ALTHOUGH for many, perhaps most, of my readers, Belgian literature is summed up in the one word, Maeterlinck, it is nevertheless true that the writers of this little country have been no unworthy spokesmen for so sturdy and independent a race. Even when the nation lay stupefied in the relentless grasp of Spain, among the exiles who sought refuge in Holland was at least one poet, Vondel, who is remembered with pride today.

From the earliest days of Belgian fable the name of the chronicler, Lucius de Tongres, has come down to us. Like many another monk, he wrote in his humble cell the annals of the warring tribes. We think of the Nibelungen Lied as the especial property of Germany, but “The epic of the Franks belongs to our provinces,” says the Belgian writer, Potvin, “and the Siegfried of the Nibelungen is called the hero of the Low Countries.”

Later, when troubadour and trouvÈre sang of love and war from Provence to Normandy, there were minstrels also in the castles of Flanders and Brabant. Jean Bodel of Arras, in his “Chansons des Saxons,” sang of resistance to the power of Charlemagne, and it was the trouvÈres of the Walloon country who first borrowed from the Britons the cycle of the Table Ronde. The greatest poet of the reign of Philip of Alsace, at the end of the twelfth century, was Chrestien de Troyes, a native of Brabant, whose writings were imitated in England and Germany.

The “Chambers of Rhetoric,” formed in the sixteenth century to provide entertainment for the people, exerted so great an influence in promoting a taste for art and literature among Belgians in general that our own Motley could find nothing with which to compare it except the power of the press in the nineteenth century. These chambers were really theatrical guilds, composed almost entirely of artisans, and they not only produced plays and recited original poetry but also arranged pageants and musical festivals. In 1456, the Adoration of the Lamb was reproduced as a tableau vivant by the chamber of rhetoric at Ghent. The “Seven Joys of Mary” was given at Brussels for seven years, beginning in 1444, and was the best acted mystery of that time. Jean Ruysbroeck was called the “Father of Flemish Prose,” while Jean le Bel (a Walloon) started a school of writers which rivaled that of France.

The treatment these rhetoricians received from the Spanish sovereigns is sufficient proof that they were the mouthpiece of the people and voiced their aspirations for freedom in both church and state—Charles V was their persecutor, Philip II their executioner.

When the long struggle with Spain ended in the subjugation of the Spanish Netherlands and art and literature were stifled in the southern provinces of the Low Countries, Vondel, the Fleming, produced in his safe retreat in Holland plays which are worthy of notice today. About the same time the poet who is known as “le pÈre des Flamands, le Vieux Cats,” had many followers, and his works were so popular that they were called “The Household Bible.”

Another exile, Jacques van ZÈvecote, a native of Ghent, who also emigrated to Holland during the Spanish oppression, was a great poet. His hatred of Spain found expression in these vigorous lines:—

Under Napoleon the chambers of rhetoric were revived. In 1809, the concours of Ypres celebrated a “hero of the country.” In 1810, Alost called on Belgian poets to sing “The Glory of the Belgians.” A young poet named Lesbroussart won the prize in a fine poem full of the old national spirit of the race. Jenneval, the author of the “BrabanÇonne,” the national anthem, was killed in a battle between the Dutch and the Belgians outside Antwerp, in the revolution of 1830.

About 1844 Abbe David, and Willems, a free thinker, started literary societies, and later followed Henri Conscience and Ledeganck. Ledeganck was called the Flemish Byron, and another poet, van Beers of Antwerp, was often compared to Shelley. To the early years of free Belgium belonged also Charles de Coster, whom Verhaeren calls “the father of Belgian literature.”

Henri Conscience, the Walter Scott of Flanders, was born in 1812, when Belgium was under the rule of France. His father was a Frenchman, his mother a Fleming. He first wrote in French, but in 1830 he said, “If ever I gain the power to write, I shall throw myself head over ears into Flemish literature.” In 1830 he volunteered as a soldier in the army of Belgian patriots.

His first historical romance, “Het Wonder-Jaar,” written in Flemish, is said to have been “the foundation-stone on which arose the new Flemish school of literature.“ His two finest historical novels, ”The Lion of Flanders“ and ”The Peasants’ War,” describe the revolt of the Flemings against French despotism, for “to raise Flanders was to him a holy aim.” The net profit to the author from the first of these books was six francs!

The most artistic work that Conscience ever did, however, is found in his tales of Flemish peasant life, one of which, “’Rikke-Tikke-Tak,’” says William Sharp, “has not only been rendered into every European tongue, but has been paraphrased to such an extent that variants of it occur, in each instance as an indigenous folk-tale, in every land, from Great Britain in the west to India and even China in the east.” Conscience says of himself, “I write my books to be read by the people.... I have sketched the Flemish peasant as he appeared to me ... when, hungry and sick, I enjoyed hospitality and the tenderest care among them.”

“After a European success ranking only after that of Scott, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, and Hans Andersen, Henri Conscience is still,” wrote William Sharp in 1896, thirteen years after the great Fleming’s death, “a name of European repute; is still, in his own country, held in the highest honour and affection.”

The Walloon country provided the historians, of whom VanderkindÈre was one of the ablest. Charles Potvin, born at Mons in 1818, was a Walloon journalist and prolific writer on a variety of subjects. He held the position of professor of the history of literature at the Royal Museum of Industry in Brussels, was director of the Revue de Belgique, which he founded, and was curator of the Wiertz Museum in Brussels. He was poet, writer on political subjects, historian of art and literature, critic and essayist; “a power in Belgian politics and literature, a leader of democrats and free-thinkers.” In his long life—he died in 1902—he produced a great number of works, among which were “La Belgique,“ a poem, the ”History of Civilization in Belgium,” the “History of Literature in Belgium,” and a work on “Belgian Nationality.”

Camille Lemonnier, of LiÈge, wrote three or four novels before 1880. He was a brilliant writer, who “touched modern society at almost every point” in his books, but will perhaps be remembered chiefly as the doyen of the little band of “la jeune Belgique.”

The students at Louvain in 1880, with their rival magazines, really laid “the foundation of a literature which is in many respects the most remarkable of contemporary Europe.” At the head stand Maeterlinck and Verhaeren. Edmond Glesener, a hero of LiÈge, is well known for his novels.

In 1887, with the publication of the periodical, La Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique, began a renaissance of poetry, which became distinctly modern Belgian in character. Maurice Warlemont (Max Waller) was the generally recognized founder of this paper. Verhaeren and other noted contributors also wrote for the PlÉiade, which was a famous Parisian periodical at that time.

Maeterlinck is the best known of these modern Belgian writers, for many of his plays have been well translated into English, and some have been produced with great success in this country. He wrote at first in Flemish, but soon changed to French. I admire his symbolic and allegorical language, so mysterious and full of charm. It is said of his earlier poems that “they require a key and are not literature but algebra.“ Maeterlinck ”has the happy faculty of making people think they think.”

Apropos of this mysticism of Maeterlinck’s I may give the bon mot of a witty Frenchman in regard to the Jeune Ecole Belge. He said that their ambition was to write obscurely, and if the first writing seemed easy to understand, they would scratch it out, and try again. At the second attempt, if no one could understand it but the writer—that was still too simple. If the public could not understand the third, nor the writer himself, it was quite perfect.

Maurice Maeterlinck was born on August 29, 1862. As a boy, he lived at Oostacker, in Flanders, and was sent to the College of Sainte Barbe, a Jesuit school, where he studied for seven years. Among his friends in this college was Jean GrÉgoire le Roi, who later became a well-known poet. Even in those days Maeterlinck contributed to a literary review, and like Verhaeren, he studied for the bar. At the age of twenty-four he went to Paris, where he continued his friendship with le Roi. Maeterlinck had a thin, harsh voice, which was much against him as a lawyer, and he soon gave up that profession and turned his entire attention to literature. He is short, stocky, Flemish in appearance, but is a dreamer, shy, solitary, and moody.

In 1889, his first book of poems, “Serres Chaudes,” was published. After this he returned to Oostacker, and when he was not writing tended his bees, which have always interested him.

In reading his earlier poems, I find they are principally concerned with souls, hothouses, and hospitals. Some of them have a strange prophetic note, and are also good examples of his style.[9]

This is an extract from “The Soul”:

The same strain is found in this bit from “The Hospital”:

Here is another passage. Does it not make one wonder what its meaning can be?

From 1889 to 1896 Maeterlinck wrote many poems and eight plays. His first play, “La Princesse Maleine,” was a masterpiece, and is said to have made an “epoch in the history of the stage.” The author was named the Belgian Shakespeare. Many of his plays, however, have a fairy-like and unreal quality, so they have been termed “bloodless” or unhealthy. A short synopsis of “La Princesse Maleine” will give an idea of the plot.

The scene opens at the betrothal banquet of the young Princess Maleine. The fathers of the two young people quarrel over the arrangements. The betrothal is broken, and war is declared between their countries. In the attack on the castle, in the next act, the mother and father of the Princess are killed, and she disappears with her nurse into the forest. While escaping, she hears that her lover is to wed another. She decides then that she will try to obtain a position as her rival’s attendant and learn the truth.

As she is very beautiful, she succeeds in arranging it, and is taken to her rival’s castle. The young Prince discovers Maleine’s identity, and realizes that, after all, she is the only one he really loves. The mother of the spurned princess determines to poison Maleine, but the physician does not make the potion deadly, and as she sickens slowly, the wicked queen, tired of waiting for her death, twists a cord of hair around Maleine’s neck and kills her. The scene of the last act is the cemetery near the castle where Maleine’s funeral is going on. The lover stabs the Queen in revenge for the girl’s murder, and then kills himself. The animals in the play all appear. The black hound is there, bats and moles gather about; swans are seen in the castle moat, and peacocks among the cypresses; owls perch on the crosses, and sheep graze near the tombstone.

Among Maeterlinck’s books of essays the best known are “The Bee,” “The Unknown Guest,“ and ”Our Eternity.” In one of his essays he writes that he loves the idea of silence so much that the words of the people in his plays “often seem no more than swallows flying about a deep and still lake, whose surface they ruffle seldom and but for a moment.”

Maeterlinck has continued writing poems and essays as well as plays. The two dramas called “Palleas” and “Melisande” were put on the stage in 1893, and were greatly praised. In 1902 appeared “Le Temple Enseveli.” “Le TrÉsor des Humbles” was dedicated to Georgette Le Blanc, an actress, who helped him write it. Later they were married and settled in Paris. Here he lived a quiet life, writing constantly, and was seen by only a few of his friends.

“Monna Vanna” was his first play in which the action was assigned to a definite period. It was supposed to take place at the end of the fifteenth century. A few years ago, it was well given in this country, Mary Garden impersonating the heroine. Her rendering of the part was widely discussed. “Sister Beatrice” was also produced in America, and “Mary Magdalene” has been translated into English, as well as “The Bluebird.” The last named was beautifully given in New York, and was superbly staged and very spectacular. It was so artistic, so original and mysterious, and unlike anything that one had ever seen before, you knew at once that it was the work of Maeterlinck. People swarmed to see it, people went to hear it read, and people took it home to read.

Maeterlinck is now over fifty years old, and is at the height of his popularity. He spends the winter at Katchema, near Grasse, in the south of France, the summers at the ancient Benedictine Abbey of St. Wandrille. During the war he has been lecturing in behalf of his native country.

I quote from an address made by him in Milan: “It is not for me to recall here the facts which hurled Belgium into the abyss of glorious distress where she now struggles. She has been punished, as no nation ever was punished, for doing her duty as no nation ever did it. She has saved the world, in the full knowledge that she could not be saved.

“She saved the world by throwing herself across the path of the barbarian horde, by allowing herself to be trampled to death in order to give the champions of justice the necessary time, not to succour her—she was aware that she could not be succoured in time—but to assemble troops enough to free Latin civilization from the greatest danger with which it has ever been threatened.

“The spectacle of an entire people, great and humble, rich and poor, savants and unlettered, sacrificing themselves deliberately for something which is invisible—that, I declare, has never been seen before, and I say it without fear that any one can contradict me by searching through the history of mankind. They did what had never been done before, and it is to be hoped, for the good of mankind, that no nation may ever be called upon again to do it.”

Among other well-known Belgian authors EugÈne Demolder may be mentioned. In his historical novel, “Le Jardinier de la Pompadour,” he has made the eighteenth century live again in pages “vibrant with prismatic colours.” A charming characteristic of this book is the exquisite pictures of flowers and woods. The critic Gilbert quotes a page, of which he says, “It opens the story like a whiff of perfumes, for it symbolizes the charm and the freshness of rural France in flower.”

The works of Leopold Courouble are greatly enjoyed. He represents the humour of BrabanÇon fiction. As the old painters of Flanders gave expression to Flemish gaiety in their immortal canvases, so has Courouble concentrated in “Les FianÇailles de Joseph Kaekebroeck” the whole spirit of a race.

Le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is noted as a critic and essayist, and has had five of his works crowned by the French Academy. Henri Pirenne, author of “Histoire de la Belgique,” is at the head of the list of Belgian historians today. (There have been a number of patriotic books written foreshadowing this war. Balzac wrote “France et Belgique,” and it has been said that Balzac was the inspiration of the modern writers of Belgium.)

GrÉgoire le Roi, Maeterlinck’s friend, is described by Bithell as “the poet of retrospection“—”the hermit bowed down by silver hair, bending at eventide over the embers of the past, visited by weird guests draped with legend.“ It is said ”the weft of his verse is torn by translation, it cannot be grasped, it is wafted through shadows.”

Charles van Lerberghe wrote his play of the new school, “Les Flaireurs,” in 1889, before Maeterlinck had published anything, but his work resembles the latter’s somewhat in style. He was born in 1862, of a Flemish father and a Walloon mother, which resulted in a sort of dual personality. Van Lerberghe was “a man for whom modern life had no more existence than for a mediÆval recluse,” and he passed his happiest years in an old-world village in the Ardennes. He died in 1907, having published besides the play already mentioned, only three little books of poetry, “Entrevisions,” “La Chanson d’Eve,” and “Pan”—small but classic. Maeterlinck speaks of his verse as having a sort of “lyric silence, a quality of sound such as we have not heard in our French poetry.” The early poems of Rossetti are suggested by his work.

“If poetry is music van Lerberghe is a poet. The charm of his verses is unique,“ writes Bithell. Are not these stanzas on ”Rain” exquisite?

“Fernand Severin, who was 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.” The following lines, from the translation by Bithell, will give an idea of the grace and beauty of his style:

Albert Mockel is a fine musician and an excellent critic, as well as a good poet, a combination which is very rare. He is learned, subtle and brilliant. “Chantefable un peu NaÏve” and “ClartÉs” contain musical notations of rhythms.

I give here part of one of his poems called

I also give an extract from his “Song of Running Water,” that is quite lovely.

“Verhaeren is the triumph of the Belgian race, the greatest of modern poets,” writes Stefan Zweig, who has translated many of his works. Verhaeren is much admired by the Germans and Austrians, but is not so well known in this country, as few of his books have been translated into English. As Rubens with his brush depicted carousals and excesses, so did Verhaeren depict the wildness and madness of youth with his clever pen.

Emile Verhaeren was born in Flanders at St. Amand on the Scheldt, the twenty-first of May, 1855. His parents were considered well-to-do and owned a house and garden of their own on the edge of the town, overlooking the yellow cornfields and the wide river. It was here Emile’s boyhood was spent, watching the peasants sow and reap, and the white sails of the boats slowly drifting down to the great ocean. He was blue-eyed and golden-haired in those days. The people loved him then, and they love him now. As a boy he was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte Barbe, in Ghent, and it was hoped that he might in time join the order. There he began writing verses, and there too he met the poet, Georges Rodenbach, and Maeterlinck and Charles van Lerberghe, all of whom later became famous. Emile refused to become a priest and he did not wish to enter his uncle’s workshop, so when his courses were finished at Sainte Barbe, he was sent to Louvain to study law. His student days were wild in the extreme.

In 1881 he went to Brussels to practice, but he was not a success as a lawyer. Here he met artists and authors, and like many poets became eccentric in his dress. “Les Flamandes” is the name of his first book. When it was published his conservative parents were scandalized and the critics were very severe, but all had to admit the primitive vitality and savage strength of his work. “Les Moines” is his second book. These sonnets describe the monks and are unlike his other poems.

As Verhaeren was unbridled in his studies as well as his follies, he had a severe nervous breakdown. While convalescing he wrote “Les Soirs, Les DÉbÂcles, Les Flambeaux Noirs,” which are extraordinary descriptions of his physical and mental sensations during his illness.

After he recovered he married and traveled in Europe and in England. Then for a time he gave lectures at the UniversitÉ Libre in Brussels.

“Les Villes Tentaculaires,” which describes the monster city, is called magnificent. “Les Aubes” and the “Campagnes HallucinÉes” were published at the same time, and “La Foule” and “Vers la Mer” in the book entitled “Les Visages de la Vie” are also fine.

Among Verhaeren’s plays, “Le CloÎtre” is taken from his book of poems, called “Les Moines.” It is peculiar in having no woman in the cast, but it was well given and proved successful. “Les Aubes” and “HÉlÈne de Sparte” were others of his plays.

The three following poems by this author are marvelous pieces of description and thoroughly characteristic of Belgium:

Even amid the ruins of their country, Belgian writers, like the Belgian people, are indomitable. Verhaeren, from his retreat in London, sends out words that are a pÆan of victory, and the bugle note of “Chantons, Belges, chantons!” by another author, is a call to great deeds in the future.