LEMONNIER

lemonnier, antoine louis camille (1844- ), belgian poet, was born at ixelles, brussels, on the 24th of march 1844. he studied law, and then took a clerkship in a government office, which he resigned after three years. lemonnier inherited flemish blood from both parents, and with it the animal force and pictorial energy of the flemish temperament. he published a _salon de bruxelles_ in 1863, and again in 1866. his early friendships were chiefly with artists; and he wrote art criticisms with recognized discernment. taking a house in the hills near namur, he devoted himself to sport, and developed the intimate sympathy with nature which informs his best work. _nos flamands_ (1869) and _croquis d'automne_ (1870) date from this time. _paris-berlin_ (1870), a pamphlet pleading the cause of france, and full of the author's horror of war, had a great success. his capacity as a novelist, in the fresh, humorous description of peasant life, was revealed in _un coin de village_ (1879). in _un male_ (1881) he achieved a different kind of success. it deals with the amours of a poacher and a farmer's daughter, with the forest as a background. cachapres, the poacher, seems the very embodiment of the wild life around him. the rejection of _un male_ by the judges for the quinquennial prize of literature in 1883 made lemonnier the centre of a school, inaugurated at a banquet given in his honour on the 27th of may 1883. _le mort_ (1882), which describes the remorse of two peasants for a murder they have committed, is a masterpiece in its vivid representation of terror. it was remodelled as a tragedy in five acts (paris, 1899) by its author. _ceux de la glebe_ (1889), dedicated to the "children of the soil," was written in 1885. he turned aside from local subjects for some time to produce a series of psychological novels, books of art criticism, &c., of considerable value, but assimilating more closely to french contemporary literature. the most striking of his later novels are: _l'hysterique_ (1885); _happe-chair_ (1886), often compared with zola's _germinal_; _le possede_ (1890); _la fin des bourgeois_ (1892); _l'arche, journal d'une maman_ (1894), a quiet book, quite different from his usual work; _la faute de mme charvet_ (1895); _l'homme en amour_ (1897); and, with a return to flemish subjects, _le vent dans les moulins_ (1901); _petit homme de dieu_ (1902), and _comme va le ruisseau_ (1903). in 1888 lemonnier was prosecuted in paris for offending against public morals by a story in _gil blas_, and was condemned to a fine. in a later prosecution at brussels he was defended by edmond picard, and acquitted; and he was arraigned for a third time, at bruges, for his _homme en amour_, but again acquitted. he represents his own case in _les deux consciences_ (1902), _l'ile vierge_ (1897) was the first of a trilogy to be called _la legende de la vie_, which was to trace, under the fortunes of the hero, the pilgrimage of man through sorrow and sacrifice to the conception of the divinity within him. in _adam et eve_ (1899), and _au coeur frais de la foret_ (1900), he preached the return to nature as the salvation not only of the individual but of the community. among his other more important works are _g. courbet, et ses oeuvres_ (1878); _l'histoire des beaux-arts en belgique_ 1830-1887 (1887); _en allemagne_ (1888), dealing especially with the pinakothek at munich; _la belgique_ (1888), an elaborate descriptive work with many illustrations; _la vie belge_ (1905); and _alfred stevens et son oeuvre_ (1906). lemonnier spent much time in paris, and was one of the early contributors to the _mercure de france_. he began to write at a time when belgian letters lacked style; and with much toil, and some initial extravagances, he created a medium for the expression of his ideas. he explained something of the process in a preface contributed to gustave abel's _labeur de la prose_ (1902). his prose is magnificent and sonorous, but abounds in neologisms and strange metaphors. see the _revue de belgique_ (15th february 1903), which contains the syllabus of a series of lectures on lemonnier by edmond picard, a bibliography of his works, and appreciations by various writers.