Les Campagnes hallucinées / Les Villes tentaculaires

by Emile Verhaeren

Rare Book

Genres: Poetry, France, Belgium, Classics, French Literature, 19th Century

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Emile Adolphe Gustave Verhaeren (sometimes spelled Émile) was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism.

He was one of the most prolific poets of his era. His first collection of poems Les Flamandes was published in 1883. Inspired by the paintings of Jacob Jordaens, David Teniers and Jan Steen, Verhaeren described in a direct and often provocative, naturalistic way his country and the Flemish people. It was an immediate success in avant-garde milieus, but caused a great deal of controversy in Catholic circles. His next book Les Moines (1886) was not the success he had hoped for. This, and his health problems, led to a deep crisis. In this period he published Les Soirs (1888), Les Débâcles (1888) and Les Flambeaux Noirs (1891).

Reviews

[Piotr · Rating 3 out of 5]

verhaeren plutôt visionnaire sur l'avenir des campagnes et l'essor des villes, il m'a même rappelé mon enfance sur les paysages belges des campagnes hallucinées, tout en faisant des refs au folklore local
pour le reste le vers libre vrmt pas mon truc, c'est dissonant à crever, très niais parfois, tjrs pas trouvé mon auteur belge coup de cœur

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very elaborate poetic style. Especially les Villes is captivating through the evocative painting of the "monstrosity" of the city. I must say, this is isn't really my thing.

[Joaquin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two books that are inseparable, like they would form a diptych or two sides of the same coin. What Verhaeren is here singing is the end of a rural world and the unstoppable victory of the urban one. The city, portrayed as an insatiable leviathan or even a cancer, throws its tentacles with a voracious hunger that knows no limit. There is violence there, but it doesn’t mean that Verhaeren shelters himself in an idealistic nostalgia, as a remake of Virgil’s Georgics. On the opposite: the country (“Les campagnes”) are more like an after death Inferno, where the hardness, the decay (both physical and moral) and the madness (“hallucinées”), reign absolutely, and even it finds its prophet under the of a fool that appears after each poem, showing a world of drunkenness, cruelty, handicap and terrible superstition (I am still recovering from the poem in which a black cat is burned alive). On the other hand, the city is not better, with Death itself being omnipresent between the multitudes. The city is enormous, unbearable in its institutions (the factory, the port, the theater, the stock market and the statues -which here accomplish the role that the fool did in the countryside). But, even been a ferment of a collectivity, even with its moral decay (the prostitutes are described as “red meat hanging”) and political violence (global-capitalistic in the case of the stock market; revolutionary in the case of the riots), the city is alive, and it is almost impossible not to remember James Ensor’s (another Belgian, like Verhaeren) paintings. Yes, the city is immoral, violent but, as the author points at the end, contains the germ of the only possible future, because the city is not just populated by crowds, but also by ideas.

[Sarah Ajs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toujours un plaisir ♥️

[Valérie Marcoux · Rating 3 out of 5]

L’urbanité s’étend partout en Belgique. Elle laboure le pays le long des chemins de fer et des routes. Les parcelles de campagne n’échappent pas au son de la vie industrielle ni à ses icônes qui polluent le paysage autrement pittoresque.... https://lettrescetera.wordpress.com/2...

[Léa s'égare · Rating 2 out of 5]

Les deux recueils démarrent bien mais prennent un tour beaucoup trop naïfs… Il nous décrit son vécu de la marche forcée vers le progrès et on ne sait pas s’il la décrie (éloge des campagnes) ou s’il s’y rallie…

[Ivo Moyersoen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah Emile. Quel grand poête