Portrait of Georges Rodenbach

IN SMALL TOWNS

In small towns, in the languid morn and frail

Chimes the far bell, chimes in the sweetness of

Dawn that regards thee with a sister’s love,

Chimes the far bell – and then its music pale

Falters upon the roofs like flower on flower,

And on the stairs of gables, dark and deep –

Moist blossoms gathered by the winds that sweep.

The morning music flutters from the tower,

From far away in garlands dry and sere,

Like unseen lilies from an hour that’s gone

The petals, cold and pale, drift on and on

As from the dead brow of the perished year

-- Georges Rodenbach

           Trans. Lewis Lewisohn, The Poets of Modern France (New York: 1918), pp. 81-82

Georges Rodenbach was born at Tournai in Belgium of a cultivated family of purely Flemish origin. Early, however, his family moved to Ghent where he attended the college of Sainte Barbe and the university, taking, in due time, his doctorate in law.  In 1876 he went to Paris, engaged in the life of letters, established himself at the Brussels bar in 1885 but returned definitely to Paris two years later. “He will take his rank,” wrote Verhaeren, “amongst those whose sadness, gentleness, subtle sentiment and talent fed upon memories, tenderness and silence weave a crown of pale violets about the brow of Flanders.”

-- Lewis Lewisohn. The Poets of Modern France (New York: 1918) . pp. 172 – 173.

From Wikipedia:  Georges Rodenbach

"Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach (16 July 1855 – 25 December 1898) was a Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist.

"He spent the last ten years of his life in Paris as the correspondent of the Journal de Bruxelles, and was an intimate of Edmond de Goncourt. He published eight collections of verse and four novels, as well as short stories, stage works and criticism. He produced some Parisian and purely imitative work; but a major part of his production is the outcome of a passionate idealism of the quiet Flemish towns in which he had passed his childhood and early youth.

"In his best known work, Bruges-la-Morte (1892), he explains that his aim is to evoke the town as a living being, associated with the moods of the spirit, counselling, dissuading from and prompting action. Bruges-la-Morte was used by the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold as the basis for his opera Die Tote Stadt. Albrecht Rodenbach, his cousin, was a poet and novelist as well, and a leader in the revival of Flemish literature of the 19th century. "


References:

Bruges-la-Morte. Wikipedia page. Note: Rodenbach's novel may have influenced the French crime novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac, "which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Vertigo in 1958."

Bruges-la-Morte at Internet Archive (downloadable ebooks and audio books).

Photos of Georges Rodenbach's gravestone and quotes from his work Bruges-la-Morte may be found at an interesting Tumblr Page here.

Free, downloadable ebooks of works by Georges Rodenbach may be found at the Archive.org Georges Rodenbach page, here

Criticism and Biography:  

  Casier, J.:  L’Oeuvre poetique de Georges Rodenbach, 1888

  Daxhelet, A.: Georges Rodenbach. 1899

  Guerin, Charles:  Georges Rodenbach. 1894.

Poetical Works:

Le Foyer et les Champs. 1877.

Les Tristesses. 1879.

A La Belgique. 1880

La Mer elegante. 1881.

L’Hiver Mondain. 1884.

La Jeunesse blanche. 1886.

Du Silence. 1888.

La Regne du Silence. 1891.

Les Vies encloses. 1896.

Le Miroir du ciel natal. 1898

Le règne du silence : poème (1905)