Albert Giraud was a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 poet who wrote in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

Biography

Giraud was born Emile Albert Kayenbergh in Leuven

Leuven

Leuven is the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region, Belgium...

, Belgium. He studied law at the University of Louvain. He left university without a degree and took up journalism and poetry. In 1885, Giraud became a member of La Jeune Belgique

La Jeune Belgique

La Jeune Belgique was a belgian literary society and movement that published a French-language literary review La Jeune Belgique between 1881 and 1897. The society was founded by the Belgian poet Max Waller...

, a Belgian nationalist literary movement that met at the Café Sésino in Brussels.
Giraud became chief librarian at the Belgian Ministry of the Interior.

He was a Symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

 poet. His published works include Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasques

Pierrot lunaire (book)

Pierrot lunaire: rondels bergamasques is a collection of fifty poems published in 1884 by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud , who is usually associated with the Symbolist Movement. The protagonist of the cycle is Pierrot, the comic servant of the French Commedia dell'Arte and, later, of Parisian...

(1884), a poem cycle based on the commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...

 figure of Pierrot

Pierrot

Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre , via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in...

, and La Guirlande des Dieux (1910). The composer Arnold Schönberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

 set a German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 version (translated by Otto Erich Hartleben

Otto Erich Hartleben

Otto Erich Hartleben was a German poet and dramatist from Clausthal, known for his translation of Pierrot Lunaire.-Childhood, Education and Marriage:...

) of selections from his Pierrot Lunaire

Pierrot Lunaire

Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds 'Pierrot lunaire' , commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 , is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg...

to innovative atonal music.

Works

Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasques

Pierrot lunaire (book)

Pierrot lunaire: rondels bergamasques is a collection of fifty poems published in 1884 by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud , who is usually associated with the Symbolist Movement. The protagonist of the cycle is Pierrot, the comic servant of the French Commedia dell'Arte and, later, of Parisian...

(1884)

Hors du Siècle (poems written between 1885 and 1897)

Le concert dans la musée (1921)

Quotation

Coucher de soleil

Le Soleil s'est ouvert les veines

Sur un lit de nuages roux:

Son sang, par la bouche des trous,

S'éjacule en rouges fontaines.

Les rameaux convulsifs des chênes

Flagellent les horizons fous;

Le Soleil s'est ouvert les veines

Sur un lit de nuages roux:

Comme, après les hontes romaines,

Un débauché plein de dégoûts

Laissant jusqu'aux sales égouts

Saigner ses artères malsaines,

Le Soleil s'est ouvert les veines!

--- Pierrot Lunaire