Remy de Gourmont:
(Bazoches-au-Houlme, 4 April 1858 – Paris, 27 September 1915).
French writer, poet and critic. He is mainly counted among the movement of Symbolism.
Herfst is zo vreugdevol en zoet als een voortijdig einde.
This is a paradoxical, poetic statement that plays on contrasts:
– ‘Autumn’ is traditionally associated with decline, decay, and the approach of winter (death of the year).
– Yet here it’s described as “joyful and sweet”
— qualities we’d expect from spring or youth.
– The comparison to an “untimely end” (a death that comes too soon, often of someone young or in their prime) suggests that there’s a strange ‘beauty’ or ‘intensity’ in things cut short before decay fully sets in.
Core idea:
Just as someone who dies young is remembered in full bloom — beautiful, vital, never withered by old age — autumn captures nature at its most richly colored and sensorially intense moment, ‘just before’ the stripping bare of winter. The melancholy of ending becomes aestheticized as sweetness, not sorrow.
This reflects a very ‘Decadent/Symbolist’ sensibility (late 19th century France): beauty intertwined with mortality, pleasure tinged with melancholy, decay rendered exquisite.
🔍 Origin & Author — Caution Advised ⚠️:
Remy de Gourmont — this is a reasonable guess given the style:
– Gourmont (1858–1915) was a key figure of French ‘Symbolism’, known for prose poetry (“Sixtine”, “Litanies de la Rose”, “Le Pèlerin du Silence”) that frequently fused:
– sensuality 🌹
– melancholy 🍂
– death and decay 💀
– ornate, paradoxical phrasing
– The ’tone’ and ‘construction’ (an elegant paradox linking a season to mortality) is ‘very consistent with his style’ and that of contemporaries like Maurice Maeterlinck or Henri de Régnier.
However, ‘I cannot confirm with certainty that this exact line comes from a specific, verifiable text by Gourmont’. It’s possible that:
1. ✅ It’s an authentic (if loosely translated) line from one of his works — possibly “Les Litanies de la Rose” or another prose-poem collection.
2. 🔄 It’s a paraphrase or compressed translation that has drifted from the original French wording.
3. ❓ It’s misattributed — sometimes such aphoristic lines circulate online attached to a “fitting” author without solid textual sourcing.
