Emile Verhaeren - Principal works, Quotation
Poet, born in St Amand lez-Pueres, NC Belgium. He studied law at Louvain, but turned to literature, writing in French, and becoming a leading figure of the Belgian literary renaissance of the 1890s. His poetry hovers between powerful sensuality, as in Les Flamandes (1883) and the harrowing despair of Les Débâcles (1888). Among his most notable works are La Multiple Splendeur (1906) and the five-part Tout la Flandre (190411). He was also an art critic, and wrote short stories and verse plays.
Emile Verhaeren (Sint-Amands May 21, 1855 – Rouen November 27, 1916) was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism.
He was born to a French-speaking middle-class family.
Having gained his PhD in Law, he became a trainee (1881-1884) with Edmond Picard, a renowned criminal lawyer, who also played a pivotal role on the Brussels artistic scene.
He soon became the mouthpiece for the artistic revival at the turn of the century. Fascinated by the works of the painters of the artistic circle "Les XX", he wrote many articles in La Jeune Belgique and L'Art Moderne, with flamboyant criticism on the artistic-literary works of the Brussels art world.
Through these articles, he became a lifelong friend of the neo-impressionist Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe, resulting in a vast body of letters.
He was one of the most prolific poets of his era. His first collection of poems "Les Flamandes" was published in 1883. In this period he published Les Soirs (1888), Les Débâcles (1888) and Les Flambeaux noirs (1891).
On 24 August 1891 he married Marthe Massin, a talented artist from Liège. His new-found happiness found expression in three poetry books : Les Heures Claires (1896), Les Heures d’Après-midi (1905) and Les Heures du Soir (1911).
He wrote his first play "Les Aubes" in 1898.
In 1898 he moved to Saint-Cloud, near Paris.
When Emile Verhaeren died on 27 November 1916 at Rouen station (by falling under a train), it was Théo van Rysselberghe and his friend, the famous French writer (and later Nobel Prize winner) André Gide who had to inform Marthe Verhaeren of the tragic death of her husband.
His vast body of work shows him as one of the most prominent figures in Belgian literature.
St. Amands, his native city, has dedicated a museum to this giant of Belgian literature, showing many original manuscripts of his works and letters and also works of his artistic friends Théo van Rysselberghe, Leon Spilliaert, Constantin Meunier, Paul Signac and Ossip Zadkine.
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