Part 2

The word mysticism during these last years has taken such diverse and even divergent meanings that it must be clearly and newly defined each time one writes it. Certain persons give it a significance which would draw it to that other word which seems clear, individualism. It is certain that it touches the other, since mysticism may be called the state in which a soul, abandoning the physical world and scornful of its shocks and accidents, gives its mind only to relations and direct intimacies with the infinite. But, if the infinite is changeless and one, souls are changing and many. A soul has not the same communications with God as has his sister, and God, though changeless and one, is modified by the desire of each of his creatures and does not tell one what he has told another. Liberty is the privilege of the soul raised to mysticism. The body itself is but a neighbor to whom the soul scarcely gives the friendly counsel of silence, but if the body speaks, she hears it only as through a wall, and if the body acts, she sees it act through a mask. Another name has been historically given to such a state of life: quietism. This sentence of Maeterlinck is altogether that of a quietist who shows us God smiling "at our most serious faults as one smiles at the play of little dogs on a rug". This is serious but true if we think how tiny a thing a fact is, how a fact is caused, how we all are led by the endless chain of action, and how little we really participate in our most decisive and best considered acts. Such an ethics, leaving the care of useless judgments to wretched human laws, snatches from life its very essence and transports it to the upper regions where it blossoms, sheltered from contingencies and from the humiliations which social contingencies are. Mystic morality ignores everything not marked at the same time with the double seal of the human and divine. Wherefore, it was always feared by clergy and magistrates, for in denying every hierarchy of appearance, it denies, to the point of abstention, all social order. A mystic can consent to all bondages, except that of being a citizen. Maeterlinck sees the time drawing near when men will understand each other, soul to soul, in the same way that the mystic's soul communes with God. Is it true? Will men one day be men, proud, free beings who admit no other judgments than God's judgments? Maeterlinck perceives this dawn, because he gazes within himself and is himself a dawn, but if he watched external humanity, he would only see the impure, socialistic appetite of troughs and stables. The humble, for whom he has divinely written, will not read his book, and if they did read it they would see in it but a mockery, for they have learned that the ideal is a manger, and they know that their masters would flog them if they lifted their eyes to God.

So _le Trésor des Humbles_, that book of liberation and love, makes me think bitterly of the unhappy condition of man today--and doubtless in all possible times,

Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre Pour n'avoir pas chanté la region où vivre Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.

(Tr. 1)

And it will be in vain that

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie.

(Tr. 2)

the hour of deliverance will be past and only a few will have heard it sound.

Nevertheless, what means of hope in these pages where Maeterlinck, disciple of Ruysbroeck, Novalis, Emerson and Hello, only asking of these superior spirits (whose two lesser had intuitions of genius) the sign of the hand that stimulates mysterious voyages! The generality of men, and the more conscious, who have so many hours of indifference, would find here encouragement to enjoy the simplicity of days and muffled murmurs of deep life. They would learn the meaning of very humble gestures and very futile words, and that an infant's laugh or a woman's prattle equals, by what it holds of soul and mystery, the most resplendent words of sages. For Maeterlinck, with his air of being a sage, and quite wise, confidently narrates unusual thoughts with a frankness quite disrespectful of psychological tradition, and with a boldness quite contemptuous of mental habits, assumes the courage only to attribute to things the importance they will have in an ultimate world. Thus, sensuality is altogether absent in his meditations. He knows the importance, but also the insignificance of the stir of blood and nerves, storms that precede or follow, but never accompany thought. And if he speaks of women who are nothing but soul, it is to inquire into "the mysterious salt which forever conserves the memory of the touch of two lips".

Maeterlinck's literature, poems or philosophy, comes in an hour when we have most need to be fortified and strengthened, in an hour when it is not immaterial to learn that the supreme end of life is "to keep open the highways that lead from the visible to the invisible." Maeterlinck has not only kept open the highways frequented by so many good-intentioned souls, and where great-minded men here and there open their arms like oases. It rather seems that he has increased to infinity the extent of these highways; he has said "such specious words in low tones" that the brambles have made way of themselves, the trees have pruned themselves spontaneously, a step beyond is possible, and the gaze today travels farther than it did yesterday.

Others doubtless have or have had a richer language, a more fertile imagination, a clearer gift of observation, more fancy, faculties better fitted to trumpet the music of words. Granted; but with a timid and poor language, childish dramatic combinations, an almost enervating system of repetition in phraseology, with these awkwardnesses, with all his awkwardnesses, Maurice Maeterlinck works at books and booklets that have a certain originality, a novelty so truly new that it will long disconcert the lamentable troop of people who pardon audacity if there be a precedent--as in the protocol--but who hold in scorn genius, which is the perpetual audacity.

ÉMILE VERHAEREN

Of all the poets of today, narcissi along the river, Verhaeren is the least obliging in allowing himself to be admired. He is rude, violent, unskillful. Busied for twenty years in forging a strange and magical tool, he remains in a mountain cavern, hammering the reddened irons, radiant in the fire's reflection, haloed with sparks. Thus it is we should picture him, a forger who,

Comme s'il travaillait l'acier des âmes, Martèle à grands coups pleins, les lames Immenses de la patience et du silence.

(Tr. 3)

If we discover his dwelling and question him, he replies with a parable whose every word seems scanned on the forge, and, to conclude, he delivers a tremendous blow of his heavy hammer.

When he is not laboring at his forge, he goes forth through the fields, head and arms bare, and the Flemish fields tell him secrets they have not yet told anyone. He beholds miraculous things and is not astonished at them. Singular beings pass before him, beings whom everybody jostles without being aware, visible alone to him. He has met the November Wind:

Le vent sauvage de novembre. Le vent, L'avez-vous rencontré, le vent Au carrefour des trois cents routes...?

(Tr. 4)

He has seen Death, and more than once; he has seen Fear; he has seen Silence

S'asseoir immensément du côté de la nuit.

(Tr. 5)

The characteristic word of Verhaeren's poetry is _halluciné_. The word leaps from page to page. An entire collection, the _Campagnes hallucinées_ has not freed him from this obsession. Exorcism was not possible, for it is the nature and very essence of Verhaeren to be the hallucinated poet. "Sensations," Taine said, "are true hallucinations." But where does truth begin or end? Who shall dare circumscribe it? The poet, with no psychological scruples, wastes no time over troubling himself to divide hallucinations into truths or untruths. For him they are all true if they are sharp and strong, and he recounts them frankly--and when the recitation is made by Verhaeren, it is very lovely. Beauty in art is a relative result which is achieved by the mixture of very different elements, often the most unexpected. Of these elements, one alone is stable and permanent, and ought to be found in all combinations: that is novelty. A work of art must be new, and we recognize it as such quite simply by the fact that it gives a sensation not yet experienced.

If it does not give this, a work, perfect though it be adjudged, is everything that is contemptible. It is useless and ugly, since nothing is more absolutely useful than beauty. With Verhaeren, beauty is made of novelty and strength. This poet is a strong man and, since those _Villes tentaculaires_ which surged with the violence of a telluric upheaval, no one dares to deny him the state and glory of a great poet. Perhaps he has not yet quite finished the magic instrument which for twenty years he has been forging. Perhaps he is not yet master of his language. He is unequal; he lets his most beautiful pages grow heavy with inopportune epithets, and his finest poems become entangled in what was once called prosaism. Nevertheless, the impression of power and grandeur remains, and yes: he is a great poet. Listen to this fragment from _Cathédrales_:

* * * * *

--O ces foules, ces foules Et la misère et la détresse qui les foulent Comme des houles!

Les ostensoirs, ornés de soie, Vers les villes échafaudées, En toits de verre et de cristal, Du haut du choeur sacerdotal, Tendent la croix des gothiques idées.

Ils s'imposent dans l'or des clairs dimanches --Toussaint, Noël, Pâques et Pentecôtes blanches. Ils s'imposent dans l'or et dans l'encens et dans la fête Du grand orgue battant du vol de ses tempêtes

Les chapiteaux rouges et les voûtes vermeilles, Ils sont une âme, en du soldi, Qui vit de vieux décor et d'antique mystère Autoritaire.

Pourtant, dès que s'éteignent le cantique Et l'antienne naïve et prismatique, Un deuil d'encens évaporé s'empreint Sur les trépieds d'argent et les autels d'airain,

Et les vitraux, grands de siècles agenouillés Devant le Christ, avec leurs papes immobiles Et leurs martyrs et leurs héros, semblent trembler Au bruit d'un train hautain que passe sur la ville.

(Tr. 6)

Verhaeren appears a direct son of Victor Hugo, especially in his earliest works. Even after his evolution towards a poetry more freely feverish, he still remains romantic. Here, to explain this, are four verses evoking the days of former times.

Jadis--c'était la vie errante et somnambule, A travers les matins et les soirs fabuleux, Quand la droite de Dieu vers les Chanaans bleus Traçait la route d'or au fond des crépuscules.

Jadis--c'était la vie énorme, exaspérée, Sauvagement pendue aux crins des étalons, Soudaine, avec de grands éclairs à ses talons Et vers l'espace immense immensément cabrée.

Jadis--c'était la vie ardent, évocatoire; La Croix blanche de ciel, la Croix rouge d'enfer Marchaient, à la clarté des armures de fer, Chacune à travers sang, vers son ciel de victoire.

Jadis--c'était la vie écumante et livide, Vécue et morte, à coups de crime et de tocsins, Bataille entre eux, de proscripteurs et d'assassins, Avec, au-dessus d'eux, la mort folle et splendid.

(Tr. 7)

These verses are drawn from _Villages illusoires_, written almost exclusively in assonant free verse, divided by means of a gasping rhythm, but Verhaeren, master of free verse, is also master of romantic verse, to which he can force, without being dashed to pieces, the unbridled, terrible gallop of his thought, drunk with images, phantoms and future visions.

HENRI DE RÉGNIER

He lives in an old Italian palace where emblems and figures are written on walls. He muses, passing from room to room. Towards evening he descends the marble stairs and goes into gardens flagged like streams, to dream of his life among fountain basins and ponds, while the black swans grow alarmed in their nests, and a peacock, alone like a king, seems to drink superbly the dying pride of a golden twilight. De Régnier is a melancholy, sumptuous poet. The two words which most often break forth in his verses are _or_ and _mort_ (gold and death) and there are poems where the insistence of this royal and autumnal rhyme returns and even induces fear. In the collection of his last works we could doubtless count more than fifty verses ending thus: golden birds, golden swans, golden basins, golden flowers, and dead lake, dead day, dead dream, dead autumn. It is a very curious obsession and symptomatic, not of a possible verbal poverty, rather the contrary, but of a confessed liking for a particularly rich colour and of a sad richness like that of a setting sun, a richness turning into the darkness of night.

Words obtrude themselves upon him when he wants to paint his impressions and the color of his dreams; words also obtrude themselves upon whoever would define him, and first this one, already written but inevitably recurring: richness. De Régnier is the rich poet _par excellence_--rich in images. He has coffers full of them, caves full of them, vaults full of them, and unendingly a file of slaves bring him opulent baskets which he disdainfully empties on the dazzling steps of his marble stairs, rainbow-hued cascades that go gushingly, then peacefully to form pools and illuminated lakes. All are not new. To the fittest and fairest metaphors that came before, Verhaeren prefers those he himself creates, though awkward and formless. De Régnier does not disdain metaphors that came before, but he refashions them and converts them to his own use by modifying their setting, imposing new proximities on them, meanings still unknown. If among these reworked images some of virgin matter are found, the impression such poetry gives will none the less be altogether original. In working thus, the bizarre and the obscure are avoided; the reader is not rudely thrown into a labyrinthine forest; he recovers his path, and his joy in gathering new flowers is doubled by the joy of gathering familiar ones.

Le temps triste a fleuri ses heures en fleurs mortes, L'An qui passe a jauni ses jours en feuilles sèches. L'Aube pâle s'est vue à des eaux mornes Et les faces du soir ont saigné sous les flèches Du vent mystérieux qui rit et qui sanglote.

(Tr. 8)

Such a poetry certainly charms.

De Régnier in verse can tell everything he wishes, his subtlety is infinite; he notes indefinable nuances of dreams, imperceptible apparitions, fugitive decorations. A naked hand, slightly shriveled, that leans upon a marble table; fruit that swings in the wind and drops; an abandoned pool--such nothings suffice, and the poem springs forth, perfect and pure. His verse is very evocative; in several syllables he forces his vision on us.

Je sais de tristes eaux en qui meurent les soirs; Des fleurs que nul n'y cueille y tombent une à une....

(Tr. 9)

Different again in this from Verhaeren, he is absolute master of his language. Whether his poems are the result of long or brief labor, they bear no mark of effort, and it is not without amazement, nor even without admiration, that we follow the straight, noble progress of his fair verses, white ambling nags harnessed in gold that sinks into the glory of evenings.

Rich and fine, de Régnier's poetry is never purely lyrical; he encloses an idea in the engarlanded circle of his metaphors, and no matter how vague or general this idea may be, it suffices to strengthen the necklace; the pearls are held by a thread, invisible sometime, but always solid, as in these few verses:

L'Aube fut si pâle hier Sur les doux prés et sur les prêles, Qu'au matin clair Un enfant vint parmi les herbes, Penchant sur elles Ses mains pures qui y cueillaient des asphodèles.

Midi fut lourd d'orage et morne de soleil Au jardin mort de gloire en son sommeil Léthargique de fleurs et d'arbres, L'eau était dure à l'oeil comme du marbre, Le marbre tiède et clair comme de l'eau, Et l'enfant qui vint était beau, Vêtu de pourpre et lauré d'or, Et longtemps on voyait de tige en tige encor, Une à une, saigner les pivoines leur sang De pétales au passage du bel Enfant.

L'Enfant qui vint ce soir était nu, Il cueillait des roses dans l'ombre, Il sanglotait d'être venu, Il reculait devant son ombre, C'est en lui nu Que mon Destin s'est reconnu.

(Tr. 10)

Simple episode of a longer poem, itself a fragment of a book, this little triptych has several meanings and tells different things as one leaves it in its place or isolates it; here, an image of a particular destiny; there, a general image of life, while yet again, one may there see an example of free verse truly perfect and shaped by a master.

FRANCIS VIELÉ-GRIFFIN

I do not wish to say that Vïelé-Griffin is a joyous poet; nevertheless, he is the poet of joy. With him, we share the pleasures of a normal, simple life, the certitude of beauty, the invincible youthfulness of nature. He is neither violent, sumptuous nor sweet: he is calm. Though very subjective, or because of this, for to think of oneself is to think of oneself completely, he is religious. Like Emerson he is bound to see "images of the most ancient religion" in nature, and to think, again like Emerson: "It seems that a day has not been entirely profane, in which some attention has been given to the things of nature." One by one he knows and loves the elements of the forest, from the "great gentle ash trees" to the "million young plants," and it is his very own forest, his personal and original forest:

Sous ma forêt de Mai fleure tout chèvrefeuille, Le soleil goutte en or par l'ombre grasse, Un chevreuil bruit dans les feuilles qu'il cueille, La brise en la frise des bouleaux passe, De feuille en feuille.

Par ma plaine de mai toute herbe s'argente, Le soleil y luit comme au jeu des épées, Une abeille vibre aux muguets de la sente Des hautes fleurs vers le ru groupées. La brise en la frise des frênes chante....

(Tr. 11)

But he knows other flowers than those which are common to glades; he knows the flower-that-sings, she who sings, lavendar, sweet marjoram or fay, in the old garden of ballads and tales. The popular songs have left refrains in his memory which he blends in little poems, and which are their commentary or fancy:

Où est la Marguerite, O gué, ô gué, Où est la Marguerite? Elle est dans son château, coeur las et fatigué, Elle est dans son hameau, coeur enfantile et gai, Elle est dans son tombeau, semons-y du muguet, O gué, la Marguerite.

(Tr. 12)

And this is almost as pure as Gerard de Nerval's _Cydalises_:

Où sont nos amoureuses? Elles sont su tombeau; Elles sont plus heureuses Dans un séjour plus beau....

(Tr. 13)

And almost as innocently cruel as this round which the little girls sing and dance to:

La beauté, a quoi sert-elle? Elle sert à aller en terre, Être mangée par les vers, Être mangée par les vers....

(Tr. 14)

Vielé-Griffin has used the popular poetry discreetly--that poetry of such little art that it seems increate--but he would have been less discreet had he misused it, for he has the sentiment and respect for it. Other poets, unfortunately, have been less prudent and have collected the rose-that-talks with such clumsy or rough hands that we wish an eternal silence had been conjured around a treasure now sullied and vilified.

Like the forest, the sea enchants and intoxicates Vielé-Griffin; he has called it all things in his earliest verses, that already remote _Cueille d'Avril_; the insatiable devouring sea, abyss and tomb, the savage sea with triumphal haughty swell, the sea wantoning after voluptuous voids, the furious sea, the heedless sea, the stubborn, dumb sea, the envious sea painting its face with stars or suns, dawns or midnights--and the poet reproaches it for its flown glory:

Ne sens-tu pas en toi l'opulence de n'être Que pour toi seule belle, ô Mer, et d'être toi?

(Tr. 15)

then he proclaims his pride at not having followed the sea's example, at not having sued glory with happy reminiscences or bold plagiarisms. It must be recognized that Vielé-Griffin, who before did not lie, has since kept his word. He has indeed remained himself, truly free, truly proud and truly wild. His forest is not limitless, but it is not a banal forest, it is a domain. I do not speak of the very important part he has had in the difficult conquest of free verse; my impression is more general and deeper and concerns itself not only with the form, but with the essence of his art. Through Francis Vielé-Griffin there is something new in French poetry.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ

With Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé is the poet who has had the most direct influence on the poets of today. Both were Parnassians and first Baudelairians.

Per me si va tra la perduta gente.

(Tr. 16)

With them one descends along the gloomy mountain to the doleful city of _Fleurs du Mal_. All the present literature and especially that which is called symbolistic, is Baudelairian, not doubtless by its external technique, but by its internal and spiritual technique, by the sense of mystery, by the anxious care to hear what things say, by the desire to harmonize, from soul to soul, with the obscure thought diffused in the night of the world, according to those so often quoted and repeated verses:

La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

(Tr. 17)

Baudelaire had read the first poems of Mallarmé before dying. He was troubled; poets do not like to leave a brother or son behind them. They would like to be alone and have their genius perish with their brain. But Mallarmé was Baudelairian only by filiation. His so precious originality quickly asserted itself. His _Proses_, his _Après-midi d'un Faune_, his _Sonnets_, came, at too long intervals, to tell of the marvelous subtlety of his patient, disdainful, imperiously gentle genius. Having voluntarily killed in him the spontaneity of being impressionable, the gifts of the artist by degrees replaced the gifts of the poet. He loved words more for their possible sense than for their true sense, and combined them in mosaics of a refined simplicity. It has been well said of him that, like Perseus or Martial, he was a difficult author. Yes, and like Anderson's man who wove invisible threads, Mallarmé assembles gems colored by his dreams, whose richness our care does not always succeed in divining. But it would be absurd to suppose that he is incomprehensible. The trick of quoting certain verses, obscure by their isolation, is not loyal, for, even in fragments, Mallarmé's poetry, when good, is incomparably so, and if later in a corroded book we only find these debris:

La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres. Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres D'être parmi l'écume inconnue et les cieux....

Un automne jonché de taches de rousseur.... Et tu fis la blancheur sanglotante des lys.... Je t'apporte l'enfant d'une nuit d'Idumée.... Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie....

(Tr. 18)

we must attribute them to a poet who was an artist to the highest degree. Oh! that sonnet of the swan (of which the last verse quoted above is the ninth) where all the words are white as snow!

But everything possible has been written on this beloved poet. I end with this comment.