Poetry
Gevoel en leven
Not translated into English
Jan van Beers · 1869
Opening lines
Vóor zijn kribbeken, heeft
Klein-Broêrken zijn avondgebeêken
Knielend gezeid; de Lievrouw
en het kindeken Jezus, dat altijd
Before his little crib
Little Brother has said his evening prayer
On his knees; Our Lady
and the infant Jesus, who always
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from dbnl.org
Synopsis
Six long poems. Begga, a verse narrative drawn from the life of the Flemish people, opens the collection; there follow the tribute recited at Damme in 1860 for the unveiling of the statue of Maerlant, the story of a mason's labourer's son, verses for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Belgian railways, Marthe la folle, and the text of an oratorio on war intended for Peter Benoit. In them the poet reconciles, according to his readers, beauty, truth and a measured realism.
Context
The collection appeared in 1869 from J. P. van Dieren; a note by the author explains to the reader of the North the words peculiar to the South. Several pieces had appeared separately, De stoomwagen and Martha de zinnelooze in 1859, Maerlant in 1860. Its author owed his reputation as much to his voice as to his pen: in 1854 he had moved the Utrecht language congress to tears by reciting one of his poems, and he taught declamation. It is the third of his four collections.
Who it is for
Narrative poems, long and meant to be read aloud, in a deliberately simple language; they exist neither in French nor in English.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the collection of its author's maturity, before the one that won him the quinquennial prize in 1885.
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