Georges Eekhoud

Georges Eekhoud (born May 27, 1854, Antwerp, Belg.—died May 29, 1927, Schaerbeek) was one of the first important Belgian regionalist novelists.

Also a poet, essayist, dramatist, and art critic, Eekhoud worked in the 1880s with Max Waller’s review La Jeune Belgique to breathe new life into Belgian literature. But to express his views on the reform of society, Eekhoud turned to prose. In 1895 he and Émile Verhaeren founded a radical literary review, Le Coq rouge (“The Red Rooster”). As a novelist Eekhoud lacked the ability to construct satisfactory stories, and his characters rarely came alive. His strength lay in his descriptive realism and idiosyncratic language. Even his best novel, La nouvelle Carthage (1888; The New Carthage), set in Antwerp, is saved only by the brilliance of its various episodes.

Unlike many regionalists, Eekhoud was able to evoke both urban and rural scenes. His cycles of stories, Kermesses (1884; “Country Fair”) and Nouvelles Kermesses (1887; “New Country Fair”), graphically describe the seamy side of peasant life; his city novels explore the world of the working classes and social outcasts. In the novel Escal-Vigor (1899; Escal-Vigor: A Strange Love), Eekhoud confronted his own homosexuality.