Bruges · 1892 · citedBruges-la-Morte
Georges Rodenbach
A widower, Hugues Viane, comes to Bruges to mourn his dead wife, keeping a plait of her hair as a relic, until he grows obsessed with a dancer who is her living double, and the silent 'dead city' becomes the mirror of his grief. Rodenbach makes the real Bruges a character: the still canals and their reflections, the great churches and their bells, the hushed enclosure of the Béguinage, and the belfry above the market square where the Procession of the Holy Blood ends the book in murder.
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