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THE PATH OF LIFE

By Stijn Streuvels


Translated from the West-Flemish by

Alexander Teixeira De Mattos




TRANSLATOR's NOTE

In introducing this new writer to the English-speaking public, I may be
permitted to give a few particulars of himself and his life. Stijn
Streuvels is accepted not only in Belgium, but also in Holland as the
most distinguished Low-Dutch author of our time: his vogue, in fact, is
even greater in the North Netherlands than in the southern kingdom. And I
will go further and say that I know no greater living writer of
imaginative prose in any land or any language. His medium is the
West-Flemish dialect, which is spoken by perhaps a million people
inhabiting the stretch of country that forms the province of West
Flanders and is comprised within the irregular triangle outlined by the
North Sea on the west, the French frontier of Flanders on the south and a
line drawn at one-third of the distance between Bruges and Ghent on the
east. In addition to Bruges and Ostend, this province of West Flanders
includes such towns as Poperinghe, Ypres and Courtrai; and so subtly
subdivided is the West-Flemish dialect that there are words which a man
of Bruges will use to a man of Poperinghe and not be understood.

It is one of the most interesting dialects known to me, containing
numbers of mighty mediaeval words which survive in daily use; and it is
one of the richest: rich especially--and this is not usual in
dialects--in words expressive of human characteristics and of physical
sensations.

Thus there is a word to describe a man who is not so much a poor wretch,
_un miserable_, as what Tom