Part 17

Among works announced, but never published, it may be interesting to mention: _Seid, William de Strally, Faust, Poésies Nouvelles (Intermèdes; Gog; Ave, Mater Victa; Poésies diverses), La Tentation sur la Montagne, Le Vieux de la Montagne, L'Adoration des Mages, Méditations Littéraires, Mélanges, Théâtre_ (2 vols.), _Documents sur les Règnes de Charles VI. et de Charles VII., L'Illusionisme, De la Connaissance de l'Utile, L'Exégèse Divine._

A sympathetic, but slightly vague, Life of Villiers was written by his cousin, Vicomte Robert du Pontavice de Heussey: _Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ 1893; it was translated into English by Lady Mary Lloyd, 1894. See Verlaine's _Poètes Maudits,_ 1884, and his biography of Villiers in _Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui,_ the series of penny biographies, with caricature portraits, published by Vanier; also Mallarmé's _Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ the reprint of a lecture given at Brussels a few months after Villiers, death. _La Révolte_ was translated by Mrs. Theresa Barclay in the _Fortnightly Review,_ December, 1897, and acted in London by the New Stage Club in 1906. I have translated a little poem, _Aveu,_ from the interlude of verse in the _Contes Cruels_ called _Chant d'Amour,_ in _Days and Nights,_ 1889. An article of mine, the first, I believe, to be written on Villiers in English, appeared in the _Woman's World_ in 1889; another in the _Illustrated London News_ in 1891.

LÉON CLADEL

(1835-1892)

_Les Martyrs Ridicules. Preface par Charles Baudelaire,_ 1862; _Pierre Patient,_ 1862; _L'Amour Romantique,_ 1882; _Le Deuxième Mystère de l'Incarnation,_ 1883; _Le Bouscassié,_ 1889; _La Fête-Votive de Saint Bartholomée Porte-Glaive,_ 1872; _Les Vas-nu-Pieds,_ 1874; _Celui de la Croix-aux-Bœufs,_ 1878; _Bonshommes,_ 1879; _Ompdrailles Le Tombeau des Lutteurs,_ 1879; _N'a q'un Œil,_ 1885; _Tity Foyssac IV,_ 1886; _Petits Chiens de Léon Cladel,_ 1879; _Par Devant Notaire,_ 1880; _Crête-Rouge,_ 1880; _Six Morceaux de la Littérature,_ 1880; _Kerkades Garde-Barrière,_ 1884; _Urbains et Ruraux,_ 1884; _Léon Cladel et ses Kyrielle des Chiens,_ 1885; _Héros et Pantins,_ 1885; _Quelques Sires,_ 1885; _Mi-Diable,_ 1886; _Gueux de Marque,_ 1887; _Effigies d'Inconnus,_ 1888; _Raca,_ 1888; _Seize Morceaux de Littérature,_ 1889; _L'ancien,_ 1889; _Juive-Errante,_ 1897.

EMILE ZOLA

(1840-1902)

Les _Rougon-Macquart,_ 1871-1893; _La Fortune des Rougons,_ 1871; _La Curée,_ 1872; _Le Ventre de Paris,_ 1873; _La Conquête de Pluisans,_ 1874; _La Faute de l'abbé Mouret,_ 1875; _Son Excellence Eugène Rougon,_ 1876; _L'Assommoir,_ 1876; _Une Page d'Amour,_ 1878; _Nana,_ 1880; _Pot.-Bouille,_ 1882; _Au Bonheur des Dames,_ 1883; _La Joie de Vivre,_ 1884; _Madeleine Fer at,_ 1885; _La Confession de Claude,_ 1886; _Contes à Ninon,_ 1891; _Nouveaux Contes à Ninon,_ 1874; _Le Capitaine Burle,_ 1883; _La joie de vivre,_ 1884; _Les Mystères de Marseilles,_ 1885; _Mes Haines,_ 1866; _Le Roman Expérimental,_ 1881; _Nos Auteurs dramatiques,_ 1881; _Documents littéraires,_ 1881; _Une Compagne,_ 1882. _Théâtre: Thérèse Raquin, Les Héritiers Rabourdin, La Bouton de Rose,_ 1890; _L'Argent,_ 1891; _L'Attaque du Moulin,_ 1890; _La Bête Humaine,_ 1890; La _Débâcle,_ 1892; _Le Doctor Pascal,_ 1893; _Germinie,_ 1885; Mon Salon, 1886; Le _naturalisme au Théâtre,_ 1889; _L'Œuvre,_ 1886; _Le Rêve,_ 1892; _Paris_, 1898; _Rome,_ 1896; _Lourdes,_ 1894; _Fécondité,_ 1899; _Travail,_ 1901; _Vérité_, 1903.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ

(1842-1898)

_Le Corbeau_ (traduit de Poe), 1875; _La Dernière Mode,_ 1875; L'_Après-Midi d'un Faune,_ 1876; _Le Vathek de Beckford,_ 1876; _Petite Philologie à l'Usage des Classes et du Monde: Les Mots Anglais,_ 1877; _Poésies Complètes_ (photogravées sur le manuscrit), 1887; _Les Poèmes de Poe,_ 1888; _Le Ten o'Clock de M. Whistler,_ 1888; _Pages,_ 1891; _Les Miens: Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ 1892; _Vers et Prose,_ 1892; _La Musique et les Lettres_ (Oxford, Cambridge), 1894; _Divagations,_ 1897; _Poésies,_ 1899.

See, on this difficult subject, Edmund Gosse, _Questions at Issue,_ 1893, in which will be found the first study of Mallarmé that appeared in English; and Vittorio Pica, _Letteratura d'Eccezione,_1899, which contains a carefully-documented study of more than a hundred pages. There is a translation of the poem called "Fleurs" in Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_1893, and translations of "Hérodiade" and three shorter poems will be found in the first volume of my collected poems. Several of the poems in prose have been translated into English; my translation of the "Plainte d'Automne," contained in this volume, was made in momentary forgetfulness that the same poem in prose had already been translated by Mr. George Moore in _Confessions of a Young Man._ Mr. Moore also translated "Le Phénomène Futur" in the _Savoy,_ July, 1896.

PAUL VERLAINE

(1844-1896)

_Poèmes Saturniens,_ 1866; _Fêtes Galantes,_ 1869; _La Bonne Chanson,_ 1870; _Romances sans Paroles,_ 1874; _Sagesse,_ 1881; _Les Poètes Maudits,_ 1884; _Jadis et Naguère,_ 1884; _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf,_ 1886; _Louise Leclercq_ (suivi de _Le Poteau, Pierre Duchatelet, Madame Aubin),_ 1887; _Amour,_ 1888; _Parallèlement,_ 1889; _Dédicaces,_ 1890; _Bonheur,_ 1891; _Mes Hôpitaux,_ 1891; Chansons _pour Elle,_ 1891; _Liturgies Intimes,_ 1892; _Mes Prisons,_ 1893; _Odes en son Honneur,_ 1893; _Elégies,_ 1893; _Quinze Jours en Hollande,_ 1894; _Dans les Limbes,_ 1894; _Epigrammes,_ 1894; _Confessions,_ 1895; _Chair_, 1896; _Invectives,_ 1896; _Voyage en France d'un Français_ (posthumous), 1907.

The complete works of Verlaine are now published in six volumes at the Librairie Léon Vanier (now Messein); the text is very incorrectly printed, and it is still necessary to refer to the earlier editions in separate volumes. _A Choix de Poésies,_1891, with a preface by François Coppée, and a reproduction of Carrière's admirable portrait, is published in one volume by Charpentier; the series of _Hommes d'Aujourd'hui_ contains twenty-seven biographical notices by Verlaine; and a considerable number of poems and prose articles exists, scattered in various magazines, some of them English, such as the _Senate;_ in some cases the articles themselves are translated into English, such as "My Visit to London," in the _Savoy_ for April, 1896, and "Notes on England: Myself as a French Master," and "Shakespeare and Racine," in the _Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1894, and September, 1894. The first English translation in verse from Verlaine is Arthur O'Shaughnessy's rendering of "Clair de Lune" in _Fêtes Galantes,_ under the title "Pastel," in _Songs of a Worker,_ 1881. A volume of translations in verse, _Poems of Verlaine,_ by Gertrude Hall, was published in America in 1895. In Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_ 1893, there are translations of "Parsifal," "A Crucifix," "Le Chevalier Malheur," "Spleen," "Clair de Lune," "Mon Dieu m'a dit," and "Green."

As I have mentioned, there have been many portraits of Verlaine. The three portraits drawn on lithographic paper by Mr. Rothenstein, and published in 1898, are but the latest, if also among the best, of a long series, of which Mr. Rothenstein himself has done two or three others, one of which was reproduced in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1894, when Verlaine was in London. M. F. A. Cazals, a young artist who was one of Verlaine's most intimate friends, has done I should not like to say how many portraits, some of which he has gathered together in a little book, _Paul Verlaine: ses Portraits,_ 1898. There are portraits in nine of Verlaine's own books, several of them by M. Cazals (roughly jotted, expressive notes of moments), one by M. Anquetin (a strong piece of thinking flesh and blood), and in the _Choix de Poésies_ there is a reproduction of the cloudy, inspired poet of M. Eugène Carrière's painting. Another portrait, which I have not seen, but which Verlaine himself calls, in the _Dédicaces, un portrait enfin reposé,_ was done by M. Aman-Jean. M. Niederhausern has done a bust in bronze, Mr. Rothenstein a portrait medallion. A new edition of the _Confessions,_ 1899, contains a number of sketches; _Verlaine Dessinateur,_ 1896, many more; and there are yet others in the extremely objectionable book of M. Charles Donos, _Verlaine Intime,_ 1898. The _Hommes d'Aujourd'hui_ contains a caricature-portrait, many other portraits have appeared in French and English and German and Italian magazines, and there is yet another portrait in the admirable little book of Charles Morice, _Paul Verlaine,_ 1888, which contains by far the best study that has ever been made of Verlaine as a poet. I believe Mr. George Moore's article, "A Great Poet," reprinted in _Impressions and Opinions,_ 1891, was the first that was written on Verlaine in England; my own article in the _National Review_ in 1892 was, I believe, the first detailed study of the whole of his work up to that date. At last, in the _Vie de Paul Verlaine,_ of Edmund Lepelletier, there has come the authentic record.

An honest and instructed life of Verlaine has long been wanted, if only as an antidote to the defamatory production called _Verlaine Intime,_ made up out of materials collected by the publisher Léon Vanier in his own defense, in order that a hard taskmaster might be presented to the world in the colours of a benefactor. A "legend" which may well have seemed plausible to those who knew Verlaine only at the end of his life, has obtained currency; and a comparison of Verlaine with Villon, not only as a poet (which is to his honour), but also as a man, has been made, and believed. Lepelletier's book is an exact chronicle of a friendship which lasted, without a break, for thirty-six years--that is, from the time when Verlaine was sixteen to the time of his death; and a more sane, loyal and impartial chronicle of any man's life we have never read. It is written with full knowledge of every part of the career which it traces; and it is written by a man who puts down whatever he knows exactly as he believes it to have been. His conclusion is that "on peut fouiller sa vie au microscope: on y reconnaîtra des fautes, des folies, des faiblesses, bien des souffrances aussi, avec de la fatalité au fond, pas de honte véritable, pas une vile et indigne action. Les vrais amis du poète peuvent donc revendiquer pour lui l'épithete d'honnête homme, sans doute très vulgaire, mais qui, aux yeux de certains, a encore du prix."

In 1886 Verlaine dedicated _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf_ to Lepelletier, affirming the resolve, on his part, to "garder intacte la vielle amitié si forte et si belle." The compact has been kept nobly by the survivor.

It may, indeed, be questioned whether Lepelletier does not insist a little too much on the bourgeois element which he finds in Verlaine. When a man has suffered under unjust accusations, it is natural for his friends to defend him under whatever aspect seems to them most generally convincing. So it is interesting to know that for seven years Verlaine was in a municipal office, the Bureau des Budgets et Comptes, and that later, in 1882, he made an application, which was refused, for leave to return to his former post. Lepelletier reproaches the authorities for an action which he takes to have precipitated Verlaine into the final misery of his vagabondage. He would have lived quietly, he says, and written in security. Both assumptions may be doubted. What was bourgeois, and contented with quiet, was a small part of the nature of one who was too strong as well as too weak to remain within limits. The terrible force of Verlaine's weakness would always, in the process of making him a poet, have carried him far from that "tranquilité d'une sinécure bureaucratique" which Lepelletier strangely regrets for him. It is hardly permitted, in looking back over a disastrous life which has expressed itself in notable poetry, to regret that the end should have been attained, by no matter what means.

On moral questions Lepelletier speaks with the authority of an intimate friendship, and from a point of view which seems wholly without prejudice. He defends Verlaine with evident conviction against the most serious charges brought against him, and he shows at least, on documentary evidence, that nothing of the darker part of his "legend" was ever proved against him in any of his arrests and imprisonments. Drink, and mad rages let loose by drink, account, ignobly enough, for all of them. In the famous quarrel with Rimbaud, which brought him into prison for eighteen months, the accusation reads:

"Pour avoir, à Bruxelles, le 10 juillet, 1873, volontairement portés des coups et fait des blessures ayant entraîné une incapacité de travail personnel à Arthur Rimbaud."

The whole account of this episode is given by M. Lepelletier in great detail, and from this we learn that it was by the merest change of mind on the part of Rimbaud, or by sudden treachery, that the matter came into the courts at all. Lepelletier supplies an unfavourable account of Rimbaud, whom he looks upon as the evil counsellor of Verlaine--probably with justice. There is little doubt that Rimbaud, apart from his genuine touch of precocious power, which had its influence on the genius of Verlaine, was a "mauvais sujet" of a selfish and mischievous kind. He was destructive and pitiless; and having done his worst, he went off carelessly into Africa.

It will surprise some readers to learn that Verlaine took his degree of "bachelier-ès-lettres," and that on leaving the Lycée Bonaparte he received a certificate placing him "au nombre des sujets distingués que compte l'établissement." He was well grounded in Latin, and fairly well in English, and at several intervals in his life attempted to master Spanish, with the vague desire of translating Calderon. At an early period he read French literature, classical and modern, with avidity; translations of English, German and Eastern classics; books of criticism and philosophy.

"Il admirait beaucoup Joseph de Maîstre. _Le Rouge et le Noir_ de Stendhal avait produce sur lui une forte impression. Il avait déniché, on ne sait où, une Vie de sainte Thérèse, qu'il lisait avec ravissement."

He was absorbed in Baudelaire, Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Banville; he read Pétrus Borel and Aloysius Bertrand. The only poem that remains of this early period is the "Nocturne Parisien" of the _Poèmes Saturniens,_ which dates from about his twentieth year. Jules de Goncourt defined it as "un beau poème sinistre mêlant comme une Morgue à Notre-Dame." Baudelaire, as Sainte-Beuve, in a charming letter of real appreciation, pointed out, is here the evident "point de départ, pour aller au delà."

The chapter in which Lepelletier tells the story of the origin of the most famous literary movement since that of 1830, the "Parnasse," is one of the most entertaining in the book, and gives, in its narrative of the receptions "chez Nina" (a _salon_ which Lepelletier describes as the ancestor of the "Chat Noir"), a vivid picture of the days when Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and François Coppée were beginners together. Nina de Villars was one of the oddest people of her time: she made a kind of private Bohemia for poets, musicians, all kinds of artists and eccentric people, herself the most eccentric of them all. It was at her house that the members of the "Parnasse" gathered, while they selected as their more formal meeting-place the _salon_ of Madame Ricard. It is not generally known that Verlaine's _Poèmes Saturniens_ was the third volume to be issued by the house of Lemerre, afterwards to become a famous "publisher of poets," and it was in this volume that the new laws of the Parnasse were first formulated--that impassivity, that "marble egoism," which Verlaine was so soon to reject for a more living impulse, but which neither Leconte de Lisle nor Héredia was ever to abandon. When one thinks of the later Verlaine, it is curious to turn to that first formula:

Est-elle en marvre où non, le Vénus de Milo?

Verlaine's verse suddenly becomes human with _La Bonne Chanson,_ though the humanity in it is not yet salted as with fire. It is the record of the event which, as Lepelletier says, dominated his whole life; the marriage with Mathilde Maute, the young girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight, and whose desertion of him, however explicable, he never forgot nor forgave. Nothing could be more just or delicate than Lepelletier's treatment of the whole situation and there is no doubt that he is right in saying that the young wife "eût une grande responsabilité dans les désordres de l'existence désorbitée du poète." Verlaine, as he says, "était bon, aimant, et c'était comme un souffrant qu'il fallait le traiter." "Vous n'avez rien compris à ma simplicité," he wrote long afterwards, addressing the woman of whom Lepelletier says, "Il l'aima toujours, il n'aima qu'elle."

With his marriage Verlaine's disasters begin. Rimbaud enters his life and turns the current of it; the vagabondage begins, in France and England, and the letters written from London are among the most vivid documents in the book: thumbnail sketches full of keen observation. Then comes his imprisonment and conversion to Catholicism. Here Lepelletier, while he gives us an infinity of details which he alone could give, adopts an attitude which we cannot think to be justified, and which, as a matter of fact, Verlaine protested against during his lifetime. "Cette conversion fut-elle profonde et véridique?" he asks; and he answers, "Je ne le crois pas." That his conversion had much influence on Verlaine's conduct cannot be contended, but conduct and belief are two different things. Sincerity of the moment was his fundamental characteristic, but the moments made and remade his moods in their passing. The religion of _Sagesse_ is not the less genuine because that grave and sacred book was followed by the revolt of _Parallèment._ Verlaine tried to explain--in the poems themselves, in prefaces, and in conversation with friends--how natural it was to sin and to repent, and to use the same childlike words in the immediate rendering of sin and of repentance. This _naïveté,_ which made any regular existence an impossibility, was a part of him which gave a quality to his work unlike that of any other poet of our time. At the end of his life hardly anything but the _naïvetê_ was left, and the poems became mere outcries and gestures. Lepelletier is justly indignant at the action of Vanier in publishing after Verlaine's deaths the collection called _Invectives,_ made up of scraps and impromptus which the poet certainly never intended to publish. Here we see part of the weakness of a great man, who becomes petty when he puts off his true character and tries to be angry. "J'ai la fureur d'aimer," he says somewhere, and there is no essential part of his work which is not the expression of some form of love, grotesque or heroic, human or divine.

Of all this later, more and more miserable part of the life of Verlaine, Lepelletier has less to tell us. It has been sufficiently commented on, not always by friendly or understanding witnesses. What we get in this book, for the first time, is a view of the life as a whole, with all that is beautiful, tragic, and desperate in it. It is not an apology: it is a statement. It not only does honor to a great and unhappy man of genius; it does him justice.

JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS

(1848-1907)

Le _Drageoir à épices,_ 1874; _Marthe: Histoire d'une Fille,_ 1876; _Les Sœurs Vatard,_ 1879; _Croquis Parisiens,_ 1880; _En Ménage,_ 1881; _A Vau-l'Eau,_ 1882; _L'Art Moderne,_ 1883; _A Rebours,_ 1884; _Un Dilemme,_ 1887; _En Rade,_ 1887; _Certains,_1889; _La Bièvre,_1890; _Là-Bas,_ 1891; _En Route,_ 1895; La _Cathédrale,_ 1898; _La Bièvre Saint-Séverin,_ 1898; Pages _Catholiques,_ 1900; Sainte _Lydwine de Schiedam,_ 1901; De Tout, 1902; L'Oblat, 1903; Trois _Primitifs,_ 1905; Les Foules de _Lourdes,_ 1906; See also the short story, _Sac au Dos,_ in the _Soirées de Médan,_ 1880, and the pantomime, _Pierrot Sceptique,_ 1881, in collaboration with Léon Hennique. _En Route_ was translated into English by Mr. Kegan Paul, in 1896; and _La Cathédrale_ by Miss Clara Bell, in 1898.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

(1854-1891)

_Une Saison en Enfer,_ 1873; _Les Illuminations,_ 1886; _Reliquaire,_ 1891 (containing several poems falsely attributed to Rimbaud); _Les Illuminations: Une Saison en Enfer,_ 1892; _Poésies Complètes,_ 1895; _Œuvres,_ 1898.

See also Paterne Berrichon, _La Vie de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud,_ 1898, and _Lettres de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud,_ 1899; Paul Verlaine, _Les Poètes Maudits,_1884, and the biography by Verlaine in _Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui._ Mr. George Moore was the first to write about Rimbaud in England, in "Two Unknown Poets" (Rimbaud and Laforgue) in _Impressions and Opinions,_ 1891. In Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_ 1893, there are translations of "Charleville" and "Sensation." The latter, and "Les Chercheuses de Poux," are translated by Mr. T. Sturge Moore in _The Vinedresser, and other Poems,_ 1899.

JULES LAFORGUE

(1860-1887)

_Les Complaintes,_ 1885; _L'Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune,_ 1886; _Le Concile Féerique,_ 1886; _Moralités Légendaires,_ 1887; _Derniers Vers,_ 1890 (a privately printed volume, containing _Des Fleurs de Bonne Volonté, Le Concile Féerique,_ and _Derniers Vers); Poésies Complètes,_ 1894; _Œuvres Complètes, Poésies, Moralités Légendaires, Mélanges Posthumes_ (3 vols.), 1902, 1903.

An edition of the _Moralités Légendaires_ was published in 1897, under the care of M. Lucien Pissarro, at the Sign of the Dial; it is printed in Mr. Ricketts' admirable type, and makes one of the most beautiful volumes issued in French during this century. In 1896 M. Camille Mauclair, with his supple instinct for contemporary values, wrote a study, or rather an eulogy, of Laforgue, to which M. Maeterlinck contributed a few searching and delicate words by way of preface.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

(1862)

_Serres Chaudes,_ 1889; _La Princesse Maleine,_ 1890; _Les Aveugles (L'Intruse, Les Aveugles),_ 1890; _L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles, de Ruysbroeck l'Admirable,_ 1891; _Les Sept Princesses,_ 1891; _Pelléas et Mélisande,_ 1892; _Alladine et Palomides, Intérieur, La Mort de Tintagiles,_ 1894; _Annabella, de John Ford,_ 1895; _Les Disciples à Sais et les Fragments de Novalis,_ 1895; _Le Trésor des Humbles,_ 1896; _Douze Chansons,_ 1896; _Aglavaine et Sélysette,_ 1896; _La Sagesse et la Destinée,_ 1898; _Théâtre,_ 1901 (3 vols.); _La Vie des Abeilles,_ 1901; _Monna Vanna,_ 1902; _Le Temple Enseveli,_ 1902; _Joyzelle,_ 1903; _Le Double Jardin,_ 1904; _L'Intelligence des Fleurs,_ 1907.