No Paradise without a Surveyor. Landscape in Literature

Geometry won't get you far in Flanders. There the horizon is closer, the roads are not as straight and the water is not such an overwhelming presence. Here everything is on a smaller scale and more cluttered than in the Netherlands. Messier certainly, sometimes more charming. But these distinctions vanish like morning mist as we observe poets from North and South going in search of their own Arcadias (with translated poems by H. Marsman, Martinus Nijhoff, M. Vasalis, Hugo Claus, Anton van Wilderode, Peter Ghyssaert, Ad Zuiderent, Nescio, Rutger Kopland and Martin Reints).