Part 6 (1/2)
he cries, with a note like a bird's song. Among the thirty-six every one will have his favourites. We venture to translate the ”Ballad de Banville”:
”AUX ENFANTS PERDUS
”I know Cythera long is desolate; I know the winds have stripped the garden green.
Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!
So be it, for we seek a fabled sh.o.r.e, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths, beguile; There let us land, there dream for evermore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'
”The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate Of angry G.o.ds that smite us in their spleen.
Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen That veils the fairy coast we would explore.
Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'
”Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, And ruined is the palace of our state; But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.
Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, Whose flower is faded and whose locks are h.o.a.r.
Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile; Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'
ENVOI.
”Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
All, singing birds, your happy music pour; Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; Flit to these ancient G.o.ds we still adore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'”
Alas! the mists that veil the sh.o.r.e of our Cythera are not the summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial time.
It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. ”Je ne m'entends qu'a la meurique,” he says in his ballad on himself; but he can write prose when he pleases.
It is in his drama of _Gringoire_ acted at the Theatre Francais, and familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire, the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised a good supper if he will recite the new satirical ”Ballade des Pendus,” which he has made at the monarch's expense. Hunger overcomes his timidity, and, addressing himself especially to the king, he enters on this goodly matter:
”Where wide the forest boughs are spread, Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, Are crowns and garlands of men dead, All golden in the morning gay; Within this ancient garden grey Are cl.u.s.ters such as no mail knows, Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: _This is King Louis' orchard close_!
”These wretched folk wave overhead, With such strange thoughts as none may say; A moment still, then sudden sped, They swing in a ring and waste away.
The morning smites them with her ray; They toss with every breeze that blows, They dance where fires of dawning play: _This is King Louis' orchard close_!
”All hanged and dead, they've summoned (With h.e.l.l to aid, that hears them pray) New legions of an army dread, Now down the blue sky flames the day; The dew dies off; the foul array Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, With wings that flap and beaks that flay: _This is King Louis' orchard close_!
ENVOI.
”Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, A tree of bitter cl.u.s.ters grows; The bodies of men dead are they!
_This is King Louis' orchard close_!
Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is made to recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he must join the ghastly army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be allowed to finish his supper.
This the king grants, and in the end, after Gringoire has won the heart of the heroine, he receives his life and a fair bride with a full dowry.
_Gringoire_ is a play very different from M. De Banville's other dramas, and it is not included in the pretty volume of ”Comedies” which closes the Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often declared, with an iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin, that ”comedy is the child of the ode,” and that a drama without the ”lyric” element is scarcely a drama at all. While comedy retains either the choral ode in its strict form, or its representative in the shape of lyric enthusiasm (_le lyrisme_), comedy is complete and living. _Gringoire_, to our mind, has plenty of lyric enthusiasm; but M. De Banville seems to be of a different opinion. His republished ”Comedies” are more remote from experience than _Gringoire_, his characters are ideal creatures, familiar types of the stage, like Scapin and ”le beau Leandre,” or ethereal persons, or figures of old mythology, like Diana in _Diane au Bois_, and Deidamia in the piece which shows Achilles among women. M. De Banville's dramas have scarcely prose enough in them to suit the modern taste. They are masques for the delicate diversion of an hour, and it is not in the nature of things that they should rival the success of blatant buffooneries. His earliest pieces--_Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane_ (acted at the Odeon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and _Le Cousin du Roi_ (Odeon, April 4th, 1857)--were written in collaboration with Philoxene Boyer, a generous but indiscreet patron of singers.
”Dans les salons de Philoxene Nous etions quatre-vingt rimeurs,”
M. De Banville wrote, parodying the ”quatre-vingt ramuers” of Victor Hugo. The memory of M. Boyer's enthusiasm for poetry and his amiable hospitality are not unlikely to survive both his compositions and those in which M. De Banville aided him. The latter poet began to walk alone as a playwright in _Le Beau Leandre_ (Vaudeville, 1856)--a piece with scarcely more substance than the French scenes in the old Franco-Italian drama possess. We are taken into an impossible world of gay non-morality, where a wicked old bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her lover Leandre, a light-hearted scamp, bustle through their little hour. Leandre, who has no notion of being married, says, ”Le ciel n'est pas plus pur que mes intentions.” And the artless Colombine replies, ”Alors marions-nous!” To marry Colombine without a dowry forms, as a modern novelist says, ”no part of Leandre's profligate scheme of pleasure.” There is a sort of treble intrigue.
Orgon wants to give away Colombine dowerless, Leandre to escape from the whole transaction, and Colombine to secure her _dot_ and her husband. The strength of the piece is the brisk action in the scene when Leandre protests that he can't rob Orgon of his only daughter, and Orgon insists that he can refuse nothing except his ducats to so charming a son-in-law.