Bruges-la-Morte and The Death Throes of Towns

Bruges-la-Morte, first published in 1892, is one of the great masterpieces of the Symbolist period and of city writing. Rodenbach does for Bruges what Dickens did for London and Meyrink and kafka did for Prague.
Hugues Viane, a widower, has turned to the melancholy, decaying city of Bruges as the ideal location in which to mourn his wife. There he find a suitable haven for the narcissistic perambulations of his inexorably disturbed spirit. The story itself centres on Hugue's obsession with a young dancer whom he believes is the double of his beloved wife.