[13] The Massacre of the Innocents and other Tales by Belgian Writers.
[14] Verhaeren's first vers libres appeared in book form in January, 1891 (printed in December, 1890) in Les Flambeaux noirs. But in May, 1890, he had published, in La Wallonie, a poem in vers libres; and this is dated 1889.
[15] Poèmes anciens et romanesques, his first book of acknowledged symbolism, did not appear till 1890, but the poems which compose it were written between 1887 and 1888.
[16] It was in 1886, too, that Gustave Kahn with the collaboration of Jean Moréas and Paul Adam, founded the review Le Symboliste.
[17] A translation of Whitman's Enfants d'Adam, by Jules Laforgue, appeared in La Vogue in 1886. Stuart Merrill personally handed this translation to Whitman, who was delighted. (See Le Masque, Série ii, Nos. 9 and 10, 1912). Vielé-Griffin's first translation of Whitman appeared in November, 1888, in. La Revue indépendante; another translation of his appeared afterwards in La Cravache. A translation of Whitman had appeared in the Revue des deux Mondes in the reign of Napoleon III.
[18] He himself told Huret that La Princesse Maleine was written in vers libres concealed typographically as prose.
CHAPTER II
On his return to Belgium, Maeterlinck spent his winters in Ghent, in the house of his parents; his summers in the family villa at the village of Oostacker.