Franz Hellens - Oeil-de-Dieu - 1925

For the great connoisseur of French literature - Original Edition

Franz Hellens - Oeil-de-Dieu - Paris, éditions Emile-Paul frères, 1925 - 341 pp. - 12 X 19 cm.

Condition: très bon. Légères rousseurs. (cfr. photos)

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Franz Hellens is the pseudonym of Frédéric Van Ermengem, born September 8, 1881 in Brussels and died January 20, 1972 in the same city, is a Belgian novelist, poet, essayist and art critic.

Franz Hellens is the son of bacteriologist Émile van Ermengem (1851-1932). Until the age of 12 he lived at his parents’ property in Wetteren near Ghent. He entered the Jesuit college Sainte-Barbe of Ghent. Then he studied law. He earned the license and, in 1905, the doctorate. Not liking the legal profession, he became a trainee at the Royal Library, then at the Library of Parliament; he later became chief librarian.

In 1907, he married Marguerite Nyst (1888-1958), daughter of the man of letters Ray Nyst.

He lived in Paris from 1947 to 1971.

Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, he is known as one of the major representatives of Belgian fantastic literature. But he was also the tireless promoter of Belgian letters, notably of the magazine first called Signaux de France et de Belgique and then Le Disque vert (1922-1941). It was he who discovered Henri Michaux, before Jean Paulhan took over. Michaux, for his part, was part of the editorial board of Le Disque vert from 1923 to 1925, publishing many of his early writings, some of which would be revived in Qui je fus. The magazine would reappear from 1952 to 1954, co-edited by Franz Hellens and René de Solier. Michaux was highly admiring of Hellens, and especially of his novel Mélusine (1920), writing notably: “poet, novelist, writer — his work is of rare diversity — he has written in so many ways — one often gives up trying to find [him] ... Such an imagination that there are hardly any that compare; it starts from zero and runs to infinity.”

The French Academy awarded him the Académie prize in 1943, the prize for a work written in French by a foreigner in 1958, and the prize for the influence of the French language and literature in 1971.