III
In "The New Carthage" Eekhoud turned his attention to the life of Antwerp. And in order that his fundamental intention in writing the book may be immediately apparent, I quote the following paragraph from the body of the novel:
"To paint Antwerp, its life, its harbor, its river, its sailors, its dockers, its luxuriant women, its rosy and chubby children whom Rubens, in other days, had thought sufficiently plastic and appetizing to populate his heavens and Olympuses; to paint this human mob in its own ways, its costume and surroundings, with the most cherishing care for its special customs and morals, without neglecting the correlations which accentuate and characterize it; to interpret the very soul of the city of Rubens with a sympathy bordering upon assimilation—what a program and what an objective!"
It is to this conception that Eekhoud adhered in writing "The New Carthage," and the novel is essentially a record of the life of the whole city. Its protagonist is Antwerp itself, or, more definitely, the proletariat of Antwerp as its life is experienced by Laurent Paridael. The novel is largely autobiographi-
