Rhymes of Joy

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Rhymes of Joy (Rimes de joie in French) was Belgian poet Theodore Hannon's second book of poetry. Originally published in 1881, the book has the distinction of containing a preface written by J.-K. Huysmans who, three years later, in his ground-breaking decadent novel, A Rebours, said this about Hannon?s poetry:

Its charming corruption corresponded fatally with the inclinations of Des Esseintes, who, on foggy days, on rainy days, locked himself up in the imagined hideaway of that poet and his eyes got intoxicated on the shimmering of his fabrics, on the incandescences of his stones, on his sumptuosities...

As a painter, artist, scenarist, theatrical-parodist, and poet, Theodore Hannon (AD 1851-1916) was influential in the Belgian modernist artistic circles of his day. He helped found the influential progressive Belgian society La Chrysalide in 1875. And as the editor in chief of l'Artiste, a weekly literary review based in Brussels, he helped promote the then-fledgling French Naturalist movement. His good friend Felicien Rops contributed four illustrations and the frontispiece to the original publication of Rhymes of Joy.