Emile Verhaeren

Emile Verhaeren (Dutch: [vərˈɦaːrən]; 21 May 1855 – 27 November 1916) was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism.

He was born in a Flemish French-speaking, middle-class family in Sint-Amands. Nevertheless Emile Verhaeren also spoke the local dialect (Dutch was not taught at school at that 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 became completely Frenchified. He then went to study law at the University of Leuven. Here he produced his first literary efforts in a student paper. During those years, he became acquainted with like-minded students. They later became his collaborators on the revolutionary artistic magazine La Jeune Belgique.