VERHAEREN, EMILE (1855-1916), Belgian poet, born at St. Amand, near Antwerp, on May 21, 1855, studied at Ghent and at the university of Louvain, and was admitted to the bar at Brussels in 1851. But he soon devoted his whole energies to literature, and especially to the organs of "young Belgium," La Jeune Belgique and L'Art moderne, making himself especially the champion of the impressionist painters. Verhaeren learnt his art of poetry from the great Flemish artists, and in his early works, Les Flamandes (1883), and Les Moines (1886) dis plays similar qualities of strength, sometimes degenerating into violence and even into coarseness. A period of despair and dis illusionment is reflected in his Les Soirs (1887), Les Debacles (1888), Les Flambeaux noirs (1889) and Les Apparus dans mes chemins (1891). Wandering over Europe from 1887 to 1892, Verhaeren found a new interest in social problems, and his Campagnes hallucinees (1893) and Les Villes tentaculaires (1895) both deal with the growth of industrialism and its evils.
A genuine optimism based on an appreciation of the greatness of human life and progress appears in Les Visages de la vie (1899), Les Forces tumultueuses (1902) and La Multiple Splen deur (1906), and a delight in natural beauty runs through his chief work Toute la Flandre, a collection of lyrics in 5 vols. (1904-I1), the first volume dealing with the memories of his boyhood, Les tendresses premieres, being the best. The others describe: the Flemish coast, La Guirlande des dunes; various epi sodes of Flemish history, Les heros; life in the small towns, Les villes a Pignans; and the Flemish countryside, Les Plaines and Les bles mouvants. In 1911 Verhaeren published Les heures du soir,
a series of intimate poems dedicated to his wife, completing two previous series Les heures de l'apres-midi (1905) and Les heures claires (1896). During the World War, the poet wrote Les wiles rouges de la guerre (1916) which contains an ode to Rupert Brooke, and two short volumes of prose, La Belgique sanglante (1915, Eng. trs. 1915), and Parmi les cendres (1916). He died on Nov. 27, 1916, a victim of a railway accident in Rouen station.
Among Verhaeren's subsidiary activities may be mentioned his critical studies, some of which have been published as Impressions (Paris, 1927), and his plays, Les Aubes (1898), Le Cloitre (1900, Eng. trs. 1915), Philippe II. ( 901) and Helene de Sparte (1912) , translated in 1916.
A selection of his poems has been translated by M. Strettell (2nd ed. 1915) and his Love Poems by F. S. Flint (1916). See also L. Bazal gette, E. Verhaeren (1907) ; S. Zweig, E. Verhaeren (Eng. trs. 1914) ; A. Mockel, Un Poete de l'inergie, P. Verhaeren (1917) ; J. de Smet, E. Verhaeren, 2 vols. ; L. Charles-Baudouin, Le Symbole chez Verhaeren (4th ed. 1924), and P. Mansell Jones, E. Verhaeren (Cardiff, 1926, bibliography).