By davidh. On 21st January A post for a rather depressing winter. Some Flemish literature is written in Dutch, and some is, or at least was, written in French. Despite his name, Camille Lemonnier identified as Flemish; yet, as was true of most of the Belgian upper classes at the time, his chosen mode of expression was French.
He was as frequently coupled with the French decadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. In fact, Lemonnier embraced several literary fashions in turn, including symbolism. Fondation Roi Baudoin, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. Lemonnier was a great promoter of Belgian painters. Here the past, with its vanished promises and enduring regrets, weighs so heavily on the present that it crushes all life, all hope.
Medievalism was one facet of the symbolist movement, in art as well as literature. Although the precise nature of her heartache is not specified, it is clear that she has loved and lost. She is working on a bridal veil she will never wear. Courtesy of ArtUK. But whereas social realists fulminated against the economic and sexual exploitation that caused these tragedies, symbolists luxuriated in their aesthetic possibilites, just as they relished the spectacle of the dead city Rodenbach even campaigned against any modernisation of Bruges.
The piece remained quite popular both in Belgium and France through the first three decades of the twentieth century, but it has only been recorded once, in , by the mezzo-soprano Pauline Claes, accompanied by Mathias Lecomte on piano and the Sturm und Klang ensemble. The translation offered below is our own, and we make no claims for its poetic qualities. The text utilized by Samuel-Holeman was a little different and a translation of that is provided in the booklet accompanying the Sturm und Klang cd.
Des mantes noires passent sur le pont. Des lampes encore! Des lampes comme des yeux rouges de pleurs! Et ri et ri, petit rigodon! Elle rit. Il passe, il regarde; nous ne nous sommes jamais rien dit.
