Ver- haeren's "Les Pauvres" first
appeared
there as the sec-
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Ezra-Pound-Instigations
, 1918.
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
two men hold the two tenable, positions : the Mountain and the Multitude.
It might be fairer to Rpmains to say simply he has chosen, or specialized in, the collected multitude as a subject matter, and that he is quite well on a mountain of his own.
My general conclusions, redoing and reviewing this period of French poetry, are (after my paw-over of some sixty new volumes as mentioned, and after re-reading most of what I had read before) :
1. As stated in my opening, that mediocre poetry is about the same in all countries ; that France has as much drivel, gas, mush, etc. , poured into verse, as has any other nation.
2. That it is impossible "to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," or poetry out of nothing; that all attempts to "expand" a subject into poetry are futile, funda- mentally; that the subject matter must be coterminous with the expression. Tasso, Spenser, Ariosto, prose poems, diffuse forms of all sorts are all a preciosity; a parlor-game, and dilutations go to the scrap heap.
3. That Corbiere, Rimbaud, Laforgue are permanent; that probably some of De Gourmont's and Tailhade's poems are permanent, or at least reasonably durable; that Romains is indispensable, for the present at any rate; thatpeoplewhosaythey"don'tlikeFrenchpoetry" are possibly matoids, and certainly ignorant of the scope and variety of French work. In the same way people are ignorant of the qualities of French people; ignorant that if they do not feel at home in Amiens (as I do not),
thefe are other places in France; in the Charente if you walk across country you meet people exactly like the nicest people you can meet in the American country and they are not "foreign! '
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All France is not to be found in Paris. The adjective "French" is current in America with a dozen erroneous or stupid connotations. If it means, as it did in the mouth of my contemporary, "talcum powder" and sur- face neatness, the selection of poems I have given here would almost show the need of, or at least a reason for, French Parnassienism ; for it shows the French poets violent, whether with the violent words of Corbiere, or the quiet violence of the irony of Laforgue, the sudden annihilations of his "turn-back" on the subject. People
forget that the incision of Voltaire is no more all of French Literature than is the robustezza of Brantome. (Burton of the "Anatomy" is our only writer who can match him. ) They forget the two distinct finenesses of the Latin French and of the French "Gothic," that is of the eighteenth century, of Bernard (if one take a writer of no great importance to illustrate a definite quality), or of D'Orleans and of Froissart in verse. From this delicacy, if they can not be doing with it, they may turn easily to Villon or Basselin. Only a general distaste for
literature can be operative against all of these writers.
UNANIMISME
The English translation of Remains' "Mort de Quelqu'un" has provoked various English and American essays and reviews. His published works are "L'Ame des Hommes," 1904; "Le Bourg Regenere," 1906; "La Vie Unanime," 1908; "Premier Livre de Prieres," 1909; "La Foule qui est Ici," 1909 ; in 1910 and 191 1 "Un Etre en Marche," "Deux Poemes," "Manuel de Deification," "L'armee dans la Ville," "Puissances de Paris," and "Mort de Quelqu'un," employing the three excellent pub- lishing houses of the Mercure, Figuiere and Sansot.
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POEtS
His "Reflexions" at the end of "Puissances de Paris" are so good a formulation of the Unanimiste Aesthetic, or "Pathetique," that quotation of them will do more to disabuse readers misled by stupid English criticism than would any amount of talk about Romains. I let him speak for himself
REFLEXIONS
"Many people are . now ready to recognize that there are in the world beings more real than man. We admit the life of entities greater than our own bodies. Society is not merely an arithmetical total, or a collective desig- nation. We even credit the existence of groups inter- mediate between the individual and the state. But these opinions are put forth by abstract deduction or by ex- perimentation of reason.
"People employ them to complete a system of things and with the complacencies of analogy. If they do not follow a serious study of social data, they are at least the most meritorious results of observations ; they justify the method, and uphold the laws of a science which struggles manfully to be scientific.
"These fashions of knowing would seem both costly and tenuous. Man did not wait for physiology to give him a notion of his body, in which lack of patience he was intelligent, for physiology has given him but analytic and exterior information concerning things he had long known from within. He had been conscious of his organs long before he had specified their modes of ac- tivity. As spirals of smoke from village chimneys, the profound senses of each organ had mounted toward him joy, sorrow, all the emotions are deeds more fully of consciousness than are the thoughts of man's reason.
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Reason makes a concept of man, but the heart perceives the flesh of his body.
"In like manner we must know the groups that englobe us, not by observation from without, but by an organic consciousness. And it is by no means sure that the rhythms will make their nodes in us, if we be not the centresofgroups. Wehavebuttobecomesuch. Dig deep enough in our being, emptying it of individual rev- eries, dig enough little canals so that the souls of the groups will flow of necessity into us.
"I have attempted nothing else in this book. Various groups have come here into consciousness. They are still rudimentary, and their spirit is but a perfume in the air. Beings with as little consistence as la Rue du Havre, and la Place de la Bastile, ephemeral as the com- pany of people in an omnibus, or the audience at L'Opera Comique, can not have complex organism or thoughts greatly elaborate. People will think it superfluous that I should unravel such shreds in place of re-carding once more the enormous heap of the individual soul.
"Yet I think the groups are in the most agitated stage of their evolution. Future groups will perhaps deserve less affection, and we shall conceal the basis of things more effectively. Now the incomplete and unstable con- tours have not yet learned to stifle any tendency (aiiy inclination). Every impact sets them floating. They do not coat the infantile matter with a hard or impact- ingenvelope. Asuperiorplanthasrealizedbutfewof the possibilities swarming in fructificatory mould. A mushroom leads one more directly to the essential life quality than do the complexities of the oak tree.
"Thus the groups prepare more future than is strictly required. Thus we have the considerable happiness of watching the commencement of reign, the beginning of
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 8i
an organic series which will last as did others, for a thousand ages, before the cooling of the earth. This is not a progression, it is a creation, the first leap-out of a different series. Groups will not continue the activi- tiesofanimals,norofmen; theywillstartthingsafresh according to their own need, and as the consciousness of their substance increases they will refashion the image of the world.
"The men who henceforth can draw tlie souls of groups to converge within themselves, will give forth the com- ing dream, and will gather, to boot, certain intuitions of human habit. Our ideas of the being will undergo a correction; will hesitate rather more in finding a dis- tinction between the existent and non-existent. In pass- ing successively from the Place de I'Europe to the Place des Vosges, and then to a gang of navvies, one perceives that there are numerous shades of difference between nothingandsomething. Beforeresortingtogroupsone is sure of discerning a being of a simple idea. One knows that a dog exists, that he has an interior and independent unity ; one knows that a table or a mountain does not exist; nothing but our manner of speech cuts it off from the universal non-existing. But streets de- mand all shades of verbal expression (from the non- existing up to the autonomous creature).
"One ceases to believe that a definite limit is the indis- pensable means of existence. Where does la Place de la Trinite begin ? The streets mingle their bodies. The squares isolate themselves with great difificulty. The crowd at the theatre takes on no contour until it has lived for some time, and with vigor. A being (etre) has a centre, or centres in harmony, but a being is not compelled to have limits. He exists a great deal in one place, rather less in others, and, further on, a second
? 82 INSTIGATIONS
being commences before the first has left off. Every being has, somewhere in space, it^ maximum. Only ancestored individuals possess affirmative contours, a skin which cuts them off from the infinite.
"Spaceisnoone'spossession. Nobeinghassucceeded in appropriating one scrap of space and saturating it withhisownuniqueexistence. Everythingover-crosses, coincides, and cohabits. Every point is a perch for a thousand birds. Paris, the rue Montmartre, a crowd, a man, a protoplasm are on the same spot of pavement. A thousand existences are concentric. We see a little of some of them.
"How can we go on thinking that an individual is a solitary thing which is born, grows, reproduces itself and dies? This is a superior and inveterate manner of being an individual. But groups are not truly born. Their life makes and unmakes itself like an unstable state of matter, a condensation which does not endure. They show us that life, at its origin, is a provisory atti- tude, a moment of exception, an intensity between two relaxations, not continuity, nothing decisive. The first entireties take life by a sort of slow success, and extin- guish themselves without catastrophe, the single elements do not perish because the whole is disrupted.
"The crowd before the Baraque Foraine starts to live little by little, as water in a kettle begins to sing and evaporate. The passages of the Odeon do not live by night,eachdaytheyarereal,afewhours. Atthestart life seems the affair of a moment, then it becomes inter- mittent. To be durable; to become a development and a destiny; to be defined and finished off at each end by birth and death, it needs a deal of accustomedness.
"The primitive forms are not coequal. There is a natural hierarchy among groups. Streets have no set
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 83
middle, no veritable limitations; they hold a long vacil- lating sort of life which night flattens out almost to nothingness. Cross-roadsandsquarestakeoncontour, andgatherupthenodesoftheirrhythms. Othergroups have a fashioned body, they endure but a little space, buttheyhavelearned,almost,todie; theyevenresurrect themselves as by a jerk or dry spasm, they begin the habit of being, they strive toward it, and this puts them out of breath.
"I have not yet met a group fully divine. None has had a real consciousness, none has addressed me, saying: I exist. The day when the first group shall take its soul in its hands, as one lifts up a child in order to look in its face, that day there will be a new god upon earth. This is the god I await, with my labor of annunciation. "
This excerpt from Romains gives the tone of his thought. In so far as he writes in the present tense he carries conviction. He broaches truly a "new," or at leastcontemporary"pathetique. " Heutters,inoriginal vein, phases of consciousness whereinto we are more or less drifting, in measure of our proper sensibility.
I retain, however, my full suspicion of agglomerates.
DE BOSSCHERE'S STUDY OF ELSKAMP *
I CONFESSED in my February essay my inability to make anything of Max Elskamp's poetry, and I have tacitly confessed my inability to find any formula for hawking De Bosschere's own verge to any public of my
acquaintance; De Bosschere's study of Elskamp, how- ever, requires no advocacy; I do not think it even re-
* "Max Elskamp"; essai par lean De Bosscfi^re. Bibliothique de I'Occident, 17 rue Ehli, Paris, fr. 3. 50.
? 84 INSTIGATIONS
quires to be a study of Max Elskamp ; it drifts as quiet canal water; the protagonist may or not be a real man.
"Ici, la solitude est plus accentuee: souvent, pendant de longues minutes, les rues sont desertes. . . . Les portes ne semblent pas, ainsi que dans les grandes villes, s'ouvrir sur un poumon de vie, et etre une cellule vivante de la rue. Au contraire, toutes sont fetmees. Aussi bien, les facades de ce quartier sont pareilles aux murs borgnes. Unmincerubandecielrouxetgris,apeine' bleu au printemps, decoupe les pignons, se tend sur le marche desert et sur le puits profond des cours. "
From this Antwerp, De Bosschere derives his subject, as Gautier his "Albertus" from
Un vieux bourg flamand tel que peint Teniers; trfces bathing in water.
"Son univers etait limite par : 'le grand peuplier' ; une statue de Pomone, 'le grand rocher,' et 'la grand grenouille' ; ceci etait un coin touffu ovi il y avait de I'eau et oil il ne vit jamais qu'une seule grenouille, qu'il croyait immortelle. " DeBosschere'snextvisionofElskampis when his subject is pointed out as "le poete decadent," for no apparent reason save that he read Mallarme at a time when Antwerp did not. The study breaks into a cheerful grin when Elskamp tells of Mallarme's one appearance in the sea-port:
"Le bruit et les cris qui furent pousses pendant la conference de Mallarme, I'arreterent plusieurs fois. L'opinion du public sur sa causerie est contenue en ces quelques mots, dits par un general retraite, grand joueur de billard, et qui du reste ne fit qu'une courte absence de la salle de jeu, pour ecouter quelques phrases du poete. 'Get homme est ivre ou fou,' dit il fort haut, en quittant la salle, ou son jugement fit loi. Anvers, malgre un leger masque de snobisme, qui pourrait
"
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 85
tromper, n'a pas change depuis. Mallarme, meme pour les avertis, est toujours rhomme ivre ou fou. "
The billiard player is the one modern touch in the book; for the rest Elskamp sails with sea-captains, ap- parently in sailing ships to Constantinople, or perhaps one should call it Byzantium. He reads Juan de la Cruz and Young's Night Thoughts, and volumes of de- monology, in the properly dim library of his maternal grandfather, "Sa passion en rhetorique fut pour Long- fellow, il traduisait 'Song of (sic) Hiawatots. '
The further one penetrates into De Bosschere's de- lightful narrative the less real is the hero; the less he needs to be real. A phantom has been called out of De Foe's period, delightful phantom, taking on the reality of the fictitious; in the end the author has created a charming figure, but I am as far as ever from making head or tail of the verses attributed to this creation. I have had a few hours' delightful reading, I have loitered along slow canals, behind a small window sits Elskamp doing something I do not in the least understand.
II
So was I at the end of the first division "Sur la Vie" de Max Elskamp. The second division, concerned with "Oeuvre et Vie," but raised again the questions that had faced me in reading Elskamp's printed work. He has an undercurrent, an element everywhere present, differentiating his poems from other men's poems. De Bosschere scarcely helps me to name it. The third divi- sion of the book, at first reading, nearly quenched the curiosity and the interest aroused by the first two-thirds. On second reading I thought better of it. Elskamp, plunged in the middle ages, in what seems almost an
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? 86 INSTIGATIONS
atrophy, as much as an atavism, becomes a little more plausible. (For what it is worth, I read the chapter upon a day of almost complete exhaustion. )
"Or, quand la vision lache comme une proie videe le saint, il demeure avec les hommes. "
"Entre le voyant et ceux qui le sanctifient il y a un precipice insondatle. Seul I'individu est beatific par sa croyance; mais il ne pent I'utiliser au temporel ni la partager avec les hommes, et c'est peut-etre la forme unique de la justice sur terre. "
The two sentences give us perhaps the tone of De Boss- chere's critique "Sur le Mysticisme" of Elskamp.
It is, however, not in De Bosschere, but in La Wallome that I found the clue to this author:
CONSOLATRICE DES AFFLIGES
Et I'hiver m'a donne la main,
J'ai la main d'Hiver dans les mains,
et dans ma tete, au loin, il brule
les vieux etes de canicule ;
et dans mes yeux, en candeurs lentes, tres blanchement il fait des tentes,
dans mes yeux il fait des Sicile, puis des lies, encore des iles.
Et c'est tout un voyage en rond trop vite pour la guerison
a tons les pays oti Ton meurt
au long cours des mers et des heures
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 87
et c'est tout un voyage au vent sur les vaisseaux de mes lits blancs
qui houlent avec des etoilcs
a I'entour de toutes les voiles.
or j'ai le gout de mer aux levres comme une rancoeur de genievre
bu pour la tres mauvaise orgie des departs dans les tabagies;
puis ce pays encore me vient: un pays de neiges sans fin. . . .
Marie des bonnes couvertures, faites-y la neige moins dure
et courir moins comme des lieres
mes mains sur mes draps blancs de fievre.
--Max Elskamp in "La Wallonie," 1892.
The poem appears in Van Bever and Leautaud's an- thology and there rhay be no reason for my not having thence received it; but there is, for all that, a certain value in finding a man among his native surroundings, and in finding Elskamp at home, among his contem- poraries, I gained first the advantage of comprehension.
ALBERT MOCKEL AND "LA WALLONIE" *
I recently received a letter from Albert Mockel, written with a graciousness not often employed by Eng- lish and American writers in communication to their
* Utile Review, Oct. , 1918.
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juniors. Indeed, the present elder generation of Ameri- can "respectable" authors having all their lives ap- proached so nearly to death, have always been rather annoyed that American letters did not die utterly in their personal desiccations. Signs of vitality; signs of inter- est in, or cognizance of other sections of this troubled planet have been steadily and papier-macheedly depre- cated. The rubbish bins of Harper's and the Century have opened their lids not to new movements but only to the diluted imitations of new movers, etc.
La Wallonie, beginning as L'Elan Litteraire in 1885, endured seven years. It announced for a full year on its covers that its seventh year was its last. Albert Meckel has been gracious enough to call it "Notre Little Review a nous," and to commend the motto on our cover, in the letter here following:
109, Avenue de Paris 8 mai, 1918 La MaJmaison Ruejl
Monsieur et cher confrere,
Merci de votre amiable envoi. La Little Review m'est sympathique a I'extreme. En la feuilletant j'ai cru voir renaitre ce temps dore de ferveur et de belle confiance oil, adolescent encore, et tatonnant un peu dans les neuves regions de I'Art, je fondai a Liege notre Little Review a nous. La Wallonie. Je retrouve justement quelques livraisons de cette revue et je vous les envoie; elles ont tout au moins le merite de la rarete.
Vous mon cher confrere, deja ne marchez plus a tatons mais je vous soupQonne de n'etre pas aussi terriblement, aussi criminellement jeune que je I'etais a cette epoque- la. Et puis trente ans ont passe sur la litterature, et c'est de la folie d'hier qu'est faite la sagesse d'aujourd'- hui. Alors le Symbolisme naissait ; grace a la coUabora-
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 89
tion de mes amis, grace a Henri de Regnier et Pierre M. Olin qui dirigerent la revue avec moi, La Wallonie en fut I'un des premiers foyers. Tout etait remis en ques- tion. On aspirait a plus de liberte a une forme plus intense et plus complete plus musicale et plus souple, a une expression nouvelle de reternelle beaute. On s'inge- niait on cherchait . . Tatonnementse? Certes et ils etaient inevitables. Mais vif et ardent effort, desinteres- sement absolu, foi juvenile et surtout "No compromise with the public taste" . . . N'y a-t-il point la quelques traits de ressemblance avec I'ceuvre que vous tentez au- jourd'hui en Amerique, et, a trente annees d'intervale, une sorte de cousinage? C'est pourquoi mon cher con- frere, j'ai lu avec tant de plaisir la Little Review dont vous avec eu la gentillesse de m'adresser la collection. Croyez-moi sympathiquement votre,
Albert Mockel.
With a native mistrust of la belle phrase; of "temps dorel' "ferveur," "belle confiance," etc. , and with an equally native superiority to any publication not printed LARGE, I opened La Wallonie. The gropings, "ta- tonnements," to which M. Mockel so modestly refers, appear to have included some of the best work of Mallarme, of Stuart Merrill, of Max Elskamp and Emile Verhaeren. Verlaine contributed to La Wallonie, De Regnier was one of its editors . . . Men of since popu-
lar fame--Bourget, Pierre Louys, Maeterlinck--ap- peared with the rarer spirits.
If ever the "amateur magazine" in the sense of maga- zine by lovers of art and letters, for lovers of art and letters, in contempt of the commerce of letters, has vin- dicated itself, that vindication was La Wallonie.
Ver- haeren's "Les Pauvres" first appeared there as the sec-
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oncl part of the series : "Chansons des Carrefours" (Jan. , '92) . . . The Elskamp I have just quoted appeared there with other poems of Max Elskamp. Mallarme is represented by the exquisite
SONNET
Ses purs ongles tres haut dediant leur onyx, L'Angoisse ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore, Maint reve vesperal brule par le phenix
Que ne recueille pas de cineraire amphore
Sur les credences, au salon vide : nul ptyx, Aboli bibelot d'inanite sonore,
(Car le maitre est alle puiser des pleurs au Styx Avec ce seul objet dont le Neant s'honore. )
Mais proche la croisee au nord vacante, un or Agonise selon peut-etre le decor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe,
EUe, defunte nue en le miroir encor
Que, dans I'oubli ferme par le cadre, se fixe De scintillations sitot le septuor.
--Mallarme in "La WcMonie," Jan. , 1889.
An era of Franco-Anglo-American intercourse is marked by his address to:
THE WHIRLWIND
Pas les rafales a propos
De rien comme occuper la rue
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POE'lb gi
Sujette au noir vol des chapeaux; Mais une danseuse apparue
Tourbillon de mousseline ou Fureur eparses en ecumes Que souleve par son genou Celle meme dont nous vecumes
Pour tout, hormis lui, rebattu Spirituelle, ivre, immobile Foudroyer avec le tutu,
Sans se faire autrement de bile
Sinon rieur que puisse I'air De sa jupe eventer Whistler.
--Mallarme in "Wallonie" Nov. , 1890.
If I owe Albert Mockel a great debt in having illumi- nated my eye for Elskamp I owe him no less the pleasure of one of Merrill's most delicate triumphs in the open- ing of
BALLET
Pour Gustck/e Moreau En casque de cristal rose les baladines,
Dont les pas mesures aux cordes des kinnors Tintent sous les tissus de tulle roidis d'ors, Exultent de leurs yeux pales de xaladines.
Toisons fauves sur leurs levres incarnadines. Bras lourds de bracelets barbares, en essors Moelleux vers la lueur lunaire des decors, Elles murmurent en malveillantes sourdines:
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"Nous sommes, 6 mortels, danseuses du Desir,
Salomes dont les corps tordus par le plaisir
Leurrent vos heurs d'amour vers nos pervers arcanes.
Prosternez-vous avec des hosannas, ces soirs! Car, surgissant dans des aurores d'encensoirs, Sur nos cymbales nous ferons tonner vos cranes. "
--Stuart Merrill in "La Wallonie," July, '98.
The period was "glauque" and "nacre," it had its pet and too-petted adjectives, the handles for parody; but it had also a fine care for sound, for sound fine-virrought, not mere swish and resonant rumble, not
"Dolores, O hobble and kobble Dolores. O perfect obstruction on track. "
The particular sort of fine workmanship shown in this sonnet of Merrill's has of late been too much let go by the board. One may do worse than compare it with the Syrian syncopation of Aiwva and 'khuv iv in Bion's Adonis.
Hanton is gently didactic
LE BON GRAIN
"Deja peinent maints moissonneurs dont la memoire est destinee a vivre. "
--Celestin Demblon.
Amants des rythmes en des strophes cadencees, Des rimes rares aux splendeurs evocatoires, Laissant en eux comme un echo de leurs pensees, Comme un parfum de leurs symboles en histoires:
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93
Tels les poetes vont cherchant en vrais glaneurs Les blonds epis qui formeront leur riche ecrin. lis choisirpnt, comme feraient les bons vanneurs, Parmi les bles passes au crible, le beau grain.
Et germera cette semence bien choisie, Entre les roses et les lys, pour devenir Riche moisson de la fertile fantaisie.
L'ardent soleil de Messidor fera jaunir Les tiges souples d'une forte poesie
Qui dresseront leurs fiers epis vers I'avenir!
--Edmond Hanton in "La Wallonie,'' July, '88.
Delaroche is, at least in parts, utterly incomprehen- sible, but there is an interesting experiment in sound- sequence which begins
SONNETS SYMPHONIQUES
En la langueur accidentelle
de ta dentelle
oii meurt mon coeur
Un profil pleure et se voit tel
en le pastel
du divin leurre
Qu'or vegetal de lys s'enlise au froid santal
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INSTIGATIONS
Si n'agonise occidental qui s'adonise.
--Achille Delairoche in "La Wallonie," Feb. , '89.
I do not know that we will now be carried away by Albert Saint-Paul's chinoiserie, or that she-devils are so much in fashion as when Jules Bois expended, certainly, some undeniable emotion in addressing them:
PETALES DE NACRE
En sa robe ou s'immobilisent les oiseaux,
Une emerge des fleurs comme une fleur plus grande. Comme une fleur penchee au sourire de I'eau,
Ses mains viennent tresser la trainante guirlande Pour enchainer le Dragon vert--et de legende! Qui de ses griffes d'or dechire les roseaux,
Les faisceaux de roseaux: banderolles et lances.
Et quand le soir empourprera le fier silence
De la foret enjoleuse de la Douleur,
Ses doigts, fuseaux filant au rouet des murmures Les beaux anneaux fleuris liant les fleurs aux fleurs,
Ses doigts n'auront saigne qu'aux epines peu dures. --Albert Saint-Paul in "La Wallonie," Jan. , '91.
POUR LA DEMONE
Un soir de joie, un soir d'ivresse, un soir de fete, --Et quelle fete, et quelle ivresse, et quelle joie! --
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
Tu vins. L'imperial ennui sacrait ta tSte;
Et tu marchais dans un bruit d'armure et de soie.
Tu dedaignas tous les bijoux et I'oripeau De ruban, de dentelle et d'^phemere fleur Hermetique,* ta robe emprisonnait ta peau. Oui, la fourrure seule autour de ta paleur.
Tuparus. Soustesyeuxquelekh'olabomine,
Le bal fut la lugubre et derisoire histoire.
Les hommes des pantins qu'un vice mene et mine.
Les femmes, coeurs et corps fanes, et quel deboire
POUR LA DEMONS V.
EUe est folle, c'est stir, elle est folle la chere; Elle m'aime a n'en pas douter, mais elle est folle, Elle m'aime et, compatissez a ma misere,
Avec tous, avec toutes, elle batifole.
Un passe. . . . Elle s'elance a lui, coeur presume. . . Elle s'offre et le provoque, puis elle fuit
Vers ailleurs . . . si fidele encore au seul-aime, Mais elle est folle et je m'eplore dans la nuit.
Pour quelque amie aux delicatesses felines,
Elle glisse vers les caresses trop profondes.
. . . "Tu vas, folle, oublier mes rancoeurs orphelines. ' Mais sa levre pensive hesite aux toisons blondes.
--Jules Bois in "La Wcdlonie" Sept. , 'go. * Laforguef
95
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96 INSTIGATIONS
In part we must take our reading of La Wallonie as a study of the state of symbolism from 1885 to '92.
Rodenbach displays the other leaf of the diptych: the genre, the homely Wallon landscape, more familiar to the outer world in Verhaeren, but not, I think, better painted.
PAYSAGES SOUFFRANTS II.
A Emilie Verhaeren. La-bas, tant de petits hameaux sous I'avalanche
De la neige qui tombe adoucissante et blanche, Tant de villages, tant de chaumines qui sont Pour le reste d'un soir doucement assoupies. Car le neige s'etend en de molles charpies
Sur les blessures des vieilles briques qui n'ont Rien senti d'une Soeur sur leur rongeur qui saigne Mais, 6 neige, c'est toi la Soeur au halo blanc Qui consoles les murs malades qu'on dedaigne
Et mats un peu d'ouate aux pierres s'eraflant.
Las! rien ne guerira les chaumines--aieules
Qui meurent de I'hiver et meurent d'etre seules. . . . Et leurs ames bientot, au gre des vents du nord. Dans la fumee aux lents departs, seront parties Cependant que la neige, a I'heure de leur mort,
Leur apporte ses refraichissantes hosties
--Georges Rodenbach in "La Wallonie," Jan. , '88.
Rodenbach is authentic.
A'iele-Griffin, who, as Stuart Merrill, has always been
!
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 97
known in France as "an American," contributed largely toLaWallonie. His"AuTombeaud'Helene"ends:
HELENE
Me voici:
J'etais la des hier, et des sa veille,
Ailleurs, id;
Toute chair, a pare, un soir, mon ame vieille Comme I'etemite du desir que tu vets.
La nuit est claire au firmament . . .
Regarde avec tes yeux leves:
Voici--comme un tissu de pale feu fatal
Qui fait epanouir la fleur pour la fletrir
Mon voile ou transparait tout assouvissement Qui t'appelle a la vie et qui t'en fait mourir. La nuit est claire au firmament vital . . .
Mes mythes, tu les sais:
Je suis fille du Cygne,
Je suis la lune dont s'exuberent les mers Qui montent, tombent, se soulevent;
Et c'est le flot de vie exultante et prostree, le flot des reves,
le flot des chairs,
le flux et le reflux de la vaste maree.
Mon doute--on dit I'Espoir--fait Taction insigne: Je suis reine de Sparte et celle-la de Troie,
Par moi, la douloureuse existence guerroie
Je mens toute inertie aux leurres de ma joie, Helene, Selene, flottant de phase en phase,
Je suis Tlnaccedee et la tierce Hypostase Et si je rejetais, desir qui m'y convies,
--;
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INSTIGATIONS
Mon voile qui promet et refuse I'extase,
Ma nudite de feu resorberait les Vies. . . . >>
--Viele-GriMn in "La IVallonie," Dec, '91. (Complete number devotgd to his poems. )
Meckel is represented by several poems rather too long to quote,--"Chantefable un peu naive," "L'Antithese," suggestive of the Gourmont litany; by prose comment, by work over various pseudonyms. "A Clair Matin" is a suitable length to quote, and it is better perhaps to represent him here by it than by fragments which I had first intended to cut from his longer poems.
A CLAIR MATIN
La nuit au loin s'est eflfacee
comme les lignes tremblantes d'un reve la nuit s'est fondue au courant du Passe et le jour attendu se leve.
Regardez! en les courbes molles des rideaux une heure attendue se revele
et ma fenetre enfin s'eclaire,
cristalline du givre ou se rit la lumiere.
Une parure enfantine de neiges
habille la-bas d'immobiles eaux
et c'est les corteges des fees nouvelles
a tire d'ailes, a tire d'ailes
du grand lointain qui toutes reviennent
aux flocons de ce jour en neiges qui s'epele.
Des courbes de mes rideaux clairs
--voici
!
c'est un parfum de ciel !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 99
blanc des guirlandes de I'hiver le jeune matin m'est apparu avec un visage de fiancee.
Des fees
(ah je ne sais quelles mortelles fees)
jadis elles vinrent toucher la paupiere
d'un etre enfantin qui mourut.
Son ame, oti se jouait en songes la lumiere,
diaphane corolle epanouie au jour
son ame etait vive de toute lumiere
Lui, comme un frere il sufvait ma course
et nous allions en confiants de la montagne a la Vallee par les forets des chenes, des hetres
--car eux, les ancetres, ils ont le front grave
ils virent maints reves des autres ages
et nous parlent, tres doucement, comme nos Peres.
Mais voyez ! a mes rideaux pales le matin glisse des sourires;
car la Fiancee est venue
car la Fiancee est venue
avec un simple et tres doux visage,
avec des mots qu'on n'entend pas,
en silence la Fiancee est apparue
comme une grande soeur de I'enfant qui mourut; et les hetres, les chenes royaux des forets
par douce vocalise egrenant leur parure,
les voix ressuscitees en la plaine sonore
et toute la foret d'aurore
quand elle secoue du crepuscule sa chevelure. tout chante, bruit, petille et rayonne
car la celeste Joie que la clarte delivre
d'un hymne repercute aux miroirs du futur
:
? 100 INSTIGATIONS
le front pale ou scintille en etoiles le givre.
--Albert Mockel in "La Wallonie," Dernier fascicule,
92.
I have left Gide and Van Lerberghe unquoted, un- mentioned, but I have, I dare say, given poems enough to indicate the quality and the scope of the poetry in La Wallonie.
In prose their cousinage is perhaps more quickly ap- parent. Almost the first sentence I come upon (I sus- pect it is Mockel's) runs as follows:
"La Revue des deux Mondes publie un roman de Georges Ohnet ce qui ne surprendra personne. "
This is the proper tone to use when dealing with elderly muttonheads ; with the Harpers of yester year. La Wal- loniefounditoutintheeighties. Thesymbolistemove- ment flourished on it. American letters did not flour- ish, partly perhaps for the lack of it, and for the lack of unbridled uncompromising magazines run by young men who did not care for reputations surfaites, for elderly stodge and stupidity.
If we turn to Mockel's death notice for Jules Laforgue we will find La Wallonie in '87 awake to the value of contemporary achievement
JULES LAFORGUE
Nous apprenons avec une vive tristesse, la mort de Jules Laforgue, I'un des plus curieux poetes de la lit- terature aux visees nouvelles. Nous I'avons designe, ja deux mois : un Tristan Corbiere plus argentin, moins apre . . . Et telle est bien sa caracteristique. Sans le
--
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS loi
moindre soupgon d'imitation ou de reminiscences, Jules Laforgue a sauvegarde une originalite vivace. Seule- ment, cette originalite, par bien des saillies, touche a celledeTristanCorbiere. C'estunememerailleriedela Vie et du Monde; mais plus de sombre et virile amer- tume emouvait en I'auteur des Amours Jaunes, dont cette piece donnera quelque idee:
LE CRAPAUD
Un chant dans une nuit sans air . . . --La lune plaque en metal clair
Les decoupures du vert sombre.
. . . Un chant; comme un echo, tout vif Enterre, la, sous le massif . . .
--Qa. se tait ; viens, c'est la, dans I'ombre . . . Un crapaud!
--Pourquoi cette peur,
Pres de moi, ton soldat fidele!
Vois-le, poete tondu, sans aile,
Rossignol de la boue . . .
--Horreur !
. . . II chante. --Hoi-reur ! --Horreur pourquoi ?
!
Vois-tu pas son oeil de lumiere . . . Non, il s'en va, froid, sous sa pierre.
Bonsoir--ce crapaud-la c'est moi.
Chez Laforgue, il y a plus de gai sans-soud, de coups de batte de pierrot donnes a toutes choses, plus de "vaille- que-vaille la vie," dit d'un air de moqueuse resignation. Sa rancoeur n'est pas qui encombrante. II etait un peu I'enfant indiscipline que rit a travers les gronderies, et faitlamoueasafantaisie; maissonhaussementd'epaules
!
? I02 INSTIGATIONS
gamin, et ses "Apres tout? " qu'il jette comme une chiquenaude au visage du Temps, cachent toujours au fond de son coeur un lac melancolique, un lac de tristesse et d'amours fletris, oi! i vient se refleter sa claire imagina- tion. Temoins ces fragments pris aux Complamtes: Mon coeur est une urne ou j'ai mis certains defunts, Oh ! chut, refrains de leurs berceaux ! et vous, parfums.
Mon coeur est un Neron, enfant gate d'Asie,
Qui d'empires de reve en vain se rassasie.
Mon coeur est un noye vide d'ame et d'essors, Qu'etreint la pieuvre Spleen en ses ventouses d'or. C'est un feu d'artifice, helas! qu'avant la fete,
A noye sans retour I'averse qui s'embete.
Mon coeur est le terrestre Histoire-Corbillard
Que trainent au neant I'instinct et le hazard
Mon coeur est une horloge oubliee a demeure
Qui, me sachant defunt, s'obstine a marquer I'heure.
Et toujours mon coeur ayant ainsi declame. En revient a sa complainte: Aimer, etre aime!
Et cette piece, d'une ironie concentree:
COMPLAINTE DES BONS MENACES
L'Art sans poitrine m'a trop longtemps berce dupe. Si ses labours sont fiers, que ses bles decevants! Tiens, laisse-moi beler tout aux plis de ta jupe
Qui fleure le convent.
La Genie avec moi, serf, a fait des manieres;
Toi, jupe, fais frou-frou, sans t'inquieter pourquoi .
. .
Mais I'Art, c'est ITnconnu! qu'on y dorme et s'y vautre, On ne pent pas I'avoir constamment sur les bras
--;
? A STUDY IN jRE. nCH POETS 103
Etbien,menageauvent!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
two men hold the two tenable, positions : the Mountain and the Multitude.
It might be fairer to Rpmains to say simply he has chosen, or specialized in, the collected multitude as a subject matter, and that he is quite well on a mountain of his own.
My general conclusions, redoing and reviewing this period of French poetry, are (after my paw-over of some sixty new volumes as mentioned, and after re-reading most of what I had read before) :
1. As stated in my opening, that mediocre poetry is about the same in all countries ; that France has as much drivel, gas, mush, etc. , poured into verse, as has any other nation.
2. That it is impossible "to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," or poetry out of nothing; that all attempts to "expand" a subject into poetry are futile, funda- mentally; that the subject matter must be coterminous with the expression. Tasso, Spenser, Ariosto, prose poems, diffuse forms of all sorts are all a preciosity; a parlor-game, and dilutations go to the scrap heap.
3. That Corbiere, Rimbaud, Laforgue are permanent; that probably some of De Gourmont's and Tailhade's poems are permanent, or at least reasonably durable; that Romains is indispensable, for the present at any rate; thatpeoplewhosaythey"don'tlikeFrenchpoetry" are possibly matoids, and certainly ignorant of the scope and variety of French work. In the same way people are ignorant of the qualities of French people; ignorant that if they do not feel at home in Amiens (as I do not),
thefe are other places in France; in the Charente if you walk across country you meet people exactly like the nicest people you can meet in the American country and they are not "foreign! '
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? 78 INSTIGATIONS
All France is not to be found in Paris. The adjective "French" is current in America with a dozen erroneous or stupid connotations. If it means, as it did in the mouth of my contemporary, "talcum powder" and sur- face neatness, the selection of poems I have given here would almost show the need of, or at least a reason for, French Parnassienism ; for it shows the French poets violent, whether with the violent words of Corbiere, or the quiet violence of the irony of Laforgue, the sudden annihilations of his "turn-back" on the subject. People
forget that the incision of Voltaire is no more all of French Literature than is the robustezza of Brantome. (Burton of the "Anatomy" is our only writer who can match him. ) They forget the two distinct finenesses of the Latin French and of the French "Gothic," that is of the eighteenth century, of Bernard (if one take a writer of no great importance to illustrate a definite quality), or of D'Orleans and of Froissart in verse. From this delicacy, if they can not be doing with it, they may turn easily to Villon or Basselin. Only a general distaste for
literature can be operative against all of these writers.
UNANIMISME
The English translation of Remains' "Mort de Quelqu'un" has provoked various English and American essays and reviews. His published works are "L'Ame des Hommes," 1904; "Le Bourg Regenere," 1906; "La Vie Unanime," 1908; "Premier Livre de Prieres," 1909; "La Foule qui est Ici," 1909 ; in 1910 and 191 1 "Un Etre en Marche," "Deux Poemes," "Manuel de Deification," "L'armee dans la Ville," "Puissances de Paris," and "Mort de Quelqu'un," employing the three excellent pub- lishing houses of the Mercure, Figuiere and Sansot.
;
:
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POEtS
His "Reflexions" at the end of "Puissances de Paris" are so good a formulation of the Unanimiste Aesthetic, or "Pathetique," that quotation of them will do more to disabuse readers misled by stupid English criticism than would any amount of talk about Romains. I let him speak for himself
REFLEXIONS
"Many people are . now ready to recognize that there are in the world beings more real than man. We admit the life of entities greater than our own bodies. Society is not merely an arithmetical total, or a collective desig- nation. We even credit the existence of groups inter- mediate between the individual and the state. But these opinions are put forth by abstract deduction or by ex- perimentation of reason.
"People employ them to complete a system of things and with the complacencies of analogy. If they do not follow a serious study of social data, they are at least the most meritorious results of observations ; they justify the method, and uphold the laws of a science which struggles manfully to be scientific.
"These fashions of knowing would seem both costly and tenuous. Man did not wait for physiology to give him a notion of his body, in which lack of patience he was intelligent, for physiology has given him but analytic and exterior information concerning things he had long known from within. He had been conscious of his organs long before he had specified their modes of ac- tivity. As spirals of smoke from village chimneys, the profound senses of each organ had mounted toward him joy, sorrow, all the emotions are deeds more fully of consciousness than are the thoughts of man's reason.
79
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Reason makes a concept of man, but the heart perceives the flesh of his body.
"In like manner we must know the groups that englobe us, not by observation from without, but by an organic consciousness. And it is by no means sure that the rhythms will make their nodes in us, if we be not the centresofgroups. Wehavebuttobecomesuch. Dig deep enough in our being, emptying it of individual rev- eries, dig enough little canals so that the souls of the groups will flow of necessity into us.
"I have attempted nothing else in this book. Various groups have come here into consciousness. They are still rudimentary, and their spirit is but a perfume in the air. Beings with as little consistence as la Rue du Havre, and la Place de la Bastile, ephemeral as the com- pany of people in an omnibus, or the audience at L'Opera Comique, can not have complex organism or thoughts greatly elaborate. People will think it superfluous that I should unravel such shreds in place of re-carding once more the enormous heap of the individual soul.
"Yet I think the groups are in the most agitated stage of their evolution. Future groups will perhaps deserve less affection, and we shall conceal the basis of things more effectively. Now the incomplete and unstable con- tours have not yet learned to stifle any tendency (aiiy inclination). Every impact sets them floating. They do not coat the infantile matter with a hard or impact- ingenvelope. Asuperiorplanthasrealizedbutfewof the possibilities swarming in fructificatory mould. A mushroom leads one more directly to the essential life quality than do the complexities of the oak tree.
"Thus the groups prepare more future than is strictly required. Thus we have the considerable happiness of watching the commencement of reign, the beginning of
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 8i
an organic series which will last as did others, for a thousand ages, before the cooling of the earth. This is not a progression, it is a creation, the first leap-out of a different series. Groups will not continue the activi- tiesofanimals,norofmen; theywillstartthingsafresh according to their own need, and as the consciousness of their substance increases they will refashion the image of the world.
"The men who henceforth can draw tlie souls of groups to converge within themselves, will give forth the com- ing dream, and will gather, to boot, certain intuitions of human habit. Our ideas of the being will undergo a correction; will hesitate rather more in finding a dis- tinction between the existent and non-existent. In pass- ing successively from the Place de I'Europe to the Place des Vosges, and then to a gang of navvies, one perceives that there are numerous shades of difference between nothingandsomething. Beforeresortingtogroupsone is sure of discerning a being of a simple idea. One knows that a dog exists, that he has an interior and independent unity ; one knows that a table or a mountain does not exist; nothing but our manner of speech cuts it off from the universal non-existing. But streets de- mand all shades of verbal expression (from the non- existing up to the autonomous creature).
"One ceases to believe that a definite limit is the indis- pensable means of existence. Where does la Place de la Trinite begin ? The streets mingle their bodies. The squares isolate themselves with great difificulty. The crowd at the theatre takes on no contour until it has lived for some time, and with vigor. A being (etre) has a centre, or centres in harmony, but a being is not compelled to have limits. He exists a great deal in one place, rather less in others, and, further on, a second
? 82 INSTIGATIONS
being commences before the first has left off. Every being has, somewhere in space, it^ maximum. Only ancestored individuals possess affirmative contours, a skin which cuts them off from the infinite.
"Spaceisnoone'spossession. Nobeinghassucceeded in appropriating one scrap of space and saturating it withhisownuniqueexistence. Everythingover-crosses, coincides, and cohabits. Every point is a perch for a thousand birds. Paris, the rue Montmartre, a crowd, a man, a protoplasm are on the same spot of pavement. A thousand existences are concentric. We see a little of some of them.
"How can we go on thinking that an individual is a solitary thing which is born, grows, reproduces itself and dies? This is a superior and inveterate manner of being an individual. But groups are not truly born. Their life makes and unmakes itself like an unstable state of matter, a condensation which does not endure. They show us that life, at its origin, is a provisory atti- tude, a moment of exception, an intensity between two relaxations, not continuity, nothing decisive. The first entireties take life by a sort of slow success, and extin- guish themselves without catastrophe, the single elements do not perish because the whole is disrupted.
"The crowd before the Baraque Foraine starts to live little by little, as water in a kettle begins to sing and evaporate. The passages of the Odeon do not live by night,eachdaytheyarereal,afewhours. Atthestart life seems the affair of a moment, then it becomes inter- mittent. To be durable; to become a development and a destiny; to be defined and finished off at each end by birth and death, it needs a deal of accustomedness.
"The primitive forms are not coequal. There is a natural hierarchy among groups. Streets have no set
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 83
middle, no veritable limitations; they hold a long vacil- lating sort of life which night flattens out almost to nothingness. Cross-roadsandsquarestakeoncontour, andgatherupthenodesoftheirrhythms. Othergroups have a fashioned body, they endure but a little space, buttheyhavelearned,almost,todie; theyevenresurrect themselves as by a jerk or dry spasm, they begin the habit of being, they strive toward it, and this puts them out of breath.
"I have not yet met a group fully divine. None has had a real consciousness, none has addressed me, saying: I exist. The day when the first group shall take its soul in its hands, as one lifts up a child in order to look in its face, that day there will be a new god upon earth. This is the god I await, with my labor of annunciation. "
This excerpt from Romains gives the tone of his thought. In so far as he writes in the present tense he carries conviction. He broaches truly a "new," or at leastcontemporary"pathetique. " Heutters,inoriginal vein, phases of consciousness whereinto we are more or less drifting, in measure of our proper sensibility.
I retain, however, my full suspicion of agglomerates.
DE BOSSCHERE'S STUDY OF ELSKAMP *
I CONFESSED in my February essay my inability to make anything of Max Elskamp's poetry, and I have tacitly confessed my inability to find any formula for hawking De Bosschere's own verge to any public of my
acquaintance; De Bosschere's study of Elskamp, how- ever, requires no advocacy; I do not think it even re-
* "Max Elskamp"; essai par lean De Bosscfi^re. Bibliothique de I'Occident, 17 rue Ehli, Paris, fr. 3. 50.
? 84 INSTIGATIONS
quires to be a study of Max Elskamp ; it drifts as quiet canal water; the protagonist may or not be a real man.
"Ici, la solitude est plus accentuee: souvent, pendant de longues minutes, les rues sont desertes. . . . Les portes ne semblent pas, ainsi que dans les grandes villes, s'ouvrir sur un poumon de vie, et etre une cellule vivante de la rue. Au contraire, toutes sont fetmees. Aussi bien, les facades de ce quartier sont pareilles aux murs borgnes. Unmincerubandecielrouxetgris,apeine' bleu au printemps, decoupe les pignons, se tend sur le marche desert et sur le puits profond des cours. "
From this Antwerp, De Bosschere derives his subject, as Gautier his "Albertus" from
Un vieux bourg flamand tel que peint Teniers; trfces bathing in water.
"Son univers etait limite par : 'le grand peuplier' ; une statue de Pomone, 'le grand rocher,' et 'la grand grenouille' ; ceci etait un coin touffu ovi il y avait de I'eau et oil il ne vit jamais qu'une seule grenouille, qu'il croyait immortelle. " DeBosschere'snextvisionofElskampis when his subject is pointed out as "le poete decadent," for no apparent reason save that he read Mallarme at a time when Antwerp did not. The study breaks into a cheerful grin when Elskamp tells of Mallarme's one appearance in the sea-port:
"Le bruit et les cris qui furent pousses pendant la conference de Mallarme, I'arreterent plusieurs fois. L'opinion du public sur sa causerie est contenue en ces quelques mots, dits par un general retraite, grand joueur de billard, et qui du reste ne fit qu'une courte absence de la salle de jeu, pour ecouter quelques phrases du poete. 'Get homme est ivre ou fou,' dit il fort haut, en quittant la salle, ou son jugement fit loi. Anvers, malgre un leger masque de snobisme, qui pourrait
"
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 85
tromper, n'a pas change depuis. Mallarme, meme pour les avertis, est toujours rhomme ivre ou fou. "
The billiard player is the one modern touch in the book; for the rest Elskamp sails with sea-captains, ap- parently in sailing ships to Constantinople, or perhaps one should call it Byzantium. He reads Juan de la Cruz and Young's Night Thoughts, and volumes of de- monology, in the properly dim library of his maternal grandfather, "Sa passion en rhetorique fut pour Long- fellow, il traduisait 'Song of (sic) Hiawatots. '
The further one penetrates into De Bosschere's de- lightful narrative the less real is the hero; the less he needs to be real. A phantom has been called out of De Foe's period, delightful phantom, taking on the reality of the fictitious; in the end the author has created a charming figure, but I am as far as ever from making head or tail of the verses attributed to this creation. I have had a few hours' delightful reading, I have loitered along slow canals, behind a small window sits Elskamp doing something I do not in the least understand.
II
So was I at the end of the first division "Sur la Vie" de Max Elskamp. The second division, concerned with "Oeuvre et Vie," but raised again the questions that had faced me in reading Elskamp's printed work. He has an undercurrent, an element everywhere present, differentiating his poems from other men's poems. De Bosschere scarcely helps me to name it. The third divi- sion of the book, at first reading, nearly quenched the curiosity and the interest aroused by the first two-thirds. On second reading I thought better of it. Elskamp, plunged in the middle ages, in what seems almost an
;
? 86 INSTIGATIONS
atrophy, as much as an atavism, becomes a little more plausible. (For what it is worth, I read the chapter upon a day of almost complete exhaustion. )
"Or, quand la vision lache comme une proie videe le saint, il demeure avec les hommes. "
"Entre le voyant et ceux qui le sanctifient il y a un precipice insondatle. Seul I'individu est beatific par sa croyance; mais il ne pent I'utiliser au temporel ni la partager avec les hommes, et c'est peut-etre la forme unique de la justice sur terre. "
The two sentences give us perhaps the tone of De Boss- chere's critique "Sur le Mysticisme" of Elskamp.
It is, however, not in De Bosschere, but in La Wallome that I found the clue to this author:
CONSOLATRICE DES AFFLIGES
Et I'hiver m'a donne la main,
J'ai la main d'Hiver dans les mains,
et dans ma tete, au loin, il brule
les vieux etes de canicule ;
et dans mes yeux, en candeurs lentes, tres blanchement il fait des tentes,
dans mes yeux il fait des Sicile, puis des lies, encore des iles.
Et c'est tout un voyage en rond trop vite pour la guerison
a tons les pays oti Ton meurt
au long cours des mers et des heures
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 87
et c'est tout un voyage au vent sur les vaisseaux de mes lits blancs
qui houlent avec des etoilcs
a I'entour de toutes les voiles.
or j'ai le gout de mer aux levres comme une rancoeur de genievre
bu pour la tres mauvaise orgie des departs dans les tabagies;
puis ce pays encore me vient: un pays de neiges sans fin. . . .
Marie des bonnes couvertures, faites-y la neige moins dure
et courir moins comme des lieres
mes mains sur mes draps blancs de fievre.
--Max Elskamp in "La Wallonie," 1892.
The poem appears in Van Bever and Leautaud's an- thology and there rhay be no reason for my not having thence received it; but there is, for all that, a certain value in finding a man among his native surroundings, and in finding Elskamp at home, among his contem- poraries, I gained first the advantage of comprehension.
ALBERT MOCKEL AND "LA WALLONIE" *
I recently received a letter from Albert Mockel, written with a graciousness not often employed by Eng- lish and American writers in communication to their
* Utile Review, Oct. , 1918.
? 88 INSTIGATIONS
juniors. Indeed, the present elder generation of Ameri- can "respectable" authors having all their lives ap- proached so nearly to death, have always been rather annoyed that American letters did not die utterly in their personal desiccations. Signs of vitality; signs of inter- est in, or cognizance of other sections of this troubled planet have been steadily and papier-macheedly depre- cated. The rubbish bins of Harper's and the Century have opened their lids not to new movements but only to the diluted imitations of new movers, etc.
La Wallonie, beginning as L'Elan Litteraire in 1885, endured seven years. It announced for a full year on its covers that its seventh year was its last. Albert Meckel has been gracious enough to call it "Notre Little Review a nous," and to commend the motto on our cover, in the letter here following:
109, Avenue de Paris 8 mai, 1918 La MaJmaison Ruejl
Monsieur et cher confrere,
Merci de votre amiable envoi. La Little Review m'est sympathique a I'extreme. En la feuilletant j'ai cru voir renaitre ce temps dore de ferveur et de belle confiance oil, adolescent encore, et tatonnant un peu dans les neuves regions de I'Art, je fondai a Liege notre Little Review a nous. La Wallonie. Je retrouve justement quelques livraisons de cette revue et je vous les envoie; elles ont tout au moins le merite de la rarete.
Vous mon cher confrere, deja ne marchez plus a tatons mais je vous soupQonne de n'etre pas aussi terriblement, aussi criminellement jeune que je I'etais a cette epoque- la. Et puis trente ans ont passe sur la litterature, et c'est de la folie d'hier qu'est faite la sagesse d'aujourd'- hui. Alors le Symbolisme naissait ; grace a la coUabora-
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 89
tion de mes amis, grace a Henri de Regnier et Pierre M. Olin qui dirigerent la revue avec moi, La Wallonie en fut I'un des premiers foyers. Tout etait remis en ques- tion. On aspirait a plus de liberte a une forme plus intense et plus complete plus musicale et plus souple, a une expression nouvelle de reternelle beaute. On s'inge- niait on cherchait . . Tatonnementse? Certes et ils etaient inevitables. Mais vif et ardent effort, desinteres- sement absolu, foi juvenile et surtout "No compromise with the public taste" . . . N'y a-t-il point la quelques traits de ressemblance avec I'ceuvre que vous tentez au- jourd'hui en Amerique, et, a trente annees d'intervale, une sorte de cousinage? C'est pourquoi mon cher con- frere, j'ai lu avec tant de plaisir la Little Review dont vous avec eu la gentillesse de m'adresser la collection. Croyez-moi sympathiquement votre,
Albert Mockel.
With a native mistrust of la belle phrase; of "temps dorel' "ferveur," "belle confiance," etc. , and with an equally native superiority to any publication not printed LARGE, I opened La Wallonie. The gropings, "ta- tonnements," to which M. Mockel so modestly refers, appear to have included some of the best work of Mallarme, of Stuart Merrill, of Max Elskamp and Emile Verhaeren. Verlaine contributed to La Wallonie, De Regnier was one of its editors . . . Men of since popu-
lar fame--Bourget, Pierre Louys, Maeterlinck--ap- peared with the rarer spirits.
If ever the "amateur magazine" in the sense of maga- zine by lovers of art and letters, for lovers of art and letters, in contempt of the commerce of letters, has vin- dicated itself, that vindication was La Wallonie.
Ver- haeren's "Les Pauvres" first appeared there as the sec-
:
? 90 INSTIGATIONS
oncl part of the series : "Chansons des Carrefours" (Jan. , '92) . . . The Elskamp I have just quoted appeared there with other poems of Max Elskamp. Mallarme is represented by the exquisite
SONNET
Ses purs ongles tres haut dediant leur onyx, L'Angoisse ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore, Maint reve vesperal brule par le phenix
Que ne recueille pas de cineraire amphore
Sur les credences, au salon vide : nul ptyx, Aboli bibelot d'inanite sonore,
(Car le maitre est alle puiser des pleurs au Styx Avec ce seul objet dont le Neant s'honore. )
Mais proche la croisee au nord vacante, un or Agonise selon peut-etre le decor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe,
EUe, defunte nue en le miroir encor
Que, dans I'oubli ferme par le cadre, se fixe De scintillations sitot le septuor.
--Mallarme in "La WcMonie," Jan. , 1889.
An era of Franco-Anglo-American intercourse is marked by his address to:
THE WHIRLWIND
Pas les rafales a propos
De rien comme occuper la rue
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POE'lb gi
Sujette au noir vol des chapeaux; Mais une danseuse apparue
Tourbillon de mousseline ou Fureur eparses en ecumes Que souleve par son genou Celle meme dont nous vecumes
Pour tout, hormis lui, rebattu Spirituelle, ivre, immobile Foudroyer avec le tutu,
Sans se faire autrement de bile
Sinon rieur que puisse I'air De sa jupe eventer Whistler.
--Mallarme in "Wallonie" Nov. , 1890.
If I owe Albert Mockel a great debt in having illumi- nated my eye for Elskamp I owe him no less the pleasure of one of Merrill's most delicate triumphs in the open- ing of
BALLET
Pour Gustck/e Moreau En casque de cristal rose les baladines,
Dont les pas mesures aux cordes des kinnors Tintent sous les tissus de tulle roidis d'ors, Exultent de leurs yeux pales de xaladines.
Toisons fauves sur leurs levres incarnadines. Bras lourds de bracelets barbares, en essors Moelleux vers la lueur lunaire des decors, Elles murmurent en malveillantes sourdines:
? 92 INSTIGATIONS
"Nous sommes, 6 mortels, danseuses du Desir,
Salomes dont les corps tordus par le plaisir
Leurrent vos heurs d'amour vers nos pervers arcanes.
Prosternez-vous avec des hosannas, ces soirs! Car, surgissant dans des aurores d'encensoirs, Sur nos cymbales nous ferons tonner vos cranes. "
--Stuart Merrill in "La Wallonie," July, '98.
The period was "glauque" and "nacre," it had its pet and too-petted adjectives, the handles for parody; but it had also a fine care for sound, for sound fine-virrought, not mere swish and resonant rumble, not
"Dolores, O hobble and kobble Dolores. O perfect obstruction on track. "
The particular sort of fine workmanship shown in this sonnet of Merrill's has of late been too much let go by the board. One may do worse than compare it with the Syrian syncopation of Aiwva and 'khuv iv in Bion's Adonis.
Hanton is gently didactic
LE BON GRAIN
"Deja peinent maints moissonneurs dont la memoire est destinee a vivre. "
--Celestin Demblon.
Amants des rythmes en des strophes cadencees, Des rimes rares aux splendeurs evocatoires, Laissant en eux comme un echo de leurs pensees, Comme un parfum de leurs symboles en histoires:
:
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
93
Tels les poetes vont cherchant en vrais glaneurs Les blonds epis qui formeront leur riche ecrin. lis choisirpnt, comme feraient les bons vanneurs, Parmi les bles passes au crible, le beau grain.
Et germera cette semence bien choisie, Entre les roses et les lys, pour devenir Riche moisson de la fertile fantaisie.
L'ardent soleil de Messidor fera jaunir Les tiges souples d'une forte poesie
Qui dresseront leurs fiers epis vers I'avenir!
--Edmond Hanton in "La Wallonie,'' July, '88.
Delaroche is, at least in parts, utterly incomprehen- sible, but there is an interesting experiment in sound- sequence which begins
SONNETS SYMPHONIQUES
En la langueur accidentelle
de ta dentelle
oii meurt mon coeur
Un profil pleure et se voit tel
en le pastel
du divin leurre
Qu'or vegetal de lys s'enlise au froid santal
? 94
INSTIGATIONS
Si n'agonise occidental qui s'adonise.
--Achille Delairoche in "La Wallonie," Feb. , '89.
I do not know that we will now be carried away by Albert Saint-Paul's chinoiserie, or that she-devils are so much in fashion as when Jules Bois expended, certainly, some undeniable emotion in addressing them:
PETALES DE NACRE
En sa robe ou s'immobilisent les oiseaux,
Une emerge des fleurs comme une fleur plus grande. Comme une fleur penchee au sourire de I'eau,
Ses mains viennent tresser la trainante guirlande Pour enchainer le Dragon vert--et de legende! Qui de ses griffes d'or dechire les roseaux,
Les faisceaux de roseaux: banderolles et lances.
Et quand le soir empourprera le fier silence
De la foret enjoleuse de la Douleur,
Ses doigts, fuseaux filant au rouet des murmures Les beaux anneaux fleuris liant les fleurs aux fleurs,
Ses doigts n'auront saigne qu'aux epines peu dures. --Albert Saint-Paul in "La Wallonie," Jan. , '91.
POUR LA DEMONE
Un soir de joie, un soir d'ivresse, un soir de fete, --Et quelle fete, et quelle ivresse, et quelle joie! --
!
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS
Tu vins. L'imperial ennui sacrait ta tSte;
Et tu marchais dans un bruit d'armure et de soie.
Tu dedaignas tous les bijoux et I'oripeau De ruban, de dentelle et d'^phemere fleur Hermetique,* ta robe emprisonnait ta peau. Oui, la fourrure seule autour de ta paleur.
Tuparus. Soustesyeuxquelekh'olabomine,
Le bal fut la lugubre et derisoire histoire.
Les hommes des pantins qu'un vice mene et mine.
Les femmes, coeurs et corps fanes, et quel deboire
POUR LA DEMONS V.
EUe est folle, c'est stir, elle est folle la chere; Elle m'aime a n'en pas douter, mais elle est folle, Elle m'aime et, compatissez a ma misere,
Avec tous, avec toutes, elle batifole.
Un passe. . . . Elle s'elance a lui, coeur presume. . . Elle s'offre et le provoque, puis elle fuit
Vers ailleurs . . . si fidele encore au seul-aime, Mais elle est folle et je m'eplore dans la nuit.
Pour quelque amie aux delicatesses felines,
Elle glisse vers les caresses trop profondes.
. . . "Tu vas, folle, oublier mes rancoeurs orphelines. ' Mais sa levre pensive hesite aux toisons blondes.
--Jules Bois in "La Wcdlonie" Sept. , 'go. * Laforguef
95
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96 INSTIGATIONS
In part we must take our reading of La Wallonie as a study of the state of symbolism from 1885 to '92.
Rodenbach displays the other leaf of the diptych: the genre, the homely Wallon landscape, more familiar to the outer world in Verhaeren, but not, I think, better painted.
PAYSAGES SOUFFRANTS II.
A Emilie Verhaeren. La-bas, tant de petits hameaux sous I'avalanche
De la neige qui tombe adoucissante et blanche, Tant de villages, tant de chaumines qui sont Pour le reste d'un soir doucement assoupies. Car le neige s'etend en de molles charpies
Sur les blessures des vieilles briques qui n'ont Rien senti d'une Soeur sur leur rongeur qui saigne Mais, 6 neige, c'est toi la Soeur au halo blanc Qui consoles les murs malades qu'on dedaigne
Et mats un peu d'ouate aux pierres s'eraflant.
Las! rien ne guerira les chaumines--aieules
Qui meurent de I'hiver et meurent d'etre seules. . . . Et leurs ames bientot, au gre des vents du nord. Dans la fumee aux lents departs, seront parties Cependant que la neige, a I'heure de leur mort,
Leur apporte ses refraichissantes hosties
--Georges Rodenbach in "La Wallonie," Jan. , '88.
Rodenbach is authentic.
A'iele-Griffin, who, as Stuart Merrill, has always been
!
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? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 97
known in France as "an American," contributed largely toLaWallonie. His"AuTombeaud'Helene"ends:
HELENE
Me voici:
J'etais la des hier, et des sa veille,
Ailleurs, id;
Toute chair, a pare, un soir, mon ame vieille Comme I'etemite du desir que tu vets.
La nuit est claire au firmament . . .
Regarde avec tes yeux leves:
Voici--comme un tissu de pale feu fatal
Qui fait epanouir la fleur pour la fletrir
Mon voile ou transparait tout assouvissement Qui t'appelle a la vie et qui t'en fait mourir. La nuit est claire au firmament vital . . .
Mes mythes, tu les sais:
Je suis fille du Cygne,
Je suis la lune dont s'exuberent les mers Qui montent, tombent, se soulevent;
Et c'est le flot de vie exultante et prostree, le flot des reves,
le flot des chairs,
le flux et le reflux de la vaste maree.
Mon doute--on dit I'Espoir--fait Taction insigne: Je suis reine de Sparte et celle-la de Troie,
Par moi, la douloureuse existence guerroie
Je mens toute inertie aux leurres de ma joie, Helene, Selene, flottant de phase en phase,
Je suis Tlnaccedee et la tierce Hypostase Et si je rejetais, desir qui m'y convies,
--;
? 98
INSTIGATIONS
Mon voile qui promet et refuse I'extase,
Ma nudite de feu resorberait les Vies. . . . >>
--Viele-GriMn in "La IVallonie," Dec, '91. (Complete number devotgd to his poems. )
Meckel is represented by several poems rather too long to quote,--"Chantefable un peu naive," "L'Antithese," suggestive of the Gourmont litany; by prose comment, by work over various pseudonyms. "A Clair Matin" is a suitable length to quote, and it is better perhaps to represent him here by it than by fragments which I had first intended to cut from his longer poems.
A CLAIR MATIN
La nuit au loin s'est eflfacee
comme les lignes tremblantes d'un reve la nuit s'est fondue au courant du Passe et le jour attendu se leve.
Regardez! en les courbes molles des rideaux une heure attendue se revele
et ma fenetre enfin s'eclaire,
cristalline du givre ou se rit la lumiere.
Une parure enfantine de neiges
habille la-bas d'immobiles eaux
et c'est les corteges des fees nouvelles
a tire d'ailes, a tire d'ailes
du grand lointain qui toutes reviennent
aux flocons de ce jour en neiges qui s'epele.
Des courbes de mes rideaux clairs
--voici
!
c'est un parfum de ciel !
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS 99
blanc des guirlandes de I'hiver le jeune matin m'est apparu avec un visage de fiancee.
Des fees
(ah je ne sais quelles mortelles fees)
jadis elles vinrent toucher la paupiere
d'un etre enfantin qui mourut.
Son ame, oti se jouait en songes la lumiere,
diaphane corolle epanouie au jour
son ame etait vive de toute lumiere
Lui, comme un frere il sufvait ma course
et nous allions en confiants de la montagne a la Vallee par les forets des chenes, des hetres
--car eux, les ancetres, ils ont le front grave
ils virent maints reves des autres ages
et nous parlent, tres doucement, comme nos Peres.
Mais voyez ! a mes rideaux pales le matin glisse des sourires;
car la Fiancee est venue
car la Fiancee est venue
avec un simple et tres doux visage,
avec des mots qu'on n'entend pas,
en silence la Fiancee est apparue
comme une grande soeur de I'enfant qui mourut; et les hetres, les chenes royaux des forets
par douce vocalise egrenant leur parure,
les voix ressuscitees en la plaine sonore
et toute la foret d'aurore
quand elle secoue du crepuscule sa chevelure. tout chante, bruit, petille et rayonne
car la celeste Joie que la clarte delivre
d'un hymne repercute aux miroirs du futur
:
? 100 INSTIGATIONS
le front pale ou scintille en etoiles le givre.
--Albert Mockel in "La Wallonie," Dernier fascicule,
92.
I have left Gide and Van Lerberghe unquoted, un- mentioned, but I have, I dare say, given poems enough to indicate the quality and the scope of the poetry in La Wallonie.
In prose their cousinage is perhaps more quickly ap- parent. Almost the first sentence I come upon (I sus- pect it is Mockel's) runs as follows:
"La Revue des deux Mondes publie un roman de Georges Ohnet ce qui ne surprendra personne. "
This is the proper tone to use when dealing with elderly muttonheads ; with the Harpers of yester year. La Wal- loniefounditoutintheeighties. Thesymbolistemove- ment flourished on it. American letters did not flour- ish, partly perhaps for the lack of it, and for the lack of unbridled uncompromising magazines run by young men who did not care for reputations surfaites, for elderly stodge and stupidity.
If we turn to Mockel's death notice for Jules Laforgue we will find La Wallonie in '87 awake to the value of contemporary achievement
JULES LAFORGUE
Nous apprenons avec une vive tristesse, la mort de Jules Laforgue, I'un des plus curieux poetes de la lit- terature aux visees nouvelles. Nous I'avons designe, ja deux mois : un Tristan Corbiere plus argentin, moins apre . . . Et telle est bien sa caracteristique. Sans le
--
? A STUDY IN FRENCH POETS loi
moindre soupgon d'imitation ou de reminiscences, Jules Laforgue a sauvegarde une originalite vivace. Seule- ment, cette originalite, par bien des saillies, touche a celledeTristanCorbiere. C'estunememerailleriedela Vie et du Monde; mais plus de sombre et virile amer- tume emouvait en I'auteur des Amours Jaunes, dont cette piece donnera quelque idee:
LE CRAPAUD
Un chant dans une nuit sans air . . . --La lune plaque en metal clair
Les decoupures du vert sombre.
. . . Un chant; comme un echo, tout vif Enterre, la, sous le massif . . .
--Qa. se tait ; viens, c'est la, dans I'ombre . . . Un crapaud!
--Pourquoi cette peur,
Pres de moi, ton soldat fidele!
Vois-le, poete tondu, sans aile,
Rossignol de la boue . . .
--Horreur !
. . . II chante. --Hoi-reur ! --Horreur pourquoi ?
!
Vois-tu pas son oeil de lumiere . . . Non, il s'en va, froid, sous sa pierre.
Bonsoir--ce crapaud-la c'est moi.
Chez Laforgue, il y a plus de gai sans-soud, de coups de batte de pierrot donnes a toutes choses, plus de "vaille- que-vaille la vie," dit d'un air de moqueuse resignation. Sa rancoeur n'est pas qui encombrante. II etait un peu I'enfant indiscipline que rit a travers les gronderies, et faitlamoueasafantaisie; maissonhaussementd'epaules
!
? I02 INSTIGATIONS
gamin, et ses "Apres tout? " qu'il jette comme une chiquenaude au visage du Temps, cachent toujours au fond de son coeur un lac melancolique, un lac de tristesse et d'amours fletris, oi! i vient se refleter sa claire imagina- tion. Temoins ces fragments pris aux Complamtes: Mon coeur est une urne ou j'ai mis certains defunts, Oh ! chut, refrains de leurs berceaux ! et vous, parfums.
Mon coeur est un Neron, enfant gate d'Asie,
Qui d'empires de reve en vain se rassasie.
Mon coeur est un noye vide d'ame et d'essors, Qu'etreint la pieuvre Spleen en ses ventouses d'or. C'est un feu d'artifice, helas! qu'avant la fete,
A noye sans retour I'averse qui s'embete.
Mon coeur est le terrestre Histoire-Corbillard
Que trainent au neant I'instinct et le hazard
Mon coeur est une horloge oubliee a demeure
Qui, me sachant defunt, s'obstine a marquer I'heure.
Et toujours mon coeur ayant ainsi declame. En revient a sa complainte: Aimer, etre aime!
Et cette piece, d'une ironie concentree:
COMPLAINTE DES BONS MENACES
L'Art sans poitrine m'a trop longtemps berce dupe. Si ses labours sont fiers, que ses bles decevants! Tiens, laisse-moi beler tout aux plis de ta jupe
Qui fleure le convent.
La Genie avec moi, serf, a fait des manieres;
Toi, jupe, fais frou-frou, sans t'inquieter pourquoi .
. .
Mais I'Art, c'est ITnconnu! qu'on y dorme et s'y vautre, On ne pent pas I'avoir constamment sur les bras
--;
? A STUDY IN jRE. nCH POETS 103
Etbien,menageauvent!
