In the same year he published his first Dutch poetry in the influential magazine De nieuwe gids (The New Guide). The journal, founded in 1885, was dominated at this period by the poet Willem Kloos (1859–1938), who used its pages to proclaim a radical aestheticism and advocate literature that was both non-sectarian and non-utilitarian. Poetry, Kloos famously asserted, was ‘the supremely indi…
Guido Gezelle, born in Bruges in 1830, left a varied œuvre as a man of letters, journalist, translator and populariser. But it is mainly as a poet that he occupies an illustrious position in the history of Dutch literature. He is undoubtedly the most innovative and original Flemish poet between 1680 and 1880. With his exceptional lyrical poetry he was some twenty years ahead of the renewal mov…