The literary Starts

The age of twenty is a rather foolish age of passionated exuberance, of admirations and wrath without measure.
Jules Destrée, while studying Law at the Free University of Brussels, shares the enthusiasm brought by the cultural growth of the Capital at the end of the 19th Century ( c. 1881).

Brussels had nothing to be ashamed of in comparison with London or Paris. The profusion of art and literature reviews testifies to that : " L'Art Moderne ", " Le Journal des Beaux Arts ", " La Société Nouvelle ", " La Wallonie ", " La Pléiade ", " L'Artiste ", " La Nervie ", " La Revue Rouge " and probably the most particular : " la Revue de la Jeune Belgique ".

In this prolific climate Jules Destrée is reading a lot of his contemporary writers (Zola, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Verlaine. . .) and goes his own way with his " Lettres à Jeanne ", encouraged by Verhaeren, Maurice des Ombiaux and Camille Lemonnier. He continues with " Transposition. Imagerie Japonaise ", and concludes with " Les Chimères ".

After this literary interest, he tries to write his considerations on law and justice : " Paradoxes professionnels (1893) ", " Bon-Dieu-des-Gaulx (1898) ", " Le Secret de Frédéric Marcinel (1901) ", " Quelques histoires de miséricorde (1902) "…