Les Villes tentaculaires
| Author | Émile Verhaeren |
|---|---|
| Language | French |
| Genre | Symbolist poetry |
| Published | 1895 |
| Publisher | Edmond Deman |
| Publication place | Belgium |
| Media type | |
Original text | Les Villes tentaculaires at French Wikisource |
Les Villes tentaculaires (transl. The Tentacular Towns, sometimes rendered The Great Cities or The Many-Tentacled Town) is a volume of Symbolist poetry in French by the Belgian Émile Verhaeren, first published in 1895 by Edmond Deman, with a frontispiece by Théo van Rysselberghe. It established the poet's European reputation, and his stature as "a true pioneer of Modernism". The loose theme of the collection is modern urban life and the transformation of the countryside by urban sprawl.
The theme of urban sprawl had already been broached in Verhaeren's 1893 collection Les Campagnes hallucinées (The Hallucinated Fields). The two collections were generally printed together in one volume from 1904 onwards.