No More Learning

L'opinion du public sur sa causerie est contenue en ces quelques mots, dits par un general retraite, grand joueur de billard, et qui du reste ne fit qu'une courte absence de la salle de jeu, pour ecouter quelques phrases du poete. 'Get homme est ivre ou fou,' dit il fort haut, en quittant la salle, ou son jugement fit loi. Anvers, malgre un leger masque de snobisme, qui pourrait
"
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 85
tromper, n'a pas change depuis. Mallarme, meme pour les avertis, est toujours rhomme ivre ou fou. "
The billiard player is the one modern touch in the book; for the rest Elskamp sails with sea-captains, ap- parently 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 de- monology, in the properly dim library of his maternal grandfather, "Sa passion en rhetorique fut pour Long- fellow, il traduisait 'Song of (sic) Hiawatots. '
The further one penetrates into De Bosschere's de- lightful 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 Bosschere scarcely helps me to name it. The third divi- sion 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
;
? 86 INSTIGATIONS
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 lache comme une proie videe le saint, il demeure avec les hommes. "
"Entre le voyant et ceux qui le sanctifient il y a un precipice insondatle. Seul I'individu est beatific par sa croyance; mais il ne pent I'utiliser au temporel ni la partager avec les hommes, et c'est peut-etre la forme unique de la justice sur terre. "
The two sentences give us perhaps the tone of De Boss- chere's critique "Sur le Mysticisme" of Elskamp.
It is, however, not in De Bosschere, but in La Wallome that I found the clue to this author:
CONSOLATRICE DES AFFLIGES
Et I'hiver m'a donne la main,
J'ai la main d'Hiver dans les mains,
et dans ma tete, au loin, il brule
les vieux etes de canicule ;
et dans mes yeux, en candeurs lentes, tres blanchement il fait des tentes,
dans mes yeux il fait des Sicile, puis des lies, encore des iles.
Et c'est tout un voyage en rond trop vite pour la guerison
a tons les pays oti Ton meurt
au long cours des mers et des heures
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 87
et c'est tout un voyage au vent sur les vaisseaux de mes lits blancs
qui houlent avec des etoilcs
a I'entour de toutes les voiles.
or j'ai le gout de mer aux levres comme une rancoeur de genievre
bu pour la tres mauvaise orgie des departs 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 lieres
mes mains sur mes draps blancs de fievre.
--Max Elskamp in "La Wallonie," 1892.
The poem appears in Van Bever and Leautaud's an- thology and there rhay 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 contem- poraries, I gained first the advantage of comprehension.
ALBERT MOCKEL AND "LA WALLONIE" *
I recently received a letter from Albert Mockel, written with a graciousness not often employed by Eng- lish and American writers in communication to their
* Utile Review, Oct. , 1918.
? 88 INSTIGATIONS
juniors. Indeed, the present elder generation of Ameri- can "respectable" authors having all their lives ap- proached 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 inter- est in, or cognizance of other sections of this troubled planet have been steadily and papier-macheedly depre- cated. 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 Litteraire in 1885, endured seven years. It announced for a full year on its covers that its seventh year was its last. Albert Meckel has been gracious enough to call it "Notre Little Review a nous," and to commend the motto on our cover, in the letter here following:
109, Avenue de Paris 8 mai, 1918 La MaJmaison Ruejl
Monsieur et cher confrere,
Merci de votre amiable envoi. La Little Review m'est sympathique a I'extreme. En la feuilletant j'ai cru voir renaitre ce temps dore de ferveur et de belle confiance oil, adolescent encore, et tatonnant un peu dans les neuves regions de I'Art, je fondai a Liege notre Little Review a nous. La Wallonie. Je retrouve justement quelques livraisons de cette revue et je vous les envoie; elles ont tout au moins le merite de la rarete.
Vous mon cher confrere, deja ne marchez plus a tatons mais je vous soupQonne de n'etre pas aussi terriblement, aussi criminellement jeune que je I'etais a cette epoque- la. Et puis trente ans ont passe sur la litterature, et c'est de la folie d'hier qu'est faite la sagesse d'aujourd'- hui. Alors le Symbolisme naissait ; grace a la coUabora-
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 89
tion de mes amis, grace a Henri de Regnier et Pierre M. Olin qui dirigerent la revue avec moi, La Wallonie en fut I'un des premiers foyers. Tout etait remis en ques- tion. On aspirait a plus de liberte a une forme plus intense et plus complete plus musicale et plus souple, a une expression nouvelle de reternelle beaute. On s'inge- niait on cherchait . . Tatonnementse? Certes et ils etaient inevitables. Mais vif et ardent effort, desinteres- sement absolu, foi juvenile et surtout "No compromise with the public taste" . . . N'y a-t-il point la quelques traits de ressemblance avec I'ceuvre que vous tentez au- jourd'hui en Amerique, et, a trente annees d'intervale, une sorte de cousinage? C'est pourquoi mon cher con- frere, j'ai lu avec tant de plaisir la Little Review dont vous avec eu la gentillesse de m'adresser la collection. Croyez-moi sympathiquement votre,
Albert Mockel.
With a native mistrust of la belle phrase; of "temps dorel' "ferveur," "belle confiance," etc. , and with an equally native superiority to any publication not printed LARGE, I opened La Wallonie. The gropings, "ta- tonnements," to which M. Mockel so modestly refers, appear to have included some of the best work of Mallarme, of Stuart Merrill, of Max Elskamp and Emile Verhaeren. Verlaine contributed to La Wallonie, De Regnier was one of its editors . . . Men of since popu-
lar fame--Bourget, Pierre Louys, Maeterlinck--ap- peared with the rarer spirits.
If ever the "amateur magazine" in the sense of maga- zine by lovers of art and letters, for lovers of art and letters, in contempt of the commerce of letters, has vin- dicated itself, that vindication was La Wallonie. Ver- haeren's "Les Pauvres" first appeared there as the sec-
:
? 90 INSTIGATIONS
oncl part of the series : "Chansons des Carrefours" (Jan. , '92) . . . The Elskamp I have just quoted appeared there with other poems of Max Elskamp. Mallarme is represented by the exquisite
SONNET
Ses purs ongles tres haut dediant leur onyx, L'Angoisse ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore, Maint reve vesperal brule par le phenix
Que ne recueille pas de cineraire amphore
Sur les credences, au salon vide : nul ptyx, Aboli bibelot d'inanite sonore,
(Car le maitre est alle puiser des pleurs au Styx Avec ce seul objet dont le Neant s'honore. )
Mais proche la croisee au nord vacante, un or Agonise selon peut-etre le decor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe,
EUe, defunte nue en le miroir encor
Que, dans I'oubli ferme par le cadre, se fixe De scintillations sitot le septuor.
--Mallarme in "La WcMonie," Jan. , 1889.
An era of Franco-Anglo-American intercourse is marked by his address to:
THE WHIRLWIND
Pas les rafales a propos
De rien comme occuper la rue
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POE'lb gi
Sujette au noir vol des chapeaux; Mais une danseuse apparue
Tourbillon de mousseline ou Fureur eparses en ecumes Que souleve par son genou Celle meme dont nous vecumes
Pour tout, hormis lui, rebattu Spirituelle, ivre, immobile Foudroyer avec le tutu,
Sans se faire autrement de bile
Sinon rieur que puisse I'air De sa jupe eventer Whistler.
--Mallarme in "Wallonie" Nov. , 1890.
If I owe Albert Mockel a great debt in having illumi- nated my eye for Elskamp I owe him no less the pleasure of one of Merrill's most delicate triumphs in the open- ing of
BALLET
Pour Gustck/e Moreau En casque de cristal rose les baladines,
Dont les pas mesures aux cordes des kinnors Tintent sous les tissus de tulle roidis d'ors, Exultent de leurs yeux pales de xaladines.
Toisons fauves sur leurs levres incarnadines. Bras lourds de bracelets barbares, en essors Moelleux vers la lueur lunaire des decors, Elles murmurent en malveillantes sourdines:
? 92 INSTIGATIONS
"Nous sommes, 6 mortels, danseuses du Desir,
Salomes 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 cranes. "
--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-virrought, 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 Aiwva and 'khuv iv in Bion's Adonis.
Hanton is gently didactic
LE BON GRAIN
"Deja peinent maints moissonneurs dont la memoire est destinee a vivre. "
--Celestin Demblon.
Amants des rythmes en des strophes cadencees, Des rimes rares aux splendeurs evocatoires, Laissant en eux comme un echo de leurs pensees, Comme un parfum de leurs symboles en histoires:
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
93
Tels les poetes vont cherchant en vrais glaneurs Les blonds epis qui formeront leur riche ecrin. lis choisirpnt, comme feraient les bons vanneurs, Parmi les bles passes 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 poesie
Qui dresseront leurs fiers epis vers I'avenir!
--Edmond Hanton in "La Wallonie,'' July, '88.
Delaroche is, at least in parts, utterly incomprehen- sible, but there is an interesting experiment in sound- sequence which begins
SONNETS SYMPHONIQUES
En la langueur accidentelle
de ta dentelle
oii meurt mon coeur
Un profil pleure et se voit tel
en le pastel
du divin leurre
Qu'or vegetal de lys s'enlise au froid santal
? 94
INSTIGATIONS
Si n'agonise occidental qui s'adonise.
--Achille Delairoche 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 ou s'immobilisent les oiseaux,
Une emerge des fleurs comme une fleur plus grande. Comme une fleur penchee au sourire de I'eau,
Ses mains viennent tresser la trainante guirlande Pour enchainer le Dragon vert--et de legende! Qui de ses griffes d'or dechire les roseaux,
Les faisceaux de roseaux: banderolles et lances.
Et quand le soir empourprera le fier silence
De la foret enjoleuse de la Douleur,
Ses doigts, fuseaux filant au rouet des murmures Les beaux anneaux fleuris liant les fleurs aux fleurs,
Ses doigts n'auront saigne qu'aux epines peu dures. --Albert Saint-Paul in "La Wallonie," Jan. , '91.
POUR LA DEMONE
Un soir de joie, un soir d'ivresse, un soir de fete, --Et quelle fete, et quelle ivresse, et quelle joie! --
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
Tu vins. L'imperial ennui sacrait ta tSte;
Et tu marchais dans un bruit d'armure et de soie.
Tu dedaignas tous les bijoux et I'oripeau De ruban, de dentelle et d'^phemere fleur Hermetique,* ta robe emprisonnait ta peau. Oui, la fourrure seule autour de ta paleur.
Tuparus. Soustesyeuxquelekh'olabomine,
Le bal fut la lugubre et derisoire histoire.
Les hommes des pantins qu'un vice mene et mine.
Les femmes, coeurs et corps fanes, et quel deboire
POUR LA DEMONS V.
EUe est folle, c'est stir, elle est folle la chere; Elle m'aime a n'en pas douter, mais elle est folle, Elle m'aime et, compatissez a ma misere,
Avec tous, avec toutes, elle batifole.
Un passe. . . . Elle s'elance a lui, coeur presume. . . Elle s'offre et le provoque, puis elle fuit
Vers ailleurs . . . si fidele encore au seul-aime, Mais elle est folle et je m'eplore dans la nuit.
Pour quelque amie aux delicatesses felines,
Elle glisse vers les caresses trop profondes.
. . . "Tu vas, folle, oublier mes rancoeurs orphelines. ' Mais sa levre pensive hesite aux toisons blondes.
--Jules Bois in "La Wcdlonie" Sept. , 'go. * Laforguef
95
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96 INSTIGATIONS
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. La-bas, tant de petits hameaux sous I'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'etend en de molles charpies
Sur les blessures des vieilles briques qui n'ont Rien senti d'une Soeur sur leur rongeur qui saigne Mais, 6 neige, c'est toi la Soeur au halo blanc Qui consoles les murs malades qu'on dedaigne
Et mats un peu d'ouate aux pierres s'eraflant.
Las! rien ne guerira les chaumines--aieules
Qui meurent de I'hiver et meurent d'etre seules. . . . Et leurs ames bientot, au gre des vents du nord. Dans la fumee aux lents departs, seront parties Cependant que la neige, a I'heure de leur mort,
Leur apporte ses refraichissantes hosties
--Georges Rodenbach in "La Wallonie," Jan. , '88.
Rodenbach is authentic.
A'iele-Griffin, who, as Stuart Merrill, has always been
!
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 97
known in France as "an American," contributed largely toLaWallonie. His"AuTombeaud'Helene"ends:
HELENE
Me voici:
J'etais la des hier, et des sa veille,
Ailleurs, id;
Toute chair, a pare, un soir, mon ame vieille Comme I'etemite du desir que tu vets.
La nuit est claire au firmament . . .
Regarde avec tes yeux leves:
Voici--comme un tissu de pale feu fatal
Qui fait epanouir la fleur pour la fletrir
Mon voile ou transparait tout assouvissement Qui t'appelle a 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'exuberent les mers Qui montent, tombent, se soulevent;
Et c'est le flot de vie exultante et prostree, le flot des reves,
le flot des chairs,
le flux et le reflux de la vaste maree.
Mon doute--on dit I'Espoir--fait Taction insigne: Je suis reine de Sparte et celle-la de Troie,
Par moi, la douloureuse existence guerroie
Je mens toute inertie aux leurres de ma joie, Helene, Selene, flottant de phase en phase,
Je suis Tlnaccedee et la tierce Hypostase Et si je rejetais, desir qui m'y convies,
--;
? 98
INSTIGATIONS
Mon voile qui promet et refuse I'extase,
Ma nudite de feu resorberait les Vies. . . . >>
--Viele-GriMn in "La IVallonie," Dec, '91. (Complete number devotgd to his poems. )
Meckel is represented by several poems rather too long to quote,--"Chantefable un peu naive," "L'Antithese," 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 eflfacee
comme les lignes tremblantes d'un reve la nuit s'est fondue au courant du Passe et le jour attendu se leve.
Regardez! en les courbes molles des rideaux une heure attendue se revele
et ma fenetre enfin s'eclaire,
cristalline du givre ou se rit la lumiere.
Une parure enfantine de neiges
habille la-bas d'immobiles eaux
et c'est les corteges des fees nouvelles
a tire d'ailes, a tire d'ailes
du grand lointain qui toutes reviennent
aux flocons de ce jour en neiges qui s'epele.
Des courbes de mes rideaux clairs
--voici
!
c'est un parfum de ciel !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 99
blanc des guirlandes de I'hiver le jeune matin m'est apparu avec un visage de fiancee.
Des fees
(ah je ne sais quelles mortelles fees)
jadis elles vinrent toucher la paupiere
d'un etre enfantin qui mourut.
Son ame, oti se jouait en songes la lumiere,
diaphane corolle epanouie au jour
son ame etait vive de toute lumiere
Lui, comme un frere il sufvait ma course
et nous allions en confiants de la montagne a la Vallee par les forets des chenes, des hetres
--car eux, les ancetres, ils ont le front grave
ils virent maints reves des autres ages
et nous parlent, tres doucement, comme nos Peres.
Mais voyez ! a mes rideaux pales le matin glisse des sourires;
car la Fiancee est venue
car la Fiancee est venue
avec un simple et tres doux visage,
avec des mots qu'on n'entend pas,
en silence la Fiancee est apparue
comme une grande soeur de I'enfant qui mourut; et les hetres, les chenes royaux des forets
par douce vocalise egrenant leur parure,
les voix ressuscitees en la plaine sonore
et toute la foret d'aurore
quand elle secoue du crepuscule sa chevelure. tout chante, bruit, petille et rayonne
car la celeste Joie que la clarte delivre
d'un hymne repercute aux miroirs du futur
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? 100 INSTIGATIONS
le front pale ou scintille en etoiles le givre.
--Albert Mockel in "La Wallonie," Dernier fascicule,
92.
I have left Gide and Van Lerberghe unquoted, un- mentioned, 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 ap- parent. Almost the first sentence I come upon (I sus- pect 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 Wal- loniefounditoutintheeighties. Thesymbolistemove- ment flourished on it. American letters did not flour- ish, 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, I'un des plus curieux poetes de la lit- terature aux visees nouvelles. Nous I'avons designe, ja deux mois : un Tristan Corbiere plus argentin, moins apre . . . Et telle est bien sa caracteristique. Sans le
--
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS loi
moindre soupgon d'imitation ou de reminiscences, Jules Laforgue a sauvegarde une originalite vivace. Seule- ment, cette originalite, par bien des saillies, touche a celledeTristanCorbiere. C'estunememerailleriedela Vie et du Monde; mais plus de sombre et virile amer- tume emouvait en I'auteur des Amours Jaunes, dont cette piece donnera quelque idee:
LE CRAPAUD
Un chant dans une nuit sans air . . . --La lune plaque en metal clair
Les decoupures du vert sombre.
. . . Un chant; comme un echo, tout vif Enterre, la, sous le massif . . .
--Qa. se tait ; viens, c'est la, dans I'ombre . . . Un crapaud!
--Pourquoi cette peur,
Pres de moi, ton soldat fidele!
Vois-le, poete tondu, sans aile,
Rossignol de la boue . . .
--Horreur !
. . . II chante. --Hoi-reur ! --Horreur pourquoi ?
!
Vois-tu pas son oeil de lumiere . . . Non, il s'en va, froid, sous sa pierre.
Bonsoir--ce crapaud-la c'est moi.
Chez Laforgue, il y a plus de gai sans-soud, de coups de batte de pierrot donnes a toutes choses, plus de "vaille- que-vaille la vie," dit d'un air de moqueuse resignation. Sa rancoeur n'est pas qui encombrante. II etait un peu I'enfant indiscipline que rit a travers les gronderies, et faitlamoueasafantaisie; maissonhaussementd'epaules
!
? I02 INSTIGATIONS
gamin, et ses "Apres tout? " qu'il jette comme une chiquenaude au visage du Temps, cachent toujours au fond de son coeur un lac melancolique, un lac de tristesse et d'amours fletris, oi! i vient se refleter sa claire imagina- tion. Temoins ces fragments pris aux Complamtes: Mon coeur est une urne ou j'ai mis certains defunts, Oh ! chut, refrains de leurs berceaux ! et vous, parfums.
Mon coeur est un Neron, enfant gate d'Asie,
Qui d'empires de reve en vain se rassasie.
Mon coeur est un noye vide d'ame et d'essors, Qu'etreint la pieuvre Spleen en ses ventouses d'or. C'est un feu d'artifice, helas! qu'avant la fete,
A noye sans retour I'averse qui s'embete.
Mon coeur est le terrestre Histoire-Corbillard
Que trainent au neant I'instinct et le hazard
Mon coeur est une horloge oubliee a demeure
Qui, me sachant defunt, s'obstine a marquer I'heure.
Et toujours mon coeur ayant ainsi declame. En revient a sa complainte: Aimer, etre aime!
Et cette piece, d'une ironie concentree:
COMPLAINTE DES BONS MENACES
L'Art sans poitrine m'a trop longtemps berce dupe. Si ses labours sont fiers, que ses bles decevants! Tiens, laisse-moi beler tout aux plis de ta jupe
Qui fleure le convent.
La Genie avec moi, serf, a fait des manieres;
Toi, jupe, fais frou-frou, sans t'inquieter pourquoi .
. .
Mais I'Art, c'est ITnconnu! qu'on y dorme et s'y vautre, On ne pent pas I'avoir constamment sur les bras
--;
? A STUDY IN jRE. nCH POETS 103
Etbien,menageauvent! SoyonsLui,EUeetI'Autre. Et puis n'insistons pas.
Et puis? et puis encore un pied de nez melancolique a la destinee;
Quim'aimajamais? Jem'entete Sur ce refrain bien impuissant Sans songer que je suis bien bete De me faire du mauvais sang;
Jules Laforgue a public outre les Complaintes, un livret de vers degingandes, d'une raillerie splenetique, a froid,commecellequisiedauxhommesduNord. Mais il a su y aj outer ce sans-faqon de choses dites a I'aven- ture, et tout un parfum de lumiere argentine, comme les rayons de Notre-Dame la Lune qu'il celebre. Le manque de place nous prive d'en citer quelques pages. NousavonsluaussicetteetrangeNuitd'Etoiles: leCon- seil Feerique, un assez court poeme edite par la "Vogue"
divers articles de revue, entre lesquels cette page en- soleillee, parue dans la Revue Independante : Pan et la Syrinx. Enfin un nouveau livre etait annonce: de la Pitie, de la Pitie! , deja prepare par I'une des Invoca- tions du volume precedent, et dont nous croyons voir I'idee en ces vers des Complaintes:
Vendange chez les Arts enfantins; sois en fete D'une fugue, d'un mot, d'un ton, d'un air de tete.
Vivre et peser selon le Beau, le Bien, le Vrai? O parfums, 6 regards, 6 fois ! soit, j'essaierai.
. . . Va, que ta seule etude
Soit de vivre sans but, fou de mansuetude
--Albert Mockel in "La Wallonie," 1887.
:
? I04 INSTIGATIONS
I have quoted but sparingly, and I have thought quo- tation better than comment, but despite the double mea- greness I think I have given evidence that La Wallonie was worth editing.
It began as L'Elan Litteraire with i6 pages, and an editionof200copies; itshouldconvinceanybutthemost 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 dore, 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 Ler- berghe, Gustave Kahn, Moreas, Quillard, Andre Gide; had been joined in their editing board by De Regnier (remember that they edited in Liege, 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 litera- ture, 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 impli- cated in La Wallonie.
If the date is insufficiently indicated by Mallarme's allusion to Whistler, we may turn to the art notes
"eaux-fortes de Mile Mary Cassatt . . . Lucien Pis-
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 105
saro, Sisley . . . lithographies de Fantin-Latour . . . Odillon Redon. "
"J'ai ete un peu a Paris, voir Bume Jones, Moreau, Delacroix . . . la danse du ventre, et les adorables Java- naises. C'est mon meilleur souvenir, ces filles 'tres parees' dans I'etrange demi-jour de leur case et qui tour- nent lentement dans la stridente musique avec de si enig- matique inflexions de mains et de si souriantes pour- suites les yeux dans les yeux. "
Prose poetry, that doubtful connection, appears at times even to advantage
"Selene, toi I'essence et le regard des infinis, ton mal nous serait la felicite supreme. O viens a nous; Tanit, Vierge Tanit, fleur metallique epanouie aux plaines celestes ! " Mockel.
? 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, per- haps 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 con- versation ; even if we did not hear it ourselves, we should have known that it was going on somewhere. The mas- sive head, the slow uplift of the hand, gli occhi onesti e tardi, the long sentences piling themselves up in elab- orate 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
io6
? HENRY JAMES 107
there to enrich the talk. I had heard it but seldom, yet it was all unforgettable.
The man had this curious power of fouoding-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 Atlan- tic 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 some- thing 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 con- sider 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 v^eeks! 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 '^fetions intelligible one to another. I am tired of hearing petti- ness 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, hot labeled "epos" or "Aeschylus. " The outbursts in The Tragic Muse, the whole of The Turn of the Screw,
? io8 INSTIGATIONS
human liberty, personal liberty, the rights of the indi- vidual against all sorts of intangible bondage! * 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 mak- ing America intelligible, of making it possible for indi- viduals to meet across national borders. I think half the American idiom is recorded in Henry James's writ- ing, and whole decades of American life that otherwise would have been utterly lost, wasted, rotting in the un- hermeticjarsofbadwriting,ofinaccuratewriting. 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. Thewholegreatassayingandweighing,there- search for the significance of nationality, French, Eng- lish, 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 paf>er, as Hen- ley 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
* This holds, despite anything that may be said of his fuss about social order, social tone. I naturally do not drag in po- litical connotations, from which H. J. was, we believe, wholly exempt. What he fights is "influence", the impinging of family pressure, the impinging of one personality on another; all of them in highest degree damn'd, loathsome and detestable. Re- spect for the peripheries of the individual may be, however, a discovery of our generation; I doubt it, but it seems to have been at low ebb in some districts (not rural) for some time.
:
? HENRY JAMES lop
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 forthenationalhonor. NootherAmericanwasofsuffi- cient 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 it- self 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 imag- inary 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 Sentimentaie, this sort of thing wouldn't have happened. " Artists are the antennse of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists. If it is the busi- ness 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.
? no INSTIGATIONS
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 criti- cism, but two things I do claim which I have not seen in reviewers'essays. First,thattherewasemotionalgreat- ness in Henry Jarnes'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 tra- ditional art. His art was great art as opposed to over- elaborate or over-refined art by virtue of the major conflictswhichheportrays. Inhisbooksheshowedrace against race, immutable ; the essential Americanness, or Englishness or Frenchness--in The American, the dif- ferencebetweenonenationandanother; notflag-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 an)rthing by having Alexander the Great make a gigantic "joy- ride"throughIndia. Weknowthatconquestsaremade 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 ttiade clear. This is no contemptible labor. No other writer had so essayed three great nations or even thought of attempt- ing it.
Peacecomesofcommunication. Nomanofourtime has so labored to create means of communication as did the late Henry James. The whole of great art is a strug-
? HENRY JAMES iii
gle 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 differ- ences, of the right of differences to exist, of interest in finding things different. Kultur is an abomination phi-
;
lology is an abomination, all repressive uniforming edu- cation is an evil.
A SHAKE DOWN
I have forgotten the moment of lunar imbecility in which I 'conceived the idea of a "Henry James" num- ber. * Thepileoftypescriptonmyfloorcanbutannoy- ingly 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.