Synopsis "The Year of the Poet vii ~ February 2020 (in English)"
ForewordDear Reader:You are holding in your hand the second collection of The Year of the Poet, Volume VII. The 2020-series is titled: “The Year of Peace. Celebrating Past Nobel Peace Prize Recipients”. The 1913-recipient of the said prize, Henri La Fontaine is the focus of this anthology’s February issue. Maybe you have never heard about him. You may be asking: Who was he? What did he do in the field of peace? Why was he rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize?I would like to introduce him to you. Read his short biography, please, and later, some poems dedicated to him in this publication. Discover his personality, dreams and emotions in the verses, which were written about him from all over the world. Poets from different countries tried to resurrect the past. His personality and ideas will revive again. I hope we all can learn much from him.Let us start our introduction . . .Henri La Fontaine was born in Brussels on the 22nd of April in 1854 and died in the city of his birth on May 14, 1943. He was a professor of international law, a senator in the Belgian legislature, a renowned bibliographer, a man of wide-ranging cultural achievements. Henri La Fontaine was a freemason, and a member of Les Amis Philanthropes in Brussels. He studied law at the Free University of Brussels. In 1877, at the age of twenty-three, La Fontaine registered as counsel with the Brussels Court of Appeal. Later, he received a doctorate in law from his alma mater. He practiced law, becoming one of Belgium’s leading jurists. In 1888, he began his long work for the cause of peace; and participated in liberal reform initiatives.He and his sister Léonie La Fontaine were early advocates for women's rights and suffrage. In 1890, they founded the Belgian League for the Rights of Women. In 1893, he became professor of international law at the Free University of Brussels, and two years later, was elected to the Belgian Senate as a member of the Socialist Party. He served as vice chairman of the Senate from 1919 to 1932. He also served as the president of the International Peace Bureau from 1907 until his death in 1943. La Fontaine promoted the idea of unification of the world's pacifist organizations. He was a member of the Belgian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and to the League of Nations Assembly between 1920 and 1921. Henri La Fontaine was the first socialist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. La Fontaine's greatest work was as an activist in the international peace movement. He was a strong champion of internationalism. He set up an institute which collected documentation from all over the world on international matters. In 1910, he organized a world conference for international organizations. Its purpose was to create "an intellectual parliament" for humanity.Henri La Fontaine held high positions of trust in the peace movement. When he was awarded the Peace Prize in 1913, he was the effective leader of the peace movement in Europe. Now, let us read some poems . . .Alicja Maria KuberskaPoland
