Belgian women poets : an anthology

481 Pages·2000·1.75 MB·English

by  Renée Linkhorn

Belgian Women Poets
Belgian Francophone Library
Donald Flanell Friedman
General Editor
Vol. 11
PETER LANG
New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:127) Boston (cid:127) Bern
Frankfurt am Main (cid:127) Berlin (cid:127) Brussels (cid:127) Vienna (cid:127) Oxford
Belgian Women Poets
An Anthology
Edited and Translated by
Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran
PETER LANG
New York (cid:127) Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:127) Boston (cid:127) Bern
Frankfurt am Main (cid:127) Berlin (cid:127) Brussels (cid:127) Vienna (cid:127) Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Belgian women poets: an anthology /
edited and translated by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran.
p. cm. — (Belgian francophone library; vol. 11)
French and English on facing pages.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Belgian poetry (French)—Women authors—Translations into English. 2. Belgian
poetry (French)—Women authors. 3. Belgian poetry (French)—20th century—
Translations into English. 4. Belgian poetry (French)—20th century.
I. Linkhorn, Renée. II. Cochran, Judy. III. Series.
PQ3858.E3B45 841’.910809287’09493—dc21 98-53633
ISBN 0-8204-4456-1
ISSN 1074-6757
Die Deutsche Bibliothek-CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Belgian women poets: an anthology / ed. and trans. by: Renée Linkhorn and Judy
Cochran. −New York; Washington, D.C./Baltimore; Boston; Bern;
Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Brussels; Vienna; Oxford: Lang.
(Belgian francophone library; Vol. 11)
ISBN 0-8204-4456-1
Cover illustration: Sagesse by Monique Thomassettie. Courtesy of the artist
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2000 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents
Foreword: A Panoramic View of French-Language
Poetry in Belgium (1880–1980) vii
by Jean-Luc Wauthier
Translators’ Introduction and Acknowledgments xxv
1. Marie Nizet (1859–1922) 1
2. Jean Dominique (1873–1952) 11
3. Marie Gevers (1883–1975) 21
4. Andrée Sodenkamp (1906) 29
5. Renée Brock (1912–1980) 45
6. Anne-Marie Kegels (1912–1994) 59
7. Jeanine Moulin (1912–1998) 77
8. Marie-José Viseur (1915–1999) 93
9. Lucienne Desnoues (1921) 111
10. Cécile Miguel (1921) 125
11. Claire Lejeune (1926) 143
12. Renée Lemaître (1926) 161
13. Ariane François-Demeester (1929) 179
14. Madeleine Biefnot (1930) 197
15. Nicole Houssa (1930–1959) 213
16. Liliane Wouters (1930) 227
17. Françoise Delcarte (1936–1996) 243
18. Lucie Spède (1936) 263
19. Anne-Marie Derèse (1938) 283
20. Véra Feyder (1939) 305
21. Rose-Marie François (1939) 321
22. Colette Nys-Mazure (1939) 341
VI Table of Contents

23. Monique Thomassettie (1946) 365
24. Evelyne Wilwerth (1947) 389
25. Mimy Kinet (1948–1996) 417
26. Françoise Lison-Leroy (1951) 431
27. Béatrice Libert (1952) 443
28. Marie-Clotilde Roose (1970) 465
Foreword

A Panoramic View of
French-Language Poetry in Belgium
1880–1980
From the outset we come up against a problem of semantics, an issue, as
novelist Conrad Detrez once said, that makes “impractical” the very no-
tion of literature in Belgium: must we speak of “Belgian literature in French”
or of the “French-language literature of Belgium”? The answer to this
question is not as simple as it may seem, nor is it a mere accessory of
secondary importance.
It is a well-known fact that, since its creation in 1830, Belgium has
been officially a trilingual country. In the East, a small German-speaking
region is composed of so-called “redeemed cantons,” placed under Bel-
gian rule at the end of World War One in 1918. This area has its own
representatives and parliament, its own TV channels and its own specific
literature, mainly in German, but sometimes in the local dialect. The ma-
jor portion of the Belgian population lives in Flanders, the Dutch-speak-
ing northern part of the kingdom, while the South, known as Wallonia, is
French-speaking. Brussels has sometimes been labeled the “capital of
Flanders,” but in actuality it is a bilingual region whose population is
unofficially estimated to be two thirds Francophone.
All this complex accounting aside, it can be said that a total of four and
one half million people are French-speaking, excepting of course resident
aliens or illegal immigrants, making a global “official” population of nearly
ten million, in a territory of merely 11,752 square miles.
It is easy to imagine the many conflicts and demands that can arise in
this small patchwork state where sensitivities are constantly put to the
test. No wonder Yasser Arafat has shown such keen interest in the socio-
VIII Foreword

economic management problems of this complicated nation, a nation
which, in this writer’s opinion, was constructed in a very artificial manner
from the beginning.
Let us now move from the political scene and concentrate on litera-
ture, which is the subject at hand. First, we may note that, regrettably, few
bridges span the gap between the Dutch-language literature of Belgium
and its French-language counterpart. We may further observe that in the
early days of its existence, Belgium was fragile and unstable; all of Europe,
except perhaps Great Britain, expected it to be short-lived as a nation. In
those early days, Francophone Belgian writers, with few exceptions, and
especially poets, followed closely in the wake of French literature and
adopted its tendencies. It would take nearly one half century after the
creation of Belgium for her poets to gain their proper status and acquire
true autonomy. Romanticism thus left but anecdotal marks on Belgian
poetry. At the time, Belgian poets were swayed by the prestige of Victor
Hugo, and to a lesser extent of Vigny, Musset and Lamartine, that is to
say by the least “romantic” representatives of the movement, in the Ger-
man or English sense of the term. Nor did Gérard de Nerval, Marceline
Desbordes-Valmore or Xavier Forneret leave any visible trace of their
influence on Belgian poetry.
In ensuing years, many writers born in Belgium chose to live in France
(Plisnier, Maeterlinck, Norge, Rodenbach, Vivier), and some, notably Henry
Michaux, became naturalized French citizens. At the end of the nine-
teenth century, strong ties existed between French and Belgian Symbol-
ists. Later, Surrealism itself underwent a significant schism: on the one
hand, the so-called “Brussels Surrealism” (including Magritte, Mesens,
Nougé, Colinet and Scutenaire) wanted to separate from the French move-
ment. This relative distanciation, however, was in no way an attempt to
affirm “belgitude” as a status, since Belgium herself then belonged to the
Surrealists’ panoply as an object of derision. On the other hand, the “La
Louvière branch of Surrealism” remained completely loyal to French leader
André Breton.
Let us add that a large number of Belgian poets proclaimed to be
francophiles (Thiry, Goffin, Hubin among others); it then follows that
Belgian poetry in French became, and still remains, justly or not, much
more important than its Dutch-language counterpart which, in turn, has
often been influenced by French literary movements and triumphs.
In the first forty years of Belgium’s independence, the impact of the
great French neighbor’s literature was both powerful and sterilizing. Thus
it would be difficult to cite a single poet in Belgium between 1830 and
Foreword IX

1880, not only a prominent one, but merely an “honorable” one. In prose,
however, three significant names may be recalled, those of De Coster,
Pirmez and Van Bemmel. Nonetheless, the field of poetry remains a desert,
although there was no lack of would-be authors. We might evoke the
names of André Van Hasselt and Charles Potvin, but their examples only
serve to illustrate the limitations and lack of perspective of “Romanticism
in the Belgian style.” As was mentioned earlier, the preferred Romantic
models imported from France were Vigny, Musset (in his poetic works)
and Lamartine, literary temples often cited, but rarely visited today. As for
Hugo, what nineteenth century Belgian poets inherited from him was his
emphatic style which, in the hands of the untalented, sometimes turns
into bombastic lyricism. The most intimate or openly visionary side of
Hugo, which later will fascinate Rimbaud, totally escapes the attention of
our minor poets who only retain his image as a Founding Father, statu-
esque but also old-fashioned and irritating. In contrast, no one but Octave
Pirmez seems to be interested in a writer as prominent as Chateaubriand.
It is therefore apparent that our compatriots will not know all that true
Romanticism can bring to the self-exploration of man freed from the
bondage of rationalism. Confronted with the bold revolutionary ways of
Romanticism, the Belgians take great care not to become involved; they
are prone to align themselves with the same “middle-of-the-road” attitude
that can be so exasperating when, devised by glum masters of compro-
mise, it forms the basis for the country’s domestic policy. It is precisely
this type of compromise that has often contaminated, contaminates, and
will keep on contaminating our literary space. Fortunately, some excel-
lent poets will emerge after 1880, poets who will leave a lasting imprint,
not only on Belgian letters, but on the international literary scene.
Those who came to be known as “the men of 1880” were definitely
not men of compromise. This Pleiad of poets, born between 1855 and
1862, are endowed with genuine talent; they not only bring fame to our
literature, but they are able to hold their own in the poetic dialogue of
their time which, of course, is the time of Symbolism. Two of them stand
out in priority: Verhaeren (1855–1916) and Maeterlinck (1862–1949).
But it is only fair to add at least three other names: Charles Van Lerberghe
(1860–1907), Georges Rodenbach (1855–1898) and Max Elskamp (1862–
1937). All of these poets share a dual culture: natives of Flanders, they
were brought up and educated in French, and they chose to express them-
selves in the French language. In each case, this is a choice they assumed
more, or less, decisively. Rodenbach, for example, will move to Paris.
Verhaeren (intermittently) and Elskamp express with sensitivity a
X Foreword

“flandritude” that conveys to their poetic language its peculiar resonance,
somewhat barbaric or formally austere. This style will be of great interest
to France’s writers, so much so that André Gide will claim that, early in
his career, he “wrote in Belgian.” By contrast, Maeterlinck (who up to this
day is the only Belgian to receive the Nobel prize in literature) will de-
scribe Flemish as “a muddled patois.”
Represented by the “Francophones of Flanders,” this literary current
will last until the contemporary period, in spite of greater and greater
opposition by Dutch-speaking extremists. It should be said, however, that
after 1880 the novelists and playwrights, rather than the poets, are the
prime targets of this animosity: Franz Hellens (1881–1972), Marie Gevers
(1883–1975), Fernand Crommelynck (1886–1970), then Ghelderode
(1898–1961), Suzanne Lilar (1901–1995), Paul Willems (1912–1998)
and Guy Vaes (born in 1927), none of whom may essentially be classified
as a poet.
Poetry, however, will be the favored, if not exclusive, mode of expres-
sion for the Symbolists: even though Maeterlinck remains famous for his
theater and essays, the published dramas of Verhaeren and Van Lerberghe
are not well-known. As for Rodenbach, it is his novel Bruges-la-Morte
(Bruges, the Dead City), and not his plays, that brought him, albeit post-
humously, a resounding success.
The most celebrated and productive poet in the second half of the
nineteenth century is uncontestably Emile Verhaeren, who lived long
enough for his art to evolve and undergo many metamorphoses that were
both significant and spectacular.
Born in Saint-Amand on the Scheldt river in 1855, educated in French-
language schools, Verhaeren earned a law degree from the University of
Louvain, after graduating from the famous Collège Sainte-Barbe in Gand,
which was also attended by other major poets of the period: Grégoire Le
Roy (1861–1940), Van Lerberghe, Rodenbach and Maeterlinck. Later,
Verhaeren joined a group of poets in La Jeune Belgique, a literary move-
ment whose objective was to acquire a specifically Belgian cultural iden-
tity, and to gain autonomy from neighboring cultures. The prime mover
of this association was poet Max Waller (1860–1889), who unfortunately
died too young to fully realize his potential.
In 1883, at the age of twenty-eight, Verhaeren published Les
Flamandes, (Flemish Scenes), a book whose connotative title could be
labeled “pictorial,” since at that time Verhaeren was a good friend of
painter Théo Van Rysselberghe. After the publication of Les Moines (The
Monks), in 1866, in which Parnassian influence can be perceived,