Georges Eekhoud

Georges Eekhoud , born with Antwerp the March 27th 1854 and dead the May 29th 1927 with Schaerbeek, is a Belgian writer which, Flemish by the birth and the ascent, accepted, like Maurice Maeterlinck, Emile Verhaeren or Georges Rodenbach, a French education. It forever closely disavowed its Flemish origin. It chose to write in French because the literature which was written in this language, in Belgium, at the time, was the prestigious literature. But he wrote, for economic reasons, popular Flemish novels under pseudonym and he collaborated in the Flemish press, under his name.

Biography

Of very modest, orphan medium very young, it was high in a middle-class family. Thus it began its studies with Mechelen (Malines) and continued them in Suisse, at the institute Breidenstein. This duality, like the linguistic duality, strongly marked its life and its work. Attentive with the Parisian literary movement, There is not an direct access. As opposed to what one often says, it met Zola or Paul Verlaine only once and always in Brussels, where those were of passage. Installed with Brussels in 1880, Eekhoud becomes writer with the daily newspaper the Star Belgian and joined the founders of the Jeune Belgium , re-examined in which it takes an active part.

It is in 1883 that its first novel Kees Doorik appears, Scène of Polder . Its hero is already one of these bet to which the writer will dedicate all his sympathy. In Village fairs and especially in the News Carthage , Eekhoud affirms its social creed, an esthetic interest for disinherited and a hatred for the middle-class. There remains faithful to the definition that Gustave Flaubert gives some: “I call middle-class all that is of bottom” and invents the concept of " belgeoisie". He also remembers the words of Charles De Coster which was its repeater at the Military academy: “See the people, the people everywhere! The middle-class is the same one everywhere”. Such opinions lead it to leave the Jeune Belgium to join the group of the red Coq . At the same time, it adopts the ideas of the lawyer Edmond Picard, freemason, first socialist senator and also a virulent anti-semite.

Thus, it takes part in 1892 in the foundation of social Art with Camille Lemonnier, Verhaeren and of the socialist leaders like Emile Vandervelde. It also carries out the literary part of a Directory for the Section of art of the House of Peuple.Il collaborates during twenty years in the " Mercury of France" it is the corresponding one for Belgium.

In 1899, it publishes its novel Escal-Vigor , making scandal as a first novel in Belgian French literature treat the Homosexualité openly.

In 1900, a few months before the brought lawsuit with Georges Eekhoud, are published in the Annales intermediate sexualities and in particular of homosexuality , the review directed by Magnus Hirschfeld, a long German article entitled “Georges Eekhoud. Foreword”. It is signed Numa Prætorius. Its objective is to present to the readers the work of Georges Eekhoud. It is a curious analysis, quasi new by news, of what the works of Georges Eekhoud can contain of elements corresponding so that one would call, today, the homosexual culture. The examination is long, meticulous and explicit; the article which makes following that one in the same number of the review has as a Famous title “Uranist 17th century. Jerome Duquesnoy, Flemish sculptor”. It is written in French and it is signed by Georges Eekhoud. This unit is followed itself of two articles little known of Eekhoud, published in the review Akademos and of the translation in French of other articles of Numa Praetorius on Georges Eekhoud. One will still find a curious article of Eekhoud published in the Eclectic Effort after the lawsuit of Escal-Vigor. Far from simply asserting the total freedom of the writer, Eekhoud locates Escal-Vigor and the lawsuit to which it gave place from the historical and political point of view. In all the articles joined together here, Eekhoud speaks about uranism while others, with its approval, speak about him like great writer, who it first among the modern ones, painted the uranist ones with sympathy and sensitivity.

However, to see in Eekhoud an author naturalist Manichean is as reducing as to join to him the labels of “regionalistic” writer or painter of male homosexuality. It is to forget that it is before a whole esthète with the paradoxical tastes, a lyric Poète which excels in the evocation of the ports or crowd:

“At the horizon, of the veils fled towards the sea, of the chimneys of steamers deployed, on the gray milky and beaded of the sky, of long streamers moutonnantes, similar with exiled which agitate their handkerchiefs, as a sign of good-bye, as a long time as they are in the sight of liked banks. Gulls scattered flights of white wings on the greenish and fair tablecloth, with degradations so soft and so subtle that they will afflict the marinists eternally. ” ( the News Carthage )

Quotation

Maurice Wilmotte justifies the choice of the jury which granted the quinquennial price to Eekhoud for the News Carthage (March 11th 1894):

“While proposing to you, Mister the minister, to grant the quinquennial price of French literature to the News Carthage , we believed to pay a homage of equity to that of all our writers who must more with itself and less to the spirit of sect or coterie and in general with the foreign influences. If it were higher than its competitors by its manifest originality, it equalized them on another side by its literary technique and its high and broad comprehension. What characterizes Mr. Eekhoud more than any other Belgian artist, it is the sincerity of impression and the honest labor whose its structures support the inimitable seal. Such its works, the such man himself. The religion of the human suffering summarizes, seems it, the aspirations if varied and sometimes if ondoyantes of Mr. Eekhoud. This artist with the hard leg, with the male and coloured verb, is also sensitive whose feather has infinite delicacies to describe misfortunes which hide in the indifferent darkness of the cities. Always, whatever its topic, Mr. Eekhoud remain the sincere, attentive and moved observer, of the same people and the same nature. And this observer is at the same time quite personal: its personality overflows in its works under the clever disguises of a romantic fiction but if it appears there with an undeniable strength, it does not bring however with it any display of vanity, any unpleasant assertion of one me bouffi and petty. She is unaware of this egoistic psychology which brings back to the glorification of the individual all the conquests of a brain liberally gifted. She is largely human and able of rarest of the abnegations. ”

Selective bibliography

Myrtles and Cyprès , 1877
Village fairs , 1881
Kees Doorik , 1883
the News Carthage , 1888
My Communions , 1894
Hooligans of Velvet , 1904-1926
the macabre dance of the Bridge of Lucerne , 1920
Last Village fairs , 1920
Magrice in Flanders or the Bush of the Beggars , 1928
Mirande Lucien, My Good Aime Petit Sander, Letters of Georges Eekhoud in Sander Pierron, 1892-1927 , text established and annotated by Mirande Lucien, 310 pp. Lille: QuestionDeGenre/GKC, 1993.
Christopher Marlowe, Edouard II , translation, adaptation and presentation of G. Eekhoud, foreword Mirande Lucien, postface Charles Adam (homage to Derek Jarman), 130 pp. Lille: QuestionDeGenre/GKC, 1994.
Hugo Claus, Escal-Vigor . Scenario according to the novel éponyme of Georges Eekhoud. Preface and translation Mirande Lucien. Lille: QuestionDeGenre/GKC, 2003.
Lancer It , Georges Eekhoud. Notes and foreword Mirande Lucien. Lille: QuestionDeGenre/GKC.
Famous Uranist, Georges Eekhoud . prefaced and annotated by Patrick Cardoon and Mirande Lucien. Lille: QuestionDeGenre/GKC, 1996.

External bonds

Biography
'' the Last Letter of the sailor ''; '' Ex-voto '' (1881).
New Village fairs (1894): '' The Quarrel of Oxen and the Bulls '', '' the Prop of Kors Davie '', '' the End of Beat '', '' the Four trades of Stann Molderé '', '' Memorandum '', '' Clochettes of Hop '', '' At Mow-in Aller ''.
Cycle patibulaire (2nd series - 1895): '' Bernard Vital '', '' the Mill-clock '', '' the Court with chauffoir '', '' Blanchelive… Blanchelivette! ''.
Emile Verhaeren: '' Georges Eekhoud '' (1892).

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