This slight, exquisite novella, originally published in 1936, may be read as a ‘portrait of the artist as a young man’, as an engaging psychological study of childhood, or as a stylistic exercise of unusual refinement. Maurice Gilliams (1900-1982) was a poet and essayist as well as a novelist. Together with Willem Elsschot, who also lived and worked in Antwerp, he is regarded as the foremost stylist in twentieth-century Flemish prose. Yet how different these two are — where Elsschot is unsentimental, urban and acerbic, wrapping emotions in layers of sarcasm, Gilliams is unashamedly romantic, eclectic and demanding. His world is that of patrician taste, remorseless soul-searching, the evocation of mood, and le mot juste.


Nothing much happens in Elias. What we have, rather, is a musical structure, variations on a theme. The main figure is twelve-year-old Elias, who lives on a large family estate with his mother, grandmother and an assortment of aunts, from whom he receives private tuition. This is the world of the old bourgeoisie of the 1920s and 30s, high on formality and the outward show of good manners. We trace one year in Elias’ life, from one summer to the next. The novella ends with Elias, now thirteen, setting off for boarding school.


The boy’s main companion is his sixteen-year-old cousin Aloysius, who takes him on expeditions to the river, goes to meet local girls, and on one occasion takes part in a wake. Elias follows, shares in the excitement and tries to grasp the meaning of Aloysius’ behaviour. The relationship changes when Aloysius goes to boarding school, returns with poor results at the end of each term and spends most of his vacations on a strictly house-bound regime of detention and extra lessons. Elias’ aunts behave in ways largely beyond the boy’s comprehension, as he has no inkling of the personal dramas that could explain their outbursts, their moments of tenderness and their emotional instability.


What makes Elias a singularly tantalizing book is the consistent focus on the boy’s mental world. His fantasizing, his myth-making, his interpretations of his own and other people’s actions fill the pages. Things that remain unclear to him usually remain unclear also to the reader. The technique lends the novella a haunting, almost claustrophobic character, offset only by the sheer poetic power of Elias’ flights of fancy. But it also leaves the reader free to speculate about what exactly is going on with and around this secretive, introverted boy with his rich imagination.

When I come home Aunt Henrietta is tending the cactus that will burst into bloom one of these nights. My aunt is touching the prickly plant with her delicate, sensitive fingers as if she wants to physically take part in the celebration of the budding flower. My Aunt Theodora, barren and adverse to the musical things of life could be compared to a scrawny, monstrous, deformed cactus; Aunt Henrietta has the fickleness that blinds itself, the dry perseverance of a thistle. She definitely does not keep those cactus monstrosities carefully alive out of a sense of ambition, or admiration; it could be an unconscious sense of recalcitrance, an untraceable pained rebellion that has made her stuff the lazily heated living room full of such gnomelike outgrowths. She creates a poisonous atmosphere for herself everywhere. I can guess that she cannot stand a cactus: she uses the plant as a sign of hatred, even though the other inhabitants of the house fail to understand this refined provocation because they all love those prickly things, on the chests and everywhere. (p. 84, tr. André Lefevere)