Part 4

If I at all rightly understand the words "vouloir chasser les choses que nous savons" they are an excellent warning against the pose of simplicity over-done that has been the end of Maeterlinck, and of how many other poets whose poetic machinery consists in so great part of pretending to know less than they do.

Jammes' poems are well represented in Miss Lowell's dilutation on _Six French Poets_, especially by the well-known "Amsterdam" and "Madame de Warens," which are also in Van Bever and Léautaud. He reaches, as I have said, his greatest verve in "Existences" in the volume "Le Triomphe de la Vie."

I do not wish to speak in superlatives, but "Existences," if not Jammes' best work, and if not the most important single volume by any living French poet, either of which it well may be, is at any rate indispensable. It is one of the first half dozen books that a man wanting to know contemporary French work must in-dulge in. One can _not_ represent it in snippets. Still I quote "Le Poète" (his remarks at a provincial soirée):

Cest drôle.... Cette petite sera bête comme ces gens-là, comme son père et sa mère. Et cependant elle a une grâce infinie. Il y a en elle l'lntelligence de la beauté. C'est délicieux, son corsage qui n'existe pas, son derrière et ses pieds. Mais elle sera bête comme une oie dans deux ans d'ici. Elle va jouer.

_(Benette joue la valse des elfes)_

In an earlier scene we have a good example of his rapidity in narrative.

_La Servante_

Il y a quelqu'un qui veut parler à monsieur.

_Le Poète_

Qui est-ce?

_La Servante_

Je ne sais pas.

_Le Poète_

Un homme ou une femme?

_La Servante_

Un homme.

_Poète_

Un commis-voyageur, Vous me le foutez belle!

_La Servante_

Je ne sais pas, monsieur.

_Poète_

Faites entrer au salon. Laissez-moi achever d'achever ces cerises.

_(Next Scene)_

_Le Poète (dans son salon)_

A qui ai-je l'honneur de parler, monsieur?

_Le Monsieur_

Monsieur, je suis le cousin de votre ancienne maîtresse.

_Le Poète_

De quelle maîtresse? Je ne vous connais pas. Et puis qu'est-ce que vous voulez?

_Le Monsieur_

Monsieur, ecoutez-moi. On m'a dit que vous êtes bon.

_Poète_

Ce n'est pas vrai.

_La Pipe du Poète_

Il me bourre avec une telle agitation que je ne vais jamais pourvoir tirer de l'air.

_Poète_

D'abord, de quelle maîtresse me parlez-vous? De qui, pretendez-vous? Non. Vous pretendez de qui j'ai été l'amant?

_Le Monsieur_

De Néomie.

_Poète_

De Néomie,

_Le Monsieur_

Oui, monsieur.

_Poète_

Où habitez-vous?

_Le Monsieur_

J'habite les environs de Mont-de-Marsan.

_Poète_

Enfin que voulez-vous?

_Le Monsieur_

Savoir si monsieur serait assez complaisant pour me donner quelque chose.

_Poète_

Et si je ne vous donne le pas, qu'est-ce que vous ferez?

_Le Monsieur_

Oh! Rien monsieur. Je ne vous ferai rien. Non....

_Le Poète_

Tenez, voila dix francs, et foutez-moi la paix.

(_Le monsieur s'en va, puis le poète sort._)

The troubles of the Larribeau family, Larribeau and the _bonne_, the visit of the "Comtese de Pentacosa," who is also staved off with ten francs, are all worth quoting. The whole small town is "Spoon-Rivered" with equal verve. "Existences" was written in 1900.

MOREAS

It must not be thought that these very "modern" poets owe their modernity merely to some magic chemical present in the Parisian milieu. Moréas was born in 1856, the year after Verhaeren, but his Madeline-aux-serpents might be William Morris on Rapunzel:

Et votre chevelure comme des grappes d'ombres, Et ses bandelettes à vos tempes, Et la kabbale de vos yeux latents,-- Madeline-aux-serpents, Madeline. Madeline, Madeline, Pourquoi vos lèvres à mon cou, ah, pourquoi Vos lèvres entre les coups du hache du roi! Madeline, et les cordaces et les flûtes, Les flûtes, les pas d'amour, les flûtes, vous les voulûtes, Hélas! Madeline, la fête, Madeline, Ne berce plus les flots au bord de l'île, Et mes bouffons ne crèvent plus des cerceaux Au bord de l'île, pauvres bouffons. Pauvres bouffons que couronne la sauge! Et mes litières s'effeuillent aux ornières, toutes mes litières à grand pans De nonchaloir, Madeline-aux-serpents....

A difference with Morris might have arisen, of course, over the now long-discussed question of vers libre, but who are we to dig up that Babylon? The schoolboys' papers of Toulouse had learnt all about it before the old gentlemen of _The Century_ and _Harper's_ had discovered that such things exist.

One will not have understood the French poetry of the last half-century unless one makes allowance for what they call the Gothic as well as the Roman or classic influence. We should probably call it (their "Gothic") "medievalism," its tone is that of their XIII century poets, Crestien de Troies, Marie de France, or perhaps even D'Orléans (as we noticed in the quotation from Vielé-Griffin). Tailhade in his "Hymne Antique" displays what we would call Swinburnism (Greekish). Tristan Klingsor (a nom de plume showing definite tendencies) exhibits these things a generation nearer to us:

Dans son rêve le vieux Prince de Touraine voit passer en robe verte à longue traîne Yeldis aux yeux charmeurs de douce reine. * * * * * * * *

or

Au verger où sifflent les sylphes d'automne mignonne Isabelle est venue de Venise et veut cueillir des cerises et des pommes. * * * * * * * *

He was writing rhymed vers libre in 1903, possibly stimulated by translations in a volume called "Poésie Arabe." This book has an extremely interesting preface. I have forgotten the name of the translator, but in excusing the simplicity of Arab songs he says: "The young girl in Germany educated in philosophy in Kant and Hegel, when love comes to her, at once exclaims 'Infinite!', and allies her vocabulary with the transcendental. The little girl in the tents 'ne savait comparer fors que sa gourmandise.'" In Klingsor for 1903, I find:

Croise tes jambes fines et nues Dans ton lit, Frotte de tes mignonnes mains menues Le bout de ton nez; Frotte de tes doigts potelés et jolis, Les deux violettes de tes yeux cernés, Et rêve. Du haut du minaret arabe s'échappe La mélopée triste et brève De l'indiscret muezzin Qui nasillonne et qui éternue, Et toi tu bâilles comme une petite chatte, Tu bâilles d'amour brisée, Et tu songes au passant d'Ormuz ou d'Endor Qui t'a quittée ce matin En te laissant sa légère bourse d'or Et les marques bleues de ses baisers.

Later he turns to Max Elskamp, addressing him as if he, Klingsor, at last had "found Jesus":

Je viens vers vous, mon cher Elskamp Comme un pauvre varlet de cœur et de joie Vient vers le beau seigneur qui campe Sous sa tente d'azur et de soie. * * * * * * * *

However I believe Moréas was a real poet, and, being stubborn, I have still an idea which gor embedded in my head some years ago: I mean that Klingsor is a poet. As for the Elskamp phase and cult, I do not make much of it. Jean de Bosschère has written a book upon Elskamp, and he assures me that Elskamp is a great and important poet, and some day, perhaps, I may understand it. De Bosschère seems to me to see or to feel perhaps more keenly than any one else certain phases of modern mechanical civilization: the ant-like madness of men bailing out little boats they never will sail in, shoeing horses they never will ride, making chairs they never will sit on, and all with a frenzied intentness. I may get my conviction as much from his drawings as from his poems. I am not yet clear in my mind about it. His opinion of Max Elskamp can not be too lightly passed over. Vide infra "De Bosschère on Elskamp."

OF OUR DECADE

Early in 1912 _L'Effort_, since called _L'Effort Libre,_ published an excellent selection of poems mostly by men born since 1880: Arcos, Chennevière, Duhamel, Spire, Vildrac, and Jules Romains, with some of Léon Bazalgette's translations from Whitman.

SPIRE

(born 1868)

André Spire, writing in the style of the generation which has succeeded him, is well represented in this collection by his "Dames Anciennes." The contents of his volumes are of very uneven value: Zionist propaganda, addresses, and a certain number of well-written poems.

DAMES ANCIENNES

En hiver, dans la chambre claire, Tout en haut de la maison, Le poêle de faïence blanche, Cerclé de cuivre, provincial, doux, Chauffait mes doigts et mes livres. Et le peuplier mandarine, Dans le soir d'argent dédoré, Dressait, en silence, ses branches, Devant ma fenêtre close.

--Mère, le printemps aux doigts tièdes A soulevé l'espagnolette De mes fenêtres sans rideaux. Faites taire toutes ces voix qui montent Jusqu'à ma table de travail.

--Ce sont les amies de ma mère Et de la mère de ton père, Qui causent de leurs maris morts, Et de leurs fils partis.

--Avec, au coin de leurs lèvres, Ces moustaches de café au lait? Et dans leurs mains ces tartines? Dans leurs bouches ces Kouguelofs?

--Ce sont des cavales anciennes Qui mâchonnent le peu d'herbe douce Que Dieu veut bien leur laisser.

--Mère, les maîtres sensibles Lâchent les juments inutiles Dans les prés, non dans mon jardin!

--Sois tranquille, mon fils, sois tranquille, Elles ne brouteront pas tes fleurs.

--Mère, que n'y occupent-elles leurs lèvres, Et leurs trop courtes dents trop blanches De porcelaine trop fragile!

--Mon fils, fermez votre fenêtre. Mon fils, vous n'êtes pas chrétien!

VILDRAC

Vildrac's "Gloire" is in a way commentary on Romains' Ode to the Crowd; a critique of part, at least, of unanimism.

Il avait su gagner à lui Beaucoup d'hommes ensemble,

* * * * *

Et son bonheur était de croire, Quand il avait quitté la foule, Que chacun des hommes l'aimait Et que sa présence durait Innombrable et puissante en eux,

* * * * *

Or un jour il en suivit un Qui retournait chez soi, tout seul, Et il vit son regard s'éteindre Dès qu'il fut un peu loin des autres.

* * * * *

(The full text of this appeared in _Poetry_ Aug., 1913.) Vildrac's two best-known poems are "Une Auberge" and "Visite"; the first a forlorn scene, not too unlike a Van Gogh, though not done with Van Gogh's vigor.

C'est seulement parce qu'on a soif qu'on entre y boire; C'est parce qu'on se sent tomber qu'on va s'y asseoir. On n'y est jamais à la fois qu'un ou deux Et l'on n'est pas forcé d'y raconter son histoire.

* * * * * * * Celui qui entre....

* * * * * * * mange lentement son pain Parce que ses dents sont usées; Et il boit avec beaucoup de mal Parce qu'il a de peine plein sa gorge.

Quand il a fini, Il hésite, puis timide Va s'asseoir un peu A côté du feu.

Ses mains crevassées épousent Les bosselures dures de ses genoux.

Then of the other man in the story:

"qui n'était pas des nôtres.... "Mais comme il avait l'air cependant d'être des nôtres!"

The story or incident in "Visite" is that of a man stirring himself out of his evening comfort to visit some pathetic dull friends.

* * * * * * Ces gens hélas, ne croyaient pas Qu'il fut venu a l'improviste Si tard, de si loin, par la neige ... Et ils attendaient l'un et l'autre Que brusquement et d'un haleine il exposat La grave raison de sa venue.

Only when he gets up to go, "ils osèrent comprendre"

* * * * * * Il leur promit de revenir.

* * * * * * Mais avant de gagner la porte Il fixa bien dans sa mémoire Le lieu ou s'abritait leur vie. Il regarda bien chaque objet Et puis aussi l'homme et la femme, Tant il craignait au fond de lui De ne plus jamais revenir.

The relation of Vildrac's verse narratives to the short story form is most interesting.

JULES ROMAINS

The reader who has gone through Spire, Romains, and Vildrac, will have a fair idea of the poetry written by this group of men. Romains has always seemed to me, and is, I think, generally recognized as, the nerve-centre, the dynamic centre of the group,

Les marchands sont assis aux portes des boutiques; Ils regardent. Les toits joignent la rue au ciel Et les pavés semblent féconds sous le soleil Comme un champ de maïs. Les marchands ont laissé dormir près du comptoir Le désir de gagner qui travaille dès l'aube. On dirait que, malgré leur âme habituelle, Une autre âme s'avance et vient au seuil d'eux-mêmes Comme ils viennent au seuil de leurs boutiques noires.

We are regaining for cities a little of what savage man has for the forest. We live by instinct; receive news by instinct; have conquered machinery as primitive man conquered the jungle. Romains feels this, though his phrases may not be ours. Wyndham Lewis on giants is nearer Romains than anything else in English, but vorticism is, in the realm of biology, the hypothesis of the dominant cell. Lewis on giants comes perhaps nearer Romains than did the original talks about the Vortex. There is in inferior minds a passion for unity, that is, for a confusion and melting together of things which a good mind will want kept distinct. Uninformed English criticism has treated Unanimism as if it were a vague general propaganda, and this criticism has cited some of our worst and stupidest versifiers as a corresponding manifestation in England. One can only account for such error by the very plausible hypothesis that the erring critics have not read "Puissances de Paris."

Romains is not to be understood by extracts and fragments. He has felt this general replunge of mind into instinct, or this development of instinct to cope with a metropolis, and with metropolitan conditions; in so far as he has expressed the emotions of this consciousness he is poet; he has, aside from that, tried to formulate this new consciousness, and in so far as such formulation is dogmatic, debatable, intellectual, hypothetical, he is open to argument and dispute; that is to say he is philosopher, and his philosophy is definite and defined. Vildrac's statement "Il a changé la pathétique" is perfectly true. Many people will prefer the traditional and familiar and recognizable poetry of writers like Klingsor. I am not dictating people's likes and dislikes. Romains has made a new kind of poetry. Since the scrapping of the Aquinian, Dantescan system, he is perhaps the first person who had dared put up so definite a philosophical frame-work for his emotions.

I do not mean, by this, that I agree with Jules Romains; I am prepared to go no further than my opening sentence of this section, concerning our growing, or returning, or perhaps only newly-noticed, sensitization to crowd feeling; to the metropolis and its peculiar sensations. Turn to Romains:

Je croyais les murs de ma chambre imperméables. Or ils laissent passer une tiède bruine Qui s'épaissit et qui m'empêche de me voir, Le papier à fleurs bleues lui cède. Il fait le bruit Du sable et du cresson qu'une source traverse. L'air qui touche mes nerfs est extrêmement lourd. Ce n'est pas comme avant le pur milieu de vie Ou montait de la solitude sublimée.

Voilà que par osmose Toute l'immensité d'alentour le sature.

* * * * * * * Il charge mes poumons, il empoisse les choses, Il sépare mon corps des meubles familiers,

* * * * * * * Les forces du dehors s'enroulent à mes mains.

In "Puissances de Paris" he states that there are beings more "real than the individual." Here, I can but touch upon salients.

Rien ne cesse d'être intérieur. La rue est plus intime à cause de la brume.

Lines like Romains', so well packed with thought, so careful that you will get the idea, can not be poured out by the bushel like those of contemporary rhetoricians, like those of Claudel and Fort. The best poetry has always a content, it may not be an intellectual content; in Romains the intellectual statement is necessary to keep the new emotional content coherent.

The opposite of Lewis's giant appears in:

Je suis l'esclave heureux des hommes dont l'haleine Flotte ici. Leur vouloirs s'écoule dans mes nerfs; Ce qui est moi commence à fondre.

This statement has the perfectly simple order of words. It is the simple statement of a man saying things for the first time, whose chief concern is that he shall speak clearly. His work is perhaps the fullest statement of the poetic consciousness of our time, or the scope of that consciousness. I am not saying he is the most poignant poet; simply that in him we have the fullest poetic exposition.

You can get the feel of Laforgue or even of Corbière from a few poems; Romains is a subject for study. I do not say this as praise, I am simply trying to define him. His "Un Etre en Marche" is the narrative of a girls' school, of the "crocodile" or procession going out for its orderly walk, its collective sensations and adventures.

Troupes and herds appear in his earlier work:

Le troupeau marche, avec ses chiens et son berger, Il a peur. Çà et là des réverbères brûlent, Il tremble d'être poursuivi par les étoiles. * * * * * * * La foule traine une écume d'ombrelles blanches * * * * * * * La grande ville s'évapore, Et pleut à verse sur la plaine Qu'elle sature.

His style is not a "model," it has the freshness of grass, not of new furniture polish. In his work many nouns meet their verbs for the first time, as, perhaps, in the last lines above quoted. He needs, as a rule, about a hundred pages to turn round in. One can not give these poems in quotation; one wants about five volumes of Romains. In so far as I am writing "criticism," I must say that his prose is just as interesting as his verse. But then his verse is just as interesting as his prose. Part of his method is to show his subject in a series of successive phases, thus in L'Individu:

V

Je suis un habitant de ma ville, un de ceux Qui s'assoient au théâtre et qui vont par les rues * * * * * * * *

VI

Je cesse lentement d'être moi. Ma personne Semble s'anéantir chaque jour un peu plus C'est à peine si je le sens et m'en étonne.

His poetry is not of single and startling emotions, but--for better or worse--of progressive states of consciousness. It is as useless for the disciple to try and imitate Romains, without having as much thought of his own, as it is for the tyro in words to try imitations of Jules Laforgue. The limitation of Romains' work, as of a deal of Browning's, is that, having once understood it, one may not need or care to re-read it. This restriction applies also in a wholly different way to "Endymion"; having once filled the mind with Keats' color, or the beauty of things described, one gets no new thrill from the re-reading of them in not very well-written verse. This limitation applies to all poetry that is not implicit in its own medium, that is, which is not indissolubly bound in with the actual words, word music, the fineness and firmness of the actual writing, as in Villon, or in "Collis O Heliconii."

But one can not leave Romains unread. His interest is more than a prose interest, he has verse technique, rhyme, terminal syzygy, but that is not what I mean. He is poetry in:

On ne m'a pas donné de lettres, ces jours-ci; Personne n'a songé, dans la ville, à m'écrire, Oh! je n'espérais rien; je sais vivre et penser Tout seul, et mon esprit, pour faire une flambée, N'attend pas qu'on lui jette une feuille noircie. Mais je sens qu'il me manque un plaisir familier, J'ai du bonheur aux mains quand j'ouvre une enveloppe; * * * * * * * *

But such statements as:

TENTATION

Je me plais beaucoup trop à rester dans les gares; Accoude sur le bois anguleux des barrières, Je regarde les trains s'emplir de voyageurs. * * * * * * * *

and:

Mon esprit solitaire est une goutte d'huile Sur la pensée et sur le songe de la ville Qui me laissent flotter et ne m'absorbent pas. * * * * * * * *

would not be important unless they were followed by exposition. The point is that they are followed by exposition, to which they form a necessary introduction, defining Romains' angle of attack; and as a result the force of Romains is cumulative. His early books gather meaning as one reads through the later ones.

And I think if one opens him almost anywhere one can discern the authentic accent of a man saying something, not the desultory impagination of rehash.

Charles Vildrac is an interesting companion figure to his brilliant friend Romains. He conserves himself, he is never carried away by Romains' theories. He admires, differs, and occasionally formulates a corrective or corollary as in "Gloire."

Compare this poem with Romains' "Ode to the Crowd Here Present" and you get the two angles of vision.

Henry Spiess, a Genevan lawyer, has written an interesting series of sketches of the court-room. He is a more or less isolated figure. I have seen amusing and indecorous poems by George Fourest, but it is quite probable that they amuse because one is unfamiliar with their genre; still "La Blonde Négresse" (the heroine of his title), his satire of the symbolo-rhapsodicoes in the series of poems about her: "La négresse blonde, la blonde négresse," gathering into its sound all the swish and woggle of the sound-over-sensists; the poem on the beautiful blue-behinded baboon; that on the gentleman "qui ne craignait ni la vérole ni dieu"; "Les pianos du Casino au bord de la mer" (Laforgue plus the four-hour touch), are an egregious and diverting guffaw. (I do not think the book is available to the public. J.G. Fletcher once lent me a copy, but the edition was limited and the work seems rather unknown.)

Romains is my chief concern. I can not give a full exposition of Unanimism on a page or two. Among all the younger writers and groups in Paris, the group centering in Romains is the only one which seems to me to have an energy comparable to that of the _Blast_ group in London,[3] the only group in which the writers for _Blast_ can be expected to take very much interest.

Romains in the flesh does not seem so energetic as Lewis in the flesh, but then I have seen Romains only once and I am well acquainted with Lewis. Romains is, in his writing, more placid, the thought seems more passive, less impetuous. As for those who will not have Lewis "at any price," there remains to them no other course than the acceptance of Romains, for these two men hold the two tenable, positions: the Mountain and the Multitude.

It might be fairer to Romains 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, fundamentally; 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.