Jean+de+Bosschere+(1881-1953)

Belgian-born Jean de Bosschere considered himself a `strayed mystic' bound only by the creed of unconventionality. This poet of pen and brush possessed the vigor and violence, both grotesque and satiric, echoed from such sixteenth-century Gothic masters as Bosch and Breughel. In France he became a companion of the Symbolist poets, Paul Claudel and Paul Valery, the latter appraising Bosschere's work as une differente magie, un instant de l' allusion murmuree de l' autre cote.Driven to London in 1915 in the wake of the war, he came in contact with Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. His two volumes of Flemish folk tales were rewritten from childhood memories. In addition to his own novels and poetry (occasionally written under the pseudonym J. P. Aubertin), Bosschere illustrated Rabelais, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Boccaccio and Oscar Wilde with a melancholy Gallic grace. One critic felt he was inspired by Freudian doctrines and should be considered from a psychological angle. His contemporary, Edmund Dulac, once presented him with a caricatured portrait in water colors.

The Devil beaten three times
Christmas Tales of Flanders WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1917

The Dwarf's Feast
Christmas Tales of Flanders WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1917