Poetry
La Chanson de la rue Saint-Paul
Not translated into English
Max Elskamp · 1922
Synopsis
Antwerp and one street in particular, Saint-Paul Street, where the poet was born, near the port, a white street where the wind is at home. The book returns to it and gathers what it contains: childhood in the family home, relatives, the nearby sea, trades, devotional images. One poem is addressed to his sister Marie, the companion of his childhood years. The lines are short, in couplets and quatrains, repeated like litanies, in a deliberately archaic language nourished by popular song and liturgy.
Context
The collection appeared in Antwerp from J.-E. Buschmann in 1922, in an edition of one hundred and ten copies not for sale, decorated with twenty-five woodcuts by the author. It belongs to the second period of his work, which opened in 1920 after nearly twenty years of silence, during which he had devoted himself to folklore and popular art. It was reissued by Gallimard, in the Poésie series, in 1997, and by Espace Nord in 2025, with an afterword by Clément Dessy.
Who it is for
Very short poems, written directly in French, with an old and popular vocabulary; available in a paperback edition.
Prizes and reception
The collection that Britannica cites among his principal works, and which gives its title to the two paperback editions of his work.
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