Emile verhaeren biography

Émile Adolphe Gustave Verhaeren (Dutch: [vərˈɦaːrən]; 21 May 1855 – 27 November 1916) was a Belgian poet and art critic who wrote in the French language. He was one of the founders of the school of Symbolism and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on six occasions.

Early life

Émile Verhaeren was born into a middle-class family in Sint-Amands, a rural commune in Belgium's Province of Antwerp.

In addition to the local Dutch dialect, he adopted French as his language of culture, as was common for Belgian elites at the time. At the age of eleven, he was sent to a strict boarding school in Ghent run by Jesuits, the Jesuit College of Sainte Barbe, where he formed a friendship with Georges Rodenbach.

He then studied law at the University of Leuven, where he produced his first literary efforts in a student paper, La Semaine (The Week), which he edited in conjunction with the opera singer Ernest van Dyck. La Semaine was suppressed by the authoriti