Lavieestla;
lepurflacondesvivesgouttes
Sera, comme il convient, d'eau propre baptise.
Ezra-Pound-Instigations
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 some- times correct the criticism du cru. I cannot pretend to
* The Little Review, February, 1918. 3
;
? 4 INSTIGATIONS
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 proper- ties 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 m that tongue; almost the pnly technique perceptible to a foreigner is the presentation of content as free as pos- sible 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 mcEstria.
Mediocre poetry is, I think, the same everywhere
there is not the slightest need to import it; we search foreign tongues for mcestria and for discoveries not yet revealedinthehomeproduct. Thecriticofaforeign 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 lan- guage 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
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
5
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 adulaition 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 Mallarme; that Mallarme, 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 jn 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 Par- nassienism--perhaps second rate, but still enough. (The verses of La Comtesse de Noailles in the "Revue d*;? Deux Mondes," and those of John Vance Cheney in "The Atlantic" once gave me an almost identical pleasure. )
? 6 INSTIGATIONS
I do not mean that all the poems here to be quoted are . "
better than Samain's "Mon ame est une infante or his "Cleopatre. "
. .
We may take it that Gautier achieved hardness in Emaux: et Camees; 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 tech- nique. 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"; buthiswhole,forallthis,becomesfrigid.
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 ap- pears 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 con- veyed makes for poetry.
I intend here a qualitative analysis. The work of Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, Samain, Here- dia, 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 fortyyears. IfIamsuccessfulinmychoice,Iwillindi- cate most of the best and even some of the half-good. Bever and Leautaud's anthology contains samples of some forty or fifty more poets. *
Atestimony to the effect of anthologies, and to the prestige of Van Bever and Leautaud in forming French taste, and at the
--;
A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
After' Gautier, France produced, as nearly as I can understand, three chief and admirable poets: Tristan Corbiere, perhaps the most poignant writer since Villon Rimbaud,avivida^idindubitablegenius; andLaforgue
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, Rim- baudtheeternalchild. " Rimbaud'seffectsseemoftento come as the beauty of certain silver crystals produced bychemicalmeans. Laforguealwaysknowswhatheis at; Rimbaud, the "genius" in the narrowest and deepest
sense of the term, the "most modem," 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 waysofsayingathinghefindstherightway. Rimbaud, when right, is so because he cannot be bothered to exist in any other modality.
JULES LAFORGUE (i86o-'87)
Laforgue was the "end of a period"; that is to say,
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. revele Laforgue que je connais- sais seulement par les extraits publics dans la premiere An- thologie en i volume par Van Bever et Leautaud. "
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.
:
? 7
! :! ! ; ;
? 8 INSTIGATIONS
he summed up and summarized and dismissed nineteenlh- century French literature, its foibles and fashions, as Flaubert in "Bouvard and Pecuchet" summed up nine- teenth-century general civilization. He satirized Flau- bert's heavy "Salammbo" manner inimitably, and he man- ages to be more than a critic, for in process of this ironic summary he conveys himself, il raconte lui-meme en racontant son age et ses moeurs, he delivers the moods and the passion of a rare and sophisticated personality: "point ce 'gaillard-la' ni le Superbe . . . mais au fond distinguee et tranche comme une herbe"
Oh! laissez-moi seulement reprendre haleine, Et vous aurez un Hvre enfin de bonne foi.
En attendant, ayez pitie de ma misere
Que je vous sois a tous un etre bienvenu
Et que je sois absous pour mon ame sincere,
Comme le fut Phryne pour son sincere nu.
He is one of the poets whom it is practically impossible to"select. " Almostanyothersixpoemswouldbequite 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 ! la, la, grele histoire Oui, comme I'art! Du calme, 6 salaire illusoire
Du capitaliste Ideal!
Elle faisait: "J'attends, me void, je sais pas" . Le regard pris de ces larges candeurs des lunes
,
! !
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 9
--Oh ! la, la, ce n'est pas peut-etre pour des prunes, Qu'on a fait ses classes ici-bas ?
Mais void qu'un beau soir, infortunee a point, Ellemeurt! --Oh! la, la; bon,changementdetheme On sait que tu dois ressusciter le troisieme
Jour, sinon en personne, du moins
Dans I'odeur, les verdures, les eaux des beaux mois Et tu iras, levant encore bien plus de dupes
Vers le Zaimph de la Joconde, vers la Jupe
II se pourra meme que j'en sois.
PIERROTS III
CoMME ils vont molester, la nuit, Au profond des pares, les statues, Mais n'offrant qu'au moins devetues Leur bras et tout ce qui s'ensuit.
En tete-a-tete avec la femme
lis ont toujours I'air d'etre un tiers, Confondent demain avec hier,
Et demandent Rien avec ame!
Jurent "je t'aime" I'air la-bas,
D'une voix sans timbre, en extase, Et concluent aux plus folles phrases Par des ; "Mon Dieu, n'insistons pas ? "
Jusqu'a ce qu'ivre, Elle s'oublie. Prise d'on ne sait quel besoin
De lune? dans leurs bras, fort loin Des convenances etablies.
; ! ! :;!
? lo INSTIGATIONS
COMPLAINTE DES CONSOLATIONS QUia voluit consalari
Ses yeux ne me voient pas, son corps serait jaloux
Elle m'a dit: "monsieur . . . " en m'enterrant d'un
geste
Elle est Tout, I'univers moderne et le celeste. Soit, draguons done Paris, et ravitaillons-nous,
Tant bien que mal, du reste.
Les Landes sans espoir de ses regards briiles, Semblaient parfois des paons prets a mettre a la voile . Sans chercher a me consoler vers les etoiles,
Ah ! Je trouverai bien deux yeux aussi sans cles,
Au Louvre, en quelque toile
Oh! qu'incultes, ses airs, revant dans la prison
D'un cant sur le qui-vive au travers de nos hontes Mais, en m'appliquant bien, moi dont la foi demonte Les jours, les ciels, les nuits, dans les quatre saisons
Je trouverai mon compte.
Sa bo. uche ! a moi, ce pli pudiquement martyr Oil s'aigrissent des nostalgies de nostalgies
Eh bien, j'irai parfois, tres sincere vigie,
Du haut de Notre-Dame aider I'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 done ! mais ma seule presence Ici-bas, vraie a s'y mirer, est I'air de Tout
De la Femme au Silence.
;
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS n
LOCUTIONS DES PIERROTS VI
Je te vas dire : moi, quand j'aime, C'est d'un coeur, au fond sans apprets, Mais dignement elabore
Dans nos plus singuHers problemes.
Ainsi, pour mes moeurs et mon art, C'est la periode vedique
Qui seule a bon droit revendique
Ce que j'en "attelle a ton char. "
Comme c'est notre Bible hindoue Qui, tiens, m'amene a caresser, Avec ces yeux de cetace,
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 modem poetic Jacob must struggle.
COMPLAINTE DES PRINTEMPS
Permettez, 6 sirene,
Void que votre haleine Embaume la verveine
C'est I'printemps qui s'amene!
! : ! !
INSTIGATIONS
--Ce systeme, en effet, ramene le printemps, Avec son impudent cortege d'excitants.
Otez done ces mitaines;
Et n'ayez, inhumaine,
Que mes soupirs pour traine Ous'qu'ilyadelagene. . .
--Ah ! yeux bleus meditant sur I'ennui de leur art Et vous, jeunes divins, aux soirs crus de hasard
Du geant a la naine,
Vois, tout bon sire entraine Quelque contemporaine. Prendre Fair, par hygiene . . .
--Mais vous saignez ainsi pour I'amour de I'exil! Pour I'amour de I'Amour ! D'ailleurs, ainsi soit-il . . .
T'ai-je fait de la peine? Oh! viens vers les fontaines Ou tournent les phalenes Des Nuits Elyseennes
--Pimbeche aux yeux vaincus, bellatre aux beaux j arrets. Donnez votre fumier a la fleur du Regret.
Voila que son haleine N'embaum' plus la verveine Drole de phenomene . . . Hein, a I'annee prochaine?
--Vierges d'hier, ce soir traineuses de foetus, A genoux ! voici I'heure ou se plaint I'Angelus.
12
!
? !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 13
Nous n'irons plus au bois, Les pins sont eternels,
Les cors ont des appels! . . . Neiges des pales mois,
Vous serez mon missel! --Jusqu'au jour de. degel.
COMPLAINTE DES PIANOS Qti'on entend dans les Quartiers Aises
Menez I'ame que les Lettres ont bien nourrie, Les pianos, les pianos, dans les quartiers aises Premiers soirs, sans pardessus, chaste flanerie, Aux complaintes des nerfs incompris ou brises.
Ces enfants, a quoi revent-elles, Dans les ennuis des ritournelles ?
--"Preaux des soirs, Christs des dortoirs!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous laisses, Tu nous laiss's et tu t'en vas, T)efaire et refaire ses tresses, Broder d'etemels canevas. "
Jolie ou vague? triste ou sage? encore pure? Ojours,toutm'estegal? ou,monde,moijeveux?
Et si vierge, du moins, de la bonne blessure,
Sachant quels gras couchants ont les plus blancs aveux ?
Mon Dieu, a quoi done revent-elles ? A des Roland, a des dentelles?
! ! ! ;;!
? 14
INSTIGATIONS
--"Coeurs en prison, Lentes saisons!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous quittes,
Tu nous quitt's et tu t'en vas Couvents gris, choeurs de Sulamites, Sur nos seins nuls croisons nos bras. "
Fatales cles de I'etre un beau jour apparues Psitt! aux heredites en ponctuels ferments, Dans le bal incessant de nos etranges rues Ah! pensionnats, theatres, journaux, remans
Allez, steriles ritournelles,
La vie est vraie et criminelle.
--"Rideaux tires, Peut-on entrer?
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous kisses,
Tu nous kiss's et tu t'en vas.
La source des frais rosiers baisse,
Vraiment !
Et lui qui ne vient pas
. "
II viendra ! Vous serez les pauvres coeurs en faute, Fiances au remords comme aux essais sans fond,
Et les suffisants coeurs cossus, n'ayant d'autre hote Qu'un train-train pavoise d'estime et de chiffons
Mourir? peut-etre brodent-elles, Pour un oncle a dot, des bretelles?
--"Jamais ! Jamais Si tu savais
. .
! !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 15
Tu t'en vas et tu nous quittes,
Tu nous quitt's et tu t'en vas,
Mais tu nous reviendras bien vite Gudrir mon beau mal, n'est-ce pas f
Et c'est vrai! I'ldeal les fait divaguer toutes; Vigne boheme, meme en ces quartiers aises.
Lavieestla; lepurflacondesvivesgouttes Sera, comme il convient, d'eau propre baptise.
Aussi, bientot, 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 a la messe O mois, 6 linges, 6 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 writ- ten his poems in America in "the eighties. " He was born in i860, died in 1887 of la miskre, of consumption and abject poverty in Paris. The vaunted sensitiveness of French perception, and the fact that he knew a reason- able number of wealthy and influential people, did noth- ing 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 re- printed since then with increasing celerity.
!
? i6 INSTIGATIONS
Un couchant des Cosmogonies!
Ah! que la Vie est quotidienne . . ?
Et, du plus vrai qu'on se souvienne, Comme on fut pietre et sans genie. .
. ?
What is the man in the street to make of this, or of the Complainte des Bons Menages!
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 couvent.
^
Delicate irony, the citadel of the intelligent, has a curi- ous effect on these people. They wish always to be ex- horted, at all times no matter how incongruous and un- suitable, 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 Coeur Simple, L'Education, MadameBovary,Bouvard. HisSalomemakesgameof the rest. The short story has become vapid because sixty thousand story writers have all set themselves to imi- tating 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
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 17
without a familiarity with Laforgue one can not appre- ciate--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 clichSs, yet he makes them a vehicle for the expression of his own very personal emotionsj of his own unper- turbed sincerity.
Je ne suis pas "ce gaillard-la ! " ni Le Superbe Mais mon ame, qu'un cri un peu cm exacerbe,
Est au fond distinguee et franche comme une herbe.
This is not the strident and satiric voice of Corbiere, calling Hugo "Garde National Spique" and Lamartine "Lacrymatoire d'abonnes. " It is not Tailhade drawing with rough strokes the people he sees daily in Paris, and bursting with guffaws over the Japanese in their mackin- toshes, the West Indian mulatto behind the bar in the Quartier. It is not Georges Fourest burlesquing in a cafe; Fourest's guffaw is magnificent, he is hardly satir- ical. Tailhade draws from life and indulges in occa- sional squabbles.
Laforgue was a better artist than any of these men save Corbiere. 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 La- forgue" in our tongue. "Under the Hill" was issued in alimitededition. Laforgue'sMoralitesLegend<? reswas 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
? i8 INSTIGATIONS
finest wrought; he is most "verbalist. " Bad verbalism is rhetoric, or the use of clichS unconsciously, or a mere playing with phrases. But there is good verbalism, dis- tinct from lyricism or imagism, and in this Laforgue is amaster. Hewritesnotthepopularlanguageofany country, but an international tongue common to the ex- cessively cultivated, and to those more or less familiar with French litera1:ure of the first three-fourths of the
nineteenth century.
He has done, sketchily and brilliantly, for Frenchjit-
erature a work not incomparable to what Flaubert was doing for "France" in Bouvard <md Pecuichef, if one may compare the flight of the butterfly with the progress of an ox, both proceeding toward the same point of the compass. Hehasdippedhiswingsinthedyeofscien- tific terminology. Pierrot imberbe has
Un air d'hydrocephale asperge.
The tyro can not play about with such things. Verbal- ism 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, So- cieties for the Prevention of All Human Activities, are impossible in the wake of Laforgue. And he is there- fore 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 for- ever a mystery.
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 19
Que loin Tame type Qui m'a dit adieu
Parce que mes yeux Manquaierit de principes
EUe, en ce moment. Elle, si pain tendre, Oh! peut-etre engendre Quelque garnement.
Car on I'a unie
Avec un monsieur,
Ce qu'il y a de mieux, Mais pauvre en genie.
Laforgueisincontrovertible. The"strongsilentman" of the kinema has not monopolized all the certitudes.
TRISTAN CORBIERE (1841-1875)
Corbiere seems to me the greatest poet of the period. "La Rapsode Foraine et le Pardon de Sainte-Anne" is, tomymind,beyondallcomment. Hefirstpublishedin '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 aoiit, jour du Pardon.
Benite est I'infertile plage
Oil, comme la mer, tout est nud.
: ! --!
? 20
INSTIGATIONS
Sainte est la chapelle sauvage De Sainte-Anne-de-la-Palud . . .
De la Bonne Femme Sainte Anne, Grand'tante du petit Jesus,
En bois pourri dans sa soutane Riche . . . plus riche que Cresus
Contre elle la petite Vierge, Fuseau frele, attend VAngelus;
Au coin, Joseph, tenant son cierge, Niche, en saint qu'on ne fete plus .
. .
C'est le Pardon. --Liesse et mysteres Deja I'herbe rase a des poux . . . Sainte Anne, Onguent des belles-mkres Consolation des epoux! .
Des paroisses environnantes
De Plougastel et Loc-Tudy,
lis viennent tous planter leurs tentes, Trois nuits, trois jours,--jusqu'au lundi.
Trois jours, trois nuits, la palud grogne, Selon I'antique rituel,
--Choeur seraphique et chant d'ivrogne- Le Cantique spirituel.
Mere taillee d coups de hache, Tout coeur de chene dur et bon; Sous for de ta robe se cache L'dme en piice d'un franc Breton!
--Vieille verte a la face usie Comme la pierre du torrent,
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 21 Par des larmes d'amour creusie,
Sichee avec des pleurs de sang .
--Toi, dont la mamelle tarie yest refait, pour avoir parti La VirgimtS de Marie,
Une male virginite!
--Servante-'maltresse alti^re, Trks haute devant le Tres-Haut; Au pauvre monde, pas fitre, Dame pleine de comme-il-faut
. .
--Batondesaveugles! Bequille Des vieilles! Bras des nouveau-nes! Mere de madamve ta fille!
Parente des abandonfies!
--
Fruit de I'efpouse au Sein grossi!
Reposoir de la femme veuve . . . Et du veuf Dame-de-merci!
--Arche de Joachim! AieuleJ Medaille de cuivre effaci! Guisacre! TrMequatre-feuille! Montd'Horeh! SouchedeJesse!
Fleur de la pucelle neuve!
--
Qui filais comme on fait chez nous, Quand le soir venait a descendre. Tenant /'Enfant sur tes genoux;
toi qui recouvrais la cendre,
? 22
INSTIGATIONS
Toi qui fus la, seule, pour favre Son maillot A Bethleem,
Et l&, pour coudre son suaire Douloureux, d. Jirusalem! . . .
Des croix profondes sont tes rides, Tes cheveux sont blancs comme fits --Preserve des regards arides
Le berceau de nos petits-fils . . .
Pais venir et conserve en joie Ceux d naitre et ceux qui sont nes, Et verse, sans que Dieu te voie, L'eau de tes yeux sur les damnes!
Reprends dans leur chemise blanche Les petits qui sont en langueur . . . Rappelle a I'eternel Dim,anche
Les vieux qui tralnent en longueur:
-^Dragon-gardien de la Vierge, Garde la creche sous ton oeil. Que, pres de toi, Joseph-concierge Garde la propretS du seuil!
Prends pitiS de la fille-mere,
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 del et le port,
Dans la tempete ou dans la guerre . . O Fanal de la bonne mort!
--
? A isTUDY IN FRENCH POETS 23
Humble: a tes pieds n'as point d'itoile. Humble . . . et brave pour protSger! Dans la nue dpparaUt ton voile.
Pale aureole du danger.
--Aux perdus dont la vie est grise,
( Sauf respect--perdus de boisson)
Montre le clocher de I'Sglise Et le chemin de la maison.
Prete ta douce et chaste Uamme Aux Chretiens qui sont ici . . . Ton remMe de bonne femme Pour tes betes-a-corne aussi!
Montre a nos femmes et servantes L'ouvrage et la fecondite . . . --Le bonjour aux ames parentes Qui sont bien dams I'eternite!
--Nous mettrons un cordon de cire, De cire-vierge jaune autour
De ta chapelle et ferons dire
Ta messe basse au point du jour.
Preserve notre chemin^e
Des sorts et du monde malin . . . A Paques te sera do^mie
Une quenouille avec du Un.
Si nos corps sont puants sur terre, Ta grace est un bain de sante; Repands sur nous, au cimetihre, Ta bonne odeur de saintete.
? 24
INSTIGATIONS
--A I'an prochaini--Void ton cierge: {C'est deux livres qu'il a coute)
. . . Respects d. Madame la Vierge,
Sans oublier la TrinitA
. . . Et les fideles, en chemise, Sainte Anne, ayes pitie de nous! Font trois fois le tour de I'eglise En se trainant sur leurs genoux,
Et boivent I'eau miraculeuse Ou les Job teigneux ont lave Leur nudite contagieuse . . . Allez: la Foi vous a sauve!
C'est la que tiennent leurs cenacles Les pauvres, freres de Jesus.
--Ce n'est pas la cour des miracles, Les trous sont vrais : Vide latus!
Sont-ils pas divins sur leurs claies Qu'aureole un nimbe vermeil
Ces proprietaires de plaies,
Rubis vivants sous le soleil! .
. .
En aboyant, un rachitique Secoue un moignon desosse, Coudoyant un epileptique Qui travaille dans un fosse.
La, ce tronc d'homme ou croit I'ulcere, Centre un tronc d'arbre ou croit le gui, Ici, c'est la fille et la mere
Dansant la danse de Saint-Guy.
;!
Certain delicate wines will not travel; they are not always the best wines. Foreign criticism may some- times correct the criticism du cru. I cannot pretend to
* The Little Review, February, 1918. 3
;
? 4 INSTIGATIONS
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 proper- ties 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 m that tongue; almost the pnly technique perceptible to a foreigner is the presentation of content as free as pos- sible 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 mcEstria.
Mediocre poetry is, I think, the same everywhere
there is not the slightest need to import it; we search foreign tongues for mcestria and for discoveries not yet revealedinthehomeproduct. Thecriticofaforeign 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 lan- guage 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
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
5
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 adulaition 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 Mallarme; that Mallarme, 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 jn 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 Par- nassienism--perhaps second rate, but still enough. (The verses of La Comtesse de Noailles in the "Revue d*;? Deux Mondes," and those of John Vance Cheney in "The Atlantic" once gave me an almost identical pleasure. )
? 6 INSTIGATIONS
I do not mean that all the poems here to be quoted are . "
better than Samain's "Mon ame est une infante or his "Cleopatre. "
. .
We may take it that Gautier achieved hardness in Emaux: et Camees; 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 tech- nique. 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"; buthiswhole,forallthis,becomesfrigid.
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 ap- pears 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 con- veyed makes for poetry.
I intend here a qualitative analysis. The work of Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, Samain, Here- dia, 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 fortyyears. IfIamsuccessfulinmychoice,Iwillindi- cate most of the best and even some of the half-good. Bever and Leautaud's anthology contains samples of some forty or fifty more poets. *
Atestimony to the effect of anthologies, and to the prestige of Van Bever and Leautaud in forming French taste, and at the
--;
A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
After' Gautier, France produced, as nearly as I can understand, three chief and admirable poets: Tristan Corbiere, perhaps the most poignant writer since Villon Rimbaud,avivida^idindubitablegenius; andLaforgue
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, Rim- baudtheeternalchild. " Rimbaud'seffectsseemoftento come as the beauty of certain silver crystals produced bychemicalmeans. Laforguealwaysknowswhatheis at; Rimbaud, the "genius" in the narrowest and deepest
sense of the term, the "most modem," 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 waysofsayingathinghefindstherightway. Rimbaud, when right, is so because he cannot be bothered to exist in any other modality.
JULES LAFORGUE (i86o-'87)
Laforgue was the "end of a period"; that is to say,
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. revele Laforgue que je connais- sais seulement par les extraits publics dans la premiere An- thologie en i volume par Van Bever et Leautaud. "
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.
:
? 7
! :! ! ; ;
? 8 INSTIGATIONS
he summed up and summarized and dismissed nineteenlh- century French literature, its foibles and fashions, as Flaubert in "Bouvard and Pecuchet" summed up nine- teenth-century general civilization. He satirized Flau- bert's heavy "Salammbo" manner inimitably, and he man- ages to be more than a critic, for in process of this ironic summary he conveys himself, il raconte lui-meme en racontant son age et ses moeurs, he delivers the moods and the passion of a rare and sophisticated personality: "point ce 'gaillard-la' ni le Superbe . . . mais au fond distinguee et tranche comme une herbe"
Oh! laissez-moi seulement reprendre haleine, Et vous aurez un Hvre enfin de bonne foi.
En attendant, ayez pitie de ma misere
Que je vous sois a tous un etre bienvenu
Et que je sois absous pour mon ame sincere,
Comme le fut Phryne pour son sincere nu.
He is one of the poets whom it is practically impossible to"select. " Almostanyothersixpoemswouldbequite 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 ! la, la, grele histoire Oui, comme I'art! Du calme, 6 salaire illusoire
Du capitaliste Ideal!
Elle faisait: "J'attends, me void, je sais pas" . Le regard pris de ces larges candeurs des lunes
,
! !
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 9
--Oh ! la, la, ce n'est pas peut-etre pour des prunes, Qu'on a fait ses classes ici-bas ?
Mais void qu'un beau soir, infortunee a point, Ellemeurt! --Oh! la, la; bon,changementdetheme On sait que tu dois ressusciter le troisieme
Jour, sinon en personne, du moins
Dans I'odeur, les verdures, les eaux des beaux mois Et tu iras, levant encore bien plus de dupes
Vers le Zaimph de la Joconde, vers la Jupe
II se pourra meme que j'en sois.
PIERROTS III
CoMME ils vont molester, la nuit, Au profond des pares, les statues, Mais n'offrant qu'au moins devetues Leur bras et tout ce qui s'ensuit.
En tete-a-tete avec la femme
lis ont toujours I'air d'etre un tiers, Confondent demain avec hier,
Et demandent Rien avec ame!
Jurent "je t'aime" I'air la-bas,
D'une voix sans timbre, en extase, Et concluent aux plus folles phrases Par des ; "Mon Dieu, n'insistons pas ? "
Jusqu'a ce qu'ivre, Elle s'oublie. Prise d'on ne sait quel besoin
De lune? dans leurs bras, fort loin Des convenances etablies.
; ! ! :;!
? lo INSTIGATIONS
COMPLAINTE DES CONSOLATIONS QUia voluit consalari
Ses yeux ne me voient pas, son corps serait jaloux
Elle m'a dit: "monsieur . . . " en m'enterrant d'un
geste
Elle est Tout, I'univers moderne et le celeste. Soit, draguons done Paris, et ravitaillons-nous,
Tant bien que mal, du reste.
Les Landes sans espoir de ses regards briiles, Semblaient parfois des paons prets a mettre a la voile . Sans chercher a me consoler vers les etoiles,
Ah ! Je trouverai bien deux yeux aussi sans cles,
Au Louvre, en quelque toile
Oh! qu'incultes, ses airs, revant dans la prison
D'un cant sur le qui-vive au travers de nos hontes Mais, en m'appliquant bien, moi dont la foi demonte Les jours, les ciels, les nuits, dans les quatre saisons
Je trouverai mon compte.
Sa bo. uche ! a moi, ce pli pudiquement martyr Oil s'aigrissent des nostalgies de nostalgies
Eh bien, j'irai parfois, tres sincere vigie,
Du haut de Notre-Dame aider I'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 done ! mais ma seule presence Ici-bas, vraie a s'y mirer, est I'air de Tout
De la Femme au Silence.
;
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS n
LOCUTIONS DES PIERROTS VI
Je te vas dire : moi, quand j'aime, C'est d'un coeur, au fond sans apprets, Mais dignement elabore
Dans nos plus singuHers problemes.
Ainsi, pour mes moeurs et mon art, C'est la periode vedique
Qui seule a bon droit revendique
Ce que j'en "attelle a ton char. "
Comme c'est notre Bible hindoue Qui, tiens, m'amene a caresser, Avec ces yeux de cetace,
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 modem poetic Jacob must struggle.
COMPLAINTE DES PRINTEMPS
Permettez, 6 sirene,
Void que votre haleine Embaume la verveine
C'est I'printemps qui s'amene!
! : ! !
INSTIGATIONS
--Ce systeme, en effet, ramene le printemps, Avec son impudent cortege d'excitants.
Otez done ces mitaines;
Et n'ayez, inhumaine,
Que mes soupirs pour traine Ous'qu'ilyadelagene. . .
--Ah ! yeux bleus meditant sur I'ennui de leur art Et vous, jeunes divins, aux soirs crus de hasard
Du geant a la naine,
Vois, tout bon sire entraine Quelque contemporaine. Prendre Fair, par hygiene . . .
--Mais vous saignez ainsi pour I'amour de I'exil! Pour I'amour de I'Amour ! D'ailleurs, ainsi soit-il . . .
T'ai-je fait de la peine? Oh! viens vers les fontaines Ou tournent les phalenes Des Nuits Elyseennes
--Pimbeche aux yeux vaincus, bellatre aux beaux j arrets. Donnez votre fumier a la fleur du Regret.
Voila que son haleine N'embaum' plus la verveine Drole de phenomene . . . Hein, a I'annee prochaine?
--Vierges d'hier, ce soir traineuses de foetus, A genoux ! voici I'heure ou se plaint I'Angelus.
12
!
? !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 13
Nous n'irons plus au bois, Les pins sont eternels,
Les cors ont des appels! . . . Neiges des pales mois,
Vous serez mon missel! --Jusqu'au jour de. degel.
COMPLAINTE DES PIANOS Qti'on entend dans les Quartiers Aises
Menez I'ame que les Lettres ont bien nourrie, Les pianos, les pianos, dans les quartiers aises Premiers soirs, sans pardessus, chaste flanerie, Aux complaintes des nerfs incompris ou brises.
Ces enfants, a quoi revent-elles, Dans les ennuis des ritournelles ?
--"Preaux des soirs, Christs des dortoirs!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous laisses, Tu nous laiss's et tu t'en vas, T)efaire et refaire ses tresses, Broder d'etemels canevas. "
Jolie ou vague? triste ou sage? encore pure? Ojours,toutm'estegal? ou,monde,moijeveux?
Et si vierge, du moins, de la bonne blessure,
Sachant quels gras couchants ont les plus blancs aveux ?
Mon Dieu, a quoi done revent-elles ? A des Roland, a des dentelles?
! ! ! ;;!
? 14
INSTIGATIONS
--"Coeurs en prison, Lentes saisons!
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous quittes,
Tu nous quitt's et tu t'en vas Couvents gris, choeurs de Sulamites, Sur nos seins nuls croisons nos bras. "
Fatales cles de I'etre un beau jour apparues Psitt! aux heredites en ponctuels ferments, Dans le bal incessant de nos etranges rues Ah! pensionnats, theatres, journaux, remans
Allez, steriles ritournelles,
La vie est vraie et criminelle.
--"Rideaux tires, Peut-on entrer?
"Tu t'en vas et tu nous kisses,
Tu nous kiss's et tu t'en vas.
La source des frais rosiers baisse,
Vraiment !
Et lui qui ne vient pas
. "
II viendra ! Vous serez les pauvres coeurs en faute, Fiances au remords comme aux essais sans fond,
Et les suffisants coeurs cossus, n'ayant d'autre hote Qu'un train-train pavoise d'estime et de chiffons
Mourir? peut-etre brodent-elles, Pour un oncle a dot, des bretelles?
--"Jamais ! Jamais Si tu savais
. .
! !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 15
Tu t'en vas et tu nous quittes,
Tu nous quitt's et tu t'en vas,
Mais tu nous reviendras bien vite Gudrir mon beau mal, n'est-ce pas f
Et c'est vrai! I'ldeal les fait divaguer toutes; Vigne boheme, meme en ces quartiers aises.
Lavieestla; lepurflacondesvivesgouttes Sera, comme il convient, d'eau propre baptise.
Aussi, bientot, 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 a la messe O mois, 6 linges, 6 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 writ- ten his poems in America in "the eighties. " He was born in i860, died in 1887 of la miskre, of consumption and abject poverty in Paris. The vaunted sensitiveness of French perception, and the fact that he knew a reason- able number of wealthy and influential people, did noth- ing 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 re- printed since then with increasing celerity.
!
? i6 INSTIGATIONS
Un couchant des Cosmogonies!
Ah! que la Vie est quotidienne . . ?
Et, du plus vrai qu'on se souvienne, Comme on fut pietre et sans genie. .
. ?
What is the man in the street to make of this, or of the Complainte des Bons Menages!
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 couvent.
^
Delicate irony, the citadel of the intelligent, has a curi- ous effect on these people. They wish always to be ex- horted, at all times no matter how incongruous and un- suitable, 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 Coeur Simple, L'Education, MadameBovary,Bouvard. HisSalomemakesgameof the rest. The short story has become vapid because sixty thousand story writers have all set themselves to imi- tating 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
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 17
without a familiarity with Laforgue one can not appre- ciate--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 clichSs, yet he makes them a vehicle for the expression of his own very personal emotionsj of his own unper- turbed sincerity.
Je ne suis pas "ce gaillard-la ! " ni Le Superbe Mais mon ame, qu'un cri un peu cm exacerbe,
Est au fond distinguee et franche comme une herbe.
This is not the strident and satiric voice of Corbiere, calling Hugo "Garde National Spique" and Lamartine "Lacrymatoire d'abonnes. " It is not Tailhade drawing with rough strokes the people he sees daily in Paris, and bursting with guffaws over the Japanese in their mackin- toshes, the West Indian mulatto behind the bar in the Quartier. It is not Georges Fourest burlesquing in a cafe; Fourest's guffaw is magnificent, he is hardly satir- ical. Tailhade draws from life and indulges in occa- sional squabbles.
Laforgue was a better artist than any of these men save Corbiere. 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 La- forgue" in our tongue. "Under the Hill" was issued in alimitededition. Laforgue'sMoralitesLegend<? reswas 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
? i8 INSTIGATIONS
finest wrought; he is most "verbalist. " Bad verbalism is rhetoric, or the use of clichS unconsciously, or a mere playing with phrases. But there is good verbalism, dis- tinct from lyricism or imagism, and in this Laforgue is amaster. Hewritesnotthepopularlanguageofany country, but an international tongue common to the ex- cessively cultivated, and to those more or less familiar with French litera1:ure of the first three-fourths of the
nineteenth century.
He has done, sketchily and brilliantly, for Frenchjit-
erature a work not incomparable to what Flaubert was doing for "France" in Bouvard <md Pecuichef, if one may compare the flight of the butterfly with the progress of an ox, both proceeding toward the same point of the compass. Hehasdippedhiswingsinthedyeofscien- tific terminology. Pierrot imberbe has
Un air d'hydrocephale asperge.
The tyro can not play about with such things. Verbal- ism 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, So- cieties for the Prevention of All Human Activities, are impossible in the wake of Laforgue. And he is there- fore 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 for- ever a mystery.
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 19
Que loin Tame type Qui m'a dit adieu
Parce que mes yeux Manquaierit de principes
EUe, en ce moment. Elle, si pain tendre, Oh! peut-etre engendre Quelque garnement.
Car on I'a unie
Avec un monsieur,
Ce qu'il y a de mieux, Mais pauvre en genie.
Laforgueisincontrovertible. The"strongsilentman" of the kinema has not monopolized all the certitudes.
TRISTAN CORBIERE (1841-1875)
Corbiere seems to me the greatest poet of the period. "La Rapsode Foraine et le Pardon de Sainte-Anne" is, tomymind,beyondallcomment. Hefirstpublishedin '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 aoiit, jour du Pardon.
Benite est I'infertile plage
Oil, comme la mer, tout est nud.
: ! --!
? 20
INSTIGATIONS
Sainte est la chapelle sauvage De Sainte-Anne-de-la-Palud . . .
De la Bonne Femme Sainte Anne, Grand'tante du petit Jesus,
En bois pourri dans sa soutane Riche . . . plus riche que Cresus
Contre elle la petite Vierge, Fuseau frele, attend VAngelus;
Au coin, Joseph, tenant son cierge, Niche, en saint qu'on ne fete plus .
. .
C'est le Pardon. --Liesse et mysteres Deja I'herbe rase a des poux . . . Sainte Anne, Onguent des belles-mkres Consolation des epoux! .
Des paroisses environnantes
De Plougastel et Loc-Tudy,
lis viennent tous planter leurs tentes, Trois nuits, trois jours,--jusqu'au lundi.
Trois jours, trois nuits, la palud grogne, Selon I'antique rituel,
--Choeur seraphique et chant d'ivrogne- Le Cantique spirituel.
Mere taillee d coups de hache, Tout coeur de chene dur et bon; Sous for de ta robe se cache L'dme en piice d'un franc Breton!
--Vieille verte a la face usie Comme la pierre du torrent,
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 21 Par des larmes d'amour creusie,
Sichee avec des pleurs de sang .
--Toi, dont la mamelle tarie yest refait, pour avoir parti La VirgimtS de Marie,
Une male virginite!
--Servante-'maltresse alti^re, Trks haute devant le Tres-Haut; Au pauvre monde, pas fitre, Dame pleine de comme-il-faut
. .
--Batondesaveugles! Bequille Des vieilles! Bras des nouveau-nes! Mere de madamve ta fille!
Parente des abandonfies!
--
Fruit de I'efpouse au Sein grossi!
Reposoir de la femme veuve . . . Et du veuf Dame-de-merci!
--Arche de Joachim! AieuleJ Medaille de cuivre effaci! Guisacre! TrMequatre-feuille! Montd'Horeh! SouchedeJesse!
Fleur de la pucelle neuve!
--
Qui filais comme on fait chez nous, Quand le soir venait a descendre. Tenant /'Enfant sur tes genoux;
toi qui recouvrais la cendre,
? 22
INSTIGATIONS
Toi qui fus la, seule, pour favre Son maillot A Bethleem,
Et l&, pour coudre son suaire Douloureux, d. Jirusalem! . . .
Des croix profondes sont tes rides, Tes cheveux sont blancs comme fits --Preserve des regards arides
Le berceau de nos petits-fils . . .
Pais venir et conserve en joie Ceux d naitre et ceux qui sont nes, Et verse, sans que Dieu te voie, L'eau de tes yeux sur les damnes!
Reprends dans leur chemise blanche Les petits qui sont en langueur . . . Rappelle a I'eternel Dim,anche
Les vieux qui tralnent en longueur:
-^Dragon-gardien de la Vierge, Garde la creche sous ton oeil. Que, pres de toi, Joseph-concierge Garde la propretS du seuil!
Prends pitiS de la fille-mere,
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 del et le port,
Dans la tempete ou dans la guerre . . O Fanal de la bonne mort!
--
? A isTUDY IN FRENCH POETS 23
Humble: a tes pieds n'as point d'itoile. Humble . . . et brave pour protSger! Dans la nue dpparaUt ton voile.
Pale aureole du danger.
--Aux perdus dont la vie est grise,
( Sauf respect--perdus de boisson)
Montre le clocher de I'Sglise Et le chemin de la maison.
Prete ta douce et chaste Uamme Aux Chretiens qui sont ici . . . Ton remMe de bonne femme Pour tes betes-a-corne aussi!
Montre a nos femmes et servantes L'ouvrage et la fecondite . . . --Le bonjour aux ames parentes Qui sont bien dams I'eternite!
--Nous mettrons un cordon de cire, De cire-vierge jaune autour
De ta chapelle et ferons dire
Ta messe basse au point du jour.
Preserve notre chemin^e
Des sorts et du monde malin . . . A Paques te sera do^mie
Une quenouille avec du Un.
Si nos corps sont puants sur terre, Ta grace est un bain de sante; Repands sur nous, au cimetihre, Ta bonne odeur de saintete.
? 24
INSTIGATIONS
--A I'an prochaini--Void ton cierge: {C'est deux livres qu'il a coute)
. . . Respects d. Madame la Vierge,
Sans oublier la TrinitA
. . . Et les fideles, en chemise, Sainte Anne, ayes pitie de nous! Font trois fois le tour de I'eglise En se trainant sur leurs genoux,
Et boivent I'eau miraculeuse Ou les Job teigneux ont lave Leur nudite contagieuse . . . Allez: la Foi vous a sauve!
C'est la que tiennent leurs cenacles Les pauvres, freres de Jesus.
--Ce n'est pas la cour des miracles, Les trous sont vrais : Vide latus!
Sont-ils pas divins sur leurs claies Qu'aureole un nimbe vermeil
Ces proprietaires de plaies,
Rubis vivants sous le soleil! .
. .
En aboyant, un rachitique Secoue un moignon desosse, Coudoyant un epileptique Qui travaille dans un fosse.
La, ce tronc d'homme ou croit I'ulcere, Centre un tronc d'arbre ou croit le gui, Ici, c'est la fille et la mere
Dansant la danse de Saint-Guy.
;!
