thumb|alt=A bespectacled man, wearing a suit, stands outside a house. He holds a pipe in his mouth with his right hand, and sports a thick moustache.|Émile Verhaeren in 1910

Émile Adolphe Gustave Verhaeren (; 21 May 1855 – 27 November 1916) was a Belgian poet and art critic who wrote in the French language. He was one of the founders of the school of Symbolism and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on six occasions.

Early life

Émile Verhaeren was born into a middle-class French-speaking family in Sint-Amands, a rural commune in Belgium's Province of Antwerp, although he also spoke the local Dutch dialect. At the age of eleven, he was sent to a strict boarding school in Ghent run by Jesuits, the Jesuit College of Sainte Barbe, where he formed a friendship with Georges Rodenbach. He then studied law at the then French-speaking Catholic University of Leuven, where he produced his first literary efforts in a student paper, La Semaine (The Week), which he edited in conjunction with the opera singer Ernest van Dyck. La Semaine was suppressed by the authorities, as was its successor, Le Type, where his colleagues included Max Waller, Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud.

thumb|Verhaeren by [[Stefan Zweig (1914)]]

He wrote his first play, Les Aubes, in 1898. Here he waged a fight against social injustice and the decline of life in the countryside. In 1912, he produced a tragedy, Hélène de Sparte, which was performed in German and Russian, besides French. He travelled, giving lectures, throughout Europe.

Verhaeren was an anarchist. The outbreak of World War I had a devastating effect on the poet's deep pacifist feelings. He went to England, where he received honorary degrees from various universities. During his exile, he published Les Ailes rouges de la Guerre.

Honours

  • 1920: Posthumous Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold.

Selected works

  • Les Flamandes, 1883
  • Les Moines, 1886
  • Les Soirs, 1888
  • Les Débâcles, 1888
  • Les Flambeaux noirs, 1891
  • Les Campagnes hallucinées, 1893
  • Les Villes tentaculaires, 1895
  • Les Heures claires, 1896
  • Les Visages de la vie, 1899
  • Les Forces tumultueuses, 1902
  • La Multiple Splendeur, 1906
  • Les Rythmes souverains, 1910
  • Les Ailes rouges de la guerre, 1916
  • Les Flammes hautes, 1917 [written in 1914]
  • Belle Chair, 1931 [published posthumously]

References

  • Selected poems by Verhaeren
  • Les campagnes hallucinées, 1893