Instigations
by Ezra Pound · English · Gutenberg #40852 · 599,092 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Instigations
Author: Ezra Pound
Contributor: Ernest Fenollosa
Release date: September 24, 2012 [eBook #40852]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSTIGATIONS ***
INSTIGATIONS
OF
EZRA POUND
TOGETHER WITH
AN ESSAY ON THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER
BY
ERNEST FENOLLOSA
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
1920
TO
MY FATHER
HOMER L. POUND
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
Narration
Jules Laforgue
Tristan Corbière
Arthur Rimbaud
Remy de Gourmont
De Régnier
Emile Verhaeren
Vielé-Griffin
Stuart Merril
Laurent Tailhade
Francis Jammes
Moréas
Spire
Vildrac
Jules Romains
Unanimisme
De Bosschère's study of Elskamp
Albert Mockel and "La Wallonie"
II. HENRY JAMES
III. REMY DE GOURMONT, a Distinction followed by notes
IV. IN THE VORTEX
Eliot
Joyce
Lewis
An Historical Essayist
The New Poetry
Breviora
PART SECOND
V. OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE
A divagation from Jules Laforgue
VI. GENESIS, or the first book in the Bible
VII. ARNAUT DANIEL
VIII. TRANSLATORS OF GREEK
IX. An essay on THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER
by the late ERNEST FENOLLOSA,
edited by Ezra Pound
INSTIGATIONS
I
A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
The time when the intellectual affairs of America could be conducted on
a monolingual basis is over. It has been irksome for long. The
intellectual life of London is dependent on people who understand the
French language about as well as their own. America's part in
contemporary culture is based chiefly upon two men familiar with Paris:
Whistler and Henry James. It is something in the nature of a national
disgrace that a New Zealand paper, "The Triad," should be more alert to,
and have better regular criticism of, contemporary French publications
than any American periodical has yet had.
I had wished to give but a brief anthology[1] of French poems,
interposing no comment of my own between author and reader; confining my
criticism to selection. But that plan was not feasible. I was indebted
to MM. Davray and Valette for cordial semi-permissions to quote the
"Mercure" publications.
Certain delicate wines will not travel; they are not always the best
wines. Foreign criticism may sometimes correct the criticism _du cru_. I
cannot pretend to give the reader a summary of contemporary French
opinion, but certain French poets have qualities strong enough to be
perceptible to me, that is, to at least one alien reader; certain things
are translatable from one language to another, a tale or an image will
"translate"; music will, practically, never translate; and if a work be
taken abroad in the original tongue, certain properties seem to become
less apparent, or less important. Fancy styles, questions of local
"taste," lose importance. Even though I know the overwhelming importance
of technique, technicalities in a foreign tongue cannot have for me the
importance they have to a man writing in that tongue; almost the only
technique perceptible to a foreigner is the presentation of content as
free as possible from the clutteration of dead technicalities, fustian a
la Louis XV; and from timidities of workmanship. This is perhaps the
only technique that ever matters, the only _mæstria_.
Mediocre poetry is, I think, the same everywhere; there is not the
slightest need to import it; we search foreign tongues for _mæstria_ and
for discoveries not yet revealed in the home product. The critic of a
foreign literature must know a reasonable amount of the bad poetry of
the nation he studies if he is to attain any sense of proportion.
He will never be as sensitive to fine shades of language as the native;
he has, however, a chance of being less bound, less allied to some group
of writers. It would be politic for me to praise as many living
French-men as possible, and thereby to increase the number of my chances
for congenial acquaintance on my next trip to Paris, and to have a large
number of current French books sent to me to review.
But these rather broad and general temptations can scarcely lead me to
praise one man instead of another.
If I have thrown over current French opinion, I must urge that foreign
opinion has at times been a corrective. England has never accepted the
continental opinion of Byron; the right estimate lies perhaps between
the two. Heine is, I have heard, better read outside Germany than
within. The continent has never accepted the idiotic British adulation
of Milton; on the other hand, the idiotic neglect of Landor has never
been rectified by the continent.
Foreign criticism, if honest, can never be quite the same as home
criticism: it may be better or worse; it may have a value similar to
that of a different decade or century and has at least some chance of
escaping whims and stampedes of opinion.
I do not "aim at completeness." I believe that the American-English
reader has heard in a general way of Baudelaire and Verlaine and
Mallarmé; that Mallarmé, perhaps unread, is apt to be slightly
overestimated; that Gautier's reputation, despite its greatness, is not
yet as great as it should be.
After a man has lived a reasonable time with the two volumes of
Gautier's poetry, he might pleasantly venture upon the authors whom I
indicate in this essay; and he might have, I think, a fair chance of
seeing them in proper perspective. I omit certain nebulous writers
because I think their work bad; I omit the Parnassiens, Samain and
Heredia, firstly because their work seems to me to show little that was
not already implicit in Gautier; secondly, because America has had
enough Parnassienism--perhaps second rate, but still enough. (The verses
of La Comtesse de Noailles in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and those of
John Vance Cheney in "The Atlantic" once gave me an almost identical
pleasure.) I do not mean that all the poems here to be quoted are
better than Samain's "Mon âme est une infante...." or his "Cléopatre."
We may take it that Gautier achieved hardness in _Emaux et Camées_; his
earlier work did in France very much what remained for the men of "the
nineties" to accomplish in England. Gautier's work done in "the
thirties" shows a similar beauty, a similar sort of technique. If the
Parnassiens were following Gautier they fell short of his merit. Heredia
was perhaps the best of them. He tried to make his individual statements
more "poetic"; but his whole, for all this, becomes frigid.
Samain followed him and began to go "soft"; there is in him just a
suggestion of muzziness. Heredia is "hard," but there or thereabouts he
ends. Gautier is intent on being "hard"; is intent on conveying a
certain verity of feeling, and he ends by being truly poetic. Heredia
wants to be poetic _and_ hard; the hardness appears to him as a virtue
in the poetic. And one tends to conclude, from this, that all attempts
to be poetic in some manner or other, defeat their own end; whereas an
intentness on the quality of the emotion to be conveyed makes for
poetry.
I intend here a qualitative analysis. The work of Gautier, Baudelaire,
Verlaine, Mallarmé, Samain, Heredia, and of the authors I quote here
should give an idea of the sort of poetry that has been written in
France during the last half century, or at least during the last forty
years. If I am successful in my choice, I will indicate most of the best
and even some of the half-good. Bever and Léautaud's anthology contains
samples of some forty or fifty more poets.[2]
After Gautier, France produced, as nearly as I can understand, three
chief and admirable poets: Tristan Corbière, perhaps the most poignant
writer since Villon; Rimbaud, a vivid and indubitable genius; and
Laforgue--a slighter, but in some ways a finer "artist" than either of
the others. I do not mean that he "writes better" than Rimbaud; and
Eliot has pointed out the wrongness of Symons's phrase, "Laforgue the
eternal adult, Rimbaud the eternal child." Rimbaud's effects seem often
to come as the beauty of certain silver crystals produced by chemical
means. Laforgue always knows what he is at; Rimbaud, the "genius" in the
narrowest and deepest sense of the term, the "most modern," seems,
almost without knowing it, to hit on the various ways in which the best
writers were to follow him, slowly. Laforgue is the "last word":--out of
infinite knowledge of all the ways of saying a thing he finds the right
way. Rimbaud, when right, is so because he cannot be bothered to exist
in any other modality.
JULES LAFORGUE
(1860-'87)
Laforgue was the "end of a period"; that is to say, he summed up and
summarized and dismissed nineteenth-century French literature, its
foibles and fashions, as Flaubert in "Bouvard and Pécuchet" summed up
nineteenth-century general civilization. He satirized Flaubert's heavy
"Salammbô" manner inimitably, and he manages to be more than a critic,
for in process of this ironic summary he conveys himself, _il raconte
lui-même en racontant son âge et ses mœurs_, he delivers the moods
and the passion of a rare and sophisticated personality: "point ce
'gaillard-là' ni le Superbe ... mais au fond distinguée et franche comme
une herbe"!
Oh! laissez-moi seulement reprendre haleine,
Et vous aurez un livre enfin de bonne foi.
En attendant, ayez pitié de ma misère!
Que je vous sois à tous un être bienvenu!
Et que je sois absous pour mon âme sincère,
Comme le fut Phryné pour son sincère nu.
He is one of the poets whom it is practically impossible to "select."
Almost any other six poems would be quite as "representative" as the six
I am quoting.
PIERROTS
(_On a des principes_)
Elle disait, de son air vain fondamental:
"Je t'aime pour toi seul!"--Oh! là, là, grêle histoire;
Oui, comme l'art! Du calme, ô salaire illusoire
Du capitaliste Idéal!
Elle faisait: "J'attends, me voici, je sais pas"...
Le regard pris de ces larges candeurs des lunes;
--Oh! là, là, ce n'est pas peut-être pour des prunes,
Qu'on a fait ses classes ici-bas?
Mais voici qu'un beau soir, infortunée à point,
Elle meurt!--Oh! là, là; bon, changement de thème!
On sait que tu dois ressusciter le troisième
Jour, sinon en personne, du moins
Dans l'odeur, les verdures, les eaux des beaux mois!
Et tu iras, levant encore bien plus de dupes
Vers le Zaïmph de la Joconde, vers la Jupe!
Il se pourra même que j'en sois.
PIERROTS
III
Comme ils vont molester, la nuit,
Au profond des parcs, les statues,
Mais n'offrant qu'au moins dévêtues
Leur bras et tout ce qui s'ensuit,
En tête-à-tête avec la femme
Ils ont toujours l'air d'être un tiers,
Confondent demain avec hier,
Et demandent _Rien_ avec âme!
Jurent "je t'aime" l'air là-bas,
D'une voix sans timbre, en extase,
Et concluent aux plus folles phrases
Par des: "Mon Dieu, n'insistons pas?"
Jusqu'à ce qu'ivre, Elle s'oublie,
Prise d'on ne sait quel besoin
De lune? dans leurs bras, fort loin
Des convenances établies.
COMPLAINTE DES CONSOLATIONS
_Quia voluit consolari_
Ses yeux ne me voient pas, son corps serait jaloux;
Elle m'a dit: "monsieur ..." en m'enterrant d'un geste;
Elle est Tout, l'univers moderne et le céleste.
Soit, draguons donc Paris, et ravitaillons-nous,
Tant bien que mal, du reste.
Les Landes sans espoir de ses regards brûlés,
Semblaient parfois des paons prêts à mettre à la voile ...
Sans chercher à me consoler vers les étoiles,
Ah! Je trouverai bien deux yeux aussi sans clés,
Au Louvre, en quelque toile!
Oh! qu'incultes, ses airs, rêvant dans la prison
D'un _cant_ sur le qui-vive au travers de nos hontes!
Mais, en m'appliquant bien, moi dont la foi démonte
Les jours, les ciels, les nuits, dans les quatre saisons
Je trouverai mon compte.
Sa bouche! à moi, ce pli pudiquement martyr
Où s'aigrissent des nostalgies de nostalgies!
Eh bien, j'irai parfois, très sincère vigie,
Du haut de Notre-Dame aider l'aube, au sortir,
De passables orgies.
Mais, Tout va la reprendre!--Alors Tout m'en absout
Mais, Elle est ton bonheur!--Non! je suis trop immense,
Trop chose. Comment donc! mais ma seule présence
Ici-bas, vraie à s'y mirer, est l'air de Tout:
De la Femme au Silence.
LOCUTIONS DES PIERROTS
VI
Je te vas dire: moi, quand j'aime,
C'est d'un cœur, au fond sans apprêts,
Mais dignement élaboré
Dans nos plus singuliers problèmes.
Ainsi, pour mes mœurs et mon art,
C'est la période védique
Qui seule a bon droit revendique
Ce que j'en "attelle à ton char."
Comme c'est notre Bible hindoue
Qui, tiens, m'amène à caresser,
Avec ces yeux de cétacé,
Ainsi, bien sans but, ta joue.
This sort of thing will drive many bull-moose readers to the perilous
borders of apoplexy, but it may give pleasure to those who believe that
man is incomplete without a certain amount of mentality. Laforgue is an
angel with whom our modern poetic Jacob must struggle.
COMPLAINTE DES PRINTEMPS
Permettez, ô sirène,
Voici que votre haleine
Embaume la verveine;
C'est l'printemps qui s'amène!
--Ce système, en effet, ramène le printemps,
Avec son impudent cortège d'excitants.
Otez donc ces mitaines;
Et n'ayez, inhumaine,
Que mes soupirs pour traîne:
Ous'qu'il y a de la gêne ...
--Ah! yeux bleus méditant sur l'ennui de leur art!
Et vous, jeunes divins, aux soirs crus de hasard!
Du géant à la naine,
Vois, tout bon sire entraîne
Quelque contemporaine,
Prendre l'air, par hygiène ...
--Mais vous saignez ainsi pour l'amour de l'exil!
Pour l'amour de l'Amour! D'ailleurs, ainsi soit-il.
T'ai-je fait de la peine?
Oh! viens vers les fontaines
Où tournent les phalènes
Des Nuits Elyséennes!
--Pimbêche aux yeux vaincus, bellâtre aux beaux jarrets.
Donnez votre fumier à la fleur du Regret.
Voilà que son haleine
N'embaum' plus la verveine!
Drôle de phénomène ...
Hein, à l'année prochaine?
--Vierges d'hier, ce soir traîneuses de fœtus,
A genoux! voici l'heure où se plaint l'Angélus.
Nous n'irons plus au bois,
Les pins sont eternels,
Les cors ont des appels!...
Neiges des pâles mois,
Vous serez mon missel!
--Jusqu'au jour de dégel.
COMPLAINTE DES PIANOS
_Qu'on attend dans les Quartiers Aisés_
Menez l'âme que les Lettres ont bien nourrie,
Les pianos, les pianos, dans les quartiers aisés!
Premiers soirs, sans pardessus, chaste flânerie,
Aux complaintes des nerfs incompris ou brisés.
Ces enfants, à quoi rêvent-elles,
Dans les ennuis des ritournelles?
--"Préaux des soirs,
Christs des dortoirs!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous laisses,
Tu nous laiss's et tu t'en vas,
Défaire et refaire ses tresses,
Broder d'éternels canevas."
Jolie ou vague? triste ou sage? encore pure?
O jours, tout m'est egal? ou, monde, moi je veux?
Et si vierge, du moins, de la bonne blessure,
Sachant quels gras couchants ont les plus blancs aveux
Mon Dieu, a quoi done rêvent-elles?
A des Roland, à des dentelles?
--"Cœurs en prison,
Lentes saisons!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous quittes,
Tu nous quitt's et tu t'en vas!
Couvents gris, chœurs de Sulamites,
Sur nos seins nuls croisons nos bras."
Fatales clés de l'être un beau jour apparues;
Psitt! aux hérédités en ponctuels ferments,
Dans le bal incessant de nos étranges rues;
Ah! pensionnats, théâtres, journaux, romans!
Allez, stériles ritournelles,
La vie est vraie et criminelle.
--"Rideaux tirés,
Peut-on entrer?
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous laisses,
Tu nous laiss's et tu t'en vas,
La source des frais rosiers baisse.
Vraiment! Et lui qui ne vient pas...."
Il viendra! Vous serez les pauvres cœurs en faute,
Fiancés au remords comme aux essais sans fond,
Et les suffisants cœurs cossus, n'ayant d'autre hôte
Qu'un train-train pavoisé d'estime et de chiffons
Mourir? peut-être brodent-elles,
Pour un oncle à dot, des bretelles?
--"Jamais! Jamais!
Si tu savais!
Tu t'en vas et tu nous quittes,
Tu nous quitt's et tu t'en vas,
Mais tu nous reviendras bien vite
Guérir mon beau mal, n'est-ce pas?"
Et c'est vrai! l'Idéal les fait divaguer toutes;
Vigne bohème, même en ces quartiers aisés.
La vie est là; le pur flacon des vives gouttes
Sera, _comme il convient_, d'eau propre baptisé.
Aussi, bientôt, se joueront-elles
De plus exactes ritournelles.
"--Seul oreiller!
Mur familier!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous laisses,
Tu nous laiss's et tu t'en vas,
Que ne suis-je morte à la messe!
O mois, ô linges, ô repas!"
The journalist and his papers exist by reason of their "protective
coloring." They must think as their readers think at a given moment.
It is impossible that Jules Laforgue should have written his poems in
America in "the eighties." He was born in 1860, died in 1887 of _la
misère_, of consumption and abject poverty in Paris. The vaunted
sensitiveness of French perception, and the fact that he knew a
reasonable number of wealthy and influential people, did nothing to
prevent this. He had published two small volumes, one edition of each.
The seventh edition of his collected poems is dated 1913, and doubtless
they have been reprinted since then with increasing celerity.
Un couchant des Cosmogonies!
Ah! que la Vie est quotidienne....
Et, du plus vrai qu'on se souvienne,
Comme on fut piètre et sans génie....
What is the man in the street to make of this, or of the _Complainte des
Bons Ménages_!
L'Art sans poitrine m'a trop longtemps bercé dupe.
Si ses labours sont fiers, que ses blés décevants!
Tiens, laisse-moi bêler tout aux plis de ta jupe
Qui fleure le couvent.
Delicate irony, the citadel of the intelligent, has a curious effect on
these people. They wish always to be exhorted, at all times no matter
how incongruous and unsuitable, to do those things which almost any one
will and does do whenever suitable opportunity is presented. As Henry
James has said, "It was a period when writers besought the deep blue sea
'to roll.'"
The ironist is one who suggests that the reader should think, and this
process being unnatural to the majority of mankind, the way of the
ironical is beset with snares and with furze-bushes.
Laforgue was a purge and a critic. He laughed out the errors of
Flaubert, i.e., the clogging and cumbrous historical detail. He left
_Cœur Simple, L'Education, Madame Bovary, Bouvard_. His _Salome_
makes game of the rest. The short story has become vapid because sixty
thousand story writers have all set themselves to imitating De
Maupassant, perhaps a thousand from the original.
Laforgue implies definitely that certain things in prose were at an end,
and I think he marks the next phase after Gautier in French poetry. It
seems to me that without a familiarity with Laforgue one can not
appreciate--i.e., determine the value of--certain positives and certain
negatives in French poetry since 1890.
He deals for the most part with literary poses and _clichés_, yet he
makes them a vehicle for the expression of his own very personal
emotions; of his own unperturbed sincerity.
Je ne suis pas "ce gaillard-là!" ni Le Superbe!
Mais mon âme, qu'un cri un peu cru exacerbe,
Est au fond distinguée et franche comme une herbe.
This is not the strident and satiric voice of Corbière, calling Hugo
"_Garde National épique_," and Lamartine "_Lacrymatoire d'abonnés_." It
is not Tailhade drawing with rough strokes the people he sees daily in
Paris, and bursting with guffaws over the Japanese in their
mackintoshes, the West Indian mulatto behind the bar in the Quartier. It
is not Georges Fourest burlesquing in a café; Fourest's guffaw is
magnificent, he is hardly satirical. Tailhade draws from life and
indulges in occasional squabbles.
Laforgue was a better artist than any of these men save Corbière. He was
not in the least of their sort.
Beardsley's "Under the Hill" was until recently the only successful
attempt to produce "anything like Laforgue" in our tongue. "Under the
Hill" was issued in a limited edition. Laforgue's _Moralités
Légendaires_ was issued in England by the Ricketts and Hacon press in a
limited edition, and there the thing has remained. Laforgue can never
become a popular cult because tyros can not imitate him.
One may discriminate between Laforgue's tone and that of his
contemporary French satirists. He is the finest wrought; he is most
"verbalist." Bad verbalism is rhetoric, or the use of _cliché_
unconsciously, or a mere playing with phrases. But there is good
verbalism, distinct from lyricism or imagism, and in this Laforgue is a
master. He writes not the popular language of any country, but an
international tongue common to the excessively cultivated, and to those
more or less familiar with French literature of the first three-fourths
of the nineteenth century.
He has done, sketchily and brilliantly, for French literature a work not
incomparable to what Flaubert was doing for "France" in _Bouvard and
Pécuchet_, if one may compare the flight of the butterfly with the
progress of an ox, both proceeding toward the same point of the compass.
He has dipped his wings in the dye of scientific terminology. Pierrot
_imberbe_ has
Un air d'hydrocéphale asperge.
The tyro can not play about with such things. Verbalism demands a set
form used with irreproachable skill. Satire needs, usually, the form of
cutting rhymes to drive it home.
Chautauquas, Mrs. Eddy, Dr. Dowies, Comstocks, Societies for the
Prevention of All Human Activities, are impossible in the wake of
Laforgue. And he is therefore an exquisite poet, a deliverer of the
nations, a Numa Pompilius, a father of light. And to many people this
mystery, the mystery why such force should reside in so fragile a book,
why such power should coincide with so great a nonchalance of manner,
will remain forever a mystery.
Que loin l'âme type
Qui m'a dit adieu
Parce que mes yeux
Manquaient de principes!
Elle, en ce moment.
Elle, si pain tendre,
Oh! peut-être engendre
Quelque garnement.
Car on l'a unie
Avec un monsieur,
Ce qu'il y a de mieux,
Mais pauvre en génie.
Laforgue is incontrovertible. The "strong silent man" of the kinema has
not monopolized all the certitudes.
TRISTAN CORBIERE
(1841-1875)
Corbière seems to me the greatest poet of the period. "La Rapsode
Foraine et le Pardon de Sainte-Anne" is, to my mind, beyond all comment.
He first published in '73, remained practically unknown until Verlaine's
essay in '84, and was hardly known to "the public" until the Messein
edition of his work in '91.
LA RAPSODE FORAINE ET LE PARDON DE SAINTE-ANNE
La Palud, 27 août, jour du Pardon.
Bénite est l'infertile plage
Où, comme la mer, tout est nud.
Sainte est la chapelle sauvage
De Sainte-Anne-de-la-Palud....
De la Bonne Femme Sainte Anne,
Grand'tante du petit Jésus,
En bois pourri dans sa soutane
Riche ... plus riche que Crésus!
Contre elle la petite Vierge,
Fuseau frêle, attend l'_Angélus_;
Au coin, Joseph, tenant son cierge,
Niche, en saint qu'on ne fête plus...
C'est le Pardon.--Liesse et mystères--
Déjà l'herbe rase a des poux....
_Sainte Anne, Onguent des belles-mères!_
_Consolation des époux!_
Des paroisses environnantes:
De Plougastel et Loc-Tudy,
Ils viennent tous planter leurs tentes,
Trois nuits, trois jours,--jusqu'au lundi.
Trois jours, trois nuits, la palud grogne,
Selon l'antique rituel,
--Chœur séraphique et chant d'ivrogne--
LE CANTIQUE SPIRITUEL.
_Mère taillée à coups de hache,_
_Tout cœur de chêne dur et bon;_
_Sous l'or de ta robe se cache_
_L'âme en pièce d'un franc Breton!_
_--Vieille verte à la face usée_
_Comme la pierre du torrent,
Par des larmes d'amour creusée,_
_Séchée avec des pleurs de sang ..._
_--Toi, dont la mamelle tarie_
_S'est refait, pour avoir porté_
_La Virginité de Marie,_
_Une mâle virginité!_
_--Servante-maîtresse altière,_
_Très haute devant le Très-Haut;_
_Au pauvre monde, pas fière,_
_Dame pleine de comme-il-faut!_
_--Bâton des aveugles! Béquille_
_Des vieilles! Bras des nouveau-nés!_
_Mère de madame ta fille!_
_Parente des abandonnés!_
_--O Fleur de la pucelle neuve!_
_Fruit de l'épouse au sein grossi!_
_Reposoir de la femme veuve ..._
_Et du veuf Dame-de-merci!_
_--Arche de Joachim! Aïeule!_
_Médaille de cuivre effacé!_
_Gui sacré! Trèfle quatre-feuille!_
_Mont d'Horeb! Souche de Jessé!_
_--O toi qui recouvrais la cendre,_
_Qui filais comme on fait chez nous,_
_Quand le soir venait à descendre,_
_Tenant l'_ENFANT _sur tes genoux;_
_Toi qui fus là, seule, pour faire_
_Son maillot à Bethléem,_
_Et là, pour coudre son suaire_
_Douloureux, à Jérusalem!..._
_Des croix profondes sont tes rides,_
_Tes cheveux sont blancs comme fils...._
_--Préserve des regards arides_
_Le berceau de nos petits-fils...._
_Fais venir et conserve en joie_
_Ceux à naître et ceux qui sont nés,_
_Et verse, sans que Dieu te voie,_
_L'eau de tes yeux sur les damnés!_
_Reprends dans leur chemise blanche_
_Les petits qui sont en langueur...._
_Rappelle à l'éternel Dimanche_
_Les vieux qui traînent en longueur:_
_--Dragon-gardien de la Vierge,_
_Garde la crèche sous ton œil._
_Que, près de toi, Joseph-concierge_
_Garde la propreté du seuil!_
_Prends pitié de la fille-mère,_
_Du petit au bord du chemin...._
_Si quelqu'un leur jette la pierre,_
_Que la pierre se change en pain!_
_--Dame bonne en mer et sur terre,_
_Montre-nous le ciel et le port,_
_Dans la tempête ou dans la guerre...._
_O Fanal de la bonne mort!_
_Humble: à tes pieds n'as point d'étoile,_
_Humble ... et brave pour protéger!_
_Dans la nue apparaît ton voile,_
_Pâle auréole du danger._
_--Aux perdus dont la vie est grise,_
_(--Sauf respect--perdus de boisson)_
_Montre le clocher de l'église_
_Et le chemin de la maison._
_Prête ta douce et chaste flamme_
_Aux chrétiens qui sont ici...._
_Ton remède de bonne femme_
_Pour tes bêtes-à-corne aussi!_
_Montre à nos femmes et servantes_
_L'ouvrage et la fécondité...._
_--Le bonjour aux âmes parentes_
_Qui sont bien dans l'éternité!_
_--Nous mettrons un cordon de cire,_
_De cire-vierge jaune autour_
_De ta chapelle et ferons dire_
_Ta messe basse au point du jour._
_Préserve notre cheminée_
_Des sorts et du monde malin...._
_A Pâques te sera donnée_
_Une quenouille avec du lin._
_Si nos corps sont puants sur terre,_
_Ta grâce est un bain de santé;_
_Répands sur nous, au cimetière,_
_Ta bonne odeur de sainteté._
_--A l'an prochain!--Voici ton cierge:_
_(C'est deux livres qu'il a coûté)_
_ .... Respects à Madame la Vierge,_
_Sans oublier la Trinité._
... Et les fidèles, en chemise,
_Sainte Anne, ayez pitié de nous!_
Font trois fois le tour de l'église
En se traînant sur leurs genoux,
Et boivent l'eau miraculeuse
Où les Job teigneux ont lavé
Leur nudité contagieuse....
_Allez: la Foi vous a sauvé!_
C'est là que tiennent leurs cénacles
Les pauvres, frères de Jésus.
--Ce n'est pas la cour des miracles,
Les trous sont vrais: _Vide latus!_
Sont-ils pas divins sur leurs claies
Qu'auréole un nimbe vermeil
Ces propriétaires de plaies,
Rubis vivants sous le soleil!...
En aboyant, un rachitique
Secoue un moignon désossé,
Coudoyant un épileptique
Qui travaille dans un fossé.
Là, ce tronc d'homme où croit l'ulcère,
Contre un tronc d'arbre où croît le gui,
Ici, c'est la fille et la mère
Dansant la danse de Saint-Guy.
Cet autre pare le cautère
De son petit enfant malsain:
--L'enfant se doit a son vieux père....
--Et le chancre est un gagne-pain!
Là, c'est l'idiot de naissance,
Un _visité par Gabriel_,
Dans l'extase de l'innocence....
--L'innocent est (tout) près du ciel!--
--Tiens, passant, regarde: tout passe.
L'œil de l'idiot est resté.
Car il est en état de grâce....
--Et la Grâce est l'Eternite!--
Parmi les autres, après vêpre,
Qui sont d'eau bénite arrosés,
Un cadavre, vivant de lèpre,
Fleurit, souvenir des croisés....
Puis tous ceux que les Rois de France
Guérissaient d'un toucher de doigts....
--Mais la France n'a plus de Rois,
Et leur dieu suspend sa clémence.
* * * * * * *
Une forme humaine qui beugle
Contre le _calvaire_ se tient;
C'est comme une moitié d'aveugle:
Elle est borgne et n'a pas de chien....
C'est une rapsode foraine
Qui donne aux gens pour un liard
L' _Istoyre de la Magdalayne,_
Du _Juif Errant_ ou _d'Abaylar_.
Elle hâle comme une plainte,
Comme une plainte de la faim.
Et, longue comme un jour sans pain,
Lamentablement, sa complainte....
--Ça chante comme ça respire,
Triste oiseau sans plume et sans nid
Vaguant où son instinct l'attire:
Autour des Bon-Dieu de granit....
Ça peut parler aussi, sans doute,
Ça peut penser comme ça voit:
Toujours devant soi la grand'route....
--Et, quand c'a deux sous, ça les boit.
--Femme: on dirait, hélas!--sa nippe
Lui pend, ficelée en jupon;
Sa dent noire serre une pipe
Eteinte.... Oh, la vie a du bon!--
Son nom.... ça se nomme Misère.
Ça s'est trouvé né par hasard.
Ça sera trouvé mort par terre....
La même chose--quelque part.
Si tu la rencontres, Poète,
Avec son vieux sac de soldat:
C'est notre sœur.... donne--c'est fête--
Pour sa pipe, un peu de tabac!...
Tu verras dans sa face creuse
Se creuser, comme dans du bois,
Un sourire; et sa main galeuse
Te faire un vrai signe de croix.
(_Les Amours Jaunes._)
It is not long since a "strong, silent" American, who had been spending
a year or so in Paris, complained to me that "all French poetry smelt of
talcum powder." He did not specifically mention Corbière; who, with
perhaps a few dozen other French poets, may have been outside the scope
of his research. Corbière came also to "Paris."
I
Bâtard de Créole et Breton,
Il vint aussi là--fourmilière,
Bazar où rien n'est en pierre,
Où le soleil manque de ton.
--Courage! On fait queue.... Un planton
Vous pousse à la chaîne--derrière!--
--Incendie éteint, sans lumière;
Des seaux passent, vides ou non.--
Là, sa pauvre Muse pucelle
Fit le trottoir en _demoiselle._
Ils disaient: Qu'est-ce qu'elle vend?
--Rien.--Elle restait là, stupide,
N'entendant pas sonner le vide
Et regardant passer le vent....
II
Là: vivre à coups de fouet!--passer
En fiacre, en correctionnelle;
Repasser à la ritournelle,
Se dépasser, et trépasser!--
--Non, petit, il faut commencer
Par être grand--simple ficelle--
Pauvre: remuer l'or à la pelle;
Obscur: un nom à tout casser!...
Le coller chez les mastroquets,
Et l'apprendre à des perroquets
Qui le chantent ou qui le sifflent--
--Musique!--C'est le paradis
Des mahomets ou des houris,
Des dieux souteneurs qui se giflent!
People, at least some of them, think more highly of his Breton subjects
than of the Parisian, but I can not see that he loses force on leaving
the sea-board; for example, his "Frère et Sœur Jumeaux" seems to me
"by the same hand" and rather better than his "Roscoff." His language
does not need any particular subject matter, or prefer one to another.
"Mannequin idéal, tête-de-turc du leurre," "Fille de marbre, en rut!",
"Je voudrais être chien à une fille publique" are all, with a constant
emission of equally vigorous phrases, to be found in the city poems. At
his weakest he is touched with the style of his time, i.e., he falls
into a phrase _à la Hugo_,--but seldom. And he is conscious of the will
to break from this manner, and is the first, I think, to satirize it, or
at least the first to hurl anything as apt and violent as "garde
nationale épique" or "inventeur de la larme écrite" at the
Romantico-rhetorico and the sentimento-romantico of Hugo and Lamartine.
His nearest kinships in our period are to Gautier and Laforgue, though
it is Villon whom most by life and temperament he must be said to
resemble.
Laforgue was, for four or five years, "reader" to the ex-Kaiser's mama;
he escaped and died of _la misère._ Corbière had, I believe, but one
level of poverty.
Un beau jour--quel métier!--je faisais, comme ça
Ma croisière.--Métier!....--Enfin. Elle passa.
--Elle qui,--La Passante! Elle, avec son ombrelle!
Vrai valet de bourreau, je la frôlai....--mais Elle
Me regarda tout bas, souriant en dessous,
Et--me tendit sa main, et....
m'a donné deux sous.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
(1854-1891)
Rimbaud's first book appeared in '73. His complete poems with a preface
by Verlaine in '95. Laforgue conveys his content by comment, Corbière by
ejaculation, as if the words were wrenched and knocked out of him by
fatality; by the violence of his feeling, Rimbaud presents a thick suave
color, firm, even.
_Cinq heures du soir_
AU CABARET VERT
Depuis huit jours, j'avais déchiré mes bottines
Aux cailloux des chemins. J'entrais à Charleroi,
--_Au Cabaret Vert_: je demandai des tartines
De beurre et du jambon qui fût à moitié froid.
Bienheureux, j'allongeai les jambes sous la table
Verte: je contemplai les sujets très naïfs
De la tapisserie.--Et ce fut adorable,
Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,
--Celle-là, ce n'est pas un baiser qui l'épeure!--
Rieuse, m'apporta des tartines de beurre,
Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié,
Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d'une gousse
D'ail,--et m'emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.
The actual writing of poetry has advanced little or not at all since
Rimbaud. Cézanne was the first to paint, as Rimbaud had written,--in,
for example, "Les Assis":
Ils ont greffé dans des amours epileptiques
Leur fantasque ossature aux grands squelettes noirs
De leurs chaises; leurs pieds aux barreaux rachitiques
S'entrelacent pour les matins et pour les soirs
Ces vieillards ont toujours fait tresse avec leurs sièges.
or in the octave of
VENUS ANADYOMENE
Comme d'un cercueil vert en fer-blanc, une tête
De femme à cheveux bruns fortement pommadés
D'une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête,
Montrant des déficits assez mal ravaudés;
Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates
Qui saillent; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort,
--La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates
Et les rondeurs des reins semble prendre l'essor.
Tailhade has painted his "Vieilles Actrices" at greater length, but
smiling; Rimbaud does not endanger his intensity by a chuckle. He is
serious as Cézanne is serious. Comparisons across an art are always
vague and inexact, and there are no real parallels; still it is possible
to think of Corbière a little as one thinks of Goya, without Goya's
Spanish, with infinite differences, but with a macabre intensity, and a
modernity that we have not yet surpassed. There are possible grounds for
comparisons of like sort between Rimbaud and Cézanne.
Tailhade and Rimbaud were both born in '54; there is not a question of
priority in date, I do not know who hit first on the form, but Rimbaud's
"Chercheuses" is a very good example of a mould not unlike that into
which Tailhade has cast his best poems.
LES CHERCHEUSES DE POUX
Quand le front de l'enfant plein de rouges tourmentes,
Implore l'essaim blanc des rêves indistincts,
Il vient près de son lit deux grandes sœurs charmantes
Avec de frêles doigts aux ongles argentins.
Elles asseoient l'enfant auprès d'une croisée
Grande ouverte où l'air bleu baigne un fouillis de fleurs,
Et, dans ses lourds cheveux où tombe la rosée,
Promènent leurs doigts fins, terribles et charmeurs.
Il écoute chanter leurs haleines craintives
Qui fleurent de longs miels végétaux et rosés
Et qu'interrompt parfois un sifflement, salives
Reprises sur la lèvre ou désirs de baisers.
Il entend leurs cils noirs battant sous les silences
Parfumés; et leurs doigts électriques et doux
Font crépiter, parmi ses grises indolences,
Sous leurs ongles royaux la mort des petits poux.
Voilà que monte en lui le vin de la Paresse,
Soupir d'harmonica qui pourrait délirer;
L'enfant se sent, selon la lenteur des caresses,
Sourdre et mourir sans cesse un désir de pleurer.
The poem is "not really" like Tailhade's, but the comparison is worth
while. Many readers will be unable to "see over" the subject matter and
consider the virtues of the style, but we are, let us hope, serious
people; besides, Rimbaud's mastery is not confined to "the unpleasant";
"Roman" begins:
I
On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans.
--Un beau soir, foin des bocks et de la limonade,
Des cafés tapageurs aux lustres éclatants!
--On va sous les tilleuls verts de la promenade.
Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin!
L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupière;
Le vent chargé de bruits,--la ville n'est pas loin--
A des parfums de vigne et des parfums de bière....
The sixth line is worthy of To-em-mei. But Rimbaud has not exhausted his
idyllic moods or capacities in one poem. Witness:
COMEDIE EN TROIS BAISERS
Elle était fort déshabillée,
Et de grands arbres indiscrets
Aux vitres penchaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près.
Assise sur ma grande chaise.
Mi-nue elle joignait les mains.
Sur le plancher frissonnaient d'aise
Ses petits pieds si fins, si fins.
--Je regardai, couleur de cire
Un petit rayon buissonnier
Papillonner, comme un sourire
Sur son beau sein, mouche au rosier.
--Je baisai ses fines chevilles.
Elle eut un long rire très mal
Qui s'égrenait en claires trilles,
Une risure de cristal....
Les petits pieds sous la chemise
Se sauvèrent: "Veux-tu finir!"
--La première audace permise,
Le rire feignait de punir!
--Pauvrets palpitant sous ma lèvre,
Je baisai doucement ses yeux:
--Elle jeta sa tête mièvre
En arrière: "Oh! c'est encor mieux!...
"Monsieur, j'ai deux mots à te dire...."
--Je lui jetai le reste au sein
Dans un baiser, qui la fit rire
D'un bon rire qui voulait bien....
--Elle était fort déshabillée
Et de grands arbres indiscrets,
Aux vitres penchaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près.
The subject matter is older than Ovid, and how many poems has it led to
every silliness, every vulgarity! One has no instant of doubt here, nor,
I think, in any line of any poem of Rimbaud's. How much I might have
learned from the printed page that I have learned slowly from
actualities. Or perhaps we never do learn from the page; but are only
capable of recognizing the page after we have learned from actuality.
I do not know whether or no Rimbaud "started" the furniture poetry with
"Le Buffet"; it probably comes, most of it, from the beginning of
Gautier's "Albertus." I cannot see that the "Bateau Ivre" rises above
the general level of his work, though many people seem to know of this
poem (and of the sonnet on the vowels) who do not know the rest of his
work. Both of these poems are in Van Bever and Léautaud. I wonder in
what other poet will we find such firmness of coloring and such
certitude.
TABLE
Laforgue 1860-1887; published 1885
Corbière 1840-1875; published 1873 and 1891
Rimbaud 1854-1891; published 1873
Remy de Gourmont 1858-1915
Merril 1868-1915
Tailhade 1854-1919
Verhaeren 1855-1916
Moréas 1856-1911
_Living_:
Vielé-Griffin 1864
Jammes 1868
De Régnier 1864
Spire 1868
_Younger Men_:
Klingsor, Romains, Vildrac
_Other Dates_:
Verlaine 1844-1896
Mallarmé 1842-1898
Samain 1858-1900
Elskamp, born 1862
REMY DE GOURMONT
(1858-1915)
As in prose, Remy de Gourmont found his own form, so also in poetry,
influenced presumably by the medieval sequaires and particularly by
Goddeschalk's quoted in his (de Gourmont's) work on "Le Latin Mystique,"
he recreated the "litanies." It was one of the great gifts of
"symbolisme," of the doctrine that one should "suggest" not "present";
it is, in his hand, an effective indirectness. The procession of all
beautiful women moves before one in the "Litanies de la Rose"; and the
rhythm is incomparable. It is not a poem to lie on the page, it must
come to life in audition, or in the finer audition which one may have in
imagining sound. One must "hear" it, in one way or another, and out of
that intoxication comes beauty. One does no injustice to De Gourmont by
giving this poem alone. The "Litany of the Trees" is of equal or almost
equal beauty. The Sonnets in prose are different; they rise out of
natural speech, out of conversation. Paul Fort perhaps began or rebegan
the use of conversational speech in rhyming prose paragraphs, at times
charmingly.
LITANIES DE LA ROSE
_A Henry de Groux._
Fleur hypocrite,
Fleur du silence.
Rose couleur de cuivre, plus frauduleuse que nos
joies, rose couleur de cuivre, embaume-nous dans
tes mensonges, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose au visage peint comme une fille d'amour, rose
au cœur prostitue, rose au visage peint, fais
semblant d'être pitoyable, fleur hypocrite, fleur
du silence.
Rose à la joue puérile, ô vierges des futures
trahisons, rose à la joue puérile, innocente et
rouge, ouvre les rets de tes yeux clairs, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose aux yeux noirs, miroir de ton néant, rose aux
yeux noirs, fais-nous croire au mystère, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose couleur d'or pur, ô coffre-fort de l'idéal,
rose couleur d'or pur, donne-nous la clef de ton
ventre, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose couleur d'argent, encensoir de nos rêves,
rose couleur d'argent prends notre cœur et
fais-en de la fumée, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose au regard saphique, plus pâle que les lys,
rose au regard saphique, offre-nous le parfum de
ton illusoire virginité, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose au front pourpre, colère des femmes
dédaignées, rose au front pourpre dis-nous le
secret de ton orgueil, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose au front d'ivoire jaune, amante de toi-même,
rose au front d'ivoire jaune, dis-nous le secret
de tes nuits virginales, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose aux lèvres de sang, ô mangeuse de chair, rose
aux lèvres de sang, si tu veux notre sang, qu'en
ferions-nous? bois-le, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose couleur de soufre, enfer des désirs vains,
rose couleur de soufre, allume le bûcher où tu
planes, âme et flamme, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose couleur de pêche, fruit velouté de fard, rose
sournoise, rose couleur de pêche, empoisonne nos
dents, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose couleur de chair, déesse de la bonne volonté,
rose couleur de chair, fais-nous baiser la
tristesse de ta peau fraîche et fade, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose vineuse, fleur des tonnelles et des caves,
rose vineuse, les alcools fous gambadent dans ton
haleine: souffle-nous l'horreur de l'amour, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose violette, ô modestie des rillettes perverses,
rose violette, tes yeux sont plus grands que le
reste, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose rose, pucelle au cœur désordonné, rose
rose, robe de mousseline, entr'ouvre tes ailes
fausses, ange, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose en papier de soie, simulacre adorable des
grâces incréées, rose en papier de soie, n'es-tu
pas la vraie rose, fleur du silence.
Rose couleur d'aurore, couleur du temps, couleur
de rien, ô sourire du Sphinx, rose couleur
d'aurore, sourire ouvert sur le néant, nous
t'aimerons, car tu mens, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose blonde, léger manteau de chrôme sur des
épaules frêles, ô rose blonde, femelle plus forte
que les mâles, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence!
Rose en forme de coupe, vase rouge où mordent les
dents quand la bouche y vient boire, rose en forme
de coupe, nos morsures te font sourire et nos
baisers te font pleurer, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose toute blanche, innocente et couleur de lait,
rose toute blanche, tant de candeur nous
épouvante, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose couleur de bronze, pâte cuite au soleil, rose
couleur de bronze, les plus durs javelots
s'émoussent sur ta peau, fleur hypocrite fleur du
silence.
Rose couleur de feu, creuset spécial pour les
chairs réfractaires, rose couleur de feu, ô
providence des ligueurs en enfance, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose incarnate, rose stupide et pleine de santé,
rose incarnate, tu nous abreuves et tu nous
leurres d'un vin très rouge et très bénin, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose en satin cérise, munificence exquise des
lèvres triomphales, rose en satin cérise, ta
bouche enluminée a posé sur nos chairs le sceau de
pourpre de son mirage, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose au cœur virginal, ô louche et rose
adolescence qui n'a pas encore parlé, rose au
cœur virginal, tu n'as rien à nous dire, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose groseille, honte et rougeur des péchés
ridicules, rose groseille, on a trop chiffonné ta
robe, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose couleur du soir, demi-morte d'ennui, fumée
crépusculaire, rose couleur du soir, tu meurs
d'amour en baisant tes mains lasses, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose bleue, rose iridine, monstre couleur des yeux
de la Chimère, rose bleue, lève un peu tes
paupières: as-tu peur qu-on te regarde, les yeux
dans les yeux, Chimère, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence!
Rose verte, rose couleur de mer, ô nombril des,
sirènes, rose verte, gemme ondoyante et fabuleuse,
tu n'es plus que de l'eau dès qu'un doigt t'a
touchée, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose escarboucle, rose fleurie au front noir du
dragon, rose escarboucle, tu n'es plus qu'une
boucle de ceinture, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose couleur de vermilion, bergère énamourée
couchée dans les sillons, rose couleur de
vermilion, le berger te respire et le bouc t'a
broutée, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose des tombes, fraicheur émanée des charognes,
rose des tombes, toute mignonne et rose, adorable
parfum des fines pourritures, tu fais semblant de
vivre, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose brune, couleur des mornes acajous, rose
brune, plaisirs permis, sagesse, prudence et
prévoyance, tu nous regardes avec des yeux rogues,
fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose ponceau, ruban des fillettes modèles, rose
ponceau, gloire des petites poupées, es-tu niaise
ou sournoise, joujou des petits frères, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose rouge et noire, rose insolente et secrète,
rose rouge et noire, ton insolence et ton rouge
ont pâli parmi les compromis qu'invente la vertu,
fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose ardoise, grisaille des vertus vaporeuses,
rose ardoise, tu grimpes et tu fleuris autour des
vieux bancs solitaires, rose du soir, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose pivoine, modeste vanité des jardins
plantureux, rose pivoine, le vent n'a retroussé
tes feuilles que par hasard, et tu n'en fus pas
mécontente, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose neigeuse, couleur de la neige et des plumes
du cygne, rose neigeuse, tu sais que la neige est
fragile et tu n'ouvres tes plumes de cygne qu'aux
plus insignes, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Rose hyaline, couleur des sources claires jaillies
d'entre les herbes, rose hyaline, Hylas est mort
d'avoir aimé tes yeux, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose opale, ô sultane endormie dans l'odeur du
harem, rose opale, langueur des constantes
caresses, ton cœur connait la paix profonde des
vices satisfaits, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose améthyste, étoile matinale, tendresse
épiscopale, rose améthyste, tu dors sur des
poitrines dévotes et douillettes, gemme offerte à
Marie, ô gemme sacristine, fleur hypocrite, fleur
du silence.
Rose cardinale, rose couleur du sang de l'Eglise
romaine, rose cardinale, tu fais rever les grands
yeux des mignons et plus d'un t'épingla au nœud
de sa jarretière, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.
Rose papale, rose arrosée des mains qui bénissent
le monde, rose papale, ton cœur d'or est en
cuivre, et les larmes qui perlent sur ta vaine
corolle, ce sont les pleurs du Christ, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.
Fleur hypocrite,
Fleur du silence.
DE REGNIER
(born 1864)
De Régnier is counted a successor to the Parnassiens, and has indeed
written much of gods and of marble fountains, as much perhaps of the
marble decor, as have other contemporaries of late renaissance and of
more modern house furniture. His "J'ai feint que les dieux m'aient
parlé" opens charmingly. He has in the "Odelettes" made two darts into
vers libre which are perhaps worth many more orderly pages, and show
lyric sweetness.
ODELETTE
Si j'ai parlé
De mon amour, c'est à l'eau lente
Qui m'écoute quand je me penche
Sur elle; si j'ai parlé
De mon amour, c'est au vent
Qui rit et cuchote entre les branches;
Si j'ai parlé de mon amour, c'est à l'oiseau
Qui passe et chante
Avec le vent;
Si j'ai parlè
C'est a l'écho.
Si j'ai aimé de grand amour,
Triste ou joyeux,
Ce sont tes yeux;
Si j'ai aimé de grand amour,
Ce fut ta bouche grave et douce,
Ce fut ta bouche;
Si j'ai aimé de grand amour,
Ce furent ta chair tiède et tes mains fraîches,
Et c'est ton ombre que je cherche.
He has joined himself to the painters of contemporary things in:
L'ACCUEIL
Tous deux étaient beaux de corps et de visages,
L'air francs et sages
Avec un clair sourire dans les yeux,
Et, devant eux,
Debout en leur jeunesse svelte et prompte,
Je me sentais courbé et j'avais presque honte
D'être si vieux.
Les ans
Sont lourds aux épaules et pèsent
Aux plus fortes
De tout le poids des heures mortes,
Les ans
Sont durs, et brève
La vie et l'on a vite des cheveux blancs;
Et j'ai déjà vécu beaucoup de jours.
Les ans sont lourds....
Et tous deux me regardaient, surpris de voir
Celui qu'ils croyaient autre en leur pensée
Se lever pour les recevoir
Vêtu de bure et le front nu
Et non pas, comme en leur pensée,
Drapé de pourpre et lauré d'or.
Et je leur dis: "Soyez tous deux les bienvenus."
Ce fut alors
Que je leur dis:
"Mes fils, quoi, vous avez monté la côte
Sous ce soleil cuisant d'août
Jusqu'à ma maison haute,
O vous
Qu'attend là-bas peut-être, au terme du chemin
Le salut amoureux de quelque blanche main!
Si vous avez pour moi allongé votre route
Peut-être, au moins mes chants vous auront-ils aidés,
De leurs rythmes présents en vos mémoires,
A marcher d'un jeune pas scandé
Je n'ai jamais désiré d'autre gloire
Sinon que les vers du poète
Plussent à la voix qui les répète.
Si les miens vous ont plu: merci,
Car c'est pour cela que, chantant
Mon rêve, après l'avoir conçu en mon esprit,
Depuis vingt ans,
J'habite ici."
Et, d'un geste, je leur montrai la chambre vide
Avec son mur de pierre et sa lampe d'argile
Et le lit où je dors et le sol où, du pied,
Je frappe pour apprendre au vers estropié
A marcher droit, et le calame de roseau
Dont la pointe subtile aide à fixer le mot
Sur la tablette lisse et couverte de cire
Dont la divine odeur la retient et l'attire
Et le fait, dans la strophe en fleurs qu'il ensoleille,
Mystérieusement vibrer comme une abeille.
Et je repris:
"Mes fils,
Les ans
Sont lourds aux épaules et pèsent
Aux plus fortes
De tout le poids des heures mortes.
Les ans
Sont durs, la vie est brève
Et l'on a vite des cheveux blancs,
Si quelque jour,
En revenant d'où vous allez,
Vous rencontriez sur cette même route,
Entre les orges et les blés,
Des gens en troupe
Montant ici avec des palmes à la main,
Dites-vous bien
Que si vous les suiviez vous ne me verriez pas
Comme aujourd'hui debout en ma robe de laine
Qui se troue a l'épaule et se déchire au bras,
Mais drapé de pourpre hautaine
Peut-être--et mort
Et lauré d'or!"
Je leur ai dit cela, pour qu'ils le sachent,
Car ils sont beaux tous deux de corps et de visages,
L'air francs et sages
Avec un clair sourire aux yeux,
Parce qu'en eux
Peut-être vit quelque désir de gloire,
Je leur ai parlé ainsi pour qu'ils sachent
Ce qu'est la gloire,
Ce qu'elle donne,
Ce qu'il faut croire
De son vain jeu,
Et que son dur laurier ne pose sa couronne
Que sur le front inerte et qui n'est plus qu'un peu
Déjà d'argile humaine où vient de vivre un Dieu.
Here we have the modern tone in De Régnier. My own feeling at the moment
is that his hellenics, his verse on classical and ancient subjects, is
likely to be overshadowed by that of Samain and Heredia. I have doubts
whether his books will hold against the Cléopatra sonnets, or if he has
equaled, in this vein, the poem beginning "Mon âme est une infante en
robe de parade." But in the lyric odelette, and in this last given poem
in particular, we find him leading perhaps onward toward Vildrac, and
toward a style which might be the basis for a certain manner F.M.
Hueffer has used in English vers libre, rather than remembering the
Parnassiens.
EMILE VERHAEREN
Verhaeren has been so well introduced to America by his obituary notices
that I can scarcely hope to compete with them in this limited space. One
can hardly represent him better than by the well known:
LES PAUVRES
Il est ainsi de pauvres cœurs
avec en eux, des lacs de pleurs,
qui sont pâles, comme les pierres
d'un cimetière.
Il est ainsi de pauvres dos
plus lourds de peine et de fardeaux
que les toits des cassines brunes,
parmi les dunes.
Il est ainsi de pauvres mains,
comme feuilles sur les chemins,
comme feuilles jaunes et mortes,
devant la porte.
Il est ainsi de pauvres yeux
humbles et bons et soucieux
et plus tristes que ceux des bêtes,
sous la tempête.
Il est ainsi de pauvres gens,
aux gestes las et indulgents
sur qui s'acharne la misère,
au long des plaines de la terre.
VIELÉ-GRIFFIN
Two men, half-Americans, Vielé-Griffin and Stuart Merril, won for
themselves places among the recent French poets. Vielé-Griffin's poem
for the death of Mallarmé is among his better known works:
IN MEMORIAM STEPHANE MALLARMÉ
Si l'on te disait: Maître!
Le jour se lève;
Voici une aube encore, la même, pâle;
Maître, j'ai ouvert la fenêtre,
L'aurore s'en vient encor du seuil oriental,
Un jour va naître!
--Je croirais t'entendre dire: Je rêve.
Si l'on te disait: Maître, nous sommes là,
Vivants et forts,
Comme ce soir d'hier, devant ta porte;
Nous sommes venus en riant, nous sommes là,
Guettant le sourire et l'étreinte forte,
--On nous répondrait: Le Maître est mort.
Des fleurs de ma terrasse,
Des fleurs comme au feuillet d'un livre,
Des fleurs, pourquoi?
Voici un peu de nous, la chanson basse
Qui tourne et tombe,
--Comme ces feuilles-ci tombent et tournoient--
Voici la honte et la colère de vivre
Et de parler des mots--contre ta tombe.
His curious and, perhaps not in the bad sense, old-fashioned melodic
quality shows again in the poem beginning:
Lâche comme le froid et la pluie,
Brutal et sourd comme le vent,
Louche et faux comme le ciel bas,
L'Automne rôde par ici,
Son bâton heurte aux contrevents;
Ouvre la porte, car il est là.
Ouvre la porte et fais-lui honte,
Son manteau s'emloche et traine,
Ses pieds sont alourdis de boue;
Jette-lui des pierres, quoi qu'il te conte,
Ne crains pas ses paroles de haine:
C'est toujours un rôle qu'il joue.
* * * * * * *
It is embroidery à la Charles D'Orléans; one must take it or leave it.
STUART MERRIL
I know that I have seen somewhere a beautiful and effective ballad of
Merril's. His "Chambre D'Amour" would be more interesting if Samain had
not written "L'Infante," but Merril's painting is perhaps interesting as
comparison. It begins:
Dans la chambre qui fleure un peu la bergamote,
Ce soir, lasse, la voix de l'ancien clavecin
Chevrote des refrains enfantins de gavotte.
There is a great mass of this poetry full of highly cultured house
furnishing; I think Catulle Mendès also wrote it. Merril's "Nocturne"
illustrates a mode of symbolistic writing which has been since played
out and parodied:
La blême lune allume en la mare qui luit,
Miroir des gloires d'or, un émoi d'incendie.
Tout dort. Seul, à mi-mort, un rossignol de nuit
Module en mal d'amour sa molle mélodie.
Plus ne vibrent les vents en le mystère vert
Des ramures. La lune a tu leurs voix nocturnes:
Mais à travers le deuil du feuillage entr'ouvert
Pleuvent les bleus baisers des astres taciturnes.
* * * * * * * *
There is no need to take this sort of tongue-twisting too seriously,
though it undoubtedly was so taken in Paris during the late eighties and
early nineties. He is better illustrated in "La Wallonie," vide infra.
LAURENT TAILHADE
1854-1919
Tailhade's satires seem rough if one come upon them straight from
reading Laforgue; and Laforgue will seem, and is presumably, the greatly
finer artist; but one should not fail to note certain definite
differences. Laforgue is criticizing, and conveying a mood. He is more
or less literary, playing with words. Tailhade is painting contemporary
Paris, with verve. His eye is on the thing itself. He has, au fond, not
very much in common with Laforgue. He was born six years before Laforgue
and in the same year as Rimbaud. Their temperaments are by no means
identical. I do not know whether Tailhade wrote "Hydrotherapie" before
Rimbaud had done "Les Chercheuses." Rimbaud in that poem identifies
himself more or less with the child and its feeling. Tailhade is
detached. I do not say this as praise of either one or the other. I am
only trying to keep things distinct.
HYDROTHERAPIE
Le vieux monsieur, pour prendre une douche ascendante,
A couronné son chef d'un casque d'hidalgo
Qui, malgré sa bedaine ample et son lumbago,
Lui donne un certain air de famine avec Dante.
Ainsi ses membres gourds et sa vertebre à point
Traversent l'appareil des tuyaux et des lances,
Tandis que des masseurs, tout gonflés d'insolences,
Frottent au gant de crin son dos où l'acné point.
Oh! l'eau froide! la bonne et rare panacée
Qui, seule, raffermit la charpente lassée
Et le protoplasma des sénateurs pesants!
Voici que, dans la rue, au sortir de sa douche,
Le vieux monsieur qu'on sait un magistrat farouche
Tient des propos grivois aux filles de douze ans.
QUARTIER LATIN
Dans le bar où jamais le parfum des brévas
Ne dissipa l'odeur de vomi qui la navre
Triomphent les appas de la mère Cadavre
Dont le nom est fameux jusque chez les Howas.
Brune, elle fut jadis vantée entre les brunes,
Tant que son souvenir au Vaux-Hall est resté.
Et c'est toujours avec beaucoup de dignité
Qu'elle rince le zinc et détaille les prunes.
A ces causes, son cabaret s'emplit le soir,
De futurs avoués, trop heureux de surseoir
Quelque temps à l'étude inepte des _Digestes_,
Des Valaques, des riverains du fleuve Amoor
S'acoquinent avec des potards indigestes
Qui s'y viennent former aux choses de l'amour.
RUS
Ce qui fait que l'ancien bandagiste renie
Le comptoir dont le faste alléchait les passants,
C'est son jardin d'Auteuil où, veufs de tout encens,
Les zinnias ont l'air d'être en tôle vernie.
C'est là qu'il vient, le soir, goûter l'air aromal
Et, dans sa rocking-chair, en veston de flanelle,
Aspirer les senteurs qu'épanchent sur Grenelle
Les fabriques de suif et de noir animal.
Bien que libre-penseur et franc-maçon, il juge
Le dieu propice qui lui donna ce refuge
Où se meurt un cyprin emmy la pièce d'eau,
Où, dans la tour mauresque aux lanternes chinoises,
--Tout en lui préparant du sirop de framboises--
Sa "demoiselle" chante un couplet de Nadaud.
From this beneficent treatment of the amiable burgess; from this
perfectly poetic inclusion of modernity, this unrhetorical inclusion of
the factories in the vicinity of Grenelle (inclusion quite different
from the allegorical presentation of workmen's trousers in sculpture,
and the grandiloquent theorizing about the socialistic up-lift or
down-pull of smoke and machinery), Tailhade can move to personal satire,
a personal satire impersonalized by its glaze and its finish.
RONDEL
Dans les cafés d'adolescents
Moréas cause avec Frémine:
L'un, d'un parfait cuistre a la mine,
L'autre beugle des contre-sens.
Rien ne sort moins de chez Classens
Que le linge de ces bramines.
Dans les cafés d'adolescents,
Moréas cause avec Frémine.
Désagrégeant son albumine,
La Tailhède offre quelque encens:
Maurras leur invente Commine
Et ça fait roter les passants,
Dans les cafés d'adolescents.
But perhaps the most characteristic phase of Tailhade is in his pictures
of the bourgeoisie. Here is one depicted with all Tailhadian serenity.
Note also the opulence of his vocables.
DINER CHAMPETRE
Entre les sièges ou des garçons volontaires
Entassent leurs chalants parmi les boulingrins,
La famille Feyssard, avec des airs sereins,
Discute longuement les tables solitaires.
La demoiselle a mis un chapeau rouge vif
Dont s'honore le bon faiseur de sa commune,
Et madame Feyssard, un peu hommasse et brune,
Porte une robe loutre avec des reflets d'if.
Enfin ils sont assis! Or le père commande
Des écrevisses, du potage au lait d'amande,
Toutes choses dont il rêvait depuis longtemps.
Et, dans le ciel couleur de turquoises fanées,
Il voit les songes bleus qu'en ses esprits flottant
A fait naître l'ampleur des truites saumonées.
All through this introduction I am giving the sort of French poem least
likely to have been worn smooth for us; I mean the kind of poem least
represented in English. Landor and Swinburne have, I think, forestalled
Tailhade's hellenic poems in our affections. There are also his ballades
to be considered.
FRANCIS JAMMES
(born 1868)
The bulk of Jammes' unsparable poetry is perhaps larger than that of any
man still living in France. The three first books of poems, and "Le
Triomphe de la Vie" containing "Existences," the more than "Spoon River"
of France, must contain about six hundred pages worth reading.
"Existences" can not be rendered in snippets. It is not a series of
poems, but the canvass of a whole small town or half city, unique,
inimitable and "to the life," full of verve. Only those who have read it
and "L'Angelus de l'Aube," can appreciate the full tragedy of Jammes'
débâcle. Paul Fort had what his friends boasted as "tone," and he has
diluted himself with topicalities; in Jammes' case it is more charitable
to suppose some organic malady, some definite softening of the brain,
for he seems perfectly simple and naive in his débâcle. It may be, in
both cases, that the organisms have broken beneath the strain of modern
existence. But the artist has no business to break.
Let us begin with Jammes' earlier work:
J'aime l'âne si doux
marchant le long des houx.
Il prend garde aux abeilles
et bouge ses oreilles;
et il porte les pauvres
et des sacs remplis d'orge.
Il va, près des fosses
d'un petit pas cassé.
Mon amie le croit bête
parce qu'il est poète.
Il réfléchit toujours,
Ses yeux sont en velours.
Jeune fille au doux cœur
tu n'as pas sa douceur.
* * * * * *
The fault is the fault, or danger, which Dante has labeled "muliebria";
of its excess Jammes has since perished. But the poem to the donkey can,
in certain moods, please one. In other moods the playful simplicity, at
least in excess, is almost infuriating. He runs so close to
sentimentalizing--when he does not fall into that puddle--that there are
numerous excuses for those who refuse him altogether. "J'allai à
Lourdes" has pathos. Compare it with Corbière's "St. Anne" and the
decadence is apparent; it is indeed a sort of half-way house between the
barbaric Breton religion and the ultimate deliquescence of French
Catholicism in Claudel, who (as I think it is James Stephens has said)
"is merely lying on his back kicking his heels in it."
J' ALLAI A LOURDES
J'allai à Lourdes par le chemin de fer,
le long du gave qui est bleu comme l'air.
Au soleil les montagnes semblaient d'étain.
Et l'on chantait: sauvez! sauvez! dans le train,
Il y avait un monde fou, exalté,
plein de poussière et du soleil d'été.
Des malheureux avec le ventre en avant
étendaient leurs bras, priaient en les tordant.
Et dans une chaire où était du drap bleu,
un prêtre disait: "un chapelet à Dieu!"
Et un groupe de femmes, parfois, passait,
qui chantait: sauvez! sauvez! sauvez! sauvez!
Et la procession chantait. Les drapeaux
se penchaient avec leurs devises en or.
Le soleil était blanc sur les escaliers
dans l'air bleu, sur les cloches déchiquetées.
Mais sur un brancard, portée par ses parents,
son pauvre père tête nue et priant,
et ses frères qui disaient: "ainsi soit-il,"
une jeune fille sur le point de mourir.
Oh! qu'elle était belle! elle avait dix-huit ans
et elle souriait; elle était en blanc.
Et la procession chantait. Des drapeaux
se penchaient avec leurs devises en or.
Moi je serrais les dents pour ne pas pleurer,
et cette fille, je me sentais l'aimer.
Oh! elle m'a regardé un grand moment,
une rose blanche en main, souriant.
Mais maintenant où es-tu? dis, où es-tu,
Es-tu morte? je t'aime, toi qui m'as vu.
Si tu existes, Dieu, ne la tue pas,
elle avait des mains blanches, de minces bras.
Dieu ne la tue pas!--et ne serait-ce que
pour son père nu-tête qui priait Dieu.
Jammes goes to pieces on such adjectives as "pauvre" and "petite," just
as De Régnier slips on "cher," "aimée" and "tiède"; and in their train
flock the herd whose ad jectival centre appears to waver from "nue" to
"frémis sante." And there is, in many French poets, a fatal proclivity
to fuss just a little too much over their subjects. Jammes has also the
furniture tendency, and to it we owe several of his quite charming
poems. However the strongest impression I get to-day, reading his work
in inverse order (i.e. "Jean de Noarrieu" before these earlier poems),
is of the very great stylistic advance made in that poem over his
earlier work.
But he is very successful in saying all there was to be said in:--
LA JEUNE FILLE
La jeune fille est blanche,
elle a des veines vertes
au poignets, dans ses manches
ouvertes.
On ne sait pas pourquoi
elle rit. Par moments
elle crie et cela
est percant.
Est-ce qu'elle se doute
qu'elle vous prend le cœur
en cueillant sur la route
des fleurs.
On dirait quelquefois
qu'elle comprend des choses.
Pas toujours. Elle cause
tout bas
"Oh! ma chère! oh! là, là ...
... Figure-toi ... mardi
je l'ai vu ... j'ai ri"--Elle dit
comme ça.
Quand un jeune homme souffre,
d'abord elle se tait:
elle ne rit plus, tout
étonnée.
Dans les petits chemins
elle remplit ses mains
de piquants de bruyères
de fougères.
Elle est grande, elle est blanche,
elle a des bras très doux,
Elle est très droite et penche
le cou.
The poem beginning:
Tu seras nue dans le salon aux vieilles choses,
fine comme un fuseau de roseau de lumière
et, les jambes croisées, auprès du feu rose
tu écouteras l'hiver
loses, perhaps, or gains little by comparison with that of Heinrich von
Morungen, beginning:
Oh weh, soll mir nun nimmermehr
hell leuchten durch die Nacht
noch weisser denn ein Schnee
ihr Leib so wohl gemacht?
Der trog die Augen mein,
ich wähnt, es sollte sein
des lichten Monden Schein,
da tagte es.
Morungen had had no occasion to say "Je pense à Jean-Jacques," and it is
foolish, to expect exactly the same charm of a twentieth-century poet
that we find in a thirteenth-century poet. Still it is not necessary to
be Jammes-crazy to feel
IL VA NEIGER....
Il va neiger dans quelques jours. Je me souviens
de l'an dernier. Je me souviens de mes tristesses
au coin du feu. Si l'on m'avait demandé: qu'est-ce?
j'aurais dit: laissez-moi tranquille. Ce n'est rien.
J'ai bien réfléchi, l'année avant, dans ma chambre,
pendant que la neige lourde tombait dehors.
J'ai réfléchi pour rien. A présent comme alors
je fume une pipe en bois avec un bout d'ambre.
Ma vieille commode en chêne sent toujours bon.
Mais moi j'étais bête parce que ces choses
ne pouvaient pas changer et que c'est une pose
de vouloir chasser les choses que nous savons.
Pourquoi donc pensons-nous et parlons-nous? C'est drôle;
nos larmes et nos baisers, eux, ne parlent pas,
et cependant nous les comprenons, et les pas
d'un ami sont plus doux que de douces paroles.
* * * * * * * *
If I at all rightly understand the words "vouloir chasser les choses que
nous savons" they are an excellent warning against the pose of
simplicity over-done that has been the end of Maeterlinck, and of how
many other poets whose poetic machinery consists in so great part of
pretending to know less than they do.
Jammes' poems are well represented in Miss Lowell's dilutation on _Six
French Poets_, especially by the well-known "Amsterdam" and "Madame de
Warens," which are also in Van Bever and Léautaud. He reaches, as I have
said, his greatest verve in "Existences" in the volume "Le Triomphe de
la Vie."
I do not wish to speak in superlatives, but "Existences," if not Jammes'
best work, and if not the most important single volume by any living
French poet, either of which it well may be, is at any rate
indispensable. It is one of the first half dozen books that a man
wanting to know contemporary French work must in-dulge in. One can _not_
represent it in snippets. Still I quote "Le Poète" (his remarks at a
provincial soirée):
Cest drôle.... Cette petite sera bête
comme ces gens-là, comme son père et sa mère.
Et cependant elle a une grâce infinie.
Il y a en elle l'lntelligence de la beauté.
C'est délicieux, son corsage qui n'existe pas,
son derrière et ses pieds. Mais elle sera bête
comme une oie dans deux ans d'ici. Elle va jouer.
_(Benette joue la valse des elfes)_
In an earlier scene we have a good example of his rapidity in narrative.
_La Servante_
Il y a quelqu'un qui veut parler à monsieur.
_Le Poète_
Qui est-ce?
_La Servante_
Je ne sais pas.
_Le Poète_
Un homme ou une femme?
_La Servante_
Un homme.
_Poète_
Un commis-voyageur, Vous me le foutez belle!
_La Servante_
Je ne sais pas, monsieur.
_Poète_
Faites entrer au salon.
Laissez-moi achever d'achever ces cerises.
_(Next Scene)_
_Le Poète (dans son salon)_
A qui ai-je l'honneur de parler, monsieur?
_Le Monsieur_
Monsieur, je suis le cousin de votre ancienne maîtresse.
_Le Poète_
De quelle maîtresse? Je ne vous connais pas.
Et puis qu'est-ce que vous voulez?
_Le Monsieur_
Monsieur, ecoutez-moi.
On m'a dit que vous êtes bon.
_Poète_
Ce n'est pas vrai.
_La Pipe du Poète_
Il me bourre avec une telle agitation
que je ne vais jamais pourvoir tirer de l'air.
_Poète_
D'abord, de quelle maîtresse me parlez-vous?
De qui, pretendez-vous? Non. Vous pretendez de
qui j'ai été l'amant?
_Le Monsieur_
De Néomie.
_Poète_
De Néomie,
_Le Monsieur_
Oui, monsieur.
_Poète_
Où habitez-vous?
_Le Monsieur_
J'habite les environs de Mont-de-Marsan.
_Poète_
Enfin que voulez-vous?
_Le Monsieur_
Savoir si monsieur serait
assez complaisant pour me donner quelque chose.
_Poète_
Et si je ne vous donne le pas, qu'est-ce que vous ferez?
_Le Monsieur_
Oh! Rien monsieur. Je ne vous ferai rien. Non....
_Le Poète_
Tenez, voila dix francs, et foutez-moi la paix.
(_Le monsieur s'en va, puis le poète sort._)
The troubles of the Larribeau family, Larribeau and the _bonne_, the
visit of the "Comtese de Pentacosa," who is also staved off with ten
francs, are all worth quoting. The whole small town is "Spoon-Rivered"
with equal verve. "Existences" was written in 1900.
MOREAS
It must not be thought that these very "modern" poets owe their
modernity merely to some magic chemical present in the Parisian milieu.
Moréas was born in 1856, the year after Verhaeren, but his
Madeline-aux-serpents might be William Morris on Rapunzel:
Et votre chevelure comme des grappes d'ombres,
Et ses bandelettes à vos tempes,
Et la kabbale de vos yeux latents,--
Madeline-aux-serpents, Madeline.
Madeline, Madeline,
Pourquoi vos lèvres à mon cou, ah, pourquoi
Vos lèvres entre les coups du hache du roi!
Madeline, et les cordaces et les flûtes,
Les flûtes, les pas d'amour, les flûtes, vous les voulûtes,
Hélas! Madeline, la fête, Madeline,
Ne berce plus les flots au bord de l'île,
Et mes bouffons ne crèvent plus des cerceaux
Au bord de l'île, pauvres bouffons.
Pauvres bouffons que couronne la sauge!
Et mes litières s'effeuillent aux ornières, toutes mes
litières à grand pans
De nonchaloir, Madeline-aux-serpents....
A difference with Morris might have arisen, of course, over the now
long-discussed question of vers libre, but who are we to dig up that
Babylon? The schoolboys' papers of Toulouse had learnt all about it
before the old gentlemen of _The Century_ and _Harper's_ had discovered
that such things exist.
One will not have understood the French poetry of the last half-century
unless one makes allowance for what they call the Gothic as well as the
Roman or classic influence. We should probably call it (their "Gothic")
"medievalism," its tone is that of their XIII century poets, Crestien de
Troies, Marie de France, or perhaps even D'Orléans (as we noticed in the
quotation from Vielé-Griffin). Tailhade in his "Hymne Antique" displays
what we would call Swinburnism (Greekish). Tristan Klingsor (a nom de
plume showing definite tendencies) exhibits these things a generation
nearer to us:
Dans son rêve le vieux Prince de Touraine
voit passer en robe verte à longue traîne
Yeldis aux yeux charmeurs de douce reine.
* * * * * * * *
or
Au verger où sifflent les sylphes d'automne
mignonne Isabelle est venue de Venise
et veut cueillir des cerises et des pommes.
* * * * * * * *
He was writing rhymed vers libre in 1903, possibly stimulated by
translations in a volume called "Poésie Arabe." This book has an
extremely interesting preface. I have forgotten the name of the
translator, but in excusing the simplicity of Arab songs he says: "The
young girl in Germany educated in philosophy in Kant and Hegel, when
love comes to her, at once exclaims 'Infinite!', and allies her
vocabulary with the transcendental. The little girl in the tents 'ne
savait comparer fors que sa gourmandise.'" In Klingsor for 1903, I find:
Croise tes jambes fines et nues
Dans ton lit,
Frotte de tes mignonnes mains menues
Le bout de ton nez;
Frotte de tes doigts potelés et jolis,
Les deux violettes de tes yeux cernés,
Et rêve.
Du haut du minaret arabe s'échappe
La mélopée triste et brève
De l'indiscret muezzin
Qui nasillonne et qui éternue,
Et toi tu bâilles comme une petite chatte,
Tu bâilles d'amour brisée,
Et tu songes au passant d'Ormuz ou d'Endor
Qui t'a quittée ce matin
En te laissant sa légère bourse d'or
Et les marques bleues de ses baisers.
Later he turns to Max Elskamp, addressing him as if he, Klingsor, at
last had "found Jesus":
Je viens vers vous, mon cher Elskamp
Comme un pauvre varlet de cœur et de joie
Vient vers le beau seigneur qui campe
Sous sa tente d'azur et de soie.
* * * * * * * *
However I believe Moréas was a real poet, and, being stubborn, I have
still an idea which gor embedded in my head some years ago: I mean that
Klingsor is a poet. As for the Elskamp phase and cult, I do not make
much of it. Jean de Bosschère has written a book upon Elskamp, and he
assures me that Elskamp is a great and important poet, and some day,
perhaps, I may understand it. De Bosschère seems to me to see or to feel
perhaps more keenly than any one else certain phases of modern
mechanical civilization: the ant-like madness of men bailing out little
boats they never will sail in, shoeing horses they never will ride,
making chairs they never will sit on, and all with a frenzied
intentness. I may get my conviction as much from his drawings as from
his poems. I am not yet clear in my mind about it. His opinion of Max
Elskamp can not be too lightly passed over. Vide infra "De Bosschère on
Elskamp."
OF OUR DECADE
Early in 1912 _L'Effort_, since called _L'Effort Libre,_ published an
excellent selection of poems mostly by men born since 1880: Arcos,
Chennevière, Duhamel, Spire, Vildrac, and Jules Romains, with some of
Léon Bazalgette's translations from Whitman.
SPIRE
(born 1868)
André Spire, writing in the style of the generation which has succeeded
him, is well represented in this collection by his "Dames Anciennes."
The contents of his volumes are of very uneven value: Zionist
propaganda, addresses, and a certain number of well-written poems.
DAMES ANCIENNES
En hiver, dans la chambre claire,
Tout en haut de la maison,
Le poêle de faïence blanche,
Cerclé de cuivre, provincial, doux,
Chauffait mes doigts et mes livres.
Et le peuplier mandarine,
Dans le soir d'argent dédoré,
Dressait, en silence, ses branches,
Devant ma fenêtre close.
--Mère, le printemps aux doigts tièdes
A soulevé l'espagnolette
De mes fenêtres sans rideaux.
Faites taire toutes ces voix qui montent
Jusqu'à ma table de travail.
--Ce sont les amies de ma mère
Et de la mère de ton père,
Qui causent de leurs maris morts,
Et de leurs fils partis.
--Avec, au coin de leurs lèvres,
Ces moustaches de café au lait?
Et dans leurs mains ces tartines?
Dans leurs bouches ces Kouguelofs?
--Ce sont des cavales anciennes
Qui mâchonnent le peu d'herbe douce
Que Dieu veut bien leur laisser.
--Mère, les maîtres sensibles
Lâchent les juments inutiles
Dans les prés, non dans mon jardin!
--Sois tranquille, mon fils, sois tranquille,
Elles ne brouteront pas tes fleurs.
--Mère, que n'y occupent-elles leurs lèvres,
Et leurs trop courtes dents trop blanches
De porcelaine trop fragile!
--Mon fils, fermez votre fenêtre.
Mon fils, vous n'êtes pas chrétien!
VILDRAC
Vildrac's "Gloire" is in a way commentary on Romains' Ode to the Crowd;
a critique of part, at least, of unanimism.
Il avait su gagner à lui
Beaucoup d'hommes ensemble,
* * * * *
Et son bonheur était de croire,
Quand il avait quitté la foule,
Que chacun des hommes l'aimait
Et que sa présence durait
Innombrable et puissante en eux,
* * * * *
Or un jour il en suivit un
Qui retournait chez soi, tout seul,
Et il vit son regard s'éteindre
Dès qu'il fut un peu loin des autres.
* * * * *
(The full text of this appeared in _Poetry_ Aug., 1913.) Vildrac's two
best-known poems are "Une Auberge" and "Visite"; the first a forlorn
scene, not too unlike a Van Gogh, though not done with Van Gogh's vigor.
C'est seulement parce qu'on a soif qu'on entre y boire;
C'est parce qu'on se sent tomber qu'on va s'y asseoir.
On n'y est jamais à la fois qu'un ou deux
Et l'on n'est pas forcé d'y raconter son histoire.
* * * * * * *
Celui qui entre....
* * * * * * *
mange lentement son pain
Parce que ses dents sont usées;
Et il boit avec beaucoup de mal
Parce qu'il a de peine plein sa gorge.
Quand il a fini,
Il hésite, puis timide
Va s'asseoir un peu
A côté du feu.
Ses mains crevassées épousent
Les bosselures dures de ses genoux.
Then of the other man in the story:
"qui n'était pas des nôtres....
"Mais comme il avait l'air cependant d'être des nôtres!"
The story or incident in "Visite" is that of a man stirring himself out
of his evening comfort to visit some pathetic dull friends.
* * * * * *
Ces gens hélas, ne croyaient pas
Qu'il fut venu a l'improviste
Si tard, de si loin, par la neige ...
Et ils attendaient l'un et l'autre
Que brusquement et d'un haleine il exposat
La grave raison de sa venue.
Only when he gets up to go, "ils osèrent comprendre"
* * * * * *
Il leur promit de revenir.
* * * * * *
Mais avant de gagner la porte
Il fixa bien dans sa mémoire
Le lieu ou s'abritait leur vie.
Il regarda bien chaque objet
Et puis aussi l'homme et la femme,
Tant il craignait au fond de lui
De ne plus jamais revenir.
The relation of Vildrac's verse narratives to the short story form is
most interesting.
JULES ROMAINS
The reader who has gone through Spire, Romains, and Vildrac, will have a
fair idea of the poetry written by this group of men. Romains has always
seemed to me, and is, I think, generally recognized as, the
nerve-centre, the dynamic centre of the group,
Les marchands sont assis aux portes des boutiques;
Ils regardent. Les toits joignent la rue au ciel
Et les pavés semblent féconds sous le soleil
Comme un champ de maïs.
Les marchands ont laissé dormir près du comptoir
Le désir de gagner qui travaille dès l'aube.
On dirait que, malgré leur âme habituelle,
Une autre âme s'avance et vient au seuil d'eux-mêmes
Comme ils viennent au seuil de leurs boutiques noires.
We are regaining for cities a little of what savage man has for the
forest. We live by instinct; receive news by instinct; have conquered
machinery as primitive man conquered the jungle. Romains feels this,
though his phrases may not be ours. Wyndham Lewis on giants is nearer
Romains than anything else in English, but vorticism is, in the realm of
biology, the hypothesis of the dominant cell. Lewis on giants comes
perhaps nearer Romains than did the original talks about the Vortex.
There is in inferior minds a passion for unity, that is, for a confusion
and melting together of things which a good mind will want kept
distinct. Uninformed English criticism has treated Unanimism as if it
were a vague general propaganda, and this criticism has cited some of
our worst and stupidest versifiers as a corresponding manifestation in
England. One can only account for such error by the very plausible
hypothesis that the erring critics have not read "Puissances de Paris."
Romains is not to be understood by extracts and fragments. He has felt
this general replunge of mind into instinct, or this development of
instinct to cope with a metropolis, and with metropolitan conditions; in
so far as he has expressed the emotions of this consciousness he is
poet; he has, aside from that, tried to formulate this new
consciousness, and in so far as such formulation is dogmatic, debatable,
intellectual, hypothetical, he is open to argument and dispute; that is
to say he is philosopher, and his philosophy is definite and defined.
Vildrac's statement "Il a changé la pathétique" is perfectly true. Many
people will prefer the traditional and familiar and recognizable poetry
of writers like Klingsor. I am not dictating people's likes and
dislikes. Romains has made a new kind of poetry. Since the scrapping of
the Aquinian, Dantescan system, he is perhaps the first person who had
dared put up so definite a philosophical frame-work for his emotions.
I do not mean, by this, that I agree with Jules Romains; I am prepared
to go no further than my opening sentence of this section, concerning
our growing, or returning, or perhaps only newly-noticed, sensitization
to crowd feeling; to the metropolis and its peculiar sensations. Turn to
Romains:
Je croyais les murs de ma chambre imperméables.
Or ils laissent passer une tiède bruine
Qui s'épaissit et qui m'empêche de me voir,
Le papier à fleurs bleues lui cède. Il fait le bruit
Du sable et du cresson qu'une source traverse.
L'air qui touche mes nerfs est extrêmement lourd.
Ce n'est pas comme avant le pur milieu de vie
Ou montait de la solitude sublimée.
Voilà que par osmose
Toute l'immensité d'alentour le sature.
* * * * * * *
Il charge mes poumons, il empoisse les choses,
Il sépare mon corps des meubles familiers,
* * * * * * *
Les forces du dehors s'enroulent à mes mains.
In "Puissances de Paris" he states that there are beings more "real than
the individual." Here, I can but touch upon salients.
Rien ne cesse d'être intérieur.
La rue est plus intime à cause de la brume.
Lines like Romains', so well packed with thought, so careful that you
will get the idea, can not be poured out by the bushel like those of
contemporary rhetoricians, like those of Claudel and Fort. The best
poetry has always a content, it may not be an intellectual content; in
Romains the intellectual statement is necessary to keep the new
emotional content coherent.
The opposite of Lewis's giant appears in:
Je suis l'esclave heureux des hommes dont l'haleine
Flotte ici. Leur vouloirs s'écoule dans mes nerfs;
Ce qui est moi commence à fondre.
This statement has the perfectly simple order of words. It is the simple
statement of a man saying things for the first time, whose chief concern
is that he shall speak clearly. His work is perhaps the fullest
statement of the poetic consciousness of our time, or the scope of that
consciousness. I am not saying he is the most poignant poet; simply that
in him we have the fullest poetic exposition.
You can get the feel of Laforgue or even of Corbière from a few poems;
Romains is a subject for study. I do not say this as praise, I am simply
trying to define him. His "Un Etre en Marche" is the narrative of a
girls' school, of the "crocodile" or procession going out for its
orderly walk, its collective sensations and adventures.
Troupes and herds appear in his earlier work:
Le troupeau marche, avec ses chiens et son berger,
Il a peur. Çà et là des réverbères brûlent,
Il tremble d'être poursuivi par les étoiles.
* * * * * * *
La foule traine une écume d'ombrelles blanches
* * * * * * *
La grande ville s'évapore,
Et pleut à verse sur la plaine
Qu'elle sature.
His style is not a "model," it has the freshness of grass, not of new
furniture polish. In his work many nouns meet their verbs for the first
time, as, perhaps, in the last lines above quoted. He needs, as a rule,
about a hundred pages to turn round in. One can not give these poems in
quotation; one wants about five volumes of Romains. In so far as I am
writing "criticism," I must say that his prose is just as interesting as
his verse. But then his verse is just as interesting as his prose. Part
of his method is to show his subject in a series of successive phases,
thus in L'Individu:
V
Je suis un habitant de ma ville, un de ceux
Qui s'assoient au théâtre et qui vont par les rues
* * * * * * * *
VI
Je cesse lentement d'être moi. Ma personne
Semble s'anéantir chaque jour un peu plus
C'est à peine si je le sens et m'en étonne.
His poetry is not of single and startling emotions, but--for better or
worse--of progressive states of consciousness. It is as useless for the
disciple to try and imitate Romains, without having as much thought of
his own, as it is for the tyro in words to try imitations of Jules
Laforgue. The limitation of Romains' work, as of a deal of Browning's,
is that, having once understood it, one may not need or care to re-read
it. This restriction applies also in a wholly different way to
"Endymion"; having once filled the mind with Keats' color, or the beauty
of things described, one gets no new thrill from the re-reading of them
in not very well-written verse. This limitation applies to all poetry
that is not implicit in its own medium, that is, which is not
indissolubly bound in with the actual words, word music, the fineness
and firmness of the actual writing, as in Villon, or in "Collis O
Heliconii."
But one can not leave Romains unread. His interest is more than a prose
interest, he has verse technique, rhyme, terminal syzygy, but that is
not what I mean. He is poetry in:
On ne m'a pas donné de lettres, ces jours-ci;
Personne n'a songé, dans la ville, à m'écrire,
Oh! je n'espérais rien; je sais vivre et penser
Tout seul, et mon esprit, pour faire une flambée,
N'attend pas qu'on lui jette une feuille noircie.
Mais je sens qu'il me manque un plaisir familier,
J'ai du bonheur aux mains quand j'ouvre une enveloppe;
* * * * * * * *
But such statements as:
TENTATION
Je me plais beaucoup trop à rester dans les gares;
Accoude sur le bois anguleux des barrières,
Je regarde les trains s'emplir de voyageurs.
* * * * * * * *
and:
Mon esprit solitaire est une goutte d'huile
Sur la pensée et sur le songe de la ville
Qui me laissent flotter et ne m'absorbent pas.
* * * * * * * *
would not be important unless they were followed by exposition. The
point is that they are followed by exposition, to which they form a
necessary introduction, defining Romains' angle of attack; and as a
result the force of Romains is cumulative. His early books gather
meaning as one reads through the later ones.
And I think if one opens him almost anywhere one can discern the
authentic accent of a man saying something, not the desultory
impagination of rehash.
Charles Vildrac is an interesting companion figure to his brilliant
friend Romains. He conserves himself, he is never carried away by
Romains' theories. He admires, differs, and occasionally formulates a
corrective or corollary as in "Gloire."
Compare this poem with Romains' "Ode to the Crowd Here Present" and you
get the two angles of vision.
Henry Spiess, a Genevan lawyer, has written an interesting series of
sketches of the court-room. He is a more or less isolated figure. I have
seen amusing and indecorous poems by George Fourest, but it is quite
probable that they amuse because one is unfamiliar with their genre;
still "La Blonde Négresse" (the heroine of his title), his satire of the
symbolo-rhapsodicoes in the series of poems about her: "La négresse
blonde, la blonde négresse," gathering into its sound all the swish and
woggle of the sound-over-sensists; the poem on the beautiful
blue-behinded baboon; that on the gentleman "qui ne craignait ni la
vérole ni dieu"; "Les pianos du Casino au bord de la mer" (Laforgue plus
the four-hour touch), are an egregious and diverting guffaw. (I do not
think the book is available to the public. J.G. Fletcher once lent me a
copy, but the edition was limited and the work seems rather unknown.)
Romains is my chief concern. I can not give a full exposition of
Unanimism on a page or two. Among all the younger writers and groups in
Paris, the group centering in Romains is the only one which seems to me
to have an energy comparable to that of the _Blast_ group in London,[3]
the only group in which the writers for _Blast_ can be expected to take
very much interest.
Romains in the flesh does not seem so energetic as Lewis in the flesh,
but then I have seen Romains only once and I am well acquainted with
Lewis. Romains is, in his writing, more placid, the thought seems more
passive, less impetuous. As for those who will not have Lewis "at any
price," there remains to them no other course than the acceptance of
Romains, for these two men hold the two tenable, positions: the
Mountain and the Multitude.
It might be fairer to Romains to say simply he has chosen, or
specialized in, the collected multitude as a subject matter, and that he
is quite well on a mountain of his own.
My general conclusions, redoing and reviewing this period of French
poetry, are (after my paw-over of some sixty new volumes as mentioned,
and after re-reading most of what I had read before):
1. As stated in my opening, that mediocre poetry is about the same in
all countries; that France has as much drivel, gas, mush, etc., poured
into verse, as has any other nation.
2. That it is impossible "to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," or
poetry out of nothing; that all attempts to "expand" a subject into
poetry are futile, fundamentally; that the subject matter must be
coterminous with the expression. Tasso, Spenser, Ariosto, prose poems,
diffuse forms of all sorts are all a preciosity; a parlor-game, and
dilutations go to the scrap heap.
3. That Corbière, Rimbaud, Laforgue are permanent; that probably some of
De Gourmont's and Tailhade's poems are permanent, or at least reasonably
durable; that Romains is indispensable, for the present at any rate;
that people who say they "don't like French poetry" are possibly
matoids, and certainly ignorant of the scope and variety of French work.
In the same way people are ignorant of the qualities of French people;
ignorant that if they do not feel at home in Amiens (as I do not), there
are other places in France; in the Charente if you walk across country
you meet people exactly like the nicest people you can meet in the
American country and _they are not "foreign."_
All France is not to be found in Paris. The adjective "French" is
current in America with a dozen erroneous or stupid connotations. If it
means, as it did in the mouth of my contemporary, "talcum powder" and
surface neatness, the selection of poems I have given here would almost
show the need of, or at least a reason for, French Parnassienism; for it
shows the French poets violent, whether with the violent words of
Corbière, or the quiet violence of the irony of Laforgue, the sudden
annihilations of his "turn-back" on the subject. People forget that the
incision of Voltaire is no more all of French Literature than is the
_robustezza_ of Brantôme. (Burton of the "Anatomy" is our only writer
who can match him.) They forget the two distinct finenesses of the Latin
French and of the French "Gothic," that is of the eighteenth century, of
Bernard (if one take a writer of no great importance to illustrate a
definite quality), or of D'Orléans and of Froissart in verse. From this
delicacy, if they can not be doing with it, they may turn easily to
Villon or Basselin. Only a general distaste for literature can be
operative against all of these writers.
UNANIMISME
The English translation of Romains' "Mort de Quelqu'un" has provoked
various English and American essays and reviews. His published works are
"L'Ame des Hommes," 1904; "Le Bourg Régénéré," 1906; "La Vie Unanime,"
1908; "Premier Livre de Prières," 1909; "La Foule qui est Ici," 1909; in
1910 and 1911 "Un Etre en Marche," "Deux Poèmes," "Manuel de
Deification," "L'armée dans la Ville," "Puissances de Paris," and "Mort
de Quelqu'un," employing the three excellent publishing houses of the
_Mercure_, Figuiere and Sansot.
His "Reflexions" at the end of "Puissances de Paris" are so good a
formulation of the Unanimiste Aesthetic, or "_Pathétique_," that
quotation of them will do more to disabuse readers misled by stupid
English criticism than would any amount of talk about Romains. I let him
speak for himself:
REFLEXIONS
"Many people are now ready to recognize that there are in the world
beings more real than man. We admit the life of entities greater than
our own bodies. Society is not merely an arithmetical total, or a
collective designation. We even credit the existence of groups
intermediate between the individual and the state. But these opinions
are put forth by abstract deduction or by experimentation of reason.
"People employ them to complete a system of things and with the
complacencies of analogy. If they do not follow a serious study of
social data, they are at least the most meritorious results of
observations; they justify the method, and uphold the laws of a science
which struggles manfully to be scientific.
"These fashions of knowing would seem both costly and tenuous. Man did
not wait for physiology to give him a notion of his body, in which lack
of patience he was intelligent, for physiology has given him but
analytic and exterior information concerning things he had long known
from within. He had been conscious of his organs long before he had
specified their modes of activity. As spirals of smoke from village
chimneys, the profound senses of each organ had mounted toward him; joy,
sorrow, all the emotions are deeds more fully of consciousness than are
the thoughts of man's reason. Reason makes a concept of man, but the
heart perceives the flesh of his body.
"In like manner we must know the groups that englobe us, not by
observation from without, but by an organic consciousness. And it is by
no means sure that the rhythms will make their nodes in us, if we be not
the centres of groups. We have but to become such. Dig deep enough in
our being, emptying it of individual reveries, dig enough little canals
so that the souls of the groups will flow of necessity into us.
"I have attempted nothing else in this book. Various groups have come
here into consciousness. They are still rudimentary, and their spirit is
but a perfume in the air. Beings with as little consistence as la Rue du
Havre, and la Place de la Bastile, ephemeral as the company of people in
an omnibus, or the audience at L'Opéra Comique, can not have complex
organism or thoughts greatly elaborate. People will think it superfluous
that I should unravel such shreds in place of re-carding once more the
enormous heap of the individual soul.
"Yet I think the groups are in the most agitated stage of their
evolution. Future groups will perhaps deserve less affection, and we
shall conceal the basis of things more effectively. Now the incomplete
and unstable contours have not yet learned to stifle any tendency (any
inclination). Every impact sets them floating. They do not coat the
infantile matter with a hard or impacting envelope. A superior plant has
realized but few of the possibilities swarming in fructificatory mould.
A mushroom leads one more directly to the essential life quality than do
the complexities of the oak tree.
"Thus the groups prepare more future than is strictly required. Thus we
have the considerable happiness of watching the commencement of reign,
the beginning of an organic series which will last as did others, for a
thousand ages, before the cooling of the earth. This is not a
progression, it is a creation, the first leap-out of a different series.
Groups will not continue the activities of animals, nor of men; they
will start things afresh according to their own need, and as the
consciousness of their substance increases they will refashion the image
of the world.
"The men who henceforth can draw the souls of groups to converge within
themselves, will give forth the coming dream, and will gather, to boot,
certain intuitions of human habit. Our ideas of the being will undergo a
correction; will hesitate rather more in finding a distinction between
the existent and non-existent. In passing successively from the Place de
l'Europe to the Place des Vosges, and then to a gang of navvies, one
perceives that there are numerous shades of difference between nothing
and something. Before resorting to groups one is sure of discerning a
being of a simple idea. One knows that a dog exists, that he has an
interior and independent unity; one knows that a table or a mountain
does not exist; nothing but our manner of speech cuts it off from the
universal non-existing. But streets demand all shades of verbal
expression (from the non-existing up to the autonomous creature).
"One ceases to believe that a definite limit is the indispensable means
of existence. Where does la Place de la Trinité begin? The streets
mingle their bodies. The squares isolate themselves with great
difficulty. The crowd at the theatre takes on no contour until it has
lived for some time, and with vigor. A being _(être)_ has a centre, or
centres in harmony, but a being is not compelled to have limits. He
exists a great deal in one place, rather less in others, and, further
on, a second being commences before the first has left off. Every being
has, somewhere in space, its maximum. Only ancestored individuals
possess affirmative contours, a skin which cuts them off from the
infinite.
"Space is no one's possession. No being has succeeded in appropriating
one scrap of space and saturating it with his own unique existence.
Everything over-crosses, coincides, and cohabits. Every point is a perch
for a thousand birds. Paris, the rue Montmartre, a crowd, a man, a
protoplasm are on the same spot of pavement. A thousand existences are
concentric. We see a little of some of them.
"How can we go on thinking that an individual is a solitary thing which
is born, grows, reproduces itself and dies? This is a superior and
inveterate manner of being an individual. But groups are not truly born.
Their life makes and unmakes itself like an unstable state of matter, a
condensation which does not endure. They show us that life, at its
origin, is a provisory attitude, a moment of exception, an intensity
between two relaxations, not continuity, nothing decisive. The first
entireties take life by a sort of slow success, and extinguish
themselves without catastrophe, the single elements do not perish
because the whole is disrupted.
"The crowd before the Baraque Foraine starts to live little by little,
as water in a kettle begins to sing and evaporate. The passages of the
Odeon do not live by night, each day they are real, a few hours. At the
start life seems the affair of a moment, then it becomes intermittent.
To be durable; to become a development and a destiny; to be defined and
finished off at each end by birth and death, it needs a deal of
accustomedness.
"The primitive forms are not coequal. There is a natural hierarchy among
groups. Streets have no set middle, no veritable limitations; they hold
a long vacillating sort of life which night flattens out almost to
nothingness. Cross-roads and squares take on contour, and gather up the
nodes of their rhythms. Other groups have a fashioned body, they endure
but a little space, but they have learned, almost, to die; they even
resurrect themselves as by a jerk or dry spasm, they begin the habit of
being, they strive toward it, and this puts them out of breath.
"I have not yet met a group fully divine. None has had a real
consciousness, none has addressed me, saying: I exist. The day when the
first group shall take its soul in its hands, as one lifts up a child in
order to look in its face, that day there will be a new god upon earth.
This is the god I await, with my labor of annunciation."
This excerpt from Romains gives the tone of his thought. In so far as he
writes in the present tense he carries conviction. He broaches truly a
"new," or at least contemporary "_pathétique_." He utters, in original
vein, phases of consciousness whereinto we are more or less drifting, in
measure of our proper sensibility.
I retain, however, my full suspicion of agglomerates.
DE BOSSCHÈRE'S STUDY OF ELSKAMP[4]
I confessed in my February essay my inability to make anything of Max
Elskamp's poetry, and I have tacitly confessed my inability to find any
formula for hawking De Bosschère's own verse to any public of my
acquaintance; De Bosschère's study of Elskamp, however, requires no
advocacy; I do not think it even requires to be a study of Max Elskamp;
it drifts as quiet canal water; the protagonist may or not be a real
man.
"Ici, la solitude est plus accentuée: souvent, pendant de longues
minutes, les rues sont desertes.... Les portes ne semblent pas, ainsi
que dans les grandes villes, s'ouvrir sur un poumon de vie, et être une
cellule vivante de la rue. Au contraire, toutes sont fermées. Aussi
bien, les façades de ce quartier sont pareilles aux murs borgnes. Un
mince ruban de ciel roux et gris, à peine bleu au printemps, découpe les
pignons, se tend sur le marché désert et sur le puits profond des
cours."
From this Antwerp, De Bosschère derives his subject, as Gautier his
"Albertus" from
Un vieux bourg flamand tel que peint Teniers;
trees bathing in water.
"Son univers était limité par: 'le grand peuplier'; une statue de
Pomone, 'le grand rocher,' et 'la grand grenouille'; ceci était un coin
touffu où il y avait de l'eau et où il ne vit jamais qu'une seule
grenouille, qu'il croyait immortelle." De Bosschère's next vision of
Elskamp is when his subject is pointed out as "le poète décadent," for
no apparent reason save that he read Mallarmé at a time when Antwerp did
not. The study breaks into a cheerful grin when Elskamp tells of
Mallarmé's one appearance in the sea-port:
"Le bruit et les cris qui furent poussés pendant la conférence de
Mallarmé, l'arrêtèrent plusieurs fois. L'opinion du public sur sa
causerie est contenue en ces quelques mots, dits par un général
retraité, grand joueur de billard, et qui du reste ne fit qu'une courte
absence de la salle de jeu, pour écouter quelques phrases du poète. 'Cet
homme est îvre ou fou,' dit il fort haut, on quittant la salle, où son
jugement fit loi. Anvers, malgré un léger masque de snobisme, qui
pourrait tromper, n'a pas changé depuis. Mallarmé, même pour les
_avertis_, est toujours l'homme îvre ou fou."
The billiard player is the one modern touch in the book; for the rest
Elskamp sails with sea-captains, apparently in sailing ships to
Constantinople, or perhaps one should call it Byzantium. He reads Juan
de la Cruz and Young's Night Thoughts, and volumes of demonology, in the
properly dim library of his maternal grandfather, "Sa passion en
rhétorique fut pour Longfellow, il traduisait 'Song of (sic)
Hiawatots.'"
The further one penetrates into De Bosschère's delightful narrative the
less real is the hero; the less he needs to be real. A phantom has been
called out of De Foe's period, delightful phantom, taking on the reality
of the fictitious; in the end the author has created a charming figure,
but I am as far as ever from making head or tail of the verses
attributed to this creation. I have had a few hours' delightful reading,
I have loitered along slow canals, behind a small window sits Elskamp
doing something I do not in the least understand.
II
So was I at the end of the first division "Sur la Vie" de Max Elskamp.
The second division, concerned with "Oeuvre et Vie," but raised again
the questions that had faced me in reading Elskamp's printed work. He
has an undercurrent, an element everywhere present, differentiating his
poems from other men's poems. De Bosschère scarcely helps me to name it.
The third division of the book, at first reading, nearly quenched the
curiosity and the interest aroused by the first two-thirds. On second
reading I thought better of it. Elskamp, plunged in the middle ages, in
what seems almost an atrophy, as much as an atavism, becomes a little
more plausible. (For what it is worth, I read the chapter upon a day of
almost complete exhaustion.)
"Or, quand la vision lâche comme une proie vidée le saint, il demeure
avec les hommes."
"Entre le voyant et ceux qui le sanctifient il y a un précipice
insondable. Seul l'individu est béatifié par sa croyance; mais il ne
peut _l'utiliser_ au temporel ni la partager avec les hommes, et c'est
peut-être la forme unique de la justice sur terre."
The two sentences give us perhaps the tone of De Bosschère's critique
"Sur le Mysticisme" of Elskamp.
It is, however, not in De Bosschère, but in _La Wallonie_ that I found
the clue to this author:
CONSOLATRICE DES AFFLIGÉS
Et l'hiver m'a donné la main,
J'ai la main d'Hiver dans les mains,
et dans ma tête, au loin, il brûle
les vieux étés de canicule;
et dans mes yeux, en candeurs lentes,
très blanchement il fait des tentes,
dans mes yeux il fait des Sicile,
puis des îles, encore des îles.
Et c'est tout un voyage en rond
trop vite pour la guérison
à tous les pays ou l'on meurt
au long cours des mers et des heures;
et c'est tout un voyage au vent
sur les vaisseaux de mes lits blancs
qui houlent avec des étoiles
à l'entour de toutes les voiles,
or j'ai le goût de mer aux lèvres
comme une rancœur de genièvre
bu pour la très mauvaise orgie
des départs dans les tabagies;
puis ce pays encore me vient:
un pays de neiges sans fin....
Marie des bonnes couvertures,
faites-y la neige moins dure
et courir moins comme des lières
mes mains sur mes draps blancs de fièvre.
_--Max Elskamp in "La Wallonie_," 1892.
The poem appears in Van Bever and Léautaud's anthology and there may be
no reason for my not having thence received it; but there is, for all
that, a certain value in finding a man among his native surroundings,
and in finding Elskamp at home, among his contemporaries, I gained first
the advantage of comprehension.
ALBERT MOCKEL AND "LA WALLONIE"[5]
I recently received a letter from Albert Mockel, written with a
graciousness not often employed by English and American writers in
communication to their juniors. Indeed, the present elder generation of
American "respectable" authors having all their lives approached so
nearly to death, have always been rather annoyed that American letters
did not die utterly in _their_ personal desiccations. Signs of vitality;
signs of interest in, or cognizance of other sections of this troubled
planet have been steadily and papier-mâchéedly deprecated. The rubbish
bins of _Harper's_ and the _Century_ have opened their lids not to new
movements but only to the diluted imitations of new movers, etc.
_La Wallonie_, beginning as _L'Elan Littéraire_ in 1885, endured seven
years. It announced for a full year on its covers that its seventh year
was its last. Albert Mockel has been gracious enough to call it "Notre
_Little Review_ à nous," and to commend the motto on our cover, in the
letter here following:
109, _Avenue de Paris_ 8 _mai_, 1918
_La Malmaison Rueil_
_Monsieur et cher confrère,_
Merci de votre amiable envoi. La _Little Review_ m'est
sympathique à l'extrème. En la feuilletant j'ai cru voir
renaître ce temps doré de ferveur et de belle confiance où,
adolescent encore, et tâtonnant un peu dans les neuves
régions de l'Art, je fondai à Liège notre _Little Review_ à
nous, _La Wallonie_. Je retrouve justement quelques
livraisons de cette revue et je vous les envoie; elles ont
tout au moins le mérite de la rareté.
Vous mon cher confrère, déjà ne marchez plus à tâtons mais
je vous soupçonne de n'être pas aussi terriblement, aussi
criminellement jeune que je l'étais à cette époque-là. Et
puis trente ans ont passé sur la littérature, et c'est de la
folie d'hier qu'est faite la sagesse d'aujourd'hui. Alors le
Symbolisme naissait; grâce à la collaboration de mes amis,
grace à Henri de Régnier et Pierre M. Olin qui dirigèrent la
revue avec moi, _La Wallonie_ en fut l'un des premiers
foyers. Tout était remis en question. On aspirait è plus de
liberté à une forme plus intense et plus complète plus
musicale et plus souple, à une expression nouvelle de
l'éternelle beauté. On s'ingeniait on cherchait....
Tâtonnements? Certes et ils étaient inévitables. Mais vif et
ardent effort, désintéressement absolu, foi juvénile et
surtout "No compromise with the public taste".... N'y a-t-il
point la quelques traits de ressemblance avec l'œuvre que
vous tentez aujourd'hui en Amérique, et, à trente années
d'intervale, une sorte de cousinage? C'est pourquoi mon cher
confrère, j'ai lu avec tant de plaisir la _Little Review_
dont vous avez eu la gentillesse de m'adresser la
collection.
Croyez-moi sympathiquement vôtre,
ALBERT MOCKEL.
With a native mistrust of _la belle phrase_; of _"temps doré,"
"ferveur," "belle confiance"_, etc., and with an equally native
superiority to any publication not printed LARGE, I opened _La
Wallonie_. The gropings, "tâtonnements," to which M. Mockel so modestly
refers, appear to have included some of the best work of Mallarmé, of
Stuart Merrill, of Max Elskamp and Emile Verhaeren. Verlaine contributed
to _La Wallonie_, De Régnier was one of its editors.... Men of since
popular fame--Bourget, Pierre Louys, Maeterlinck--appeared with the
rarer spirits.
If ever the "amateur magazine" in the sense of magazine by lovers of art
and letters, for lovers of art and letters, in contempt of the commerce
of letters, has vindicated itself, that vindication was _La Wallonie_.
Verhaeren's "Les Pauvres" first appeared there as the second part of
the series: "Chansons des Carrefours" (Jan., '92).... The Elskamp I have
just quoted appeared there with other poems of Max Elskamp. Mallarmé is
represented by the exquisite:
SONNET
Ses purs ongles très haut dédiant leur onyx,
L'Angoisse ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore,
Maint rêve vespéral brûle par le phénix
Que ne recueille pas de cinéraire amphore
Sur les crédences, au salon vide: nul ptyx,
Aboli bibelot d'inanité sonore,
(Car le maître est allé puiser des pleurs au Styx
Avec ce seul objet dont le Néant s'honore.)
Mais proche la croisée au nord vacante, un or
Agonise selon peut-être le décor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe,
Elle, défunte nue en le miroir encor
Que, dans l'oubli fermé par le cadre, se fixe
De scintillations sitôt le septuor.
--_Mallarmé in "La Wallonie," Jan_.,1889.
An era of Franco-Anglo-American intercourse is marked by his address to:
THE WHIRLWIND
Pas les rafales à propos
De rien comme occuper la rue
Sujette au noir vol des chapeaux;
Mais une danseuse apparue
Tourbillon de mousseline ou
Fureur éparses en écumes
Que soulève par son genou
Celle même dont nous vécûmes
Pour tout, hormis lui, rebattu
Spirituelle, ivre, immobile
Foudroyer avec le tutu,
Sans se faire autrement de bile
Sinon rieur que puisse l'air
De sa jupe éventer Whistler.
--_Mallarmé in "Wallonie" Nov_., 1890.
If I owe Albert Mockel a great debt in having illuminated my eye for
Elskamp I owe him no less the pleasure of one of Merrill's most delicate
triumphs in the opening of
BALLET
_Pour Gustave Moreau_
En casque de cristal rose les baladines,
Dont les pas mesurés aux cordes des kinnors
Tintent sous les tissus de tulle roidis d'ors,
Exultent de leurs yeux pâles de xaladines.
Toisons fauves sur leurs lèvres incarnadines,
Bras lourds de bracelets barbares, en essors
Moelleux vers la lueur lunaire des décors,
Elles murmurent en malveillantes sourdines:
"Nous sommes, ô mortels, danseuses du Désir,
Salomés dont les corps tordus par le plaisir
Leurrent vos heurs d'amour vers nos pervers arcanes.
Prosternez-vous avec des hosannas, ces soirs!
Car, surgissant dans des aurores d'encensoirs,
Sur nos cymbales nous ferons tonner vos crânes."
--_Stuart Merrill in "La Wallonie," July_, '98.
The period was "glauque" and "nacre," it had its pet and too-petted
adjectives, the handles for parody; but it had also a fine care for
sound, for sound fine-wrought, not mere swish and resonant rumble, not
"Dolores, O hobble and kobble Dolores.
O perfect obstruction on track."
The particular sort of fine workmanship shown in this sonnet of
Merrill's has of late been too much let go by the board. One may do
worse than compare it with the Syrian syncopation of _Διώνα_ and '_Ἄδων
ιν_ in Bion's Adonis.
Hanton is gently didactic:
LE BON GRAIN
"Déjà peinent maints moissonneurs dont
la mémoire est destinée à vivre."
--_Célestin Demblon_.
Amants des rythmes en des strophes cadencées,
Des rimes rares aux splendeurs évocatoires,
Laissant en eux comme un écho de leurs pensées,
Comme un parfum de leurs symboles en histoires:
Tels les poètes vont cherchant en vrais glaneurs
Les blonds épis qui formeront leur riche écrin.
Ils choisiront, comme feraient les bons vanneurs,
Parmi les blés passés au crible, le beau grain.
Et germera cette semence bien choisie,
Entre les roses et les lys, pour devenir
Riche moisson de la fertile fantaisie.
L'ardent soleil de Messidor fera jaunir
Les tiges souples d'une forte poésie
Qui dresseront leurs fiers épis vers l'avenir!
_--Edmond Hanton in "La Wallonie," July_,'88.
Delaroche is, at least in parts, utterly incomprehensible, but there is
an interesting experiment in sound-sequence which begins:
SONNETS SYMPHONIQUES
En la langueur
accidentelle
de ta dentelle
où meurt mon cœur
Un profil pleure
et se voit tel
en le pastel
du divin leurre
Qu'or végétal
de lys s'enlise
au froid santal
Si n'agonise
occidental
qui s'adonise.
_--Achille Delaroche in "La Wallonie" Feb_., '89.
I do not know that we will now be carried away by Albert Saint-Paul's
chinoiserie, or that she-devils are so much in fashion as when Jules
Bois expended, certainly, some undeniable emotion in addressing them:
PETALES DE NACRE
En sa robe où s'immobilisent les oiseaux,
Une émerge des fleurs comme une fleur plus grande.
Comme une fleur penchée au sourire de l'eau,
Ses mains viennent tresser la traînante guirlande
Pour enchaîner le Dragon vert--et de légende!
Qui de ses griffes d'or déchire les roseaux,
Les faisceaux de roseaux: banderolles et lances.
Et quand le soir empourprera le fier silence
De la forêt enjôleuse de la Douleur,
Ses doigts, fuseaux filant au rouet des murmures
Les beaux anneaux fleuris liant les fleurs aux fleurs,
Ses doigts n'auront saigné qu'aux épines peu dures.
_--Albert Saint-Paul in "La Wallonie," Jan_.,'91.
POUR LA DEMONE
Un soir de joie, un soir d'ivresse, un soir de fête,
--Et quelle fête, et quelle ivresse, et quelle joie!--
Tu vins. L'impérial ennui sacrait ta tête;
Et tu marchais dans un bruit d'armure et de soie.
Tu dédaignas tous les bijoux et l'oripeau
De ruban, de dentelle et d'éphémère fleur....
Hermétique,[6] ta robe emprisonnait ta peau.
Oui, la fourrure seule autour de ta pâleur.
Tu parus. Sous tes yeux que le kh'ol abomine,
Le bal fut la lugubre et dérisoire histoire.
Les hommes des pantins qu'un vice mène et mine.
Les femmes, cœurs et corps fanés,--et quel déboire!
POUR LA DEMONE
V.
Elle est folle, c'est sûr, elle est folle la chère;
Elle m'aime à n'en pas douter, mais elle est folle,
Elle m'aime et, compatissez à ma misère,
Avec tous, avec toutes, elle batifole.
Un passe.... Elle s'élance à lui, cœur présumé....
Elle s'offre et le provoque, puis elle fuit
Vers ailleurs.... si fidèle encore au seul-aimé,
Mais elle est folle et je m'éplore dans la nuit.
Pour quelque amie aux délicatesses félines,
Elle glisse vers les caresses trop profondes.
... "Tu vas, folle, oublier mes rancœurs orphelines."
Mais sa lèvre pensive hésite aux toisons blondes.
_--Jules Bois in "La Wallonie," Sept., '90._
In part we must take our reading of _La Wallonie_ as a study of the
state of symbolism from 1885 to '92.
Rodenbach displays the other leaf of the diptych: the genre, the homely
Wallon landscape, more familiar to the outer world in Verhaeren, but
not, I think, better painted.
PAYSAGES SOUFFRANTS
II.
_A Emilie Verhaeren._
Là-bas, tant de petits hameaux sous l'avalanche
De la neige qui tombe adoucissante et blanche,
Tant de villages, tant de chaumines qui sont
Pour le reste d'un soir doucement assoupies,
Car le neige s'étend en de molles charpies
Sur les blessures des vieilles briques qui n'ont
Rien senti d'une Sœur sur leur rougeur qui saigne!
Mais, ô neige, c'est toi la Sœur au halo blanc
Qui consoles les murs malades qu'on dédaigne
Et mets un peu d'ouate aux pierres s'éraflant.
Las! rien ne guérira les chaumines--aïeules
Qui meurent de l'hiver et meurent d'être seules....
Et leurs âmes bientôt, au gré des vents du nord.
Dans la fumée aux lents départs, seront parties
Cependant que la neige, à l'heure de leur mort,
Leur apporte ses refraîchissantes hosties!
_--Georges Rodenbach in "La Wallonie," Jan_.,'88.
Rodenbach is authentic.
Vielé-Griffin, who, as Stuart Merrill, has always been known in France
as "an American," contributed largely to _La Wallonie_. His "Au Tombeau
d'Hélène" ends:
HELENE
Me voici:
J'étais là dès hier, et dès sa veille,
Ailleurs, ici;
Toute chair, a paré, un soir, mon âme vieille
Comme l'éternité du désir que tu vêts.
La nuit est claire au firmament....
Regarde avec tes yeux levés:
Voici--comme un tissu de pâle feu fatal
Qui fait épanouir la fleur pour la flétrir--
Monvoile où transparaît tout assouvissement
Qui t'appelle à la vie et qui t'en fait mourir.
La nuit est claire au firmament vital....
Mes mythes, tu les sais:
Je suis fille du Cygne,
Je suis la lune dont s'exubèrent les mers
Qui montent, tombent, se soulèvent;
Et c'est le flot de vie exultante et prostrée,
le flot des rêves,
le flot des chairs,
le flux et le reflux de la vaste marée.
Mon doute--on dit l'Espoir--fait l'action insigne:
Je suis reine de Sparte et celle-là de Troie,
Par moi, la douloureuse existence guerroie
Je meus toute inertie aux leurres de ma joie,
Hélène, Séléné, flottant de phase en phase,
Je suis l'Inaccédée et la tierce Hypostase
Et si je rejetais, désir qui m'y convies,
Mon voile qui promet et refuse l'extase,
Ma nudité de feu résorberait les Vies....
_--Vielé-Griffin in "La Wallonie," Dec._, '91.
_(Complete number devoted to his poems.)_
Mockel is represented by several poems rather too long to
quote,--"Chantefable un peu naive," "L'Antithèse," suggestive of the
Gourmont litany; by prose comment, by work over various pseudonyms. "A
Clair Matin" is a suitable length to quote, and it is better perhaps to
represent him here by it than by fragments which I had first intended to
cut from his longer poems.
A CLAIR MATIN
La nuit au loin s'est effacée
comme les lignes tremblantes d'un rêve;
la nuit s'est fondue au courant du Passé
et le jour attendu se lève.
Regardez! en les courbes molles des rideaux
une heure attendue se révèle
et ma fenêtre enfin s'éclaire,
cristalline du gîvre où se rit la lumière.
Une parure enfantine de neiges
habille là-bas d'immobiles eaux
et c'est les cortèges des fées nouvelles
à tire d'ailes, à tire d'ailes
du grand lointain qui toutes reviennent
aux flocons de ce jour en neiges qui s'épèle.
Des courbes de mes rideaux clairs
--voici! c'est un parfum de ciel!--
blanc des guirlandes de l'hiver
le jeune matin m'est apparu
avec un visage de fiancée.
Des fées
(ah je ne sais quelles mortelles fées)
jadis elles vinrent toucher la paupière
d'un être enfantin qui mourut.
Son âme, où se jouait en songes la lumière,
diaphane corolle épanouie au jour
son âme était vive de toute lumière!
Lui, comme un frère il suivait ma course
et nous allions en confiants de la montagne à la vallée
par les forêts des chênes, des hêtres
--car eux, les ancêtres, ils ont le front grave
ils virent maints rêves des autres âges
et nous parlent, très doucement, comme nos Pères.
Mais voyez! à mes rideaux pâles
le matin glisse des sourires;
car la Fiancée est venue
car la Fiancée est venue
avec un simple et très doux visage,
avec des mots qu'on n'entend pas,
en silence la Fiancée est apparue
comme une grande sœur de l'enfant qui mourut;
et les hêtres, les chênes royaux des forêts
par douce vocalise égrenant leur parure,
les voix ressuscitées en la plaine sonore
et toute la forêt d'aurore
quand elle secoue du crépuscule sa chevelure,
tout chante, bruit, pétille et rayonne
car la céleste Joie que la clarté délivre
d'un hymne répercute aux miroirs du futur
le front pâle où scintille en étoiles le givre.
_--Albert Mockel in "La Wallonie," Dernier fascicule, '92._
I have left Gide and Van Lerberghe unquoted, unmentioned, but I have, I
dare say, given poems enough to indicate the quality and the scope of
the poetry in _La Wallonie_.
In prose their cousinage is perhaps more quickly apparent. Almost the
first sentence I come upon (I suspect it is Mockel's) runs as follows:
"_La Revue des deux Mondes_ publie un roman de Georges Ohnet ce qui ne
surprendra personne."
This is the proper tone to use when dealing with elderly muttonheads;
with the _Harpers_ of yester year. _La Wallonie_ found it out in the
eighties. The symboliste movement flourished on it. American letters did
not flourish, partly perhaps for the lack of it, and for the lack of
unbridled uncompromising magazines run by young men who did not care for
_reputations surfaites_, for elderly stodge and stupidity.
If we turn to Mockel's death notice for Jules Laforgue we will find _La
Wallonie_ in '87 awake to the value of contemporary achievement:
JULES LAFORGUE
Nous apprenons avec une vive tristesse, la mort de Jules Laforgue, l'un
des plus curieux poètes de la littérature aux visées nouvelles. Nous
l'avons désigné, jà deux mois: un Tristan Corbière plus argentin, moins
âpre.... Et telle est bien sa caractéristique. Sans le moindre soupçon
d'imitation ou de réminiscences, Jules Laforgue a sauvegardé une
originalité vivace. Seulement, cette originalité, par bien des saillies,
touche à celle de Tristan Corbière. C'est une même raillerie de la Vie
et du Monde; mais plus de sombre et virile amertume émouvait en l'auteur
des Amours Jaunes, dont cette pièce donnera quelque idée:
LE CRAPAUD
Un chant dans une nuit sans air....
--La lune plaque en métal clair
Les découpures du vert sombre.
... Un chant; comme un écho, tout vif
Enterré, là, sous le massif....
--Ça se tait; viens, c'est là, dans l'ombre....
Un crapaud!
--Pourquoi cette peur,
Près de moi, ton soldat fidèle!
Vois-le, poète tondu, sans aile,
Rossignol de la boue....
--Horreur!--
...Il chante.--Horreur!!--Horreur pourquoi?
_Vois-tu pas son œil de lumière...._
Non, il s'en va, froid, sous sa pierre.
* * * * * *
Bonsoir--ce crapaud-là c'est moi.
Chez Laforgue, il y a plus de gai sans-souci, de coups de batte de
pierrot donnés à toutes choses, plus de "vaille-que-vaille la vie," dit
d'un air de moqueuse résignation. Sa rancœur n'est pas qui
encombrante. Il était un peu l'enfant indiscipliné que rit à travers les
gronderies, et fait la moue à sa fantaisie; mais son haussement
d'épaules gamin, et ses "Après tout?" qu'il jette comme une chiquenaude
au visage du Temps, cachent toujours au fond de son cœur un lac
mélancolique, un lac de tristesse et d'amours flétris, où vient se
refléter sa claire imagination. Témoins ces fragments pris aux
_Complaintes:_ Mon cœur est une urne où j'ai mis certains défunts,
Oh! chut, refrains de leurs berceaux! et vous, parfums.
* * * * * * *
Mon cœur est un Néron, enfant gâté d'Asie,
Qui d'empires de rêve en vain se rassasie.
Mon cœur est un noyé vidé d'âme et d'essors,
Qu'étreint la pieuvre Spleen en ses ventouses d'or.
C'est un feu d'artifice, hélas! qu'avant la fête,
A noyé sans retour l'averse qui s'embête.
Mon cœur est le terrestre Histoire-Corbillard
Que traînent au néant l'instinct et le hazard
Mon cœur est une horloge oubliée à demeure
Qui, me sachant défunt, s'obstine à marquer l'heure.
* * * * * * *
Et toujours mon cœur ayant ainsi déclamé,
En revient à sa complainte: Aimer, être aimé!
Et cette pièce, d'une ironie concentrée:
COMPLAINTE DES BONS MENAGES
L'Art sans poitrine m'a trop longtemps bercé dupe.
Si ses labours sont fiers, que ses bles décevants!
Tiens, laisse-moi bêler tout aux plis de ta jupe
Qui fleure le couvent.
La Génie avec moi, serf, a fait des manières;
Toi, jupe, fais frou-frou, sans t'inquièter pourquoi....
* * * * * * *
Mais l'Art, c'est l'Inconnu! qu'on y dorme et s'y vautre,
On ne peut pas l'avoir constamment sur les bras!
Et bien, ménage au vent! Soyons Lui, Elle et l'Autre.
Et puis n'insistons pas.
Et puis? et puis encore un pied de nez mélancolique à la destinée:
Qui m'aima jamais? Je m'entête
Sur ce refrain bien impuissant
Sans songer que je suis bien bête
De me faire du mauvais sang:
Jules Laforgue a publié outre les _Complaintes_, un livret de vers
dégingandés, d'une raillerie splénétique, à froid, comme celle qui sied
aux hommes du Nord. Mais il a su y ajouter ce sans-façon de choses dites
à l'aventure, et tout un parfum de lumière argentine, comme les rayons
de _Notre-Dame la Lune_ qu'il célèbre. Le manque de place nous prive
d'en citer quelques pages. Nous avons lu aussi cette étrange Nuit
d'Etoiles: le _Conseil Féerique_, un assez court poème édité par la
"Vogue"; divers articles de revue, entre lesquels cette page
ensoleillée, parue dans la Revue Indépendante: _Pan et la Syrinx_. Enfin
un nouveau livre était annoncé: _de la Pitié, de la Pitié_!, déjà
préparé par l'une des Invocations du volume précédent, et dont nous
croyons voir l'idée en ces vers des _Complaintes_:
Vendange chez les Arts enfantins; sois en fête
D'une fugue, d'un mot, d'un ton, d'un air de tête.
* * * * * *
Vivre et peser selon le Beau, le Bien, le Vrai?
O parfums, ô regards, ô fois! soit, j'essaierai.
* * * * * *
... Va, que ta seule étude
Soit de vivre sans but, fou de mansuétude--
_--Albert Mockel in "La Wallonie"_, 1887.
I have quoted but sparingly, and I have thought quotation better than
comment, but despite the double meagreness I think I have given evidence
that _La Wallonie_ was worth editing.
It began as _L'Elan Littéraire_ with 16 pages, and an edition of 200
copies; it should convince any but the most stupid that size is not the
criterion of permanent value, and that a small magazine may outlast much
bulkier printings.
After turning the pages of _La Wallonie_, perhaps after reading even
this so brief excerpt, one is ready to see some sense in even so lyric a
phrase as "temps doré, de ferveur et de belle confiance."
In their seven years' run these editors, one at least beginning in his
"teens," had published a good deal of the best of Verhaeren, had
published work by Elskamp, Merrill, Griffin, Louys, Maeterlinck,
Verlaine Van Lerberghe, Gustave Kahn, Moréas, Quillard, André Gide; had
been joined in their editing board by De Régnier (remember that they
edited in Liège, not in Paris; they were not at the hub of the universe,
but in the heart of French Belgium); they had not made any compromise.
Permanent literature, and the seeds of permanent literature, had gone
through proof-sheets in their office.
There is perhaps no greater pleasure in life, and there certainly can
have been no greater enthusiasm than to have been young and to have been
part of such a group of writers working in fellowship at the beginning
of such a course, of such a series of courses as were implicated in _La
Wallonie._
If the date is insufficiently indicated by Mallarmé's allusion to
Whistler, we may turn to the art notes:
"eaux-fortes de Mlle Mary Cassatt ... Lucien Pissaro, Sisley ...
lithographies de Fantin-Latour ... Odillon Redon."
"J'ai été un peu à Paris, voir Burne Jones, Moreau, Delacroix ... la
danse du ventre, et les adorables Javanaises. C'est mon meilleur
souvenir, ces filles "très parées" dans l'étrange demi-jour de leur case
et qui tournent lentement dans la stridente musique avec de si
énigmatique inflexions de mains et de si souriantes poursuites les yeux
dans les yeux."
Prose poetry, that doubtful connection, appears at times even to
advantage:
"Séléné, toi l'essence et le regard des infinis, ton mal nous serait la
félicité suprême. O viens à nous; Tanit, Vierge Tanit, fleur métallique
épanouie aux plaines célestes!"--_Mockel._
[1] _The Little Review_, February, 1918.
[2] A testimony to the effect of anthologies, and to the prestige of Van
Bever and Léautaud in forming French taste, and at the same time the
most amazing response to my French number of the _Little Review_, was
contained in a letter from one of the very poets I had chosen to praise:
"Je vous remercie de m'avoir révélé Laforgue que je connaissais
seulement par les extraits publiés dans la première Anthologie en I
volume par Van Bever et Léautaud."
This is also a reply to those who solemnly assured me that any foreigner
attempting to criticize French poetry would meet nothing but ridicule
from French authors.
I am free to say that Van B. and L.'s selections would have led me
neither to Laforgue nor to Rimbaud. They were, however, my approach to
many of the other poets, and their two volume anthology is invaluable.
[3] Statement dated Feb., 1918.
[4] _"Max Elskamp"; essai par Jean De Bosschère. Bibliothèque de
l'Occident, 17 rue Eblé, Paris, fr_. 3.50.
[5] _Little Review_, Oct., 1918.
[6] _Laforgue!_
II
HENRY JAMES
This essay on James is a dull grind of an affair, a Baedecker to a
continent.
I set out to explain, not why Henry James is less read than formerly--I
do not know that he is. I tried to set down a few reasons why he ought
to be, or at least might be, more read.
Some may say that his work was over, well over, finely completed; there
is mass of that work, heavy for one man's shoulders to have borne up,
labor enough for two life-times; still we would have had a few more
years of his writing. Perhaps the grasp was relaxing, perhaps we should
have had no strongly-planned book; but we should have had paragraphs
here and there, and we should have had, at least, conversation,
wonderful conversation; even if we did not hear it ourselves, we should
have known that it was going on somewhere. The massive head, the slow
uplift of the hand, _gli occhi onesti e tardi_, the long sentences
piling themselves up in elaborate phrase after phrase, the lightning
incision, the pauses, the slightly shaking admonitory gesture with its
"wu-a-wait a little, wait a little, something will come;" blague and
benignity and the weight of so many years' careful, incessant labor of
minute observation always there to enrich the talk. I had heard it but
seldom, yet it was all unforgettable.
The man had this curious power of founding-affection in those who had
scarcely seen him and even in many who had not, who but knew him at
second hand.
No man who has not lived on both sides of the Atlantic can well appraise
Henry James; his death marks the end of a period. The _Times_ says: "The
Americans will understand his changing his nationality," or something of
that sort. The "Americans" will understand nothing whatsoever about it.
They have understood nothing about it. They do not even know what they
lost. They have not stopped for eight minutes to consider the meaning of
his last public act. After a year of ceaseless labor, of letter writing,
of argument, of striving in every way to bring in America on the side of
civilization, he died of apoplexy. On the side of
civilization--civilization against barbarism, civilization, not Utopia,
not a country or countries where the right always prevails in six weeks!
After a life-time spent in trying to make two continents understand each
other, in trying, and only his thoughtful readers can have any
conception of how he had tried, to make three nations intelligible one
to another. I am tired of hearing pettiness talked about Henry James's
style. The subject has been discussed enough in all conscience, along
with the minor James. Yet I have heard no word of the major James, of
the hater of tyranny; book after early book against oppression, against
all the sordid petty personal crushing oppression, the domination of
modern life; not worked out in the diagrams of Greek tragedy, not
labeled "epos" or "Aeschylus." The outbursts in _The Tragic Muse_, the
whole of _The Turn of the Screw,_ human liberty, personal liberty, the
rights of the individual against all sorts of intangible bondage![1] The
passion of it, the continual passion of it in this man who, fools said,
didn't "feel." I have never yet found a man of emotion against whom
idiots didn't raise this cry.
And the great labor, this labor of translation, of making America
intelligible, of making it possible for individuals to meet across
national borders. I think half the American idiom is recorded in Henry
James's writing, and whole decades of American life that otherwise would
have been utterly lost, wasted, rotting in the unhermetic jars of bad
writing, of inaccurate writing. No English reader will ever know how
good are his New York and his New England; no one who does not see his
grandmother's friends in the pages of the American books. The whole
great assaying and weighing, the research for the significance of
nationality, French, English, American.
"An extraordinary old woman, one of the few people who is really doing
anything good." There were the cobwebs about connoisseurship, etc., but
what do they matter? Some yokel writes in the village paper, as Henley
had written before, "James's stuff was not worth doing." Henley has gone
pretty completely. America has not yet realized that never in history
had one of her great men abandoned his citizenship out of shame. It was
the last act--the last thing left. He had worked all his life for the
nation and for a year he had labored for the national honor. No other
American was of sufficient importance for his change of allegiance to
have constituted an international act; no other American would have been
welcome in the same public manner. America passes over these things, but
the thoughtful cannot pass over them.
Armageddon, the conflict? I turn to James's _A Bundle of Letters_; a
letter from "Dr. Rudolph Staub" in Paris, ending:
"You will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that between
precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family
is destined to consume itself and that with its decline the prospect of
general pervasiveness to which I alluded above, will brighten for the
deep-lunged children of the fatherland!"
We have heard a great deal of this sort of thing since; it sounds very
natural. My edition of the volume containing these letters was printed
in '83, and the imaginary letters were written somewhat before that. I
do not know that this calls for comment. Henry James's perception came
thirty years before Armageddon. That is all I wish to point out.
Flaubert said of the War of 1870: "If they had read my _Education
Sentimentale,_ this sort of thing wouldn't have happened." Artists are
the antennæ of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to
trust their great artists. If it is the business of the artist to make
humanity aware of itself; here the thing was done, the pages of
diagnosis. The multitude of wearisome fools will not learn their right
hand from their left or seek out a meaning.
It is always easy for people to object to what they have not tried to
understand.
I am not here to write a full volume of detailed criticism, but two
things I do claim which I have not seen in reviewers' essays. First,
that there was emotional greatness in Henry James's hatred of tyranny;
secondly, that there was titanic volume, weight, in the masses he sets
in opposition within his work. He uses forces no whit less specifically
powerful than the proverbial "doom of the house,"--Destiny, _Deus ex
machina_,--of great traditional art. His art was great art as opposed to
over-elaborate or over-refined art by virtue of the major conflicts
which he portrays. In his books he showed race against race, immutable;
the essential Americanness, or Englishness or Frenchness--in _The
American_, the difference between one nation and another; not
flag-waving and treaties, not the machinery of government, but "why"
there is always misunderstanding, why men of different race are not the
same.
We have ceased to believe that we conquer anything by having Alexander
the Great make a gigantic "joy-ride" through India. We know that
conquests are made in the laboratory, that Curie with his minute
fragments of things seen clearly in test tubes in curious apparatus,
makes conquests. So, too, in these novels, the essential qualities which
make up the national qualities, are found and set working, the
fundamental oppositions made clear. This is no contemptible labor. No
other writer had so essayed three great nations or even thought of
attempting it.
Peace comes of communication. No man of our time has so labored to
create means of communication as did the late Henry James. The whole of
great art is a struggle for communication. All things that oppose this
are evil, whether they be silly scoffing or obstructive tariffs.
And this communication is not a leveling, it is not an elimination of
differences. It is a recognition of differences, of the right of
differences to exist, of interest in finding things different. Kultur is
an abomination; philology is an abomination, all repressive uniforming
education is an evil.
A SHAKE DOWN
I have forgotten the moment of lunar imbecility in which I conceived the
idea of a "Henry James" number.[2] The pile of typescript on my floor
can but annoyingly and too palpably testify that the madness has raged
for some weeks.
Henry James was aware of the spherical form of the planet, and
susceptible to a given situation, and to the tone and tonality of
persons as perhaps no other author in all literature. The victim and the
votary of the "scene," he had no very great narrative sense, or at the
least, he attained the narrative faculty but _per aspera,_ through very
great striving.
It is impossible to speak accurately of "his style," for he passed
through several styles which differ greatly one from another; but in his
last, his most complicated and elaborate, he is capable of great
concision; and if, in it, the single sentence is apt to turn and perform
evolutions for almost pages at a time, he nevertheless manages to say on
one page more than many a more "direct" author would convey only in the
course of a chapter.
His plots and incidents are often but adumbrations or symbols of the
quality of his "people," illustrations invented, contrived, often
factitiously and almost transparently, to show what acts, what
situations, what contingencies would befit or display certain
characters. We are hardly asked to accept them as happening.
He did not begin his career with any theory of art for art's sake, and a
lack of this theory may have damaged his earlier work.
If we take "French Poets and Novelists" as indication of his then (1878)
opinions, and novels of the nineties showing a later bias, we might
contend that our subject began his career with a desire to square all
things to the ethical standards of a Salem mid-week Unitarian prayer
meeting, and that to almost the end of his course he greatly desired to
fit the world into the social exigencies of Mrs. Humphry Ward's
characters.
Out of the unfortunate cobwebs he emerged into his greatness, I think,
by two causes: first by reason of his hatred of personal intimate
tyrannies working at close range; and secondly, in later life, because
the actual mechanism of his scriptorial processes became so bulky,
became so huge a contrivance for record and depiction, that the old man
simply couldn't remember or keep his mind on or animadvert on anything
but the authenticity of his impression.
I take it as the supreme reward for an artist; the supreme return that
his artistic conscience can make him after years spent in its service,
that the momentum of his art, the sheer bulk of his processes, the (_si
licet_) size of his fly-wheel, should heave him out of himself, out of
his personal limitations, out of the tangles of heredity and of
environment, out of the bias of early training, of early predilections,
whether of Florence, A.D. 1300, or of Back Bay of 1872, and leave him
simply the great true recorder.
And this reward came to Henry James in the ripeness of his talents; even
further perhaps it entered his life and his conversation. The stages of
his emergence are marked quite clearly in his work. He displays himself
in _French Poets and Novelists_, constantly balancing over the question
of whether or no the characters presented in their works are, or are
not, fit persons to be received in the James family back-parlor.
In _The Tragic Muse_ he is still didactic quite openly. The things he
believes still leap out nakedly among the people and things he is
portraying; the parable is not yet wholly incarnate in the narrative.
To lay all his faults on the table, we may begin with his self-confessed
limitation, that "he never went down town." He displayed in fact a
passion for high life comparable only to that supposed to inhere in the
readers of a magazine called _Forget-me-not._
Hardy, with his eye on the Greek tragedians, has produced an epic
tonality, and _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ is perhaps more easily
comparable to the Grettir Saga than to the novels of Mr. Hardy's
contemporaries. Hardy is, on his other side, a contemporary of Sir
Walter Scott.
Balzac gains what force his crude writing permits him by representing
his people under the _ἀνάγκη_ of modernity, cash necessity; James, by
leaving cash necessity nearly always out of the story, sacrifices, or
rather fails to attain, certain intensities.
He never manages the classic, I mean as Flaubert gives us in each main
character: _Everyman_. One may conceivably be bored by certain pages in
Flaubert, but one takes from him a solid and concrete memory, a
property. Emma Bovary and Frederic and M. Arnoux are respectively every
woman and every man of their period. Maupassant's _Bel Ami_ is not.
Neither are Henry James's people. They are always, or nearly always, the
bibelots.
But he does, nevertheless, treat of major forces, even of epic forces,
and in a way all his own. If Balzac tried to give a whole civilization,
a whole humanity, James was not content with a rough sketch of one
country.
As Armageddon has only too clearly shown, national qualities are the
great gods of the present and Henry James spent himself from the
beginning in an analysis of these potent chemicals; trying to determine
from the given microscopic slide the nature of the Frenchness,
Englishness, Germanness, Americanness, which chemicals too little
regarded, have in our time exploded for want of watching. They are the
permanent and fundamental hostilities and incompatibles. We may rest our
claim for his greatness in the magnitude of his protagonists, in the
magnitude of the forces he analyzed and portrayed. This is not the bare
matter of a number of titled people, a few duchesses and a few butlers.
Whatever Flaubert may have said about his _Education Sentimentale_ as a
potential preventive of the débâcle of 1870, _if people had_ read _it_,
and whatever Gautier's friend may have said about _Emaux et Camées_ as
the last resistance to the Prussians, from Dr. Rudolph Staub's paragraph
in _The Bundle of Letters_ to the last and almost only public act of his
life, James displayed a steady perception and a steady consideration of
the qualities of different western races, whose consequences none of us
can escape.
And these forces, in precisely that they are not political and executive
and therefore transient, factitious, but in precisely that they are the
forces of race temperaments, are major forces and are indeed as great
protagonists as any author could have chosen. They are firmer ground
than Flaubert's when he chooses public events as in the opening of the
third part of _Education Sentimentale_.
The portrayal of these forces, to seize a term from philology, may be
said to constitute "original research"--to be Henry James's own
addendum; not that this greatly matters. He saw, analyzed, and presented
them. He had most assuredly a greater awareness than was granted to
Balzac or to Mr. Charles Dickens or to M. Victor Hugo who composed the
_Légende des Siècles._
His statement that he never went down town has been urged greatly
against him. A butler is a servant, tempered with upper-class contacts.
Mr. Newman, the American, has emerged from the making of wash-tubs; the
family in _The Pupil_ can scarcely be termed upper-class, however, and
the factor of money, Balzac's, _ἀνάγκη_, scarcely enters his stories.
We may leave Hardy writing Sagas. We may admit that there is a greater
_robustezza_ in Balzac's messiness, simply because he is perpetually
concerned, inaccurately, with the factor of money, of earning one's
exiguous living.
We may admit the shadowy nature of some of James's writing, and agree
whimsically with R.H.C. (in the _New Age_) that James will be quite
comfortable after death, as he had been dealing with ghosts all his
life.
James's third donation is perhaps a less sweeping affair and of more
concern to his compatriots than to any one who might conceivably
translate him into an alien tongue, or even to those who publish his
writings in England.
He has written history of a personal sort, social history well
documented and incomplete, and he has put America on the map both in
memoir and fiction, giving to her a reality such as is attained only by
scenes recorded in the arts and in the writing of masters. Mr. Eliot has
written, and I daresay most other American admirers have written or will
write, that, whatever any one else thinks of Henry James, no one but an
American can ever know, really know, how good he is at the bottom, how
good his "America" is.
No Englishman can, and in less degree can any continental, or in fact
any one whose family was not living on, say, West 23rd Street in the old
set-back, two-story-porched red brick vine-covered houses, etc., when
Henry James was being a small boy on East 23rd Street; no one whose
ancestors had not been presidents or professors or founders of Ha'avwd
College or something of that sort, or had not heard of a time when
people lived on 14th Street, or had known of some one living in
Lexington or Newton "Old Place" or somewhere of that sort in New
England, or had heard of the New York that produced "Fanny," New York
the jocular and uncritical, or of people who danced with General Grant
or something of that sort, would quite know _Washington Square_ or _The
Europeans_ to be so autochthonous, so authentic to the conditions. They
might believe the things to be "real," but they would not know how
closely they corresponded to an external reality.
Perhaps only an exile from these things will get the range of the other
half of James's presentations! Europe to the Transpontine, New York of
brown stone that he detested, the old and the new New York in _Crapey
Cornelia_ and in _The American Scene_, which more than any other volumes
give us our peculiar heritage, an America with an interest, with a tone
of time not overstrained, not jejunely over-sentimentalized, which is
not a redoing of school histories or the laying out of a fabulous
period; and which is in relief, if you like, from Dickens or from Mark
Twain's _Mississippi._ He was not without sympathy for his compatriots
as is amply attested by Mr. and Mrs. B.D. Hayes of New York (vide _The
Birthplace_) with whom he succeeds, I think, rather better than with
most of his princely continentals. They are, at any rate, his bow to the
Happy Genius of his country--as distinct from the gentleman who
displayed the "back of a banker and a patriot," or the person whose
aggregate features could be designated only as a "mug."
In his presentation of America he is greatly attentive, and, save for
the people in _Cœur Simple_, I doubt if any writer has done more of
"this sort of thing" for his country, this portrayal of the typical
thing in timbre and quality--balanced, of course, by the array of
spittoons in the Capitol ("The Point of View").
Still if one is seeking a Spiritual Fatherland, if one feels the
exposure of what he would not have scrupled to call, two clauses later,
such a wind-shield, "The American Scene" greatly provides it. It has a
mermaid note, almost to outvie the warning, the sort of nickelplate
warning which is hurled at one in the saloon of any great transatlantic
boat; the awfulness that engulfs one when one comes, for the first time
unexpectedly on a pile of all the _Murkhn_ Magazines laid, shingle-wise
on a brass-studded, screwed-into-place, baize-covered steamer table. The
first glitter of the national weapons for driving off quiet and all
closer signs of intelligence.[3]
Attempting to view the jungle of the work as a whole, one notes that,
despite whatever cosmopolitan upbringing Henry James may have had, as
witness "A Small Boy's Memoirs" and "Notes of Son and Brother," he
nevertheless began in "French Poets and Novelists" with a provincial
attitude that it took him a long time to work free of. Secondly we see
various phases of the "style" of his presentation or circumambiance.
There is a small amount of prentice work. Let us say "Roderick Hudson,"
"Casamassima." There are lucky first steps in "The American" and
"Europeans," a precocity of result, for certainly some of his early work
is as permanent as some of the ripest, and more so than a deal of the
intervening. We find (for in the case before us criticism must be in
large part a weeding-out) that his first subject matter provides him
with a number of good books and stories: "The American," "The
Europeans," "Eugene Pickering," "Daisy Miller," "The Pupil,"
"Brooksmith," "A Bundle of Letters," "Washington Square," "The Portrait
of a Lady," before 1880, and rather later, "Pandora," "The Four
Meetings," perhaps "Louisa Pallant." He ran out of his first material.
We next note a contact with the "Yellow Book," a dip into "cleverness,"
into the epigrammatic genre, the bare epigrammatic style. It was no
better than other writers, not so successful as Wilde. We observe him to
be not so hard and fine a satirist as is George S. Street.
We come then to the period of allegories ("The Real Thing," "Dominick
Ferrand," "The Liar"). There ensues a growing discontent with the short
sentence, epigram, etc., in which he does not at this time attain
distinction; the clarity is not satisfactory, was not satisfactory to
the author, his _donné_ being radically different from that of his
contemporaries. The "story" not being really what he is after, he starts
to build up his medium; a thickening, a chiaroscuro is needed, the long
sentence; he wanders, seeks to add a needed opacity, he overdoes it,
produces the cobwebby novel, emerges or justifies himself in "Maisie"
and manages his long-sought form in "The Awkward Age." He comes out the
triumphant stylist in the "American Scene" and in all the items of "The
Finer Grain" collection and in the posthumous "Middle Years."
This is not to damn incontinent all that intervenes, but I think the
chief question addressed to me by people of good-will who do not, but
are yet ready and willing to, read James, is: Where the deuce shall I
begin? One cannot take even the twenty-four volumes, more or less
selected volumes of the Macmillan edition all at once, and it is, alas,
but too easy to get so started and entoiled as never to finish this
author or even come to the best of him.
The laziness of an uncritical period can be nowhere more blatant than in
the inherited habit of talking about authors as a whole. It is perhaps
the sediment from an age daft over great figures or a way of displaying
social gush, the desire for a celebrity at all costs, rather than a care
of letters.
To talk in any other way demands an acquaintance with the work of an
author, a price few conversationalists care to pay, _ma che_! It is the
man with inherited opinions who talks about "Shelley," making no
distinction between the author of the Fifth Act of "The Cenci" and of
the "Sensitive Plant." Not but what there may be a personal _virtu_ in
an author--appraised, however, from the best of his work when, that is,
it is correctly appraised. People ask me what James to read. He is a
very uneven author; not all of his collected edition has marks of
permanence.
One can but make one's own suggestion:--
"The American," "French Poets and Novelists," "The Europeans," "Daisy
Miller," "Eugene Pickering," "Washington Square," "A Bundle of Letters,"
"Portrait of a Lady," "Pandora," "The Pupil," "Brooksmith," "What Maisie
Knew," and "The Awkward Age" (if one is "doing it all"), "Europe," "Four
Meetings," "The Ambassadors," "The American Scene," "The Finer Grain"
(all the volume, i.e., "The Velvet Glove," "Mona Montravers," "Round of
Visits," "Crapey Cornelia," "Bench of Desolation"), "The Middle Years"
(posthumous) and "The Ivory Tower" (notes first).
I "go easy" on the more cobwebby volumes; the most Jamesian are
indubitably "The Wings of a Dove" and "The Golden Bowl"; upon them
devotees will fasten, but the potential devotee may as well find his
aptitude in the stories of "The Finer Grain" volume where certain
exquisite titillations will come to him as readily as anywhere else. If
he is to bask in Jamesian tickle, nothing will restrain him and no other
author will to any such extent afford him equal gratifications.
If, however, the reader does not find delectation in the list given
above, I think it fairly useless for him to embark on the rest.
Part of James is a caviare, part I must reject according to my lights as
bad writing; another part is a spécialité, a pleasure for certain
temperaments only; the part I have set together above seems to me
maintainable as literature. One can definitely say: "this is good";
hold the argumentative field, suffer comparison with other writers;
with, say, the De Goncourt, or De Maupassant. I am not impertinently
throwing books on the scrap-heap; there are certain valid objections to
James; there are certain standards which one may believe in, and having
stated them, one is free to state that any author does not comply with
them; granting always that there may be other standards with which he
complies, or over which he charmingly or brilliantly triumphs.
James does not "feel" as solid as Flaubert; he does not give us
"Everyman," but on the other hand, he was aware of things which Flaubert
was not aware of, and in certain things supersedes the author of "Madame
Bovary."
He appears at times to write around and around a thing and not always to
emerge from the "amorous plan" of what he wanted to present, into
definite presentation.
He does not seem to me at all times evenly skillful in catching the
intonations of speech. He recalls the New England "a" in the "Lady's"
small brothers "Ha-ard" (Haahr-d) but only if one is familiar with the
phonetics described; but (vide the beginning of "The Birthplace") one is
not convinced that he really knows (by any sure instinct) how people's
voices would sound. Some remarks are in key, some obviously factitious.
He gives us more of his characters by description than he can by any
attribution of conversation, save perhaps by the isolated and discreet
remarks of Brooksmith.
His emotional centre is in being sensitive to the feel of the place or
to the tonality of the person.
It is with his own so beautiful talk, his ability to hear his own voice
in the rounded paragraph, that he is aptest to charm one. I find it
often though not universally hard to "hear" his characters speaking. I
have noted various places where the character notably stops speaking and
the author interpolates words of his own; sentences that no one but
Henry James could in any circumstances have made use of. Beyond which
statements I see no great concision or any clarity to be gained by
rearranging my perhaps too elliptical comments on individual books.
Honest criticism, as I conceive it, cannot get much further than saying
to one's reader exactly what one would say to the friend who approaches
one's bookshelf asking: "What the deuce shall I read?" Beyond this there
is the "parlor game," the polite essay, and there is the official
pronouncement, with neither of which we are concerned.
Of all exquisite writers James is the most colloquial, yet in the first
edition of his "French Poets and Novelists," his style, save for a few
scattered phrases, is so little unusual that most of the book seems,
superficially, as if it might have been written by almost any one. It
contains some surprising lapses ... as bad as any in Mr. Hueffer or even
in Mr. Mencken. It is interesting largely in that it shows us what our
subject had to escape from.
Let us grant at once that his novels show him, all through his life,
possessed of the worst possible taste in pictures, of an almost
unpunctured ignorance of painting, of almost as great a lack of taste as
that which he attributes to the hack-work and newspaper critiques of
Théophile Gautier. Let us admit that "painting" to Henry James probably
meant, to the end of his life, the worst possible late Renaissance
conglomerations.
Let us admit that in 1876, or whenever it was, his taste in poetry
inclined to the swish of De Musset, that it very likely never got any
further. By "poetry" he very possibly meant the "high-falutin" and he
eschewed it in certain forms; himself taking still higher falutes in a
to-be-developed mode of his own.
I doubt if he ever wholly outgrew that conception of the (by him so
often invoked) Daughters of Memory. He arrived truly at a point from
which he could look back upon people who "besought the deep blue sea to
roll." Poetry to him began, perhaps, fullfledged, springing Minerva-like
from the forehead of George Gordon, Lord Byron, and went pretty much to
the bad in Charles Baudelaire; it did not require much divination by
1914 ("The Middle Years") to note that he had found Tennyson rather
vacuous and that there "was something in" Browning.
James was so thoroughly a recorder of people, of their atmospheres,
society, personality, setting; so wholly the artist of this particular
genre, that it was impossible for him ever to hold a critical opinion of
art out of key with the opinion about him--except possibly in so far as
he might have ambitions for the novel, for his own particular métier.
His critical opinions were simply an extension of his being in key with
the nice people who "impressed" themselves on his gelatine "plate."
(This is a theoretical generalization and must be taken _cum grano._)
We may, perhaps, take his adjectives on De Musset as a desperate attempt
to do "justice" to a man with whom he knew it impossible for him to
sympathize. There is, however, nothing to hinder our supposing that he
saw in De Musset's "gush" something for him impossible and that he
wished to acknowledge it. Side by side with this are the shreds of Back
Bay or Buffalo, the mid-week-prayer-meeting point of view.
His most egregious slip is in the essay on Baudelaire, the sentence
quoted by Hueffer.[4] Notwithstanding this, he does effectively put his
nippers on Baudelaire's weakness:--
"A good way to embrace Baudelaire at a glance is to say that he was, in
his treatment of evil, exactly what Hawthorne was not--Hawthorne, who
felt the thing at its source, deep in the human consciousness.
Baudelaire's infinitely slighter volume of genius apart, he was a sort
of Hawthorne reversed. It is the absence of this metaphysical quality in
his treatment of his favorite subjects (Poe was his metaphysician, and
his devotion sustained him through a translation of 'Eureka!') that
exposes him to that class of accusations of which M. Edmond Scherer's
accusation of feeding upon _pourriture_ is an example; and, in fact, in
his pages we never know with what we are dealing. We encounter an
inextricable confusion of sad emotions and vile things, and we are at a
loss to know whether the subject pretends to appeal to our conscience
or--we were going to say--to our olfactories. 'Le Mal?' we exclaim; 'you
do yourself too much honor. This is not Evil; it is not the wrong; it is
simply the nasty!' Our impatience is of the same order as that which we
should feel if a poet, pretending to pluck 'the flowers of good,' should
come and present us, as specimens, a rhapsody on plum-cake and _eau de
Cologne_."
Here as elsewhere his perception, apart from the readability of the
work, is worthy of notice.
Hueffer says[5] that James belauds Balzac. I cannot see it. I can but
perceive Henry James wiping the floor with the author of "Eugénie
Grandet," pointing out all his qualities, but almightily wiping the
floor with him. He complains that Gautier is lacking in a concern about
supernatural hocus-pocus and that Flaubert is lacking. If Balzac takes
him to any great extent in, James with his inherited Swedenborgianism is
perhaps thereby laid open to Balzac.
It was natural that James should write more about the bulky author of
"La Comédie Humaine" than about the others; here was his richest quarry,
here was there most to note and to emend and to apply so emended to
processes of his own. From De Maupassant, De Goncourt or Baudelaire
there was nothing for him to acquire.
His dam'd fuss about furniture is foreshadowed in Balzac, and all the
paragraphs on Balzac's house-furnishing propensities are of interest in
proportion to our interest in, or our boredom with, this part of Henry
James's work.
What, indeed, could he have written of the De Goncourts save that they
were a little dull but tremendously right in their aim? Indeed, but for
these almost autobiographical details pointing to his growth out of
Balzac, all James would seem but a corollary to one passage in a De
Goncourt preface:--
"Le jour où l'analyse cruelle que mon ami, M. Zola, et peut-être
moi-même avons apportée dans la peinture du bas de la société sera
reprise par un écrivain de talent, et employée à la reproduction des
hommes et des femmes du monde, dans les milieux d'éducation et de
distinction--ce jour-là seulement le classicisme et sa queue seront
tués....
"Le Réalisme n'a pas en effet l'unique mission de décrire ce qui est
bas, ce qui est répugnant....
"Nous avons commencé, nous, par la canaille, parce que la femme et
l'homme du peuple, plus rapprochés de la nature et de la sauvagerie,
sont des créatures simples et peu compliquées, tandis que le Parisien et
la Parisienne de la société, ces civilisés excessifs, dont l'originalité
tranchée est faite toute de nuances, toute de demi-teintes, toute de ces
riens insaisissables, pareils aux riens coquets et neutres avec lesquels
se façonne le caractère d'une toilette distinguée de femme, demandent
des années pour qu'on les perce, pour qu'on les sache, pour qu'on les
_attrape_--et le romancier du plus grand génie, croyez-le bien, ne les
devinera jamais ces gens de salon, avec les _racontars_ d'amis qui vont
pour lui à la découverte dans le monde....
"Ce projet de roman qui devait se passer dans le grand monde, dans le
monde le plus quintessencié, et dont nous rassemblions lentement et
minutieusement les éléments délicats et fugaces, je l'abandonnais après
la mort de mon frère, convaincu de l'impossibilité de le réussir tout
seul."
But this particular paragraph could have had little to do with the
matter. "French Poets and Novelists" was published in '78 and Edmond De
Goncourt signed the preface to "Les Frères Zemganno" in '79. The
paragraphs quoted are interesting, however, as showing De Goncourt's
state of mind in that year. He had probably been preaching in this vein
long before setting the words on paper, before getting them printed.
If ever one man's career was foreshadowed in a few sentences of
another, Henry James's is to be found in this paragraph.
It is very much as if he said: I will not be a megatherium botcher like
Balzac; there is nothing to be said about these De Goncourts, but one
must try to be rather more interesting than they are in, let us say,
"Madame Gervaisais."[6]
Proceeding with the volume of criticism, we find that "Le Jeune H."
simply didn't "get" Flaubert; that he was much alive to the solid parts
of Turgenev. He shows himself very apt, as we said above, to judge the
merits of a novelist on the ground that the people portrayed by the said
novelist are or are not suited to reception into the household of Henry
James senior; whether, in short, Emma Bovary or Frederic or M. Arnoux
would have spoiled the so delicate atmosphere, have juggled the so fine
susceptibilities of a refined 23rd Street family it the time of the
Philadelphia "Centennial."
I find the book not so much a sign that Henry James was "disappointed,"
as Hueffer puts it, as that he was simply and horribly shocked by the
literature of his continental forebears and contemporaries.
It is only when he gets to the Théâtre Français that he finds something
which really suits him. Here there is order, tradition, perhaps a slight
fustiness (but a quite pardonable fustiness, an arranged and suitable
fustiness having its recompense in a sort of spiritual quiet); here, at
any rate, was something decorous, something not to be found in Concord
or in Albany. And it is easy to imagine the young James, not illuminated
by De Goncourt's possible conversation or writing, not even following
the hint given in his essay on Balzac and Balzacian furniture, but
sitting before Madame Nathalie in "Le Village" and resolving to be the
Théâtre Français of the novel.
A resolution which he may be said to have carried out to the great
enrichment of letters.
II
Strictures on the work of this period are no great detraction. "French
Poets and Novelists" gives us a point from which to measure Henry
James's advance. Genius showed itself partly in the escape from some of
his original limitations, partly in acquirements. His art at length
became "second nature," became perhaps half unconscious; or in part
wholly unconscious; in other parts perhaps too highly conscious. At any
rate in sunnier circumstances he talked exactly as he wrote, the same
elaborate paragraph beautifully attaining its climax; the same sudden
incision when a brief statement could dispose of a matter.
Be it said for his style: he is seldom or never involved when a direct
bald statement will accurately convey his own meaning, _all of it_. He
is not usually, for all his wide leisure, verbose. He may be highly and
bewilderingly figurative in his language (vide Mr. Hueffer's remarks on
this question)
Style apart, I take it that the hatred of tyrannies was as great a
motive as any we can ascribe to Galileo or Leonardo or to any other
great figure, to any other mythic Prometheus; for this driving force we
may well overlook personal foibles, the early Bostonese bias, the
heritage from his father's concern in commenting Swedenborg, the later
fusses about social caution and conservation of furniture. Hueffer
rather boasts about Henry James's innocence of the classics. It is
nothing to brag of, even if a man struggling against natural medievalism
have entrenched himself in impressionist theory. If James _had_ read his
classics, the better Latins especially, he would not have so excessively
cobwebbed, fussed, blathered, worried about minor mundanities. We may
_conspuer_ with all our vigor Henry James's concern with furniture, the
Spoils of Poynton, connoisseurship, Mrs. Ward's tea-party atmosphere,
the young Bostonian of the immature works. We may relegate these things
mentally to the same realm as the author's pyjamas and collar buttons,
to his intellectual instead of his physical valeting. There remains the
capacious intelligence, the searching analysis of things that cannot be
so relegated to the scrap-heap and to the wash-basket.
Let us say that English freedom legally and traditionally has its basis
in property. Let us say, à la Balzac, that most modern existence is
governed by, or at least interfered with by, the necessity to earn
money; let us also say that a Frenchman is not an Englishman or a German
or an American, and that despite the remark that the aristocracies of
all people, the upper classes, are the same everywhere, racial
differences are _au fond_ differences; they are likewise major subjects.
Writing, as I am, for the reader of good-will, for the bewildered person
who wants to know where to begin, I need not apologize for the following
elliptical notes. James, in his prefaces, has written explanation to
death (with sometimes a very pleasant necrography). Leaving the "French
Poets and Novelists," I take the novels and stories as nearly as
possible in their order of publication (as distinct from their order as
rearranged and partially weeded out in the collected edition).
1875. (U.S.A.) "A Passionate Pilgrim and other Tales." "Eugene
Pickering" is the best of this lot and most indicative of the future
James. Contains also the title story and "Madame de Mauves." Other
stories inferior.
1876. (U.S.A.) "Roderick Hudson," prentice work. First novel not up to
the level of "Pickering."
1877. "The American"; essential James, part of the permanent work.
"Watch and Ward," discarded by the author.
1878. "French Poets and Novelists," already discussed.
1878. "Daisy Miller." (The big hit and one of his best.) "An
International Episode," "Four Meetings," good work.
1879. Short stories first printed in England with additions, but no
important ones.
1880. "Confidence," not important.
1881. "Washington Square," one of his best, "putting America on the
map," giving us a real past, a real background. "Pension Beaurepas" and
"Bundle of Letters," especially the girls' letters, excellent, already
mentioned.
1881. "The Portrait of a Lady," one of his best. Charming Venetian
preface in the collected edition.
1884. "Tales of Three Cities," stories dropped from the collected
edition, save "Lady Barbarina."
1884. "Lady Barbarina," a study in English blankness comparable to that
exposed in the letters of the English young lady in "A Bundle of
Letters." There is also New York of the period. "But if there was one
thing Lady Barb disliked more than another it was describing Pasterns.
She had always lived with people who knew of themselves what such a
place would be, without demanding these pictorial effects, proper only,
as she vaguely felt, to persons belonging to the classes whose trade was
the arts of expression. Lady Barb of course had never gone into it; but
she knew that in her own class the business was not to express but to
enjoy, not to represent but to be represented."
"Mrs. Lemon's recognition of this river, I should say, was all it need
have been; she held the Hudson existed for the purpose of supplying New
Yorkers with poetical feelings, helping them to face comfortably
occasions like the present, and in general, meet foreigners with
confidence...."
"He believed, or tried to believe, the _salon_ now possible in New York
on condition of its being reserved entirely for adults; and in having
taken a wife out of a country in which social traditions were rich and
ancient he had done something toward qualifying his own house--so
splendidly qualified in all strictly material respects.... to be the
scene of such an effort. A charming woman accustomed only to the best on
each side, as Lady Beauchemin said, what mightn't she achieve by being
at home--always to adults only--in an easy early inspiring
comprehensive way and on the evening of the seven, when worldly
engagements were least numerous? He laid this philosophy before Lady
Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked New York on a short
acquaintance she couldn't fail to like it on a long. Jackson believed in
the New York mind--not so much indeed in its literary, artistic,
philosophic or political achievements as in its general quickness and
nascent adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it was an
indispensable neat block in the structure he was attempting to rear. The
New York mind would throw its glamour over Lady Barb if she would only
give it a chance; for it was thoroughly bright, responsive and
sympathetic. If she would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest
social centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ
might expand and where she might inhale its fragrance in the most
convenient and luxurious way, without, as it was, getting up from her
chair; if she would only just try this graceful good-natured
experiment--which would make every one like her so much too--he was sure
all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out.
But Lady Barb didn't rise at all to his conception and hadn't the least
curiosity about the New York mind. She thought it would be extremely
disagreeable to have a lot of people tumbling in on Sunday evening
without being invited, and altogether her husband's sketch of the
Anglo-American salon seemed to her to suggest crude familiarity, high
vociferation--she had already made a remark to him about 'screeching
women'--and random extravagant laughter. She didn't tell him --for this
somehow it wasn't in her power to express and, strangely enough, he
never completely guessed it--that she was singularly deficient in any
natural, or indeed, acquired understanding of what a salon might be. She
had never seen or dreamed of one--and for the most part was incapable of
imagining a thing she hadn't seen. She had seen great dinners and balls
and meets and runs and races; she had seen garden-parties and bunches of
people, mainly women--who, however, didn't screech--at dull stuffy teas,
and distinguished companies collected in splendid castles; but all this
gave her no clew to a train of conversation, to any idea of a social
agreement that the interest of talk, its continuity, its accumulations
from season to season shouldn't be lost. Conversation, in Lady Barb's
experience, had never been continuous; in such a case it would surely
have been a bore. It had been occasional and fragmentary, a trifle
jerky, with allusions that were never explained; it had a dread of
detail--it seldom pursued anything very far or kept hold of it very
long."
1885. "Stories Revived," adding to earlier tales "The Author of
Beltraffio," which opens with excess of the treading-on-eggs manner, too
much to be borne for twenty-four volumes. The pretense of extent of
"people" interested in art and letters, sic: "It was the most complete
presentation that had yet been made of the gospel of art; it was a kind
of æsthetic war cry. 'People' had endeavored to sail nearer "to truth,"
etc."
He implies too much of art smeared on limited multitudes. One wonders if
the eighties did in any great aggregate gush up to this extent. Doesn't
he try to spread the special case out too wide?
The thinking is magnificently done from this passage up to page sixteen
or twenty, stated with great concision. Compare it with "Madame
Gervaisais" and we find Henry James much more interesting when on the
upper reaches. Compare his expressiveness, the expressiveness of his
indirectness with that of constatation. The two methods are curiously
mixed in the opening of "Beltraffio." Such sentences as (page 30) "He
said the most interesting and inspiring things" are, however, pure
waste, pure "leaving the thing undone," unconcrete, unimagined; just
simply bad writing or bad novelisting. As for his special case he does
say a deal about the author or express a deal by him, but one is
bothered by the fact that Pater, Burton, Hardy, Meredith were not, in
mere history, bundled into one; that Burton had been to the East and the
others had not; that no English novelist of that era would have taken
the least notice of anything going on in foreign countries, presumably
European, as does the supreme author of "Beltraffio."
Doubtless he is in many ways the author Henry James would have liked to
meet and more illustrative of certain English tones and limitations than
any historical portrait might have been. Still Henry James does lay it
on ... more, I think, than the story absolutely requires. In
"Beltraffio" he certainly does present (not that he does not comment to
advantage) the two damn'd women appended to the gentlemanly hero of the
tale. The most violent post-Strindbergian school would perhaps have
called them bitches _tout bonnement_, but this word did not belong to
Henry James's vocabulary and besides it is of too great an
indistinctness. Author, same "bloody" (in the English sense) author with
his passion for "form" appears in "Lesson of Master," and most of H.J.'s
stories of literary _milieux_. Perpetual Grandisonism or Grandisonizing
of this author with the passion for form, all of 'em have it. _Ma ché!_
There is, however, great intensity in these same "be-deared" and
be-"poor-old"-ed pages. He has really got a main theme, a great theme,
he chooses to do it in silver point rather than in the garish colors
of,--well, of Cherbuliez, or the terms of a religious maniac with
three-foot long carving knife.
Novel of the gilded pill, an æsthetic or artistic message, dogma, no
better than a moral or ethic one, novel a cumbrous camouflage substitute
not for "that parlor game"[7] the polite essay, but for the impolite
essay or conveyance of ideas; novel to do this should completely
incarnate the abstraction.
Finish of "Beltraffio" not perhaps up to the rest of it. Not that one at
all knows how else....
Gush on page 42[8] from both conversationalists. Still an adumbration of
the search for the just word emerges on pages 43-44, real cut at
barbarism and bigotry on the bottom of page 45 (of course not labeled by
these monstrous and rhetorical brands, scorched on to their hides and
rump sides). "Will it be a sin to make the most of that one too, so bad
for the dear old novel?" Butler and James on the same side really
chucking out the fake; Butler focused on Church of England; opposed to
him the fakers booming the Bible "as literature" in a sort of last
stand, a last ditch; seeing it pretty well had to go as history,
cosmogony, etc., or the old tribal Daddy-slap-'em-with-slab of the Jews
as anything like an ideal:--
"He told me more about his wife before we arrived at the gate of home,
and if he be judged to have aired overmuch his grievance I'm afraid I
must admit that he had some of the foibles as well as the gifts of the
artistic temperament; adding, however, instantly that hitherto, to the
best of my belief, he had rarely let this particular cat out of the bag.
'She thinks me immoral--that's the long and short of it,' he said, as we
paused outside a moment and his hand rested on one of the bars of his
gate; while his conscious, expressive, perceptive eyes--the eyes of a
foreigner, I had begun to account them, much more than of the usual
Englishman--viewing me now evidently as quite a familiar friend, took
part in the declaration. 'It's very strange when one thinks it all over,
and there's a grand comicality in it that I should like to bring out.
She's a very nice woman, extraordinarily well-behaved, upright and
clever and with a tremendous lot of good sense about a good many
matters. Yet her conception of a novel--she has explained it to me once
or twice, and she doesn't do it badly as exposition--is a thing so false
that it makes me blush. It's a thing so hollow, so dishonest, so lying,
in which life is so blinked and blinded, so dodged and disfigured, that
it makes my ears burn. It's two different ways of looking at the whole
affair,' he repeated, pushing open the gate. 'And they're
irreconcilable!' he added with a sigh. We went forward to the house, but
on the walk, half-way to the door, he stopped and said to me: 'If you're
going into this kind of thing there's a fact you should know beforehand;
it may save you some disappointment. There's a hatred of art, there's a
hatred of literature--I mean of the genuine kinds. Oh, the
shams--_those_ they'll swallow by the bucket!' I looked up at the
charming house, with its genial color and crookedness, and I answered
with a smile that those evil passions might exist, but that I should
never have expected to find them there. 'Ah, it doesn't matter, after
all,' he a bit nervously laughed; which I was glad to hear, for I was
reproaching myself with having worked him up."
Really literature in the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth centuries
is where science was in the days of Galileo and the Inquisition. Henry
James not blinking it, neither can we. "Poor dears" and "dear olds"
always a little too plentiful.
1885. (continued) "Pandora," of the best. Let it pass as a sop to
America's virginal charm; as counter-weight to "Daisy Miller," or to the
lady of "The Portrait." Henry James alert to the German.
"The process of enquiry had already begun for him, in spite of his
having as yet spoken to none of his fellow passengers; the case being
that Vogelstein enquired not only with his tongue, but with his
eyes--that is with his spectacles--with his ears, with his nose, with
his palate, with all his senses and organs. He was a highly upright
young man, whose only fault was that his sense of comedy, or of the
humor of things, had never been specifically disengaged, from his
several other senses. He vaguely felt that something should be done
about this, and in a general manner proposed to do it, for he was on his
way to explore a society abounding in comic aspects. This consciousness
of a missing measure gave him a certain mistrust of what might be said
of him; and if circumspection is the essence of diplomacy our young
aspirant promised well. His mind contained several millions of facts,
packed too closely together for the light breeze of the imagination to
draw through the mass. He was impatient to report himself to his
superior in Washington, and the loss of time in an English port could
only incommode him, inasmuch as the study of English institutions was no
part of his mission. On the other hand the day was charming; the blue
sea, in Southampton Water, pricked all over with light, had no movement
but that of its infinite shimmer. Moreover, he was by no means sure that
he should be happy in the United States, where doubtless he should find
himself soon enough disembarked. He knew that this was not an important
question and that happiness was an unscientific term, such as a man of
his education should be ashamed to use even in the silence of his
thoughts. Lost none the less in the inconsiderate crowd and feeling
himself neither in his own country nor in that to which he was in a
manner accredited, he was reduced to his mere personality; so that
during the hour, to save his importance, he cultivated such ground as
lay in sight for a judgment of this delay to which the German steamer
was subjected in English waters. Mightn't it be proved, facts, figures
and documents--or at least watch--in hand, considerably greater than
the occasion demanded?
"Count Vogelstein was still young enough in diplomacy to think it
necessary to have opinions. He had a good many, indeed, which had been
formed without difficulty; they had been received ready-made from a line
of ancestors who knew what they liked. This was of course--and under
pressure, being candid, he would have admitted it--an unscientific way
of furnishing one's mind. Our young man was a stiff conservative, a
Junker of Junkers; he thought modern democracy a temporary phase and
expected to find many arguments against it in the great Republic. In
regard to these things it was a pleasure to him to feel that, with his
complete training, he had been taught thoroughly to appreciate the
nature of evidence. The ship was heavily laden with German emigrants,
whose mission in the United States differed considerably from Count
Otto's. They hung over the bulwarks, densely grouped; they leaned
forward on their elbows for hours, their shoulders kept on a level with
their ears: the men in furred caps, smoking long-bowled pipes, the women
with babies hidden in remarkably ugly shawls. Some were yellow Germans
and some were black, and all looked greasy and matted with the sea-damp.
They were destined to swell still further the huge current of the
Western democracy; and Count Vogelstein doubtless said to himself that
they wouldn't improve its quality. Their numbers, however, were
striking, and I know not what he thought of the nature of this
particular evidence."
For further style in vignette:
"He could see for himself that Mr. and Mrs. Day had not at all her grand
air. They were fat plain serious people who sat side by side on the
deck for hours and looked straight before them. Mrs. Day had a white
face, large cheeks and small eyes; her forehead was surrounded with a
multitude of little tight black curls; her lips moved as if she had
always a lozenge in her mouth. She wore entwined about her head an
article which Mrs. Dangërfield spoke of as a "nuby," a knitted pink
scarf concealing her hair, encircling her neck and having among its
convolutions a hole for her perfectly expressionless face. Her hands
were folded on her stomach, and in her still, swathed figure her
bead-like eyes, which occasionally changed their direction, alone
represented life. Her husband had a stiff gray beard on his chin and a
bare spacious upper lip, to which constant shaving had imparted a hard
glaze. His eyebrows were thick and his nostrils wide, and when he was
uncovered, in the saloon, it was visible that his grizzled hair was
dense and perpendicular. He might have looked rather grim and truculent
hadn't it been for the mild familiar accommodating gaze with which his
large light-colored pupils--the leisurely eyes of a silent man--appeared
to consider surrounding objects. He was evidently more friendly than
fierce, but he was more diffident than friendly. He liked to have you in
sight, but wouldn't have pretended to understand you much or to classify
you, and would have been sorry it should put you under an obligation. He
and his wife spoke sometimes, but seldom talked, and there was something
vague and patient about them as if they had become victims of a wrought
spell. The spell, however, was of no sinister cast; it was the
fascination of prosperity, the confidence of security, which sometimes
makes people arrogant, but which had had such a different effect on this
simple satisfied pair, in whom further development of every kind
appeared to have been happily arrested."
Pandora's approach to her parents:
"These little offices were usually performed deftly, rapidly, with the
minimum of words, and when their daughter drew near them, Mr. and Mrs.
Day closed their eyes after the fashion of a pair of household dogs who
expect to be scratched."
The tale is another synthesis of some of the million reasons why Germany
will never conquer the world, why the Hun is impossible, why "boche" is
merely "bursch." The imbecility of a certain Wellsian journalist in
treating this gem is again proof that it is written for the
relatively-developed American, not for the island écaillère. If Henry
James, as Ford Madox Hueffer says, set out to civilize the United
States, it is at least an easier job than raising British Suburbia to a
bearable level. From that milieu at least we have nothing of value to
learn; we shall not take our tonality from that _niveau._
In describing "Pandora's" success as "purely personal," Henry James has
hit on the secret of the Quattrocento. 1450 to 1550, the vital part of
the Renaissance. Aristocracy de
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