Cyriel Buysse

Cyrillus Gustave Emile "Cyriel" Buysse (pronounced [siˈril ˈbœysə]; 20 September 1859 – 25 July 1932) was a Flemish naturalist author and playwright. He also wrote under the following pseudonyms: Louis Bonheyden, Prosper Van Hove and Robert Palmer.

Biography

Buysse was born on 20 September 1859 in Nevele, Belgium in a well-to-do family. Before he could complete his studies at the Atheneum in Ghent, he joined the family's chicory factory at the request of his father.

At the suggestion of his aunt Virginie Loveling, herself an author, he started writing when he was twenty-six. When his father found out that he was dating a girl he had met in a local bar, he was told to leave the ancestral home. Between 1886 and 1896 he emigrated to the United States several times, but he returned more disillusioned each time. The written account of his travels is known as Twee Herinneringen uit Amerika (Two memories from America), written in 1888.

Buysse became known as a naturalist writer in the tradition of Stijn Streuvels, Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant. Although he had been educated in French, which was common for sons of wealthy Flemish families in that era, most of his work would be in Dutch. His writing is characterised by a deep sympathy for the common man, whose life he vividly and realistically describes.

In 1893 he co-edited the literary periodical Van Nu en Straks (On Now and Soon) together with Prosper Van Langendonck, August Vermeylen en Emmanuel De Bom, but left soon afterwards following an argument. In the same year, he wrote his first novel Het recht van den sterkste (The Law of the Jungle).

Buysse married the Dutch widow Nelly Dyserinck in 1896 and spent winters in The Hague in the Netherlands, where his son René Cyriel was born in 1897, while staying at his rural estate in in Belgium during summer.