the Poets of Modern France

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U N I V

E R S A L

L I B R

A R Y

U N I V E

R S A L

L I B R A

R Y

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The POETS of

M O D E R N F R A N C E


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The POETS ofMODERN FRANCE

byLUDWIG LEWISOHN

A . M . , L I T T . D .

P R O F E S S O R A T T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y

N E W Y O R K B . W . H U E B S C H M C M X I X


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C O P Y R I G H T , 1 9 1 8 . B Y

B . W . H U E B S C H

First printing, April , 1918

Second printing, February, 1919

P R I N T E D I N U . S . A .


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P R E F A C E

IT is time that the art of translation, of which we

have many beautiful examples in English, shouldbe st ri ct ly distinguished fr om the trade. L ike

acting or the p lay ing of music, ji t is an ar t of inter

pretat ion, more di ff icul t than either in this respect:

that you must interpret your original in a medium

never contemplated by its author. It requires, atits best, an exacting and imaginative scholarship,

for you must understand your text in its fullest

and most living sense; it requires a power over

the instrument of your own language no less com

plete than the virtuoso's over the pianoforte, thanthe actor's over the expression of his voice or the

gestures of his body . I t s a im , too, is iden tica l

with the aims of those sister arts of interpretation:

to give a clear voice to beauty that would else be

du mb or quite muffled. For even to in te ll ig en tlovers of the arts a subtle or intricate poem


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in a language not their own is as lifeless as a

page of Beethoven which they have not heard

played.

What now should be the aim of the translatorof poetry'? For it is w i t h poe try that I am here

concerned. It shou ld be clearly, fi rs t of a l l , to

produce a beauti fu l poem. If he has not done

that he may have served the cause of information,

of language study. In ar t he has co mmit ted ap la in inep titude. If he has produced a be aut ifu l

poem, much should be forgiven him, although a

beautiful poem may not, necessarily, be a beau

t i f u l trans lat ion . To be tha t it must sustain cer

ta in relations to its or ig in al. It must, to begin

with, be faithful—not pedantically, but essen

tially, not only to the general content of the or

iginal poem but to its specific means of embodying

that content. There shou ld be as l i t t l e definite

al terat ion, addit io n or omission as possible. In

the translations in this vo lum e there w i l l no t be

found, I think, more than a dozen words that

were not in the texts, or more than half a dozen

actual verbal substitutions. The associative

values of two different linguistic media should,

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of course, be sensitive ly borne in m i n d . One

id iom must be made no t only to copy bu t r i g h t l y to

in terpre t the other. It is better, however, to risk

a slight obscurity which time and the growth ofnew artistic insights may remove than to substi

tute an easy meaning for your author's trouble

some one.

The second relation which the translated poem

must sustain to its original concerns the far moredif ficult and exacting matter of fo rm . Th e lan

guage involved w i l l , of course, modify the charac

ter of the translator's prob lem. If he is deal ing

with languages that have practically the same pro-

sodic system, any two Germanic languages for in

stance, he must scrupulously preserve the music,

the exact cadences of his o r ig ina l . If he is trans

lating from a language that has a quite different

prosody, such as the French, he must interpret

the or ig ina l forms by analogous forms. Thus I

have rendered all poems written wholly in alex

andrines into English heroic verse, but I have

sought to make that verse as fluid and as various

in movement as the types of alexandrine in my

or ig inals . W h e n the prosodic contour of a poem,

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however, depended definitely upon the contrast of

alexandrines with longer or shorter verses, I have

preserved the exact sy llabic lengths. In ly r ic a l

measures the aim must be, of course, to hear thecharacteristic music, to transfer this and to follow

its modulations from line to line and stanza to

stanza.

But these are only the external properties of

fo rm . W h a t characterises a poet, above a l l else,is the way he uses his medium, his precise and

unique method of moulding his language—in re

spect both of diction and rhythm—for the expres

sion of his personal sense o f l i f e . I t is here th at

the trans la tor comes upo n his hardest task. For

he should try, hopeless as that may seem, to use his

medium of speech in a given translation even as

the ori g in a l poet used his o w n . The translated

poem, in brief, should be such as the original poet

would have written if the translator 's language

had been his native one.

I am quite aware that, in the sixty translated

poems in this volume, I have not always even ap

proached my own ideal of what a translation of

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poetry should be. B u t to have at tem pted the task

upon such principles may, of itself, not be without

service to the practice of the art.

For my critical introduction on the poets ofmodern France I have no such apology to make.

Cr itics of power and place have to l d me repeatedly

how wrong-headed my cr it ic al metho d is. L e t

me re min d them , who kno w it so much better than

I, of the history of literature and of criticism.For if that history makes but one thing admirably

and indisputably clear it is this: In every age the

N e w Poetry and the N ew Cr iti ci sm have preva iled

in so far as they produced excellent work accord

ing to their own intentions and in harmony with

their ow n aims. In every age the cr i t ica l conser

vatives have protested in the name of eternal prin

ciples w h ic h , alas, are no t eternal at a l l . A n d

generally, for such is human nature, the innova

tors in art and thought of one generation, of one

decade at times, have become the conservatives of

the next. In another ten or fifteen years I may

myself be frowning upon a still newer criticism, a

s t i l l newer ar t. . . . B u t today I am in the ri gh t ,

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CONTENTS

PREFACE, V

I N T R O D U C T I O NI T H E SOURCES OF T H E N E W POETRY, I

I I FORERUNNERS AN D FOUNDERS OF SY M BO LI SM , IO

a) Charles Baudelaireb) Paul Verlainec) Stephane Mallarmed) Gustave Kahn

I I I T H E T R I U M P H O F S Y M B OL I SM , 2 8

a) E mile Vcrhaerenb) Henri de Regnierc) Jean Moreas—Francis Viele-Griffin—Stuart

Merrill—Albert Samain—Remy de Gour-mont

d) The Minors

I V T H E LA TER FORCES I N F RE NC H POETRY, 5 3a) Francis Jammesb) Paul Fortc) Late Romantics and Naturalistsd) The Youngest Groupe) Conclusion

T H E P O E T S O F M O D E R N F R A N C E

S TE PH A N E M A L L A R M E

. I APPAR ITI ON, 73

[ x i ]


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P A U L V E R L A I N E

I I M Y F A M I L I A R D R E A M , 7 4

I I I S E N T I M E N T A L D IA L O G U E , 7 5

I V T H E G O O DL Y S O N G , 7 7

V A S O NG W I T H O U T W O R D S , 7 8

V I A N O T H E R S O N G W I T H O U T W O R D S, 7 9V I I L A T E W I S D O M , 8 0

A R T H U R R I M B A U D

V I I I T H E S L E EP ER I N T H E V A L L E Y , 8 1

G E O R G E S R O D E N B A C H

I X I N S M A L L T O W N S , 8 2

E M I L E V E R H A E R E N

x T H E M I L L , 8 3

X I N O V E M B E R , 8 5 .

X I I T H E POOR, 8 8

X I I I L I F E , 9 0

J E A N M O R E A S

X I V O L I T T L E F A I R I E S . . . , 9 2

X V A Y O U N G G I R L S PE A K S, 9 3

X V I STANZAS, 9 4

J U L E S L A F O R G U E

X V I I A N O T H E R B OO K . • . , 9 6

H E N R I D E R E G N I E R

X V I I I T H E F A I R H A N D S , 9 7

X I X SCENE A T DUSK, 99X X A LESSER ODE, I O I

X X I I N S C R I P T I O N F O R A C I T Y ' S G A TE O F W A R R I O R S ,

103X X I I O N T H E S H O R E , I O 5

X X I I I T H E F O R E S T , 1 0 6

X X I V C H R Y S I L L A , 1 0 8

F R A N C I S V I E L E - G R I F F I N

X X V O T H E R S W I L L C O M E , 1 0 9

X X V I ' T I S T I M E FO R U S T O SAY GOOD N I G H T , 1 1 0

[x i i ]


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G U S T A V E K A H N

X X V I I S O NG , 1 1 1

X X V I I I P R O V E N C E , 1 1 2

S T U A R T M E R R I L L

X X I X A G A I N ST T H Y K N E E S . . . , 1 1 4X X X T H E P R OM I S E O F T H E Y E A R , l l 6

M A U R I C E M A E T E R L I N C K

X X X I T H E S E V E N D A U G H T E R S O F O R L A M O N D E , 1 1 8

X X X I I I H A V E S O U G H T . . . , 1 1 9

R E M Y D E G O U R M O N T

X X X I I I T H E S N O W , 1 2 0

X X X I V T H E E X I L E O F B E A U T Y , 1 2 1

A L B E R T S A M A I N

X X X V E V E N I N G , 1 2 3

X X X V I P A N N Y R E O F T H E G O L D E N H E E L S , 1 2 4

E D M O N D R O S T A N D

X X X V I I T H E D R U M M E R , 1 2 5

F R A N C I S J A M M E S

X X X V I I I T H A T T H O U A RT POOR . . . , 1 2 7

X X X I X T H E T R A I N E D ASS, 1 2 9

X L T H E C H I L D RE ADS A N A L M A N A C , 1 3 0

X L I . I N A U T U M N , 1 3 1

C H A R L E S G U E R I N

X L I I B R I G H T H A I R , I 3 3

H E N R Y B A T A I L L E

X H I I T H E W E T M O N T H , I 3 4

P A U L F O R T

X L I V T H E D E A D G I R L , 1 3 5

X L V I M A G E S O F O U R D R E A M S, I 3 6

X L V I I D Y L L , I 3 7

X L V I I B E L L O F D A W N , I 3 9

X L V I I I H O R I Z O N S , 1 4 1

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P I E R R E L O U Y S

X L I X P EG A S U S , 142

C A M I L L E M A U C L A I R

L PRESENCES, I 4 3

L I T H E M I N U T E , 1 4 4

H E N R I B A R B U S S E

L I I T H E L E TT E R, 1 4 5

F E R N A N D G R E G H

L I U D O U B T , 1 4 6

P A U L S O U C H O N

L I V E LE GY A T N O O N , I 4 8

HENRY SPIESS

L V H A N D S , 149

M A U R I C E M A G R E

L V I T H E C OQ U ET RY O F M E N , 1 ^1

L E O L A R G U I E R

L V I I W H E N I A M O L D . . . , 1 5 3

C H A R L E S V I L D R A C

L V I I I I F O N E W E R E TO K E E P . . . , 1 5 5

G EORG ES D U H A M E L

L I X A N N U N C I A T I O N , 1 5 8

E M I L E D E S P A XL X U L T I M A , 1 5 9

G E N E R A L B I B L I O G R A P H Y , 163

B I O G R A P H I C A L A N D B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E S O N

T H E T H I R T Y P O ET S , 169

I N D E X O F FI R S T L I N E S I N F R E N C H A N D E N G L I S H ,

195

[ x i v ]


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I N T R O D U C T I O N


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INTRODUCTION

I

T H E SO U R C E S O F T H E N E W P O E T R Y

Le Poete doit etre le maltre

absolu des formes de la Vie, et non

en etre l'esclave comme les Realistes

et les Naturalistes.

S T U A R T M E R R I L L

T H E struggle o f man, however b l i nd and stum

bling, however checked by tribal rage and tribal

terror, is toward self-hood. Th is t ru th is super

ficially assented to, it has become a glib common

place to the sociologist: it has really penetratedonly a few rare and lone ly minds. Th e ma jo ri ty ,

simple and learned, talks of individualism and

cries out upon the plainest implications of its own

doctrine. N o t on ly in l if e , bu t also in art . Y e t

the history of literature, and especially of poetry,

illustrates nothing in the history of the mind more

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the personal note in the older poetry of Europe,

N o r t h or South. Ev en when notable personali

ties gradually emerge—Dante, Walther von der

Vogelweide, Chaucer, V i l l o n — the hum bler singers s t i l l remain the voices of the fo lk . The sec

ond stage of poetical form, the stage illustrated by

all the great historic literatures, presents tradition

modified by personality . The forms are l im i ted

in number and in character. But in to each fo rmthe individual poet pours or tries to pour the

unique music of his soul. Th a t uni on of fixed

form and personal accent is illustrated by the his

tory of the hexameter in Latin, the alexandrine in

French, the Spenserian stanza, blank verse and the

heroic couplet in En gl ish poe try . A n d the con

servative forces in modern poetry and criticism

still point to this method—the traditional form

modified by the personal accent—as the only

sound and noble method of poetical creation.

Such, in effect, is the essential view of the critic

who w i l l not look at "free verse" not because it is

poor, but because it is "free," who, in another field,

condemns the imaginative creations of a great

dramatist for not being in a fixed and traditional

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sense—plays. The echoes of this cr it ic are a l l

about us: "It 's beautiful, but it isn't poetry!"

"I t ' s powe rfu l, bu t it isn't a p l a y ! " As though,

in some quite transcendental sense, there were adivine, Platonic, arch-typal idea of poetry, of

drama, which it is the duty of the artist to seek, at

least, to approach. In ar t, as in morals, as in

state-craft, the timorous Absolutist clings to his

Idea, his formula, as the permanent and abidingelement in the f lux of concrete th ings . He does

not see that the abiding is in the trend to finer

types, to freer and more personal kinds of self-

realisation, is, in fact, in that dark angel of his

dreams, man's w i l l to change.

The last stage in the development of poetic form

comes when, under the stress of the modern world,

the poet's struggle toward the realisation of his

self-hood becomes so keen that he cannot use the

tr ad it iona l forms any more at a l l . H e must find

his own form: his impulse is so new and strange

that it must create its o w n music or be silent. N o t

because he does not love and revere the forms of

the masters. B u t he cannot express himself

through them; he cannot, to speak in a homely

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experience. B u t another k ind of cri ti c has ap

peared and has been heard. A n d one such, the

late M. Remy de Gourmont, has admirably

summed up the whole matter: "The only excusethat a man has for writing is that he express his

own self, that he reveal to others the kind of world

that is reflected in his individual mirror: his only

excuse is that he be original: he must say things

not said before and say them in a form not formulated before. He must create his own aesthetic,

—and we must admit as many aesthetics as there

are original minds and judge them according to

what they are and not according to what they are

not."

In France, as elsewhere, the new poetry and the

new criticism sprang from very deep sources in the

life of the mind and corresponded with the larger

tendencies of the new age. For the epoch since

the Revolution may almost be divided—if every

fo rm ul a were no t insufficient and a l i t t l e em pt y—

into three periods of struggle for the three kinds

of liberty that we must attain: political, intellec

tu a l, mor al . A n d in the histo ry of French poetry

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three schools interpret closely and in right succes

sion these three phases. To the Romantics of

France, as to the Romantics of England (except

Shelley) freedom was primarily an outer thingconcerned with votes and governmental action: to

the Parnassiens it was the right to observe the

present and historic world objectively and let the

reason draw its own sombre conclusions from that

vision; to the Symbolists, the moderns, it is more;it is the right to complete realisation of one's self

hood—which includes and demands economic jus

ti ce— in action and in art. It is that new idealism

which, to quote Gourmont again, "means the free

and personal development of the intellectual in

d iv idua l in the in te lle ctua l series."

These movements are general and European.

One need adduce no external influence to account

for their appearance in any of the great literary

nations, least of all in the self-contained and self-

sufficient in te ll ec tual l i f e of France. Y e t it seems

very certain that the modern movement in French

poetry drew a good deal of its deeper guidance

fr om the one lite ratu re in wh ic h Roma ntic ism had

shown little if any interest in political liberty, but

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very much in that of personal conduct, of specula

t io n and of art. H er e I may let M . de Gourmont

speak once more: " I n re lat ion to ma n, the th ink ing

subject, the world, all that is external to theI, exists only according to the idea of it which he

shapes for himself. We know only phenomena,

we reason only concerning appearances: all truth

in itself escapes us: the essence is unapproachable.

It is this fact which Schopenhauer has popularisedin his very clear and simple formula : the world is

my representation." The French Symbolists, in

other words, drew their doctrine of freedom in life

and art partly, at least, from the doctrine of the

po st -K an tian idealists. The creative self th at

projects the vision of the universe stands above it

and need not be bound by the shadows it has itself

evoked. The inner realities became the supreme

realities: Maeterlinck translated the Fragments of

Novalis; Verhaeren declared that the "immediate

end of the poet is to express himself ." . The em

phasis placed upon the unique and creative self

might possibly be attributed to the Flemish and

hence Germanic temper of the Belgian poets.

But during the crucial years of the Symbolist

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movement the same view was shared by the most

purely Latin poets who used the French tongue.

In his excellent monograph on Henri de Regnier,

M. Jean de Gourmont speaks of this matterin unmistakable terms: " Sym bolism was not, at

first, a revolution, but an evolution called forth

by the infiltration of new philosophical ideas.

The theories of Kant, of Schopenhauer, of Hegel

and Hartmann began to spread in France: the

poets were f a i r l y in tox icated by them ." It is cu

rious to note, in this connection, the omission of

Fichte's name. B u t the young men of eighteen

hundred and eighty-five were not exact students

and thinke rs. They simp ly fo un d in the philoso

phy of a definite school and age a vision which ac

corded with their own innermost feeling concern

ing the new freedom that must be won for life and

for its close and intimate expression in the art of

poetry.

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II

FORERUNNERS AND FOUNDERS OF SYMBOLISM

"En vcrite il n'y a pas de prose: il y a

l'alphabet, et puis des vers plus ou moins

serres, plus ou moins diffus."

S T I P H A N E M A L L A R M E "

"Le vers libre, au lieu d'etre, comme

rancien vers, des lines de prose coupees

par des rimes regulieres, doit exister

en lui-meme par des alliterations de

voyelles et de consonnes parentes."

GuSTAVE K A H N

T H E young men of eighteen hundred and eighty-

five began, as was natural, by an energetic rebel

lion against the dominant school of poetry. That

school, the Parnassien, cultivated, as everyone

knows, objectivity of vision, sculpturesque full

ness and perfection of form, a completely imper

sonal attitude. It had been practically if not

officially founded when Gautier published his[10]


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Emaux et Camees in 1850, it had shown remark

able power of endurance; it was unshaken by the

incomparable notes of pure lyricism with which

Verlaine, since 1868, had modified his partial acceptance of it s ow n technical standards. I t

counted among its adherents every first-rate talent

that had come to maturity toward the middle of

the nineteenth century, even, again with certain

modifications, that of Charles Baudela ire. It srepresentative poet was Leconte de Lis le . A n d

Leconte de Lisle was a great poet. It is easier to

see that now than it was, perhaps, twenty years

ago. Th e rich, sonorous verses of the Poemes an

tiques and the Poemes barbares seem still to

march as with the ringing mail of an undefeated

arm y. A n d in every m in d that he has once i m

pressed remain as permanent possessions those

images in stone or bronze under skies of agate or

drenched in radiance which he embodied in the

clang an d thunder of his verse. B u t there was

l i t t l e personal, l i t t l e of his ow n m ind , except tha t

one proud and imperturbable gesture; his art was,

after all, decoration, even though it raised the

decorat ive to heroic dimensions. . . . T h e

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younger generation that wanted intimate, con

crete truth, subtle and personal, not large and gen

eral, that wanted, in a word, not eloquence but

lyricism, inevitably arose against him and his fellows—against the rather timid naturalism of

Francois Coppee, against the glittering dexterity

of Teodore de Banville, the expounder in prac

tice and criticism of the Parnassien technique.

The young poets of the time turned, among themen of their own land and speech, to one dead

and two living writers: to Charles Baudelaire,

Paul Verlaine and Stephane Mallarme.

It is true that in Les Fleurs du Mai (1857)

Baudelaire's verse is as firmly and preciselymoulded as any Parnassien's, his rimes are as so

norous, his stanzaic structure as exact. O n l y in

the sweep and passionate speed of perhaps two

pieces, he Bale on and Harmonie du soir:

"Voici venir les temps ou vibrant sur sa tige

C haqu e fleu r s'evapore ainsi qu'u n encensoir . . . " 1

is there a new cadence. H i s influence upon the

1 L ord A lf r ed Douglas translates happ ily if freely:

"This is the hour when swinging in the breezesEach flower like a censor sheds its sweet . . . "

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future was due to his substance: to the merciless

reve lat ion of himself , his stubborn assertion of his

strange and morbid soul, his harsh summons to

others to cast aside their masks of moral idealismand confess themselves his equals and his k i n :

"Hypocrite lecteur—mon semblable—mon f rere ." 1

It was due to his belief in the unexplored wealth

of beauty and ho rror of the subjective se lf :

"Homme, nul n'a sonde le fond de tes abimes . . ." 2

And that is, in a very real sense, what the Symbo

lists, the moderns, set out to do . F in a l l y , by some

strange prev ision, or else in a mom ent of im ag inative caprice, he struck off in a single sonnet, Cor-

respondanccs (which has been quoted again and

again,) the subtlest doctrine of the Symbolists:

"La nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers

Laissent parfois sortir des confuses paroles;

L'homme y passe a travers des forets de symboles

Qui i'observent avec des regards familiers . . ." 3

1 "Hypocritical reader—my fellow—my brother!"2 " M a n , no one has sounded the bottom of thy abysses."

3 N at ur e is a temp le wh er ei n l iv i n g colmuns sometimes let con

fused words escape; man wanders there across forests of symbols

which observe him with familiar glances,"

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To capture these obscure but revealing hints—

that, too, was part of the symbolist programme.

But the influence of Baudelaire upon the living

poets of France was slight compared to that exerted by one far stranger and far greater than him

self, by Pa ul V erlaine ( 18 4 4 -18 96 ) . Fo r Ver-

laine was not only almost their contemporary—

the wayward, childlike, mystical creature, giving

them, as on a memorable occasion he did to GeorgeMoore, some divine sonnet scribbled in bed in a

fetid slum: he was also the purest lyrical singer

th at France had ever known. The most musical

songs of the Romantics have a touch of self-con

sciousness and eloquence compared to his. Per

haps an infusion of Northern blood (he was born

at M e t z ) gave h im the soul of a minst re l and a

c h i l d ; i t l e f t h i m L a t i n e n o u g h t o b e , w i t h a l l h i s

unrestrained lyricism, a subtle, accomplished and

even learned technician. He mastered the Par-

nassien method in his youth and used it exquis

i t e ly . B u t even in the ear ly and correct Poemes

saturniens (1866) there is the unforgettable

Chanson d'Automne with its strange sob, with that

note of the ineffable, the beyond in human lon gin g

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and regret which French poetry had never, or

never, at least, so simply and piercingly heard.

Eight years later had come the Romances sans

Paroles, the highest point, probably, in Verlaine'slyrical achievement, and again seven years later

Sages se. But even in the days of his declining

power, in the collections published when the mod

ern movement was fully under way— Am our

( 1888) , Farallelement (1889)—he kept the marvellous gift of suddenly lifting the hearer of his

verse into an infinite of imaginative pathos:

" M o n pau vre enfan t, ta voix dans le Bois de B ou

logne . . . " 1

or of imaginative splendor:

"Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole." 2

The in fin it e . . . ! In that w ord lies the secret

of Verlaine, of his difference from all the past of

French poetry, of his power over its present and

fu tu re . H e does not exhaust his subject w i t h the

glowing but appeasable passion of the Romantics;

he does not paint his vision in the hard, luminous

1

"My poor child, thy voice in the Bois de Boulogne . . ."2 "And, O those children's voices singing in the cupola."

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colors of the Parnassiens; he strikes a discreet and

troubling note that leaves its vibrations in the

heart and in the nerves forever. H i s poet ry , as he

was well aware, withdrew deliberately from anyrelation to the plastic arts; it is full of images ad

dressed to the ear; it seeks magic rather than

beauty; it asks our tears rather than our admira

t ion . Words whic h the Parnassiens had used like

the brilliant stone fragments of an Italian enam-eller were to Verlaine notes in the music of thought

and passion; it is in this sense that he called his

finest volume: Songs Without Words. A l l this

is, of course, merely saying that Verlaine is a lyri

cal poet of the type of Shelley or H eine . B u t as

such his achievement was quite new and revolu

tionary in the literature of France.

Less revolutionary was his influence upon form.

He was bitter against the wrongs done by the Par

nassiens in the name of rime; he protested against

their sonorousness as he did against their brilliance

—"pas de couleur, rien que la nuance" —he used

the "rythmes impairs" verses of seven, eleven and

thirteen syllables; he strove to make the music of

verse subtler, more duct ile, more qu iver ing. He

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cannot be said to have introduced any fundamen

ta l change. Y e t everywhere among the modern

poets is heard the music of those pale vowels of his,

those trembling verses, as in the lines called Men-uct which made the reputation of M. Fernand

Gregh because they were mistaken for Verlaine's:

"Chanson fre le du c lavec in ,

Notes greles, fuyant essaim

Qui s'efface . . . " 1

The direct master of the moderns, however, and

the acknowledged founder of the Symbolist school

was Stephane Mallarme (1842—1898), a man of

a very thin though very fine vein of authentic gen

ius. H i s power over the younger men of his day

was due not wholly, not even primarily, to his

sheaf of mys tica l and undula t in g verse. H e had

reflected closely and deeply upon the sources of

poetry and upon the nature of the poetic imagination; he communicated the results of his thought

not only in his critical fragments but in exquisite

monologues during those famous Tuesday eve

nings of his in the Rue de Rome which became an

1 "Frag ile song of the harpsichord, pale, sharp notes, a fleeingswarm that fades away . . ."

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in st it ut io n in the middl e eighties. There gath

ered to be w i t h h i m " i n that dr aw ing room fa in tl y

lit to which the shadowy corners gave the aspect

of a temple and an oratory," and to hear his "seductive and lofty doctrine on poetry and art"

K a h n a n d G h i l a n d L a f o r g u e , V i e l e - G r i f f i n a n d

Regnier, Stuart M e r r i l l and Louys and M aucl air ,

John Payne and Arthur Symons and a group of

lesser talents. " W e passed unforget table hoursthere," writes M. Albert Mockel, "the best, doubt

less, that we shall ever know. . . . And he who

made us welcome there was the absolute type of

poet, the heart than can love, the brow that can

understand, inferior to nothing, yet disdaining

nothing, for he discerned in each thing a secret

teaching or an image of Bea uty ." The tributes

of the younger men who heard him thus form a

small body of very beautiful writing and include

noble verses of memorial or praise by Viele-Grif

fin, by Louys and by Regnier. Th e la tt er de

scribes in the fine dedicatory sonnet to La Cite des

Eaux the external aims of other poets and then

turns to M a l l a rm e :

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" M a i s v ous , M a i t r e , c e r ta i n que to ute g l o i r e est nue ,

Vous marchiez dans la v ie et dans la ver i te

V e r s l ' i nv i s i b l e e to i l e e n v o us- me me a ppa r ue ." 1

I have tried elsewhere to give a close interpretation of the symbolist doctrine

2 which is perma

nently connected with the name of Mallarme and

has shaped not only the work of the maturer of

the living poets of France but even that of the

youngest among them . It comes, in plainest

terms, to this: that the poet is to use the details of

the phenomenal world exclusively as symbols of

that inner or sp ir it ua l rea lit y which it is his aim to

project in ar t. In this there is, of course, no th ing

absolutely new. Poets, especially ly r i c a l poets,

have, as a matter of fact, always done that quite

ins tinc tively . Images dr aw n from the w o r l d

which the senses perceive are our only means of

communicating the nameless things of the inner

l i fe . W h a t was and is re la tive ly new in the doc

trine and the practice of the Symbolists is their

1 "But you, Master, assured that all glory is bare, you trod theways of life and truth toward that invisible star arisen in yourself."

2 Vide:

L E W I S O H N . The Modern Drama

(Second Edition).Chapter V.

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subtle and conscious cultivation of this method,

their rejection (in the heat of the reaction against

the Parnassiens) of the objective as utterly devoid

of significance, of truth, even of existence, their

search for the strange and mysterious, the unob

served and unheard of in the shifting visions of

the world. . . . But I shall let Mallarme speak

briefly for himself: "To name an object is to sup

press three-fourths of the del ig ht of a poem which

consists of the happiness o f d i v i n i n g l i t t l e by l i t -

tle; poetic vision arises from suggestion (le sug-

gerer voila le reve). It is the perfect use of this

mystery which constitutes the symbol, to evokelittle by little an object in order to show a state of

soul, or, inversely, to disengage from it a state of

soul by a series of decipherings." To th is may be

added a passage from the famous manifesto which

Jean Moreas, in his symbolist days, published in

Le Figaro (September 18, 1886): "Symbolist

poetry seeks to clothe the idea in a sensible form

which, nevertheless, shall not be its final end and

aim, but shall merely serve to express the idea

which remains subjective." In this sentence ap-

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pears very clearly, so clearly as perhaps nowhere

else, the Symbolist's reaction against naturalism

in both art and thought, against the "heavy and the

weary weight" of an objective world, its insist

ence upon the freedom of the creative soul . . . .

Mallarme's personal teaching and practice was, of

course, more esoteric. He dreamed, l ike Wagner,

whom Verlaine and all the Symbolists adored, of a

synthesis of the arts . A poem was to partake of

music, of the plastic arts, of philosophic thought.

To each of his verses, in the excellent interpreta

tion of M. Teodore de Wyzewa, "he sought to at

tach several superimposed senses.'' Each was tobe an image, a thought, a note of music—a frag

ment of that large and mystic harmony in which

the th inker and the w o r l d he th inks are one. . . .

It was all essentially, I repeat, a liberation from

the scientific, the objective, the relentless realityof earth to which—in the doctrine of the Natural

ists—our souls are in bondage; it was a reaction of

personality, of the freedom and splendor of the

inner self, it was, as I said in starting, the modern

st ri vi ng tow ar d self-hood.

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The new spirit of poetry demanded a new form.

To the discovery of this new form Mallarme had

contributed rather less than even Verlaine . Bo th

used, with whatever new cadences within the verse,with whatever new lightness and brightness of

rime, the traditional methods of French prosody:

an identical number of syllables in the corre

sponding lines of a given poem, the rigid alterna

tion of masculine and femine rimes, a rather strictlimitation in the number and character of stan-

zaic forms. From this description it is clear that

the vers libre invented and cultivated by the Sym

bolists did not mean any extraordinary liberty of

versification from the point of view of any pros

ody but that of France. To the poets of Eng

land and Germany an arbitrary or personal varia

tion of line length, as in the Pindarics from Cowley

on, entire freedom of riming, the building of qua

trains on a single rime had been immemorial pos

sessions. They had, in t ru th , long gone beyond

the earliest innovations of the Symbolists . For

neither Kahn, Laforgue nor Viele-Griffln ever dis

carded rime w ho l ly . B u t th at had been done, to

go back no farther, by Southey and Shelley, by

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Goethe and Novalis, by Heine and Matthew Ar

no ld . Th e early vers libre, then, was simply a

flexib le and rather un dul a ti ng fo rm of lyr ic or odic

verse, following in its cadences the development,the rise and fall, of the poet's mood, furnishing

in its swaying harmonies an orchestration to

thought and passion. L y r i c a l pieces of this char

acter are Verhaeren's November ( x i ) , Regnier's

Scene at Dusk ( x i x ) , K a h n ' s Provence(xxv in) , and Gourmont ' s The Exile of Beauty,

( x x x i v ) .

"To whom, then," asks M. Remy de Gourmont,

"do we owe vers libre?" A n d he answers: " T o

Rimbaud whose Illuminations appeared in La

Vogue in 1886, to Jules Laforgue who at the same

period and in the same precious little review—

which M. Kahn was editing—printed Lcgende and

Solo de Lune, and, finally, to M. Kahn himself."

It would seem, as a matter of fact, that the inno

vations of Rimbaud were slight and that Laforgue

knew of M . Kahn's theories fo r many years. The

latter's Les Palais Nomades (1887 ) was, in addi

tion, the first actually published volume of vers

libre; it made a great stir in both France and Rel-

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gium and was directly responsible for the prosodic

development that continued with Viele-Griffin's

Joies (1889), with its significant preface, Regn-

ier's Poemes anciens et rotnanesques (1890) ,and Verhaeren's A u bord de la route ( 18 91 ). No

further innovations in French versification were

made until quite recently, except by M. de Regnier

when he almost though not quite abandoned rime

in the charming Odelettes of his volume Les Jeuxrustiques et divins (1897) .

There is available, at least at present, no evi

dence of any direct foreign influence upon the rise

of free verse in French poetry . Nor , were there

such evidence, w o u ld I be w i l l i n g to attach any sig

nificance to i t . A great many sins have been com

m i t t e d by the scholarly search fo r influences. A

saner and more philosophic view of the history of

literature regards the appearance of new sources

of inspiration and new forms of expression as out

growths of those larger spiritual forces that are

wont to affect at the same time or almost at the

same time groups of people that have reached a

l ik e stage of development. The modern emer

gence of the free personality from the merely po-

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litical individual—the voter who in his day suc

ceeded the tribesman and the slave—accounts for

the change in the passions and the forms of poetry

in Goethe and in Shelley, in W h i t m a n and H en ley,in Richard Dehmel and in Henri de Regnier.

Thus, too, it is interesting rather than important

when M . K a h n says: " I a m persuaded and certain,

as far as I am concerned, that the influence of mu

sic led us to the perception of a poetic form atonce more fluid and precise, and that the musical

sensations of our youth (not only Wagner, but

Beethoven and Schubert) had their influence upon

my conception of verse when I was capable of ut

te ri ng a personal song." "A personal song"—

that ambition is the secret of the age and the move

ment. "The poet shall obey his personal

r h y t h m , " M . V iel e-G rif fin repeats. "Th e poet's

only guide is rhythm; not a rhythm that has been

learned, that is crippled by a thousand rules which

others have invented, but a personal rhythm that

he must f ind w i t h i n himself ." Thus M . A do lp h

Ret te summed up the mat te r so ea rly as 1893 in

the Mercure de France. Thus on ly , one may add,

did these poets hope to achieve that "personal

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art" which, according to Gourmont, "is the only

art."

In the works of the earliest practitioners of free

verse, gifted poets as they all are, the new formhad, at times, a timbre that was merely quaint

or an air of conscious violence. The personal

rhythm, especially in the structure of the stanza—

or, rather, verse-paragraph—was apt, in the days

of protest and polemic, to be more personal thanrhythmic. In the hands of those members of the

school, however, who were capable of a notable

inner development, the new vers libre became an

instrument of poetic expression that gave not only

a new freedom but an ampler and more spiritual

music to French verse: an instrument at once plan

gent and sonorous, capable of both subtle grace

and large majesty. It has su rv ived the reactions

and new experiments to be chronicled later; it is

used by so recent a poet as M. Fernand Gregh as

the vehicle of what is, perhaps, his most admirable

single poem Je vis. . . . :

"Mais a mon tour j'aurai connu le gout chaud de la vie:

J'aurai mire dans ma prunelle,Petite minute eblouie,

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La grande lumiere eternelle:

M a i s j 'a u r a i bonne joie au gr an d festin sacrc;

Que voudrais-je de plus*?

J'aurai vecu . . .

Et je mourrai." l

That has neither the stormy power of Verhaeren's

La Foule nor the noble melancholy of Regnier's

Le Vase. B u t any one sensitive to the music of

the language in which it is written must feel itsnative and unforced beauty, the liquid pathos of

its li ngerin g cadences.

4 x "But in my turn I shall have known the w ar m taste of li fe :

I shall have mirrored in my eye-ball, a brief and dazzlingminute, the great eternal light; but I shall have a goodly joy in

the great, sacred feast; wh at more would I have wished? Ishall have lived . . . And I shall die."

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Ill

T H E T R I U M P H O F S Y M B O L I S M

"La nature parait sculpterUn visage nouveau a son eternite;

T o u t bouge—et Ton d ir ai t les horizons en march e."

E M I L E V E R H A E R E N

" . . . Elle me dit; Sculpte la pierre

Selon la forme de mon corps en tes pensees,E t fai s sourire au bloc m a face c la ire . . . "

H E N R I D E R E G N I E R

T H E movement was fou nd ed ; the instrument o f

expression was forged . Th ere arose f rom it tw o

poets of high and memorable character, the twoI have already named: Emile Verhaeren (1855—

1915) and H e n r i de Regnier ( b . 186 4) . Th o ugh

M. Verhaeren died but, as it were, the other day,

and M. de Regnier is just arriving at the ripest

period of his own genius, there can be no reason

able doubt that these two, at least, of the French

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poets who started as Symbolists have permanently

enriched the literature of the world.

They resemble each other in nothing but in the

language they use and in certain new liberties ofexterna l fo rm . As men and as artists they are

deeply divide d. Verhaeren is a man of the N o r t h ,

of w i l d cries and mys tic raptures, of boundless ex

al ta tions and agonies. There is a touch of fever

in his visions both of his Flemish country-side andof the tu rb ul ent modern cities that he loved. H e

sought finally to release his tortured soul from the

bondage of self by sinking it, merging it—not like

the Germanic mystics of old in God or nature, but

in that vast brotherhood of pain and effort that

bears the burden and the heat of an industrial civ

il is at io n. H e was, as M . Le on Balza lgette, one

of his most intelligent biographers, says, "a bar

barian whom fate doomed to paint his visions by

the help of a language made rather to translate

the delicate and refined sensations of extreme civ

i l i sa t ion ." H e ha d no sense of "measure," " tr a

d i t i o n , " "good taste." H e is " w i t h his poetical

powers a man of the North, just as truly as Car-

l y l e . . . . " T h a t i s w e l l a n d t e l l i n g l y p u t .

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From Verhaeren's work there arises finally the vi

sion of a universe in tumult, not wholly free from

chaos, midway between formlessness and form;

against a black and desolate background flare thesilver visions of the soul and the scarlet fires of

steel furnaces. In this universe the poet wanders

seeking rest, union, finding it at last in an act of

complete acceptance, of utter oneness with the

forces th at shape the w o r ld . . . .His style is, necessarily, wholly alien to the tra

d i t i o n of the Lat in s. The re is a constant stra in

ing to express the inexpressible vastness of vision

and passion, to put into speech that which tran

scends i t . Thu s, almost th roughout his wor k, there

is an abundance, sometimes too great an abun

dance, of strong words. Thin gs are to h im "enor

mous," "formidable," "mad," "anguished," "bru

t a l , " ferocious," "b it te r, " "fevered." T he tit les

of some of his books are instructive in this respect:

The Black Torches (Les Flambeaux noirs), The

Hallucinated Country Sides (Les Campagnes ha-

lucinees)) The Tumultuous Forces (Les Forces

tumultueuses). The Mult pie Splendor ( La Mul

tiple Splendeur). Ever yw he re one shares his ow n

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impassioned sense of the inadequacy of language,

of the weakness of imagery which he strives to

overcome by the use of sharp contrasts and of di

rect and forceful verbs:"Visages d'encre et d'or trouant Tombre et la brume." 1

In other words, one never loses sight of Ver

haeren's racia l kinship- He is a F lem in g, a de

scendant of the men whom Rembrandt painted

— a fu ll-b od ied , insatiable, Germanic fo lk . He

was profoundly conscious of this fact and gloried

in i t :

"Je suis le fils de cette race,

Dont les cerveaux plus que les dents

Sont solides et sont ardents

Et sont voraces.

Je suis le fils de cette race

Tenace ,

Qui veut, apres avoir voulu

Encore, encore et encore plus!" 2

One feels in such verses almost the march and ac

cent of Germanic versification. A n d Verhaeren

1 "Faces of ink and gold boring the shade and fog."

2 "I am a son of that race whose brains, more than their

teeth, are solid and are ardent and voracious. I am a son of

that tenacious race that desires, after having desired the more,more yet and ever more!"

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raises this impulse of his blood and race in to a p h i l

osophic vision and a principle of conduct:

" E t je c ri a is : L a force est sainte.

I I faut que l 'homme imprime son empreinte

Violemment, sur ses desseins hardis;

Elle est relle qui tient les clefs des paradis

Et dont le large poing en fait tourner les portes." 1

It is evident that the style and rhythm of such a

poet w i l l not seek, f i rs t of all, after beauty but

after power, that in its failure it will touch vio

lence, in its success sublimity. A n d tha t is l i t -

erally true of Verhaeren's style.

The development of his mind and art is im

por ta nt not on ly fo r the student of his verse. I t s

nature is such that he becomes, by virtue of it, al

most symbolical of the pain and hope of his age.

In his early volumes (Les Flammandes, Les

Moines), he works evidently in the tradition of

Rubens: he sets down a large, strong vision of

large, strong things . O n l y in that vis ion there is

already, despite all health and vigor, a deepening

1 " A n d I cri ed out : 'Force itself is sacred. M a n must v io -

lently stamp his imprint upon his bold designs: it is force that

holds the keys of all paradises and whose large hand makesthei r gates s w ing open.' "

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melancholy, a mystical and subjective gloom.

There fo ll owed a per iod of acute mental and phys

ica l distress (1 8 8 7 - 1 8 9 0 ) , border ing at times upon

the pathological, in which he exalts pain itselfw i t h an almost savage note. Gradua ll y he re

covered. Lov e helped h i m and gentle memories

and, at times, exquisite visions such as that of Saint

George, the sym bol to h im of sp ir itu al va lo r :

"J'ai mis, en sa pale main fiere,

Les fleurs tristes de ma douleur." 1

But the liberating experience, since he could find

peace in no form of personal idealism, religious or

philosophic, came to him about 1892 through hisiden tificat ion w i t h the Socialist movement. I t

meant far more to him than a humanitarian hope,

though it was that, too: it meant now the possi

bility of accepting the modern world in its entirety,

id en ti fy in g himself w i t h i t , casting off the burdenof self. In tha t inner urgency lay , of course, his

weakness. B u t the process, too, cl ar if ied his

thinking magnificently and freed him from many

of the common and futile causes of moral pain:

1 " 'I laid into his proud, pale hand the sad flowers of mypain.'"

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"Les droits et les devoirs? Reves divers que fa i t

Devant chaque espoir neuf, la jeunesse du monde!" 1

He now established in his visions and his verse

that contrast between the past and future of civilisation, symbolised for him by the country and the

city and the latter's encroachment on the former:

"L'esprit de campagnes etait l'esprit de Dieu . . .

L'usine rouge eclat ou seuls brillaient les champs,

La fumee a flots noirs rase les toits d'eglise." 2

Again and again, as in the turbidly yet greatly

imaginative Les Cordiers, he compares the long

ago with the burning present:

"Jadis—c'etait la vie ardente, evocatoire;La Croix blanche de ciel, la Croix rouge d'enfer

Marchaient, a la clarte des armures de fer,

Chacune a travers sang, vers son ciel de victoire . • •

Voici—c'est une usine; et la matiere intense

Et rouge y roule et vibre, en des caveaux,

Ou se forgent d'ahan les miracles nouveaux

Qui absorbent la nuit, le temps et le distance." 3

1 "Rights and duties? They are varied dreams that theworld's youth dreams in the face of each new hope."

2 "The spirit of the country-sides was the spirit of God. . . .The factory flares where once the lonely fields shone; the smoke

in black waves grazes the roofs of the church."3 "Once on a time—life was all ardor and full of visions: The

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But he drew his profoundest inspiration from

the crowd (La Foule) of great cities. Here , in

this universal, laboring heart he found the mean

ing of life, the hope for the future, liberation forhis ow n soul . In these cities and crowds, he c r ied :

"Je sens grandir et s'exalter en moi

Et fermenter, soudain, mon coeur multiplied" 1

He saw the cities with all the accustomed feveredardor of his vis ion. B u t in them he foun d his u l

timate hope:

" U n vaste espoir, ve n u de i' inc on nu deplace

L'equilibre ancien dont les ames sont lasses." 2

And not only hope, it must be repeated, but free

do m . F o r he found here th at "grea t hour in

which the aspects of the world change, wherein

that seems strange which once was just and holy,

white Cross of heaven, the red Cross of hell marched, in theshining of iron armor, each across blood, toward its victorioussky. . . ." "To-day—yonder is a factory; matter, intense andred, rolls and vibrates there in the vaults wherein are forged withbitter labor those new miracles that swallow night and time anddistance."

1 I feel my multiplied heart suddenly grow great and seethe

and exalt itself within me.2

"A vast hope arisen from the unknown displaces the ancientequilibrium of which men's souls are weary."

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wherein man ascends towards the summits of an

other faith, where madness itself, in the storms,

forges a new t r u t h ! " W i t h th is b l i n d communal

birth of new truth and new law he strove to beat one:

"Engouffre-toi,

M o n coeur, en ces foules . . ." 1

His passion and his vision grew in apocalypticfe rv or on th is note. He alone am ong the greater

modern poets dedicated himself utterly to the ex-

tremest form of democratic faith—faith in the

prophetic and creative power of the mere mass:

"Mets en accord ta forces avec les destinees

Que la foule, sans le savoir

Promulgue, en cette nuit d'angoisse illuminee.

Ce que sera demain, le droit et le devoir,

Seule, elle en a l'instinct profond,

Et l'univers total s'attelle et collabore

"Avec ses milliers de causes qu'on ignore

A chaque effort vers le futur, qu'eile elabore,

Rouge et tragique, a Thorizon." 2

1 "Engulf thyself, my heart, in these crowds . . ."

2 "Place thy strength in harmony -with those destinies which,

without knowing it, the crowd promulgates in this night lit by

agonies. Of what the morrow w il l bring forth of right andduty the crowd alone has the deep instinct. And the whole uni-

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T h a t is very fervent and very noble wri ting . Y e t

one feels, I think, throughout such passages, a sense

not of the highest strength—nothing of quiet

power. He fled from his too troubled and in sistent self to this extreme faith because he could

not clarify that self or calm it; because he failed

to be, in the deeper and serener sense, the master

of his soul. A m an and a poet almost but never

wholl y great. . . .

To pass from Verhaeren to Regnier is to recall,

involuntarily, Taine's old theory of the effect of

climate on li terature . For can any one be, more

than Verhaeren, the creature of a fog-bound coast,a storm-beaten plain, a group of rain-swept cities'?

And then that golden-winged Muse (La Muse aux

ailes d'or) of H e n r i de Regnier—does she not

move in luminous gardens under a temperate but

radiant sky, does she not hear the murmur of clear

waters on the wooded slopes, does she not sing her

austere dream of beauty in a calm and starry even-

f a l l . . . ? No one could be more L a t i n than

verse puts itself in harness and with its thousand causes of

-which we know nothing labors at each effort toward the futurewhich the mass draws broadly, red and tragic, upon the horizon.''

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Regnier. M o de rn as he is, exquisite prac tit ion er

of free verse, mystical lover of beauty, he has the

" divine elegance" of V e rg il , the lo ve ly suavitas,

the discreet bu t pi ercing me lancho ly. He attainsthese qualities, of course, at the price of large and

definite exclusions. T h e harsh cries, the tragic

questions of the modern world, never break in upon

the wa ll ed garden of his imaginings . He lives, as

M. Jean de Gourmont has said, "in royal landscapes, palaces of gold and marble which are noth

ing in reality but the setting in which the poet has

chosen to place his dream ." I w o u ld no t have

h i m otherwise. T he w o r l d sets our hearts and

brains on fire . Here , in the poet ry of Regnier, is

a place of ease and rest and noble solitude like that

"great, good place" in Henry James' story, here

beauty, though with so new a grace, goes through

her eternal gesture and lays her hand upon the

fever of our eyes. I w o u ld have h i m always in

that attitude of his Discours en Face de la

Nuit:

"Je parlerai, debout et du fond de mon songe. . . . " 1

1 "I shall speak standing erect and from the depth of mydream."

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And I would have his liquid voice die on the ear

"Avec l'aube qui rit aux larmes des fontaines,

Avec le soir qui pleure aux rires des ruisseaux." 1

His style is unique, both in its diction and its

imagery, for an extraordinary blending of mod

ern sensitiveness with classic clearness and frugal

ity. Constantly, after his earliest symbolist

poems, he employs the tr ad it io na l He ll en ic myth sand legends to body forth his vision; he does so

even in the freest of modern verse and so adds to

those myths and legends a new freshness and a

more tr oub li ng grace. T he L a t i n in h i m is uncon

querable, the immemorial tradition absorbed him,u n t i l quite recently, more and more. As ear ly as

1896 he wrote lines which would startle no one if

found on some page of the Greek Anthology or of

T ib u l lu s . The re is the same fr ug al restraint in

sadness and in beauty.

"Et mes yeux qui t'ont vu sont las d'avoir pleure

L'inexorable absence ou tu t'es retire

Loin de mes bras pieux et de ma bouche triste . . ." 2

1 "With dawn that laughs with the tears of the fountains, with

evening that weeps to the laughter of the rivulets."2 "And my eyes which have seen thee are weary of having

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One recalls, I think, those other verses—as tender

and as f u l l of lo n gi ng — of the Rom an elegist:

"Te spectem suprema mihi cum venerit hora,

Te teneam moriens deficiente manu." 1

His growing preoccupation with beauty in i ts

antique forms may be studied in the admirable ti

tles of his later volumes: Games Rustic and Di

vine (Les Jeux rustiques et divins), The Medalsof Clay (Les Med ail les d'Argile), The Winged

Sandal (La San dale ailce.) It would be doing

him a grave wrong, however, to imagine that he

takes up again any Neo-ciassic tradition; his inspi

ration and its sources are as alien as possible toeither the method of the Renaissance or of the Sev

enteenth Cen tu ry . He has chosen the imagery of

the ancients because he has seen and felt it anew,

for himself, and has deliberately used it in that

vibrant, ultra-modern verse of his:

"Un jour, encor,

Entre les feuilles d'ocre et d'or

wept over the inexorable absence to which thou hast withdrawn,far from my pious arms and my sad mouth."

1

"May I see thee when my supreme hour shall have come, mayI, dying, hold thee with my failing hand."

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Du bois, je vis, avec ses jambes de poil jaune,

Danser un faune." 1

He finds the timelessness of beauty best inter

preted thus. "F o r Po et ry ," he wri tes, "has neither yesterday no r to-morrow, nor to-day. It is

the same everywhere. W h a t it desires is to see

it se lf be au ti fu l and is indifferent, if on ly its beauty

be reflected, whether the glass is the natural spring

of the forest or some mirror in which a subtle ar

tifice shows unto it its divine countenance in the

crystal limpidness of a fictive and imaginary wa

te r." One may assent to that theory or one may

no t. It is by the l i g h t o f such though t, a t a l l

events, that M. de Regnier has written the most

beautiful French verses of his age.

He does not, of course, deny his modernity, his

or ig in in time . He was a pup i l of Ver laine and

heard M a ll a r m e in his yo ut h and w ro te :

" I I neige dans mon coeur des souffrances cachees. . . ." 2

with its obvious reminiscence of Verlaine's fa

mous:

1 "Again, one day, amid the forest's leaves of ochre and of

gold I saw a faun dance with his yellow haired legs."2 "It snows in my heart with hidden sufferings . . ."


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" I I pleure dans mon coeur

Comme il pleut sur la vi ll e. . ." 1

He wrote :

"O mon ame, le soir est triste sur hier. . . ." 2

A n d he pr oc la im ed in those years:

"La Terre douloureuse a bu le sang des Reves. . . ."

And his versification is as wavering and as untra-

di t iona l in his last volum e as in his first. The

truth is that he took refuge in the antique vision

of beauty from the excessive sensitiveness of his

own temper, from the over-delicacy of his ownprid e. L i f e had too great a powe r to w ou nd h i m

and so he tu rn ed , in poetry, to those objects of con

te m pla ti on and those images th a t have no pang bu t

the pang of beauty:

"Car la forme, Todeur et la beaute des choses

Sont le seul souvenir dont on ne souffre pas." 4

1 "It weeps in my heart as it rains on the town . . ."

2 "O my soul, the evening is sad over yesterday . . ."

3 "The anguished earth has drunk the blood of dreams."

4

"For the form, the fragrance and the beauty of things are theonly memory from which one does not suffer."

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In his last volume there is directer and more naked

speech as in the powerful passion of Le Reproche,

the grave and elevated frankness of L' Accueil,

the remarkable avowal of La Foret. A n d he maycontinue up on this pa th . T he marvellous beauty

of the w o rk of his m id d le years, however, w i l l re

main in its union of classic grace and modern sub

tlety.

That union was founded upon a personal inter

preta tion of the po st -K an ti an idealism whic h came

to France in the early days of the Symbolist move

ment. " I have fe igned ," says M . d e Regnier,

" tha t gods have spoken w i t h me. . . . " "L i s ten: there is someone behind the echo, erect amid

the universal life who bears the double arch and

the double torch and wh o is di vi ne ly identica l w i t h

us." T h a t sp ir it of universal beauty w ho is at

one w i t h the A l l and at one w i t h us arises out of

that divine union in an hundred shadows of him

self and these shadows of the "invisible Face" the

poet has sought to grave upon medals "soft and

silvery as the pale dawn, of gold as ardent as the

sun, of brass as sombre as the night—of every

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metal that sounds clear as joy or deep as glory or

lov e or de ath. " A n d he has made the lovelie st

" o f lov ely clay, fragile and d r y . " A n d me n have

come to him and smiled and counted the medalsand sa id : " H e is s k i l f u l , " and have passed on

s m i l i n g :

"Aucun de vous n'a done vu

Que mes mains tremblaient de tendresse,

Que tout le grand songe terrestreVivait en moi pour vivre en eux

Que je gravais aux metaux pieux

Mes Dieux,

Et qu'ils etaient le visage vivant

De ce que nous avons senti des roses,

De l'eau, du vent,De la foret et de la mer,

De toutes choses

En notre chair

Et qu'ils sont nous divinement." 1

That passage completes the statement of the philosophical background o f Regnier's poetry. I t

1 "Did not but one of you then see that my hands trembled

with tenderness, that all the great terrestrial dream lived in me

to live again in them whom I engraved on pious metals—those

gods of mine,—and that they were the living countenance of all

that we have felt of roses, of water and the wind, of the forest

and the sea, of all things in our flesh, and that, in some divineway, they are ourselves."

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may also serve to illustrate the flexibility, the ex

pressiveness and range of his free verse music, even

though it has not the ampler cadences of Le Vase.

But indeed, M. de Regnier's versification is always—at least to a foreigner's ear—mere perfection.

His music is usually grave and slow and deep,

rarely very energetic, but of a sweetness that never

cloys. He has used rime and assonance, he has

denied himself no measure of freedom and variety,but he has also taken the alexandrine and drawn

from it a note of profound spiritual grace and a

more inner music.

It is difficult to choose among the other poets

who proceeded f rom Symbol ism . T he y are many

and there is hardly one of them who has not writ

ten memorab ly at times. B u t this is no t a history

of the modern poetry of France and i t w i l l suffice

to speak brief ly o f Jean Moreas, of M M . Francis

Viele-Grif f in and Stuar t M e r r i l l , of the la te A l

bert Samain and Remy de Gourmont and, still

more briefly, of those younger men who carry the

symbolist inspiration and method into the imme

diate present.

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Jean Moreas (1856-1910) a notably gifted

and flexible Greek threw himself early and ar

de nt ly in to the Symbolist movement. B u t , by

1891, in his Le Pelerin Passtone:

, he attemptedto create a diversion, to found a new school, the

briefly famous Ecole romane. He was concerned

largely with the question of poetic diction and,

th roug h i t , o f poetic vis ion . He desired to b ri ng

about a "communion of the French Middle Agesand Renaissance with the principle of the modern

soul," by using a selection from the archaic words

of the Pleiade and even of the Roman de la Rose.

Hence M. Anatole France promptly called him the

Ronsard of Sym bol ism . A n d the lyrics of thePelerin passione have, no doubt, a certain old-

world sweetness wherever the obvious archaisms

do not give them a somewhat obscure and artificial

grace. H i s ear lier symbolist verse, in whic h he

took some very quaint and charming liberties of

versification and poetic manner—

("Parmi les marroniers, parmi les

Lilas Wanes, les li las violets. . . . ") 1

1

"Among the chestnut trees, among the white lilacs, the violetlilacs . • ."

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—are of the stuff of dreams and have a dreamy ca

dence :

"Voix qui revenez, bercez-nous, berceuses voix. . . ." 1

Finally he left behind him both Symbolism and

his own Ecole romane. "These things concern

me no longer," he confessed in his middle age and,

withdrawing into solitude, he wrote his last work:

Les Stances (1 9 0 1 - 1 9 0 5 ) . In these poems hereturns to the traditional verse, to the traditional

stanzaic forms. They have an ex traord ina ry pu

rity of poetic outline, a notable dignity of speech

and imag ina tio n, a jus t and pr ou d perfec tion. It

was the Hellenic soul in him, one must suppose,that made his last work so memorable an example

of the classical sp i ri t in modern poe try . H i s

changes of mood and manner and theory were not

without their influence upon the younger poets and

no less a man that M. Paul Fort has written:

"Ce que je dois a Moreas ne peut etre dit en paroles." 2

The American, M. Francis Viele-Griffin (b.

1864) was one of the very active founders of the

1 "O voices that return, cradle us, cradling voices . . ."2 "What I owe to Moreas cannot be expressed in words."

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Symbolist school and has remained true to it ever

since. A poet of rare l y r i c a l g i f t , he has always

been concerned with his "interior vision" and has

continued to hold that "conviction, common toShelley, Wagner and Mallarme, that reali ty is a

creation of the soul and art a superimposed crea

t i o n . " W i t h h im , as w i t h so many of the poets

of modern France—Jewish, Greek, Flemish, An

glo-Saxon, Alemanic Swiss—one is tempted,wrongly perhaps, to attribute certain qualities of

thou gh t and style to racial o r ig in . It is a fact, at

all events, that M. Viele-Griffin is often haunt-

ingly lyrical in a sense that is not characteristic

ally Latin and that in his mingling of verses of

seven and eight syllables one seems to detect the

introduction of an English cadence:

"N'est-il une chose au Monde,

Chere, a la face du ciel

— U n rire, un reve, une ronde,

Un rayon d'aurore ou de miel. . . " 1

He is a poet who rarely touches the imagination

without also touching the heart, whose music

1 "Is there a thing in the world, dear, in the face of the sky—a laugh, a dream, a song, a beam of the dawn or of honey.''

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ranges f r o m a l y r i c a l l i f t to the fullness and grave-

ness of the elegy.

The other American who has become a modern

French poet is M . Stuart M e r r i l l (b . 18 68) . H i sgeneral character as a man and an artist is at once

evident from a correct interpretation of his own

wo rd s: " M o d e r n society is a bad ly w r it te n poem

w hic h one must be active in correcting. A poet,

in the etymological sense, remains a poet everywhere and it is his duty to bring back some love

liness upon the earth." Acco rdingly , M . M e r r i l l ,

a revolutionary Socialist , has given unstintingly

both of himself and of his fortune to his chosen

cause. In ar t, on the other hand, he has been pre

occupied w i t h beauty alone. H i s poems are

woven upon the loom of dreams; they have a

vi sionary magnificence, a g l i n t as of shadows up on

go ld . Once at least in Les Poings a la Porte he

has come near sub l im i ty . H i s music has of ten a

slow and lingering quality and he has used, with

notable success, lines—so rare in French—that are

longer than the alexandrine:

"L'Amour entrera toujours comme un ami dans notremaison,

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T'ai-je repondu, ccoutant le bruit des feuilles qui tom-

bent." 1

In turning to Albert Samain (1858-1900) we

come once more upon the unmistakably Latin tem

perament. T h e first of his tw o celebrated v o l

umes Au Jar din de V Infante (1893) is purely

symbolist in inspiration and quali ty; in the

second Aux Flanes du Vase (1898) he turns again

to the beauty of the visible world, of the immor

tal gesture held fast as in the plastic arts which is,

after all, perhaps the most characteristic method

of French poet ry . H i s verse here is s t i l l free and

flowing and trembling; the pictures are sculptured

or painted, and poetry adds nothing to this art

except the element of motion before the final and

memorable gesture is achieved. A l l his best

poems follow this method and so he attains the

white, sculptural beauty of Xanth is , the ruddy,

flame-like g lo w of Pannyre aux Talons d'Or

( x x x v i ) .

T he chief qua li ty o f the late M . Re m y de Gour-

mont's (1858-1915) character was an extreme

1

"Love w i l l enter always like a friend into our house, I answered thee while listening to the noise of leaves that fall."

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subtlety—subtlety of mind and subtlety of the

senses. The first made h i m a cr it ic of the highest

order even in a co un try of great cri tic s. He car

ried far beyond Jules Lemaitre what is rather foolishly known as the impressionist method in criti

cism: the plain and sensible belief, namely, that

a work of art is precious not through the tribal or

social elements in it, but through the personal,

that art knows no ought-ness of convention orprecedent and that the test of beauty, different in

that respect from truth, is a pragmatic one. . . .

His poetry, of which he did not write a great deal,

addresses itself to the nerves, to the finer senses.

It is keen and strange and pale and, at its best, of

a very individual music though always adhering

to the prosody of the Symbolists.

The younger members of the school, the late

Char les Guer in (1873-1907) , M. Camil le Mau-

clair (who i s also a critic of distinction), M.

H en ry Bata i l le ( the wel l -know n p la y w ri g ht ) , M .

Henri Barbusse (who recently achieved interna

t ional fame with Le Feu), M. Henri Spiess and

M. Fernand Gregh, have all continued the now

fam il ia r methods of modern French poe try. Each

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has contributed his personal vision and his per

sonal note. B u t he has co nt ribu ted these to a

kind of poetry now firmly established and well

recognisable: poetry that lives in the dawn anddusk of the mind, that sees its visions in the state

of re very and projects its own shadows upon the

face of the world—whose voice is a wavering

music, the notes of a flute upon the breeze. . . .

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IV

T H E LA TE R FORCES I N F R E N C H POE TR Y

" I I dit je ne sais quoi de triste, bon et pur."F R A N C I S J A M M E S

"La terre est le soleil en moi sont en cadence,

et toute la nature est entree dans mon cceur."

P A U L F O R T

T H E R E has been no reaction against Symbolism inFrance. I am not at a l l sure th at the very young

est group, with some exaggerations in prosodic

matters, has not merely returned to the essential

taste and method of the early eighteen hundred

and nineties. In the meantime, however, therehave appeared two powerful talents who, a rare

thing in France, stand aside and alone, members

of no group, no school, no cenacle: M M . Francis

Jammes ( b . 18 6 8 ) and Pa ul Fo rt ( b. 1 8 7 2 ) .

Charles Guerin, in a set of very pure and verytouching verses addressed to M. Jammes calls that

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poet a "son of V e r g i l . " The say ing has been re

peated because M. Jammes, unlike the average

French man of letters, lives in the country (at

Orthez in the Hautes-Pyrenees) and writes aboutcountry matters which he understands admirably.

Thus he recalls, in a superficial way, the poet of

the Georgics. B u t one quotation , and a hack

neyed one, from those magnificent poems and one

b r i e f confession f r o m M . Jammes w i l l show theabsurdity of the comparison and also define the

French poet's character. Everyone knows the

V erg il ia n lines :

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. . . ." 1

M. Jammes prefaced his first collection of poems

w i t h these wor ds : " M y God , yo u have called me

among men . Here I am . I suffer and I love . I

have spoken with the voice which you have given

me. I have w r i t t e n w i t h the words whi ch yo u

taught my father and my mother who transmitted

them to me. I pass alo ng the road l ike a burdened

ass at whom children laugh and who droops his

1 "Happy he who has been able to understand the causes of

things."

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head. I sha ll go wh en yo u w o u l d have me,

whither you w o u l d have me go. . . . T h e angelus

rin gs ." Th ere is no th in g here of the sad in te l

lec tual val or of the Augustans. It is the note ofSaint Francis, the humble brother of the birds

and beasts. . . . I n a w or d, M . Jammes i s a

Ca tho lic . So w h o l l y a Ca tho lic th at one need

not speak of intellectual submission in his case.

H e w a s b o r n w i t h t h e l i g h t o f f a i t h a s h i s on l yguide and sees l i f e w i t h the wide-eyed reverential

wonder of a l i t t l e ch i ld or a great saint. He has

the child's and the saint's simple-hearted fa

miliari ty with divine things:

"Ce n'est pas vous, mon Dieu,

qui, sur les joues en roses, posez la mort bleue." 1

and the tender and v i v i d sense of the human ele

ments in his d iv in it ie s :

"Rappelez-vous, mon Die u , devant I'enf ant qui meurt,

que vous vivez toujours aupres de votre Mere." 2

So, too, as an artist, he is like the nameless sculp-

1 "It is not you, my God, who on the rosy cheeks will lay the

blue of death."2 "Recall, my God, before the dying child, that you live always

near your own mother."

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tors who adorned the Mediaeval cathedrals, an

humble craftsman in the light of God's glory, de

sir ing no th in g for him sel f :

"Et, comme un adroit ouvrier

tient sa truelle alourdie de mortier,

je veux, d'un coup, a chaque fois porter

du bon ouvrage au mur de ma chaumiere." 1

He is aware, of course, of the life of his own age.

He has read, as he says, "novels and verses madein Paris by men of ta le n t. " B u t these men an d

their works seem very fo r lo rn and sad to h i m . He

would have them come to his own country-side;

for it is in the stillness of the fields and farms that

the peace of God is to be found:

"Alois ils souriront en fumant dans leur pipe,

et, s'ils souffrent encore, car les hommes sont tristes,

ils gueriront beaucoup en ecoutant les cris

des eperviers pointus sur quelque metairie." 2

His own happiness is untroubled, his own submission to the divine will complete. Like Saint

1"And as a skilful workman holds his trowel, heavy with

mortar, I would, at once, each time add some goodly work tothe wall of my cottage."

2 "Then they will smile while smoking their pipes, and, if

they suffer still, for men are sad, they will be greatly cured byhearing the cries of the slim sparrow-hawks over the farmlands."

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Francis he has grasped the uttermost meaning of

the Ch ris tian v ir tu e of h u m i l i t y and prays to pass

in to Paradise w i t h the asses:

". . . et faites que, penche dans ce sejour des ames

sur vos divines eaux, je sois pareil aux ans

qui mireront leur humble et douce pauvrete

a la limpidite de Tamour eternel." 1

These quotations, fra gm en tary and b ri e f as the y

are, w i l l already have made clear some of the

qualities of this ex traord ina ry poet. T h e saint

like simplicity of his vision has really, on the

purely descriptive side, made him a naturalist.

For he is no burning mystic, no St. John of the

Cross or Richard Crashaw, but a humble child of

the Church who sees the immediate things of this

world very soberly and clearly as they appear in

their objective nature:

" I I y a aussi le chien maladeregardant tristement, couche dans les salades

venir la grande mort qu'il ne comprendra pas." 2

1 "Leaning over your divine waters in that sojourning place of

souls, cause me to be like to the asses who wi l l mirror theirhumble and gentle poverty in the limpidity of the eternal love."

2 "There is also the sick dog sadly watching, where he lies

amid the lettuce, great death approach which he will not understand."

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But he is always conscious of the relations which

these things, according to his faith, sustain to the

div in e . A n d so, when his ow n dog dies, he ex

cla ims :

" A h ! faites, mon Dieu , si vous me donnez la grace

de Vous voir face a Face aux jours d'fiternite,

faites qu'un pauvre chien contemple face a face

celui qui fut son dieu parmi I'humanite." 1

As becomes his spiritual character, M. Jammes

has discarded all the vain pomp and splendor of

verse, even the subtler and quieter graces of the

Symbolis ts. H i s tone is conversationa l, almosi

casual; his sentences have the structure of prose.

He uses rime or assonance or suddenly fails to

rim e at a l l . He seems mere ly ben t on t e l l i n g the

simple and beautiful things in his heart as quietly

as possible. W h a t constitutes his eminence, his

very high eminence, as an artist is the fact that hisprosaic simplicity of manner, his naive matter-of-

factness, his apparently (but only apparently)

slovenly technique are so used as to make for a

1 "Ah, my God, if you grant me the grace of seeing you face to

face in the days of Eternity, then let a poor dog contemplateface to face him who was his god among men."

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new style in French poetry—a naturalistic style

that rises constantly to a high and noble elevation

of speech, and rises to that elevation, as Words

worth sought to do, by using the simplest words inthe simplest order. Brie fly , he does no t adorn

things u n t i l they become poetical; he sees them

poeti ca lly . H i s imag inati on and his heart trans

form them, not his diction or his figures of speech.

Is that not the highest aim of poetry? A n d yetit were thrusting aside some very elementary and

obvious considerations to call M. Jammes a great

poet. A great ar tis t he is—bu t not a great poet.

For, except on the purely pictorial side, his sub

ject matter, the in te llectual content of his w ork

is, necessarily, without significance or permanent

v a l i d i t y . It has subjective t r u th onl y. So, it

may be said, has the substance of most modern

verse. T r u e ! B u t a subjec tiv ity tha t finds har

monious echoes in a thousand souls achieves, after

all , the only kind of objectivity, of reali ty that

we kn ow . T h a t k i n d of real ity and therefore sig

nificance M. Jammes, as a Catholic in the twenti

eth centu ry, has la rgely denied himse lf. To his

fellow-villagers at Orthez, who share his faith, he


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w i l l seem merely curious as a writer: to the in

tellectual world of the present and the future he

will seem a l i t t

Documents

the Poets of Modern France