Part 5 (1/2)
M. De Banville revived old measures--the _rondeau_ and the ”poor little triolet.” These are forms of verse which it is easy to write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In ”Les Cariatides” they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often recalls Keats in his choice of cla.s.sical themes. ”Les Exiles,” a poem of his maturity, is a French ”Hyperion.”
”Le Triomphe de Bacchus” reminds one of the song of the Ba.s.sarids in ”Endymion”--
”So many, and so many, and so gay.”
There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse:
”Il reve a Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries, Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal, Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal.”
The Bacchus of t.i.tian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories of perfumed places where ”the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails.” One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering G.o.d still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous pa.s.sion by the fresh wind blowing from Thrace. Of all the Olympians, Diana has been most often hymned by M. De Banville: his imagination is haunted by the figure of the G.o.ddess. Now she is manifest in her h.e.l.lenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, ”taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad at heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be known where all are fair” (Odyssey, vi.). Again, Artemis appears more thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean Goujon, touched with the sadness of moonlight. Yet again, she is the weary and exiled spirit that haunts the forest of Fontainebleau, and is a stranger among the woodland folk, the _fades_ and nixies. To this G.o.ddess, ”being triple in her divided deity,” M. De Banville has written his hymn in the characteristic form of the old French _ballade_. The translator may borrow Chaucer's apology--
”And eke to me it is a grete penaunce, Syth rhyme in English hath such sca.r.s.ete To folowe, word by word, the curiosite Of _Banville_, flower of them that make in France.”
”BALLADE SUR LES HOTES MYSTERIEUX DE LA FORET
”Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old, Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree; The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold, And still wolves dread Diana roving free, In secret woodland with her company.
Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite When now the wolds are bathed in silver light, And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey, Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.
”With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, The sudden G.o.ddess enters, tall and white, With one long sigh for summers pa.s.sed away; The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.
”She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee, Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled, But her delight is all in archery, And nought of ruth and pity wotteth she More than the hounds that follow on the flight; The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might, And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay, She tosses loose her locks upon the night, And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way.
ENVOI.
”Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite, The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight; Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray There is the mystic home of our delight, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.”
The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville's genius. Through his throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of the ballet the cold Muse sometimes pa.s.ses, strange, but not unfriendly. He, for his part, has never degraded the beautiful forms of old religion to make the laughing- stock of fools. His little play, _Diane au Bois_, has grace, and gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the failings of immortals. ”The G.o.ds are jealous exceedingly if any G.o.ddess takes a mortal man to her paramour, as Demeter chose Iasion.” The least that mortal poets can do is to show the Olympians an example of toleration.
”Les Cariatides” have delayed us too long. They are wonderfully varied, vigorous, and rich, and full of promise in many ways. The promise has hardly been kept. There is more seriousness in ”Les Stalact.i.tes” (1846), it is true, but then there is less daring. There is one morsel that must be quoted,--a fragment fas.h.i.+oned on the air and the simple words that used to waken the musings of George Sand when she was a child, dancing with the peasant children:
”Nous n'irons plus an bois: les lauries sont coupes, Les amours des ba.s.sins, les naiades en groupe Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux decoupes Les flots silencieux qui coulaient de leur coupe, Les lauriers sont coupes et le cerf aux abois Tressaille au son du cor: nous n'irons plus au bois!
Ou des enfants joueurs riait la folle troupe Parmi les lys d'argent aux pleurs du ciel trempes, Voici l'herbe qu'on fauche et les lauriers qu'on coupe; Nous n'irons plus au bois; les lauriers sont coupes.”
In these days Banville, like Gerard de Nerval in earlier times, RONSARDISED. The poem 'A la Font Georges,' full of the memories of childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, is written in a favourite metre of Ronsard's. Thus Ronsard says in his lyrical version of five famous lines of Homer--
”La gresle ni la neige N'ont tels lieux pour leur siege Ne la foudre oncques la Ne devala.”
(The snow, and wind, and hail May never there prevail, Nor thunderbolt doth fall, Nor rain at all.)
De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its sad emphatic cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his childish memories:
”O champs pleins de silence, Ou mon heureuse enfance Avait des jours encor Tout files d'or!”
O ma vieille Font Georges, Vers qui les rouges-gorges Et le doux rossignol Prenaient leur vol!
So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, ”tout file d'or,” and closes when the dusk is washed with silver--
”A l'heure ou sous leurs voiles Les tremblantes etoiles Brodent le ciel changeant De fleurs d'argent.”
The ”Stalact.i.tes” might detain one long, but we must pa.s.s on after noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats' ”Ode to a Greek Urn”:
”Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante, La verveine, melee a des feuilles d'acanthe, Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement S'avancent deux a deux, d'un pas sur et charmant, Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites.”