View source for Georges Rodenbach

{{Short description|Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist (1855–1898)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Georges Rodenbach
| image       =Georges_Rodenbach,_portrait.jpg
| image_size  = 200px
| alt         = Georges Rodenbach
| caption     = 
| birth_name  = Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach
| birth_date  = {{birth date|df=yes|1855|7|16}}
| birth_place = [[Tournai]], Belgium
| death_date  = {{death date and age|df=yes|1898|12|25|1855|7|16}}
| death_place = [[Paris]], France
| resting_place = [[Père Lachaise cemetery]], Paris
| other_names =
| known_for   =
| occupation  = Novelist, poet
| relatives   = [[Albrecht Rodenbach]] (cousin)
}}

'''Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach''' (16 July 1855 – 25 December 1898) was a Belgian [[Symbolism (movement)|Symbolist]] poet and novelist.

== Biography ==
Georges Rodenbach was born in [[Tournai]] to a [[French people|French]] mother and a [[Germans|German]] father from the Rhineland ([[Andernach]]). He was related to the famous [[Germans|German]] poet [[Christoph Martin Wieland]].<ref>Romain Vanlandschoot, ''Albrecht Rodenbach: biografie'', Lannoo Uitgeverij (2002), p. 72</ref> He went to school in [[Ghent]] at the prestigious [[Sint-Barbaracollege]], where he became friends with the poet [[Émile Verhaeren]]. Rodenbach worked as a lawyer and journalist. He was an early contributor to the literary review ''[[La Jeune Belgique]]'',{{sfn|Gosse|1911|p=680}} and spent the last ten years of his life in Paris as the correspondent of the ''[[Journal de Bruxelles]]'', and was an intimate of [[Edmond de Goncourt]].

He published eight collections of verse and four novels, as well as short stories, stage works and criticism. He produced some Parisian and purely imitative work; but a major part of his production is the outcome of a passionate idealisation of the quiet Flemish towns in which he had passed his childhood and early youth. In his best known work, ''[[Bruges-la-Morte]]'' (1892), he explains that his aim is to evoke the town as a living being, associated with the moods of the spirit, counselling, dissuading from and prompting action.{{sfn|Gosse|1911|p=681}} ''Bruges-la-Morte'' was used by the composer [[Erich Wolfgang Korngold]] as the basis for his opera ''[[Die tote Stadt]]''. [[Albrecht Rodenbach]], his cousin, was a poet and novelist as well, and a leader in the [[Flemish movement|revival of Flemish literature]] of the 19th century.

== Works ==
[[Image:Tombeau Georges Rodenbach.jpg|thumb|Rodenbach's tomb in Paris.]]
* ''Le Foyer et les Champs'' (1877), poetry
* ''Les Tristesses'' (1879), poetry
* ''La Belgique 1830-1880'' (1880), historic poem
* ''La Mer élégante'' (1881), poetry
* ''L'Hiver mondain'' (1884)
* ''Vers d'amour'' (1884)
* ''La Jeunesse blanche'' (1886), poetry
* ''Du Silence'' (1888)
* ''L'Art en exil'' (1889)
* ''[[Bruges-la-Morte]]'' (1892)
* ''Le Voyage dans les yeux'' (1893)
* ''Le Voile'', drama
* ''L'Agonie du soleil'' (1894)
* ''Musée de béguines'' (1894)
* ''Le Tombeau de Baudelaire'' (1894)
* ''[[La Vocation]]'' (1895), translated as ''Hans Cadzand's Vocation''
* ''A propos de "Manette Salomon". L'Œuvre des Goncourt'' (1896)
* ''Les Tombeaux'' (1896)
* ''Les Vierges'' (1896)
* ''Les Vies encloses'' (1896), poem
* ''[[Le Carillonneur]]'' (1897), translated as ''The Bells of Bruges''
* ''Agonies de villes'' (1897)
* ''Le Miroir du ciel natal'' (1898)
* ''Le Mirage'' (1900)
{{Portal|Literature|Poetry|Novels}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Belgium|display=Belgium (''Literature'')|first=Edmund|last=Gosse|author-link=Edmund Gosse|volume=3|pages=668–681}} (See pp.&nbsp;680–681.)

== External links ==
* {{Gutenberg author |id=5747| name=Georges Rodenbach}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Georges Rodenbach}}
* {{Librivox author |id=3520}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodenbach, Georges Raymond Constantin}}
[[Category:1855 births]]
[[Category:1898 deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Tournai]]
[[Category:French-language Belgian poets]]
[[Category:Decadent literature]]
[[Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery]]
[[Category:Symbolist novelists]]
[[Category:Symbolist poets]]
[[Category:19th-century Belgian poets]]
[[Category:19th-century Belgian novelists]]
[[Category:19th-century Belgian male writers]]
[[Category:Belgian people of French descent]]
[[Category:Belgian people of German descent]]
[[Category:Belgian male poets]]
[[Category:Belgian male novelists]]