OURTETRARCHALPRECIEUSE
A divagation from Jules Laforgue 253
VI.
A divagation from Jules Laforgue 253
VI.
Ezra-Pound-Instigations
?
PA/ P^7
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY
HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE
? Cornell University Library PN 771. P87
3 1924 027 151 723
? The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www. archive. org/details/cu31924027151723
? INSTIGATIONS OF
EZRA POUND
TOGETHER WITH
AN ESSAY ON THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER
BY
ERNEST FENOLLOSA
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
Publishers
New York
? COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY EZRA POUND
? \A<\s^no
PKINIED IN THE maiED STATES OP AUEKICA
? TO
MY FATHER HOMER L. POUND
? II.
J III.
I.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A STUDY OF FRENCH POETS 3
3"
Narration
^ Jules Laforgue 7
Tristan Corbifere 19
Arthur Rimbaud 29 VRemy de Gourmont 3S De R^gnier 40 Emile Verhaeren 4S Viel6-Griffin 46
Stuart Merril 47. Laurent Tailhade 48
V Francis Jammes
Mor6as 62 Spire 6s Vildrac 67 Jules Remains 69 Unanimisme 78 De Bosschfere's study of Elskamp 83
Albert Meckel and " La Wallonie " 87
HENRY JAMES 106
REMY DE GOURMONT, a Distinction followed
by notes 168
S3
? viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
IV. INTHEVORTEX EUot
Joyce
Lewis
An Historical Essayist The New Poetry Breviora
PART SECOND
196 196 203 ^^3 ^^4^ 235 246
V. OURTETRARCHALPRECIEUSE
A divagation from Jules Laforgue 253
VI. GENESIS,orthefirstbookintheBible 266 I
VII. ARNAUTDANIEL 286 VIII. TRANSLATORSOFGREEK 321
IX. AnessayonTHECHINESEWRITTENCHAR- ACTER by the late ERNEST FENOLLOSA, edited by Ezra Pound.
357
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
? INSTIGATIONS
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, contem- porary French publications than any American period- ical has yet had.
I had wished to give but a brief anthology * 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 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!
OURTETRARCHALPRECIEUSE
A divagation from Jules Laforgue 253
VI. GENESIS,orthefirstbookintheBible 266 I
VII. ARNAUTDANIEL 286 VIII. TRANSLATORSOFGREEK 321
IX. AnessayonTHECHINESEWRITTENCHAR- ACTER by the late ERNEST FENOLLOSA, edited by Ezra Pound.
357
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
? INSTIGATIONS
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, contem- porary French publications than any American period- ical has yet had.
I had wished to give but a brief anthology * 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 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 !
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY
HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE
? Cornell University Library PN 771. P87
3 1924 027 151 723
? The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www. archive. org/details/cu31924027151723
? INSTIGATIONS OF
EZRA POUND
TOGETHER WITH
AN ESSAY ON THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER
BY
ERNEST FENOLLOSA
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
Publishers
New York
? COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY EZRA POUND
? \A<\s^no
PKINIED IN THE maiED STATES OP AUEKICA
? TO
MY FATHER HOMER L. POUND
? II.
J III.
I.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A STUDY OF FRENCH POETS 3
3"
Narration
^ Jules Laforgue 7
Tristan Corbifere 19
Arthur Rimbaud 29 VRemy de Gourmont 3S De R^gnier 40 Emile Verhaeren 4S Viel6-Griffin 46
Stuart Merril 47. Laurent Tailhade 48
V Francis Jammes
Mor6as 62 Spire 6s Vildrac 67 Jules Remains 69 Unanimisme 78 De Bosschfere's study of Elskamp 83
Albert Meckel and " La Wallonie " 87
HENRY JAMES 106
REMY DE GOURMONT, a Distinction followed
by notes 168
S3
? viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
IV. INTHEVORTEX EUot
Joyce
Lewis
An Historical Essayist The New Poetry Breviora
PART SECOND
196 196 203 ^^3 ^^4^ 235 246
V. OURTETRARCHALPRECIEUSE
A divagation from Jules Laforgue 253
VI. GENESIS,orthefirstbookintheBible 266 I
VII. ARNAUTDANIEL 286 VIII. TRANSLATORSOFGREEK 321
IX. AnessayonTHECHINESEWRITTENCHAR- ACTER by the late ERNEST FENOLLOSA, edited by Ezra Pound.
357
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
? INSTIGATIONS
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, contem- porary French publications than any American period- ical has yet had.
I had wished to give but a brief anthology * 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 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!
OURTETRARCHALPRECIEUSE
A divagation from Jules Laforgue 253
VI. GENESIS,orthefirstbookintheBible 266 I
VII. ARNAUTDANIEL 286 VIII. TRANSLATORSOFGREEK 321
IX. AnessayonTHECHINESEWRITTENCHAR- ACTER by the late ERNEST FENOLLOSA, edited by Ezra Pound.
357
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
? INSTIGATIONS
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, contem- porary French publications than any American period- ical has yet had.
I had wished to give but a brief anthology * 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 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.
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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
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--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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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?
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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 !
