Jardin d'Isabelle

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Sittard

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“Jardin d'Isabelle” is named after Isabelle de Borman, the daughter of a wealthy family of doctors. The De Borman family lived on the Markt and this was their garden. Isabella was in love with the poet and bohemian Charles Beltjens who wanted to marry her. However, Doctor de Borman did not give permission and Charles left for France where he wrote poetry in his mother tongue, French. He gained some fame and is therefore commemorated in the garden of the former doctor's house with fragments from his poem about the Condor and with a copy of his sculpture by the hand of the sculptor Gjus Roebroek.

This is the former garden of doctor De Borman, who lives on the Markt. In the gazebo of this garden, the French-speaking poet Charles Beltjens (1832 – 1890), born in Sittard, read his poems to Isabelle, the doctor's daughter he loved. Father De Borman, however, found the difference in status too great and the revolutionary ideas and the “profession” of the “amateur” objectionable, so that Isabelle remained the unattainable lover for Charles.

At the foot of the monument to Charles Beltjens some lines from his poems:

“A toi je songe, a toi ma jeune fiancée,

Aurore de mes jours, printemps de ma pensée.”

“I dream of you, of you my young betrothed,

Dawn of my days of life, spring of my thoughts.”

“C'est toi qui veux rouvrir ta grande aile captive,

Ô Souvenir, oiseau des Paradis perdus.”

“You want to unfold your great wing again for me,

O Remembrance, bird of the lost Paradises.” (from: “Le Condor captif”)

“Le Condor captif” (= the caged condor) consists of sixty-five stanzas of four lines. In the first seven stanzas, Beltjens evokes the peaceful and idyllic image of a May morning in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Then he is suddenly struck by a cry from a huge bird, a condor making desperate attempts to escape the cage in which he is imprisoned.

“Dans un cri formidable, il s'éleva, terrible,

Comme s'il eût tenté d'en briser le ceiling;

Sa tête alla frapper la barrier inflexible

Et, poussant un long rale, il tomba sur le fond.”

“With a mighty screeching he flew up, terrifying,

As if he wanted to break through the ceiling of the cage.

His head hit the fence, which didn't budge

And, giving a long cry, he fell to the ground.”

This text has been automatically translated using an online translation service.

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