Symbolism and the late romantic imagination in a northern cityscape
The notion of symbolism marks a later surge in romantic thought, a final impulse that echoed across Europe and North America between roughly 1770 and 1870. It gathered energy from towering figures like Byron, Goethe, Hugo, Rodenbach, Leopardi, and Poe. While the symbolist project in narrative could not rival the sheer drama of poetry or painting connected to its broader movement, its echoes still deliver striking aesthetic experiences. Bruges lost in time emerges as a single work that can stand as a powerful instance of this mood and its consequences for readers.
Rodenbach draws on several recurrent motifs of the movement: a fascination with mortality, a fetishized vision of love, and a coded, esoteric reading of reality. In his hands, these elements compose a morbid, elegant funerary allegory where body and stone, woman and city, merge into a lament for a past that cannot be revived. A spectral guide directs the widowed hero, Hugues Viane, toward Bruges, the somber city where the memory of his beloved is kept. He creates a memorial museum in her house, where the beloved’s braid is revered as a ritual of perfect love. Escaping the glare of the day, the noise of life, he withdraws into a world beside him, a place of bells and damp air, gleaming with a chrome-like stillness that never anticipates the future. This atmosphere imprints a sense of persistent ennui on the city’s inhabitants, fostering a taste for sickness, fervent religiosity, and wandering as a preferred pastime.
When a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the deceased appears, new and dramatic correspondences arise. Although the body seems to repeat itself, the twins’ motives and destinies diverge. Viane pursues an exhausted existence, but the price is steep: deception, followed by contempt, and finally tragedy. The psychic upheaval becomes a fatal echo, turning the sought relic into an instrument of pain. In their own ways, the dead cling to their altered status, and the irreversible nature of their condition should not be underestimated. In Bruges, time holds a fixed perspective, yet the introduction of a second love into its streets and canals requires delicate handling and careful judgment.
In the middle of the century, the interest in this subject resurfaced when two writers turned the same obsession toward new forms: the sequel, a persistent motif that later influenced a major moment in film history. The exploration of secret passages and recurring patterns continued to fascinate readers and viewers alike as the tale moved from page to screen, inviting fresh interpretations and extending its reach beyond the printed word.