Gezelle in Roeselare by Luc Naert Handelsonderwijs Burgerschool

Luc Naert, ex-teacher in Dutch at the Klein Seminarie calls himself a Gezelle-fanatic. He told the pupils of 5 IF about the years Guido Gezelle spent in Roeselare.

Gezelle lived in Roeselare from 1846 until 1850 as a student and from 1854 until 1860 as a teacher at the Klein Seminarie.

To understand Gezelle you have to know his parents. During the time of Napoleon, his father Pieter-Jan Gezelle went into hiding for 7 years. Because of the desertion of their son, his parents (Gezelle's grandparents) died in prison in 1813.

Some time later, Gezelle's father took gardening lessons in the evening school in the Klein Seminarie. Until 1825 the talkactive and cheerful man worked as a gardener, a servant and as a supervisor at the same time. During the Dutch rule, the Klein Seminarie had to close his doors.

After that, Gezelle's father became unemployed. This explains why Guido Gezelle had little sympathy for Dutch or French as a language.

From 1825 until 1829, Gezelle's father worked in Gent as a gardener, where he met his wife Monica Devriese, a shy and timid woman. From 1829 onwards the couple lives in Brugge. When the talented Guido Gezelle finishes secondary school in the Klein Seminarie from 1846 until 1850, he works as a door-keeper to help finance his studies. In this way, he comes into touch with the outside-world and gets to know the popular language. The tough combination of studying and working at the same time influences his results in school, but in the 5th year he' s first in "langue Flamande".

After his secondary school he takes up studies to become a priest at the Groot Seminarie in Brugge. Guido Gezelle wasn't a priest yet when in March 1854 the bishop asked him to start teaching at the Klein Seminarie. His subjects were book-keeping and natural history.

Book-keeping was beyond him, but he loved teaching natural history: he took his students out into the garden for observation.

In those days the distance between students and teachers was remote. Gezelle chose for a pleasant, confidential approach in the spirit of bishop Dupanloup who said that a teacher had to be a father, a mother and a teacher at the same time.

This caused disciplinairy problems, partly due to Gezelle's naïvety. When students damaged a candelabra, Gezelle felt responsible and helped finance a new one.

In 1857 he became class-teacher of the 5th year, the poetry class. At that time Hugo Verriest was one of his students for whom Gezelle cherished 3 great dreams: he wanted each one of them to became a priest, a poet and a good Fleming. So he gave his students a lot of poetry exercises, which gave him new inspiration as well. He also passed on his 'Flemish fire', which Albrecht Rodenbach in his turn inherited from Hugo Verriest.

If Gezelle has to be classified as a romanticist, it' s because his sensibility and love for the nature are his major characteristics. But also the feeling of discomfort when amongst others and the problems he had to stick to rules is typical. His superiors started complaining about the "désordre" in his class.

In 1860 he was kicked upstairs to Brugge, where he became superintendent of the English convent. Although he had few friends amongst his colleagues in the Klein Seminarie, it must be said that his time in Roeselare was by far the happiest time in his life, and the most prolific poetically speaking.