The City and the River : Émile Verhaeren and Charles Baudelaire: A Comparative Study of Belgian and French Symbolism

This study presents a comparative analysis of two major figures in French-language Symbolism: the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren (1855–1916) and the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867). While the influence of Baudelaire on Verhaeren is well recognized in literary history, no systematic comparative study of their imagery of the city and the river has yet been undertaken. Focusing on these two core motifs, the research explores how both poets responded to the modern condition—Baudelaire from the heart of mid-nineteenth-century Paris, Verhaeren from the industrializing cities of fin-de-siècle Belgium. Through close reading of key texts—Baudelaire’sLes Fleurs du malandLe Spleen de Paris, Verhaeren’sLes Villes tentaculairesandLes Fleurs du rêve—the study reveals that while both poets share a poetics of urban anxiety, their treatment of the river as a counterpoint to the city diverges significantly. Baudelaire’s Seine is often a space of escape or transcendence; Verhaeren’s Scheldt is a river of labor, industry, and collective destiny. The study argues that this divergence reflects different historical contexts—Baudelaire’s Paris of Haussmann and bourgeois modernity, Verhaeren’s Belgium of industrial expansion and socialist awakening—and different conceptions of the poet’s role in society. By bringing these two poets into sustained dialogue, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of Symbolism as a transnational movement and offers a new framework for reading Belgian literature in its relation to French poetry.