ÃÂlisabeth van Rysselberghe (15 October 1890 â 29 July 1980) was a Belgian translator. She was the daughter of Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe.
ÃÂlisabeth van Rysselberghe was born on 15 October 1890 in Brussels, Belgium. She was the daughter of neo-impressionist painter Théo van Rysselberghe and his wife Maria Monnom. As a child, she became acquainted with André Gide, a close friend of her parents, and the two became good friends.
ÃÂlisabeth had an affair with Rupert Brooke when she was twenty years old, and by 1913 the two might have become lovers "in a complete sense". However, Brooke, who was involved also with other women, died during World War I.
After the war, in 1920, Marc Allégret, Gide's lover, fell in love with ÃÂlisabeth. The two had wanted a child, but the wish did not come true. In 1923, ÃÂlisabeth gave birth to a child, Catherine. The father was André Gide, who at the time was married, and recognised the child only after the death of his wife, adopting her in 1938. ÃÂlisabeth had wanted a child "at all costs", while Gide had passed her a note during a trip on the train with friends years before, where he explained that he could not bear to see her or himself childless. Eventually, ÃÂlisabeth married French journalist Pierre Herbart in 1931. After her marriage to Herbart, the friendship between the latter and Gide was upset. The two divorced in 1968.
She was an avid reader and an excellent translator. She translated Donald Windham and John Keats into French. She translated the Letters of John Keats with Charles Du Bos, including Quatre lettres inédites and Lettre àJohn Hamilton Reynolds. Van Rysselberghe is the French translator of Windham's The Dog Star (French: Canicule) and Emblems of Conduct (French: Emblèmes d'une vie). In 1953, her translation of Justin O'Brien's Les nourritures terrestres d'André Gide et les Bucoliques de Virgile was published.
She died on 29 July 1980 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, ÃÂle-de-France, France.