“The country one never truly arrives in.” Belgium has long fascinated and intrigued its visitors. The experiences of travellers from Belgium or elsewhere come together to delve like never before deep into both Belgian identity and imagination. Patrick Corillon describes this country, cobbled together and sandwiched between Holland and France, feeding on multiple cultural offerings, where 2, even 3 languages are spoken, as “an impressionists mosaic” in a state of “permanent remodelling”.

From Bruges to Liege, from Brussels to Antwerp, there are a few ecstatic recluses, exiles, revolutionaries – like Karl Marx – pit miners, the great writers of France or from across the English Channel, Balzac, the Bronte sisters, Lord Byron and James Joyce. The enthusiasm of the romantics (Hugo, Neval, Dumas) mix with Baudelaire’s sarcasm and the bitter reverie of Verlaine. Belgian writers, Walloon or Fleming, as different as Verhaeren, Simenon, Eekhoud, Michaux, Hugo Claus and Marguerite Yourcenar, shed light upon the manifold faces of this eternal paradox, born only recently, but a forerunner in European History. All the genius of such a unique people is brought together through this journey of literature and feelings, pushing us to the edge of all possible scatter-brained imagination. Robert Laffont

Advances made in the late nineteenth century in the printing industry gave rise to what are known “coffee-table books”. Many poets have had the good fortune to see their works accompanied by colour illustrations commissioned from famous painters.
Creating a contrary trend, a Parisian circle of young poets called “the Notionists” took the view that the words ought to be enough on their own. They refused to have the slightest piece of their writing published along with an image, and even encouraged their readers to empty their heads completely before plunging into one of their poems. To do this, they had devised little coloured paper theatres that worked as follows: the reader would close his eyes and focus on the dominant colour that came to him from deep down inside, letting himself become totally taken over by it. When he opened his eyes, he would look straightaway into the paper theatre for the subtractive complementary colour that would cancel out the one that had just taken him over. The effect was instantaneous, the reader’s inner gaze was cleared again, finally ready to read a poem.
Unfortunately, these paper theatres were hardly ever used. One of the “Notionists” soon cottoned on to the fact that once your head is properly cleared, the slightest phrase or word that you read, even on an advertising hoarding, appears in the splendour ‘of the first day’; everything becomes poetry, and there is no more need for poets.