to other contemporary periodicals,
he was for many years a contributor. In 1892 he founded, with the help
of two other friends, the "Section of Art" in the "House of the People,"
a popular institution in Brussels, where performances of the best music,
as well as lectures upon literary and artistic subjects, were given. In
spite, however, of the work which all this entailed, and of the many
interests created by his ardent appreciation of the various branches of
art and literature, Verhaeren continued to labour unceasingly at his
poetical work, and between 1883 and 1897 brought out successively eleven
small volumes: _Les Flamandes, Les Moines, Les Soirs, Les Débâcles, Les
Flambeaux Noirs, Les Apparus dans mes chemins, Les Campagnes
Hallucinées, Les Villages Illusoires, Les Villes Tentaculaires, Les
Heures Claires,_ and _Les Aubes_.
Throughout this entire series the intellectual and spiritual development
of the poet may be closely traced--from the materialism which pervades
_Les Flamandes_, and the despairing pessimism and lurid emotion--the
throes of a self-centred soul in revolt against fate--which are so
powerfully portrayed in _Les Débâcles_ and _Les Flambeaux Noirs_, and are
apparent even in the opening pages of _Les Apparus_ dans mes chemins--to
the tender, hopeful mysticism which marks the latter poems in that
volume, and the wonderful sympathy with Nature, even in her saddest
aspects--the subtle power of endowing those aspects with a profound and
ennobling symbolism, which characterise the most beautiful of the poems
in Les Villages Illusoires. Les Heures Claires is the name given to a
volume of love-songs, an exquisite record of golden hours spent in a
garden at spring-time--spring-time in a double sense.
The task of making an adequate and typical selection from a poet's work
is always difficult, and in this case it has been decided to limit the
field of selection, at least for the present, to the three last-named
volumes, which embody what may, I think, be considered as Verhaeren's
highest achievement in the realm of lyrical poetry.
In style, Verhaeren is essentially the apostle of the "Vers libre"; and
his handling of rhyme and rhythm, his coining of words where he finds
the French vocabulary insufficient, have called down upon him some
criticism from those of his French contemporaries who are sticklers for
the older rules and more conventional forms of versification. But
however this may be, it remains an undeniable fact that Verhaeren has at
his command a rare and powerful poetic eloquence--a wealth of imagery, a
depth of thought and a subtlety of expression which perhaps are not to
be imprisoned behind the bars of a too rigid convention. English readers
have already been accustomed by their own poets to the "vers libre," and
it is not so much, therefore, for my adherence to this form, as for my
failure adequately to render Verhaeren's peculiar and striking beauty of
language, that I beg their indulgence for the following translations.