Page 75

WISCONSIN LITERARY MAGAZINE
75
Emile Verhaeren
VERHAEREN is dead. I would not willingly
perturb the silence now filled with the echoes
of his genius, in this third winter of my people's dis-
aster. Still the cannons thunder, and still the Bel-
gian mothers are at their bitter prayer. How speak
at all while my people's night grows longer, and the
bitter memories are added one to another, day by day!
On my table lie those black-bordered letters, the last
poems of him whose death turns the Belgian blood to
ice. I think of the crowd parting to open a highway
for the bier, I see another streamer of crepe upon the
flag whose pendants tremble in the wind.
When I saw Verhaeren for the last time, the smoke
of coming war was already rising above the lassitude
of a long summer. I had sought him on the fourth
story of that vast house which reared its gray pillars
and deserted balconies over one of the most popular
avenues in Brussells. I saw him, as he liked to have
himself described, robust, with heavy moustaches, long
arms extended in greeting, body thrust forward, and
responsive through its length to the least word or
movement you made. An attack of asthma, of which
he was the yearly victim, had him in its grip, and the
windows of his apartment were closed. I remember
how the sunlight made patterns on the carpet, where
it came through the curtains, and I see his wife in the
shadow beyond, smiling over the poems he is reading
to us. The look of his eyes, lifted above his glasses,
and wandering from his manuscript, made me think,
somehow, of one of Tacitus's barbarians come out of
the North into the fever and wonder of modern civil-
ization. His face was illuminated with an immense
serenity, striking because suffering had so obviously
made its marks also on his face, and his huge hands,
open as if to catch and send forth the tragic word,
rose gradually with the Joy whose marvellous blos-
soming out of sorrow he was celebrating. When the
sunlight was supplanted by the outer dusk at the win-
dows, I took leave and he led me to the door, at which
we stood a long time, with hands clasped. Outside
the street lights twinkled into being, one by one; we
heard the excited murmur of crowds and the flapping
of newspaper extras, bearing the latest dispatches.
There was a great sweetness in the air.
As I went my own way, I thought of his life and
story. Emile Verhaeren was born in Anvers, more
than sixty years ago. He studied at the College Ste.
Barbe at Gand, with Rodenbach, Van Leerberghe
and .Maeterlinck as fellow-pupils. Afterwards he
studied at Louvain for the degree of doctor of laws.
But poetry, which had always been rival of his con-
ventional interests, soon took complete possession of
him and in 1883 he published "Les Flamandes."
All that had ever lain asleep, since the days of Rubens
in the depths of the Flemish soul, came to sudden
awakening in this book. It shows the poet a true son
of this Flanders bathed in light whose mad Kermess
Teniers had painted and which Jan Steen and Pierre
Bruegel the Elder detail so lovingly. The rich fields
of his country, the shifting horizons, the warm light,
the powerful and centuries-old instincts of his people
all these Verhaeren sang with violent passionateness
And the spirit of his first book has animated all his
others, to the very last.  His vision broadened with
the years; his insight became European, became hu-
mane, but its substance is a growth of Flemish earth.
The image of Mother Flanders has remained fixed in
his spirit and is the core of all his work:
'Ah! l'ai-je aim6 6perdument
Ce peuple, aim6 jusqu' en ses injustices
jusqu' en ses crimes, jusqu' en ses vices!
ne sentant rien, sinon que j''tais de sa race,
que sa tristesse 6tait la mienne et que sa face
me regardait penser, me regardait vouloir
sous la lampe, le soir,
quand je lisais sa gloire en mes livres de cla se.
About the middle of his life, a crisis, ph-,sical
and spiritual, shook him profoundly. He emerged
from it to plunge into public affairs. The Socialist
teaching and program drew him, and he became a de-
voted and effective member of that party.  It anmwer-
ed to his democratism, his sense for justice and
abounding goodness. It filled him with prophetic in-
spiration, with enormous power to proselyte and win
adherents. Through it he became master of his life
and certain of his vocation. It made the manifold-
ness of his genius manifest. As poet he not merely
sees, he understands and he loves the hopeful unborn.
His poetry is in the world of social thinking as the
morning star in the dusk before sun-rise. Night and
day mingle their lights in it; the coming event casts its
beam before. This is the burden of his song, and it
is of the substance of eternity. "Les Visages de la
Vie," "Les Forces Tumultueuses," "La Multiple
Splendeur" will I think, keep their rank as the most
beautiful of Verhaeren's works. In them he glorifies
the power, the action, the joy, the enthusiasm which
are in the universe, and which man partakes of:
Mieux vaut partir, sans aboutir,
que de s'asseoir, mrme vainqueur, le soir
avec, en son coeur morne, une vie
qui cesse de bondir au dela de la vie.
December, 1916