Georges Rodenbach was a Belgian symbolist poet and novelist. Though born into a Flemish family, he wrote in French, the language of the educated bourgeoisie in his native country at the time. After studying law, Rodenbach moved to Paris, where he befriended Stéphane Mallarmé and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, among others. He published his first volume of poems in 1878 and became famous with the 1886 collection La jeunesse blanche. Although he spent most of his adult life in France, Rodenbach’s main subject always remained the sleepy medieval towns of his native Flanders.