Part 6
Not till the thirtieth year from the publication of these two volumes was the inexhaustible labor of the spirit which inspired them to cease for a moment--and then, among us at least, for ever. Three years afterwards appeared the first series of the _Légende des Siècles_, to be followed nineteen years later by the second, and by the final complementary volume six years after that: so that between the inception and the conclusion of the greatest single work accomplished in the course of our century a quarter of that century had elapsed--with stranger and more tragic evolution of events than any poet or any seer could have foretold or foreseen as possible. Three years again from this memorable date appeared the great epic and tragic poem of contemporary life and of eternal humanity which gave us all the slowly ripened fruit of the studies and emotions, the passions and the thoughts, the aspiration and the experience, brought finally to their full and perfect end in _Les Misérables._ As the key-note of _Notre-Dame de Paris_ was doom--the human doom of suffering to be nobly or ignobly endured--so the key-note of its author's next romance was redemption by acceptance of suffering and discharge of duty in absolute and entire obedience to the utmost exaction of conscience when it calls for atonement, of love when it calls for sacrifice of all that makes life more endurable than death. It is obvious that no account can here be given of a book which if it required a sentence would require a volume to express the character of its quality or the variety of its excellence--the one unique, the latter infinite as the unique and infinite spirit whose intelligence and whose goodness gave it life.
Two years after _Les Misérables_ appeared the magnificent book of meditations on the mission of art in the world, on the duty of human thought towards humanity, inscribed by Victor Hugo with the name of William Shakespeare. To allow that it throws more light on the greatest genius of our own century than on the greatest genius of the age of Shakespeare is not to admit that it is not rich in valuable and noble contemplations or suggestions on the immediate subject of Shakespeare's work; witness the admirably thoughtful and earnest remarks on Macbeth, the admirably passionate and pathetic reflections on Lear. The splendid eloquence and the heroic enthusiasm of Victor Hugo never found more noble and sustained expression than in this volume--the spontaneous and inevitable expansion of a projected preface to his son's incomparable translation of Shakespeare. The preface actually prefixed to it is admirable for concision, for insight, and for grave historic humor. It appeared a year after the book which (so to speak) had grown out of it; andin the same year appeared the _Chansons des Rues et des Bois._ The miraculous dexterity of touch, the dazzling mastery of metre, the infinite fertility in variations on the same air of frolic and thoughtful fancy, would not apparently allow the judges of the moment to perceive or to appreciate the higher and deeper qualities displayed in this volume of lyric idyls. The prologue is a superb example of the power peculiar to its author above all other poets; the power of seizing on some old symbol or image which may have been in poetic use ever since verse dawned upon the brain of man, and informing it again as with life, and transforming it anew as by fire. Among innumerable exercises and excursions of dainty but indefatigable fancy there are one or two touches of a somewhat deeper note than usual which would hardly be misplaced in the gravest and most ambitious works of imaginative genius. The twelve lines (of four syllables each) addressed _À la belle Imperieuse_ are such, for example, as none but a great poet of passion, a master of imaginative style, could by any stroke of chance or at any cost of toil have written.
L'amour, panique De la raison, Se communique Par le frisson.
Laissez-moi dire, N'accordez rien. Si je soupire, Chantez, c'est bien.
Si je demeure, Triste, à vos pieds, Et si je pleure, C'est bien, riez.
Un homme semble Souvent trompeur. Mais si je tremble, Belle, ayez peur.
The sound of the songs of a whole woodland seems to ring like audible spring sunshine through the adorable song of love and youth rejoicing among the ruins of an abbey.
Seuls tous deux, ravis, chantants! Comme on s'aime! Comme on cueille le printemps Que Dieu sème!
Quels rires étincelants Dans ces ombres Pleines jadis de fronts blancs. De cœurs sombres!
On est tout frais mariés. On s'envoie Les charmants cris variés De la joie.
Purs ébats mêlés au vent Qui frissonne! Gaîtés que le noir couvent Assaisonne!
On effeuille des jasmins Sur la pierre Où l'abbesse joint ses mains En prière.
Ses tombeaux, de croix marqués, Font partie De ces jeux, un peu piqués Par l'ortie.
Ou se cherche, on se poursuit, On sent croître Ton aube, amour, dans la nuit Du vieux cloître.
On s'en va se becquetant, On s'adore, On s'embrasse à chaque instant, Puis encore,
Sous les piliers, les arceaux, Et les marbres. C'est l'histoire des oiseaux Dans les arbres.
The inexhaustible exuberance of fancies lavished on the study of the natural church, built by the hawthorn and the nettle in the depth of the living wood, with foliage and wind and flowers, leaves the reader not unfit for such reading actually dazzled with delight: In a far different key, the _Souvenir des vieilles guerres_ is one of Hugo's most pathetic and characteristic studies of homely and heroic life. The dialogue which follows, between the irony of skepticism and the enthusiasm of reason, on the progressive ascension of mankind, is at once sublime and subdued in the fervent tranquillity of its final tone: and the next poem, on the so-called "great age" and its dwarf of a Cæsar with the sun for a periwig, has in it a whole volume of history and of satire condensed into nine stanzas of four lines of five syllables apiece.
_LE GRAND SIÈCLE_
Ce siècle a la forme D'un monstrueux char. Sa croissance énorme Sous un nain césar.
Son air de prodige, Sa gloire qui ment, Mêlent le vertige À l'écrasement.
Louvois pour ministre, Scarron pour griffon, C'est un chant sinistre Sur un air bouffon.
Sur sa double roue Le grand char descend; L'une est dans la boue, L'autre est dans le sang.
La mort au carrosse Attelle--où va-t-il?-- Lavrillière atroce, Roquelaure vil.
Comme un geai dans l'arbre, Le roi s'y tient fier; Son cœur est de marbre Son ventre est de chair.
On a pour sa nuque Et son front vermeil Fait une perruque Avec le soleil.
Il règne et végète, Effrayant zéro Sur qui se projette L'ombre du bourreau.
Ce trône est la tombe; Et sur le pavé Quelque chose en tombe Qu'on n'a point lavé.
The exquisite poem on the closure of the church already described for the winter is as radiant with humor as with tenderness: and the epilogue responds in cadences of august antiphony to the moral and imaginative passion which imbues with life and fire the magnificent music of the prologue.
In the course of the next four years Victor Hugo published the last two great works which were to be dated from the haven of his exile. It would be the very ineptitude of impertinence for any man's presumption to undertake the classification or registry of his five great romances in positive order of actual merit: but I may perhaps be permitted to say without fear of deserved rebuke that none is to me personally a treasure of greater price than _Les Travailleurs de la Mer._ The splendid energy of the book makes the superhuman energy of the hero seem not only possible but natural, and his triumph over all physical impossibilities not only natural but inevitable. Indeed, when glancing at the animadversions of a certain sort of critics on certain points or passages in this and in the next romance of its author, I am perpetually inclined to address them in the spirit--were it worth while to address them in any wise at all--after the fashion if not after the very phrase of Mirabeau's reply to a less impertinent objector. Victor Hugo's acquaintance with navigation or other sciences may or may not have been as imperfect as Shakespeare's acquaintance with geography and natural history; the knowledge of such a man's ignorance or inaccuracy in detail is in either case of exactly equal importance: and the importance of such knowledge is for all men of sense and candor exactly equivalent to zero.
Between the tragedy of Gilliatt and the tragedy of Gwynplaine Victor Hugo published nothing but the glorious little poem on the slaughter of Mentana, called _La Voix de Guernesey_, and (in the same year) the eloquent and ardent effusion of splendid and pensive enthusiasm prefixed to the manual or guide-book which appeared on the occasion of the international exhibition at Paris three years before the collapse of the government which then kept out of France the Frenchmen most regardful of her honor and their own. In the year preceding that collapse he published _L'Homme qui Rit_; a book which those who read it aright have always ranked and will always rank among his masterpieces. A year and eight months after the fall of the putative Bonaparte he published the terrible register of _L'Année Terrible._ More sublime wisdom, more compassionate equity, more loyal self-devotion never found expression in verse of more varied and impassioned and pathetic magnificence. The memorial poem in which Victor Hugo so royally repaid, with praise beyond all price couched in verse beyond all praise, the loyal and constant devotion of Théophile Gautier, bears the date of All Souls' Day in the autumn of 1872. For tenderness and nobility of mingling aspiration and recollection, recollection of combatant and triumphant youth, aspiration towards the serene and sovereign ascension out of age through death, these majestic lines are worthy not merely of eternal record, but far more than that--of a distinct and a distinguished place among the poems of Victor Hugo. They are not to be found in the _édition ne varietur_: which, I must needs repeat, will have to be altered or modified by more variations than one before it can be accepted as a sufficient or standard edition of the complete and final text. In witness of this I cite the closing lines of a poem now buried in "the tomb of Théophile Gautier"--a beautiful volume which has long been out of print.
Ami, je sens du sort la sombre plénitude; J'ai commencé la mort par de la solitude, Je vois mon profond soir vaguement s'étoiler. Voici l'heure où je vais, aussi moi, m'en aller. Mon fil trop long frissonne et touche presque au glaive; Le vent qui t'emporta doucement me soulève, Et je vais suivre ceux qui m'aimaient, moi banni: Leur œil fixe m'attire au fond de l'infini. J'y cours. Ne fermez pas la porte funéraire.
Passons, car c'est la loi: nul ne peut s'y soustraire; Tout penche; et ce grand siècle avec tous ses rayons Entre en cette ombre immense où, pâles, nous fuyons. Oh! quel farouche bruit font dans le crépuscule Les chênes qu'on abat pour le bûcher d'Hercule! Les chevaux de la Mort se mettent à hennir, Et sont joyeux, car l'âge éclatant va finir; Ce siècle altier qui sut dompter le vent contraire. Expire...--O Gautier, toi, leur égal et leur frère, Tu pars après Dumas, Lamartine et Musset. L'onde antique est tarie où l'on rajeunissait; Comme il n'est plus de Styx il n'est plus de Jouvence. Le dur faucher avec sa large lame avance Pensif et pas à pas vers le reste du blé; C'est mon tour; et la nuit emplit mon œil troublé Qui, devinant, hélas, l'avenir des colombes, Pleure sur des berceaux et sourit à des tombes.
Two years after the year of terror, the poet who had made its memory immortal by his record of its changes and its chances gave to the world his heroic and epic romance of _Quatrevingt-treize_; instinct with all the passion of a deeper and wider chivalry than that of old, and touched with a more than Homeric tenderness for motherhood and childhood. This book was written in the space of five months and twenty-seven days. The next year witnessed only the collection of the second series of his _Actes et Paroles_ (_Pendant l'Exil_), and the publication of two brief and memorable pamphlets: the one a simple and pathetic record of the two beloved sons taken from him in such rapid succession, the other a terse and earnest plea with the judges who had spared the life of a marshal condemned on a charge of high treason to spare likewise the life of a private soldier condemned for a transgression of military discipline. Most readers will be glad to remember that on this occasion at least the voice of the intercessor was not uplifted in vain. A year afterwards he published the third series of _Actes et Paroles_ (_Depuis l'Exil_), with a prefatory essay full of noble wisdom, of pungent and ardent scorn, of thoughtful and composed enthusiasm, on the eternal contrast and the everlasting battle between the spirit of clerical Rome and the spirit of republican Paris.
"Moi qu'un petit enfant rend tout à fait stupide," I do not propose to undertake a review of _L'Art d'être Grand-père._ It must suffice here to register the fact that the most absolutely and adorably beautiful book ever written appeared a year after the volume just mentioned, and some months after the second series of the _Légende des Siècles_; that there is not a page in it which is not above all possible eulogy or thanksgiving; that nothing was ever conceived more perfect than such poems--to take but a small handful for samples--as _Un manque, La sieste. Choses du soir, Ce que dit le public_ (at the Jardin des Plantes or at the Zoological Gardens; ages of public ranging from five, which is comparatively young, to seven, which is positively old), _Chant sur le berceau_, the song for a round dance of children, _Le pot cassé, La mise en liberté, Jeanne endormie_, the delicious _Chanson de grand-père_, the glorious _Chanson d'ancêtre_, or the third of the divine and triune poems on the sleep of a little child; that after reading these--to say nothing of the rest--it seems natural to feel as though no other poet had ever known so fully or enjoyed so wisely or spoken so sweetly and so well the most precious of truths, the loveliest of loves, the sweetest and the best of doctrines.
The first of all to see the light appeared in a magazine which has long ago collapsed under the influence of far other writers than the greatest of the century. Every word of the thirty-eight lines which compose _La Sieste de Jeanne_--if any speech or memory of man endure so long--will be treasured as tenderly by generations as remote from the writer's as now treasure up with thankful wonder and reverence every golden fragment and jeweled spar from the wreck of Simonides or of Sappho. It has all the subtle tenderness which invests the immortal song of Danaë; and the union of perfect grace with living passion, as it were the suffusion of human flesh and blood with heavenly breath and fire, brings back once again upon our thoughts the name which is above every name in lyric song. There is not one line which could have been written and set where it stands by the hand of any lesser than the greatest among poets. For once even the high priest and even the high priestess of baby-worship who have made their names immortal among our own by this especial and most gracious attribute--even William Blake and Christina Rossetti for once are distanced in the race of song, on their own sweet ground, across their own peculiar field of Paradise. Not even in the pastures that heard his pipe keep time to the "Songs of Innocence," or on the "wet bird-haunted English lawn" set ringing as from nursery windows at summer sunrise to the faultless joyous music and pealing birdlike laughter of her divine "Sing-Song," has there sounded quite such a note as this from the heaven of heavens in which little babies are adored by great poets, the frailest by the most potent of divine and human kind. And above the work in this lovely line of all poets in all time but one, there sits and smiles eternally the adorable baby who helps us for ever to forget all passing perversities of Christianized socialism or bastard Cæsarism which disfigure and diminish the pure proportions and the noble charm of "Aurora Leigh." Even the most memorable children born to art in Florence, begotten upon stone or canvas by Andrea del Sarto or by Luca della Robbia's very self, must yield to that one the crown of sinless empire and the palm of powerless godhead which attest the natural mystery of their omnipotence; and which haply may help to explain why no accumulated abominations of cruelty and absurdity which inlay the record of its history and incrust the fabric of its creed can utterly corrode the natal beauty or corrupt the primal charm of a faith which centres at its opening round the worship of a new-born child.
The most accurate and affectionate description that I ever saw or heard given of a baby's incomparable smile, when graciously pleased to permit with courtesy and accept with kindness the votive touch of a reverential finger on its august little cheek, was given long since in the text accompanying a rich and joyous design of childish revel by Richard Doyle. A baby in arms is there contemplating the riotous delights of its elders, fallen indeed from the sovereign state of infancy, but not yet degenerate into the lower life of adults, with that bland and tacit air of a large-minded and godlike tolerance which the devout observer will not fail to have remarked in the aspect of babies when unvexed and unincensed by any cross accident or any human shortcoming on the part of their attendant ministers. Possibly a hand which could paint that inexpressible smile might not fail also of the ability to render in mere words some sense of the ineffable quality which rests upon every line and syllable of this most divine poem. There are lines in it--but after all this is but an indirect way of saying that it is a poem by Victor Hugo--which may be taken as tests of the uttermost beauty, the extreme perfection, the supreme capacity and charm, to which the language of men can attain. It might seem as if the Fates could not allow two men capable of such work to live together in one time of the world; and that Shelley therefore had to die in his thirtieth year as soon as Hugo had attained his twentieth.
Elle fait au milieu du jour son petit somme; Car l'enfant a besoin du rêve plus que l'homme, Cette terre est si laide alors qu'on vient du ciel! L'enfant cherche à revoir Chérubin, Ariel, Les camarades, Puck, Titania, les fées, Et ses mains quand il dort sont par Dieu réchauffées. Oh! comme nous serions surpris si nous voyions, Au fond de ce sommeil sacré, plein de rayons, Ces paradis ouverts dans l'ombre, et ces passages D'étoiles qui font signe aux enfants d'être sages, Ces apparitions, ces éblouissements! Donc, à l'heure où les feux du soleil sont calmants, Quand tout la nature écoute et se recueille, Vers midi, quand les nids se taisent, quand la feuille La plus tremblante oublie un instant de frémir, Jeanne a cette habitude aimable de dormir; Et la mère un moment respire et se repose, Car on se lasse, même à servir une rose. Ses beaux petits pieds nus dont le pas est peu sûr Dorment; et son berceau, qu'entoure un vague azur Ainsi qu'une auréole entoure une immortelle, Semble un nuage fait avec de la dentelle; On croit, en la voyant dans ce frais berceau-là, Voir une lueur rose au fond d'un falbala; On la contemple, on rit, on sent fuir la tristesse, Et c'est un astre, ayant de plus la petitesse; L'ombre, amoureuse d'elle, a l'air de l'adorer; Le vent retient son souffle et n'ose respirer. Soudain dans l'humble et chaste alcôve maternelle, Versant tout le matin qu'elle a dans sa prunelle, Elle ouvre la paupière, étend un bras charmant, Agite un pied, puis l'autre, et, si divinement Que des fronts dans l'azur se penchent pour l'entendre, Elle gazouille...--Alors, de sa voix la plus tendre, Couvant des yeux l'enfant que Dieu fait rayonner, Cherchant le plus doux nom qu'elle puisse donner À sa joie, à son ange en fleur, à sa chimère: --Te voilà réveillée, horreur! lui dit sa mère.
If the last word on so divine a subject could ever be said, it surely might well be none other than this. But with workmen of the very highest order there is no such thing as a final touch, a point at which they like others are compelled to draw bridle, a summit on which even their genius also may abide but while a man takes breath, and halt without a hope or aspiration to pass beyond it.
Far different in the promise or the menace of its theme, the poet's next work, issued in the following year, was one in spirit with the inner spirit of this book. In sublime simplicity of conception and in sovereign accomplishment of its design, _Le Pape_ is excelled by no poem of Hugo's or of man's. In the glory of pure pathos it is perhaps excelled, as in the divine long-suffering of all-merciful wisdom it can be but equalled, by the supreme utterance of _La Pitié Suprême._ In splendor of changeful music and imperial magnificence of illustration the two stand unsurpassed for ever, side by side. A third poem, attacking at once the misbelief or rather the infidelity which studies and rehearses "the grammar of assent" to creeds and articles of religion, and the blank disbelief or denial which rejects all ideals and all ideas of spiritual life, is not so rich even in satire as in reason, so earnest even in rejection of false doctrine as in assertion of free belief. Upon this book no one can hope to write anything so nearly adequate and so thoroughly worth reading as is the tribute paid to it by Théodore de Banville--the Simonides Melicertes of France.
In the midst of our confused life, turbulent and flat, bustling and indifferent, where books and plays, dreams and poems, driven down a wind of oblivion, are like the leaves which November sweeps away, and fly past, without giving us time to tell one from another, in a vague whirl and rush, at times there appears a new book by Victor Hugo, and lights up, resounds, murmurs, and sings at once everything.
The shining, sounding, fascinating verse, with its thousand surprises of sound, of color, of harmony, breaks forth like a rich concert, and ever newly stirred, dazzled and astonished, as if we were hearing verses for the first time, we remain stupefied with wonder before the persistent prodigy of the great seer, the great thinker, the unheard-of artist, self-transfigured without ceasing, always new and always like himself. It would be impertinent to say of him that he makes progress; and yet I find no other word to express the fact that every hour, every minute, he adds something new, something, yet more exact and yet more caressing, to that swing of syllables, that melodious play of rhyme renascent of itself, which is the grace and the invincible power of French poetry,--if English ears could but learn or would but hear it; whereas usually they have never been taught even the rudiments of French prosody, and receive the most perfect cadences of the most glorious or the most exquisite French poetry as a schoolboy who has not yet learnt scansion might receive the melodies of Catullus or of Virgil.