Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

n to be i

pa practica

d me w the fans

and t

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

nor in any way whatever to trumpet mediocrity or what is beneath mediocrity.

Ime Rt Jules Lemaître, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Moréas, Mirbeau, Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendès, Coppée, Vacquerie, Rod, Nay, I cannot even utter ny own and some half a hundred of other writers éloge." It was a magnanimous resolve; may be considered representative-the but the interviewer was not defrauded; characteristic vices and foibles of the man on the contrary, he was well content to have secured so striking a communication. More trying was the reception given to him by M. Guy de Maupassant, whose reputation is that of the man in all Paris most difficult to approach. M. Huret tells, with a touch of pathos, how longingly he had anticipated this particular interview. From early youth the ideal author of his imagination had been Guy de Maupassant; true, he had heard the great disciple of Flaubert styled “un snob," but to what calumnies is not genius exposed? and now the eventful moment of audience was come. I quote from M. Huret the record of what followed :

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

of letters assuredly play no inconsiderable
part in the "evolution of literature.'
Here may be learned the art of literary
self-advertisement in both the direct way,
which thrusts forward the " I," naked
and unashamed, and the indirect way,
which reflects the "I" in the mirrors of
admired and admiring friends; here may
be witnessed the indignant revolt of youth
against age-youth, which, after centuries
of venerable folly, has at last found the
secret of all beauty and the key to univer-
sal truth here may be seen the scorn of
self-satisfied age for aspiring youth; here
the pride of mystification; the war of
schools, the hatred of successful rivals,
and the bitterer hatred of successful com-
rades. "I have read your Enquêtes,"
writes M. Gustave Guiches, "which move
so picturesquely through the courtless
æsthetics of the day. It is as if I were
reading over again the Tentation de Saint
Antoine. From these studies of yours
there creeps over me a nightmare as dis-
tressing as that caused by the vision of re-
ligious chaos in Flaubert's book. I have
seen defiling past me symbolists, instru-
mentalists, decadents, naturalists, neo-
realists, supra-naturalists, psychologists,
Parnassiens, mages, Positivists, Buddh-
ists, Tolstoizers; I have heard fierce im-
precations, bitter laughter, cries of pity,
solemn anathemas, subtle analyses, abso-
lute syntheses, proclamations eloquently
improvised. Everything has been said,
re-said, unsaid." And M. Guiches there-
And M. Guiches there-
upon proceeds to add his own particular
speech to the confusion of Babel.
erary Evolution !" cries M. Paul Bonne-
tain, "evolution of a tortoise wriggling

on its back!"'

"Lit

"I ring. A servant, or rather a flunkey, appears; you know that insolent eye which we see in all the antechambers of the ambitious bourgeois. 'Monsieur is not at home.' I wrote some words, notwithstanding, on my card, and I was introduced, passing through an antechamber decorated with Arab hangings, and entering a luxurious room which I have no time to describe, where tender colors ruled, and which in its general effect seemed to me

M. Léon Hennique, author of Pouf, and of the more recent Un Caractère, a study, in the form of a novel, of the more obscure hypnotic phenomena, was one of the few who faced round upon the in genious and courteous tormentor, confronting him with a direct negative. "I cannot persuade myself," he wrote, "to belabor the masters, to use my fingernails on the writers of my own generation, to cleave in twain my younger brethren,

to be in far from excellent taste.

"Enter the master. I surveyed him with curiosity and remained stupefied: Guy de Maupassant! Guy de Maupassant! For so much time as it takes to bow, choose a chair, and sit down I inwardly repeated the name, and gazed at the little man before me; shoul ders not too broad; heavy, bi-colored mustache, chestnut, the hairs as if they had been steeped in alcohol. He courteously begged

me to be seated. But on the first words re

ferring to literature, a consultation, etc., he assumed a disagreeable aspect, as if the victim of headache or in some way thoroughly uncomfortable. 'Oh, monsieur,' he saidand his words came wearily and his whole air was splenetic, I beg of you, do not speak to me of literature! I am suffering from severe

neuralgia; I start for Nice the day after tomorrow, so my physician orders me--the atmosphere here in Paris oppresses me, the noise, the agitation; I am really very far from well.' I sympathized, and approaching the subject again with the utmost precaution and my best skill, tried to elicit some vague expression of opinion. Oh, literature, monsieur! I never speak of it. I write when it gives me pleasure to do so, but speak of itno! Besides at present I know not one man

of letters.

[ocr errors]

I am on good terms with Zola, with Goncourt, in spite of his Memoirs, but them I rarely see, and the rest never. I know only the younger Dumas; our provinces are not the same and we never speak of litera

I

ture... there are so many other things.' opened my eyes like portholes. Yes,' I said, knowing his taste for this amusement, yachting.' And so many others. Stay, monsieur, the proof that I am telling you the truth is this-not long ago they promised me a seat in the Academy-twenty-eight names sure, and I refused it, and crosses and all that; no,

really, it does not interest me; let us, I beg,

speak no more of literature.'

[ocr errors]

And such, adds the interviewer, with a touch of pardonable irony, are the views of M. de Maupassant on the contemporary evolution of literature.

The immediate occasion or excuse for M. Huret's inquiry was the appearance of two noteworthy books: the Jardin de Bérénice, the last volume of M. Maurice Barrès, the young Boulangist deputy, who "dines with Stendhal, and sups with Saint Ignatius," and the Fèlerin passionné of M. Jean Moréas. If M. Barrès can be ranged in a class, we must reckon him among the "Psychologists," whose boast is to have displaced the Naturalists in prose fiction. M. Moréas, a Greek by birth, rejecting the leadership of Mallarmé and Verlaine, both, alas! now beyond the fatal fortieth year, and therefore in the cold and shallows of extreme antiquity, proclaims himself with no uncertain voice as chief of the Symbolists, and it would seem that his claim has been allowed if a banquet (2nd February) in his honor be the proper proof of poetical leadership. "Passionate pilgrim "exclaims one of the tribe, himself a symbolist decadent, "pilgrims without a pilgrimage, and passionate-oh, no! No one has ever met two of these pilgrims together on the same route."

Yet the Passionate Pilgrim of M. Moréas is a volume to note, if not for its contents, at least for its aims with respect to style and metrical form. The author was born in 1856, and having reached, in 1884, the happiest age for a poet, is said by his malicious friends to have grown since then no older. As the Psychologists have in prose fiction succeeded to the Naturalists, so in poetry the Symbolists aim at the overthrow of the Parnassien dynasty; and thus the two books which have been named served sufficiently well for a centre around which to group the questions and answers of the inquisitor and his victims.

Before setting to work, M. Huret considered the order in which he should call his witnesses, and carefully prepared his

questions. Of the Psychologists he in quired. What is the significance, and what is the future, of the present reaction against Naturalism? Is there a bond of kinship between the Psychological school and the Symbolists? Is there not, again, something in common between the Natu ralists and the Parnassiers in their disdain of personal sentiment on the part of the writer,. in their tendency to pessimism, and in their aim at plastic or concrete presentation of what is positive and real, rather than the suggestion or evocation of things invisible? Of the SymbolistDecadents he inquired: What is the meaning of this word inscribed upon their banner? what are their poetic aims? how are they related to the Parnassiens? who are their representative writers? what are the works which embody the purposes of the movement? And in a similar manner suitable interrogations were framed for the elder schools of Parnassus and of Nature. But, like an accomplished interviewer, M. Huret did not tie himself to his own order of examination; he kept his hands free and his eyes open; he was alive at every point. If he could not run down his game, there might still be some profit in the accidents and incidents of the chase. If he could not come to the winning post, he might yet pick up some Atalanta's apple on or off the course. To touch in now and again a bit of local color was a relief from the scientific severity of his Enquête. The doctrine of M. Anatole France on the elision of e mute was interrupted, not altogether unhappily, by the incursion of a charming child of eight or nine into the critic's study; her terracotta frock and her floating hair come well into the picture, and the suavity of the critic, who could so gracefully reply to a cartel from M. Leconte de Lisle,* is here shown in pretty pleadings with his little daughter that she should not desert him at the luncheon-table. "Ces jeunes

gens!

Tous fumistes !" exclaimed a feminine voice at the moment when the interviewer entered the study of M. de Hérédia. It was madame, who was reading aloud from the Echo the last words

I have never been wanting in the respect due to M. Leconte de Lisle. If he generously forgets in my favor that he was born in 1820, it is my duty not to forget the fact. Must I needs tell him that he is one of those glories which we dare not touch?"

[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

There is color, too, in the picture of M. Octave Mirbeau, the celebrated author of Calvaire and Sébastien Roch, in his garden near Rouen, amid his Japanese lilies and German irises; or pointing out to his visitor the Chinese Moréas, with its great orange petals, "worth many Moréas of Athens [the author of the Passionate Pilgrim], assure you." But English readers, at the present moment, will prefer another picture-that of the "Flemish Shakespeare" (writer of genius, surely, but a very Flemish Shakespeare), of whom M. Mirbeau was the discoverer, and about whom we have already heard a good deal, and shall soon hear more. In order to find M. Maurice Mæterlinck, it was necessary to take the train for Ghent. The weather was abominable, and under the melancholy sky the interviewer expected to see, in a suitably gloomy environment, the spectral figure of the author of La Princesse Maleine.

"A surprise. Twenty-seven years old, large ly built, square shoulders, blond mustache cut close, Mæterlinck, with his regular features, bright eyes, and cheeks of rosy bloom, realizes exactly the Flemish type. This, added to his very simple manners, his almost timid bearing, the absence of gestures and the absence also of embarrassment, aroused at once a feeling of very agreeable surprise. This man, with his correct dress-black, with white silk cravat-will not play the part of the precocious genius, nor deal in mystery or menfoutism; he is modest and he is sincere. But the charm has something to counterbalance it; if I do not succeed in making my interlocutor forget the interview, which terrifies him, I shall elicit nothing for my Enquête, or next ext to nothing from his large tranquillity. A quarter of an hour, and I began to reckon my gains; not a word about himself or others, or

hardly a word; brief phrases, monosyllabic replies to my questions, a slight gesture, a nod of the head, a movement of the lips or eyebrows, such will be all I glean from the subject of my interview so long as he feels himself a victim of the interviewer. Little by little I must make him forget the purpose of my travel, and break up bit by bit this blond piece of silence. And again I feel that there

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

"The

Once in motion, in the shadow of the venerable buildings of the city-for the rain had ceased--in the old streets or among the network of canals and quays and bridges, M. Mæterlinck grew communicative, and as discussion arose his apparent placidity disappeared; the observer could recognize that keen nervous sensibility which shows itself in his literary work. He spoke freely and he spoke well; few indeed of M. Huret's interlocutors uttered themselves more clearly and effectively on the subject of the symbolic in art. There are two kinds of symbols according to M. Mæterlinck; there is first the designed and deliberate symbol; the artist starts from an abstraction, and endeavors to clothe this abstraction with humanity and concrete form. A typical example of such symbolism, which approaches allegory, may be found in the Second Part of Faust, and in the Mährchen aller Mührchen, translated long since. for English readers by Carlyle. other kind of symbol is unconscious, comes into existence although the poet be not aware of it, or even against his will, and almost always has beatings which reach beyond his conscious thought; this is the symbol which is found in every genial creation of humanity; capital examples may be seen in the dramas of Eschylus and Shakespeare. I do not believe that a viable work can be born of a symbol; but a symbol is always born from a work which is viable. . . . As regards what is symbolic, the poet ought to be passive: the symbol should be the flower of the vitality of the poem." Asked as to what philosophic influences had most affected him, Maeterlinck replied, Kant, Carlyle, Schopenhauer, who consoles you even in the presence of death." Of Shakespeare: "Oh yes, Shakespeare above all! Shakespeare ! When I wrote the Princesse Maleine I said to myself, I am going to attempt a play in Shakespeare's manner

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

for a theatre of marionettes.' And that was what in fact I did." Among recent English writers and artists the favorites of Mæterlinck are Swinburne, Rossetti, William Morris, and Burne-Jones. Edgar Poe is dear to him; but The Fall of the House of Usher is qualified for his temperament by the wholesome whirl of the bicycle.

[ocr errors]

66

Just now, when English readers are discovering a most interesting, if not a great, poet in Paul Verlaine, and when the name of Stéphane Mallarmé rouses curiosity as that of a distinguished, if not a great, unknown, the younger representatives of the Symbolist movement in France disclaim their leadership, and assert their independence by declaring that Verlaine has halted at a point which it is impossible to regard as a resting-place. Mallarmé, whose nature is more sympathetic, whose temperament is less aggressive than Verlaine's, protests against so-called "schools" in literature, proclaims himself a solitary, yet bends graciously from his height of pride towards les jeunes gens ;" and hence he retains their affection. Even in presence of the interviewer, who at the moment was noting (in the graceful way of the profession) his medium height, his pointed beard already grizzled, his long satyr ears, his eyes which shone with extraordinary lustre, M. Mallarmé retained un grand air de bonté." When he speaks" the word is always accompanied by a gesture, a liberal gesture, full of grace, precision, eloquence; his voice lingers a little on the ends of his words, with a dying fall; his personality affects you with a powerful charm; you feel in the man an undeclining pride, which floats calmly over all, the pride of a god or of an illuminated adept, before which you must needs bow the Lead-when once it is understood." It is unfortunate for us that M. Mallarmé has so rarely put himself, as they say, in evidence by his writings. He cannot understand, he told a friend, what induces a poet to go to the publishers; the birds sing in their bowers, but these are not commonly situated in Paternoster Row. To print our poems is surely nothing less than an indecent exposure of the soul. The author of L'Après-midi d'un Faune has not often offended in this way, and has on those rare occasions preserved something of his modesty by affixing an almost prohibitive price on the article so indiscreetly offered

for sale. For Mallarmé literature is essentially an outcome of the individual, bearing the impress of a distinct personality. Formerly poets may have sung, as it were in a choir, to the great organ tones of the official metres; now each singer retires into his corner to play upon the flute the air he loves. The demand for a versification, more free, more elastic, more living than that so grandly wrought in bronze or in gold by the great Parnas siens, has been recognized and admitted as just and inevitable by M. Anatole France. The official verse-the Alexandrine-is not rejected by M. Mallarmé, but he would reserve its use for great occasions, when solemn movements of the soul require an utterance, and even then it should be freer, more spontaneous, more aërial than the Alexandrine as too commonly it is written. With this for grave and, as it were, imperial uses, the poetry of the future will exhibit an infinity of motives derived from the peculiar sensibility of finely-organized individuals. The themes of which future singers will treat must include all in thought, action, and emotion which is susceptible of poetic handling, and these themes will not be presented directly and four-square after the manner of those old rhetoricians, the Parnassien poets; the younger poets will choose rather to suggest than to depict; they will not fear the indefinite or the mysterious; if they present an object it will be in order that the object may call up or adumbrate some spiritual, some emotional state or mood; or they will, through some state of the soul, shadow forth an object; they may be charged with obscurity, but all art which demands the co-operation of the spectator's or the reader's feelings and imagination is obscure to those who do not bring that one thing needful. In this statement of M. Mallarmé we have perhaps a better account of the aims of the symbolist school than can be obtained from any other of the subjects of M. Huret's examination.

For his own part, Mallarmé acknowledges that, with the marvellous mastery of verse possessed by certain recent writers

Banville, for example-the Alexandrine admits of infinite variety, is flexible for every purpose, can respond to every movement of human passion. In an interesting paper on Modern Poetry, by Mr. Lewis Morris, published last July, the

[ocr errors]

writer speaks of French as the one European language in which poetry is well nigh impossible. . . . It may attain to fine rhetoric, it may even mount to the height of a tender and graceful lyric, but beyond this it cannot go." Doubtless a nation which feeds exclusively on frogs cannot produce true epic verse, and any one British poet can beat any three French. That is a pious and patriotic opinion to which I give a loyal adhesion. Matthew Arnold informed us nearly thirty years ago that the power of French literature is in its prose-writers, the power of English literature is in its poets; and he added that the main vehicle for poetry in France, the Alexandrine, is an inadequate vehicle. I confess that I have always ventured to regard this statement as evidence that Mr. Arnold's feeling for what is excellent in French literature had its limitations. No one possessed of a true sense for what is great in French poetry can think of the Alexandrine in its history from Racine to Hugo, and Banville, and Leconte de Lisle, with a stinted admiration. It is capable of infinite grace, sweetness, subtlety; the fall and folds of the robe of an antique statue are not more exquisite than it can be; and yet it can, when there is need, advance with the bounding, mounting motion of a wave of the sea, all strength, all joy, all harmony. I am glad to confirm my feeling, that of one to whom the more intimate beauties of French verse can never be fully known, by the words of such a master as M. Catulle Mendès: "The Alexandrine," he says, "has been modified in a thousand ways; it may hereafter perhaps be transformed in a thousand other ways; I admit it, but-and this is its high distinction and its glory-from the chanson de geste, where it appeared for the first time, and down through Ronsard and Malherbe, it has remained, and it will remain, that marvellous thing which the greatest artists have found adequate in so many magnificent masterpieces-the French Alexandrine."

Mr. George Moore has given to English readers a vivid portrait of Paul Verlaine -the "bald, prominent forehead, the cavernous eyes, the macabre expression of burned-out lust smouldering upon his face" and we need not confirm that portrait by reproducing M. Huret's sketch. On this occasion it did not require a jourNEW SERIES.-VOL. LIV., No. 6.

ney past factories and canals, and dim streets and clamorous court-yards to find Verlaine he was easily run to earth in his accustomed café, the François-Premier, Boulevard Saint-Michel. His attacks of black misanthropy, his wild fits of silence, says M. Huret, vanish with the least gleam of sunshine. He has that beautiful resignation which made him declare in a soft voice, only faintly suggestive of absinthe "I have no mother now but one-the Assistance publique." During the hours preceding the interview he had taken pains to replenish his pockets, and now under his ample Macfarlane of black and gray checks, glowed a superb yellow silk necktie. This was indeed splendor which contrasts favorably with the filthy night cap, the greasy shirt, the discolored trousers, in which the author of Sagesse received Mr. George Moore.

Verlaine, as every one knows, is no great talker; he is a purely instinctive artist, who utters his opinions in quick fits and starts, by means of concise imagery, sometimes with desigued brutality, yet always qualified by a gleam of unconstrained kindliness and charming bonhomie. . . . When I asked him for a definition of symbolism, he said, ' You know I have some common sense; perhaps I have nothing else, but I have that. Symbolism?

don't understand it. Must be a German word, eh? What does it mean? It doesn't matter a straw to me. When I suffer, when I am enjoying myself, or when I weep, I know well that that is no symbol. Look now, all these distinctions and definitions are just Germanisms; what does it matter to a poet what opinions Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and other blockheads may have on human emotions. For my part, I am French-you take me?-rampantly French-that before all else. I find in my instinct nothing which obliges me to inquire after the why of the why of my tears; when I am wretched, I write melancholy verses, that is the whole of it, with no other rule than the instinct, as they say, of good writing, which I believe I have.' His countenance fell into shadow, and his speech became slow and grave. All the same,' he went on, there may be seen under my verses the . . Gulf stream of my being, where are currents of glacial water and currents that boil, débris, yes-sands, most certainly-flowers, perhaps.' Every moment in Verlaine's conversation you are surprised and delighted by these unexpected antitheses of brutality and grace, of light irony and savage indignation.

53

Striking with his fist the marble table till the glasses of absinthe and vermouth trembled, Verlaine went on to declaim against the ridiculous "cymbalists," their big banner on which was inscribed the

« VorigeDoorgaan »