Escal Vigor. Georges Eekhoud
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Georges Eekhoud
Escal Vigor
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066463250
Table of Contents
DYKGRAVE'S RETURN
BLANDINE
INTRODUCTION
GEORGE EEKHOUD, the author of this novel, is one of the best known classical writers of modern Belgium. This is saying a great deal; for Belgium was never able to point to such a splendid galaxy of nearly perfect scribesmen as at the present time. By "classical" I mean writers whose names are pretty sure to go down with honour and acclamation to posterity; writers like Maurice Maeterlinck, Camille Lemonnier, Emile Verhaeren, Edmond Picard and Albert Giraudy to say nothing of many others, more or less well known, victorious toilers in the arduous paths of chastened expression, tireless sowers in the fields of thought.
The intellectual peer of the famous men whose names we have just mentioned, George Eekhoud well deserves the celebrity he has won. He is the author of numerous worlds that are justly honoured by the cultivated and the discerning in all French-speaking lands, for the simple and perfectly comprehensible reason that they are works of art, wrought with infinite patience and chiselled with admirable dexterity. That is equivalent to asserting that George Eekhoud is no penny-a-liner throwing off, with feverish haste, a conglomeration of ill-digested conceptions couched in rag-and bobtail terms. On the contrary, his compositions bear traces of exquisite artistry; every line he has written gives evidence of painstaking care; his books are the outcome of sleepless nights and toil-filled days. They abound with patient wisdom and a large experience of human life, human sorrows, and human failings, all of this being permeated with a sentiment of the infinite pathos of death and a profound commiseration therewith.
We shall make no attempt in this preface to give an outline of the dolorous tale before us. Why should we do so? He who is too lazy to read the whole dramatic story for himself will also be too lazy to glance at anything we may write down. Why seek to refine fine gold? Be it enough to shadow forth the saintly character of Blandine, the familiar rascality of Landrillon, the pusillanimous nature, mens fæmina in corpore virile, of the Count of Kehlmark, prenatally damned to the possession of a fatalistic hankering after unnatural loves to the exclusion of the enjoyment of those beautiful creatures that Nature has destined for the lawful delectation of men.
Why speak of that admirable character, the Dowager of Kehlmark, high-born lady and fearless disciple of Voltaire, dying in the saintly odour of her good deeds? Why name the sacrifices of Blandine, beautiful name covering a more beautiful soul, save to emphasize the martyrdom she endured? Blandine, true type of thousands of other brave girls and women living to-day in this strange God's world; Blandine, the losing heroine, who made a living sacrifice of her woman's body to save a mans name from shame.
Ah! These things recall other memories, stir up other souvenirs, mind us of the besmirchment of a great name, when a brilliant light, that shone like a star in England's literary constellation, was hurled headlong down from his ethereal estate.
"With hideous ruin and combustion … Confounded though immortal."
This is no place, we know, to offer a plea for the hapless author of "Dorian Gray," nor for his literary congener Henry of Kehlmark. On the other hand, let us refrain from throwing stones at them. We even beg leave to suggest that Wilde was too severely, because far too publicly, chastised for what he may have done, for what at the worst was no more than a private misdemeanour. We consider that far more harm than needful was wrought by the publicity given to these unwholesome pranks with grown-up wastrels in private rooms, these "naughty fellows of a baser sort" as St. Paul would have called them. Would it not have been better first mercifully to warn, aye, and if needs were, to have hurried them off, willy-nilly,—struggling and kicking it might be,—to some private asylum to be treated hydropathically, as was done by the French authorities in the case of a certain well-known Parisian littérateur caught flagrante delicto in a Boulevard vespasienne? The interests of Justice would have been amply served, had prevention alone, and not vengeance, been the object to be attained.
Moreover, we are of those who believe that whilst there should be "one law for the rich and for the poor alike," there should still be a further law for the neurotic, the brain-sick, the mind-shattered, the functionally deranged. To apply the same heavy whip to a sensitive, highly-strung Derby runner, as to a coarser grained, slow-going dray horse were amazing lack of gumption. But we treat our favourite dogs and horses better than our gifted man.
He has sinned, has he? Then, by Christ, he shall pay for it! He has been found out, has he? Then, by the God that lives, we'll proclaim his sins to the earths four winds, blazon the nauseous thing in the newspapers, incarnadine the story of his shame on the fair skies themselves with the very blood wrung from the wretched man's soul. Hypocrites, whited sepulchres, pharisees, avaunt! Were your own secret misdeeds inscribed upon your every smooth forehead what edifying ornaments ye would all prove!
"Escal Vigor," like many another virile book, was prosecuted at law. What an honour! One day, (the novel had been out some time and was indeed practically unknown,) some little-minded juge d'instruction was inspired to seize it, in some inconsiderable bookseller's shop hidden away in the gentle, little town of Bruges. The book had been published in Paris and was merely by hazard, on sale in this quiet, old-world city. The seizure was doubtless due to some private vengeance. Or, did the Prosecution imagine that a hostile verdict could be more easily cajoled out of a jury in this clerical stronghold of Western Flanders than elsewhere?
The trial came on. The name of the Judge on the bench, the prosecuting Attorney at the bar, or of the twelve good Jurymen in the box, is not of the slightest consequence. Myrmidons of the law, string-pulled puppets of the judicial Punch-and-Judy show, they were there to do their "dooty" and they did their little worst. The fighter of the day,—the great henchman who, standing athwart the breach made by legal might in the rampart of thought, hewed down time-honoured lies and miserable contorsions of truth, as one after another they presented their rat-like heads to the Valiant blade of his memorable oratory, pitiless logic and scathing scorn,—was the Flemisher, Edmond Picard, one of the most extraordinary figures in Belgium for the last fifty odd years, advocate, jurisconsult, traveller, dramatist, poet, swordsman, athlete, aye and—finer than a hundred other titles besides,—a man!
The case of "Escal Vigor" was fought to a finish. After hearing all the witnesses, listening to expert medical evidence on the subject of abnormality, and the impassioned orations, for and against, the Jury came unanimously to their decision. George Eekhoud was acquitted!
This is no place to trace the story of the ebbying fortunes of that day's fight. Suffice to say that the enemies of George Eekhoud were routed—that the accused, whom it was sought to crush, emerged triumphant from the shock of arms more glorious than ever, looking, we opine, pretty much like Saint George after he had slain the Dragon, with this slight difference that Eekhoud's dragon was probably far more real than the mythological animal that fell beneath the strokes