Part 4 (1/2)
It is not long since a ”strong, silent” American, who had been spending a year or so in Paris, complained to me that ”all French poetry smelt of talc.u.m powder.” He did not specifically mention Corbiere; who, with perhaps a few dozen other French poets, may have been outside the scope of his research. Corbiere came also to ”Paris.”
I
Batard de Creole et Breton, Il vint aussi la--fourmiliere, Bazar ou rien n'est en pierre, Ou le soleil manque de ton.
--Courage! On fait queue.... Un planton Vous pousse a la chaine--derriere!-- --Incendie eteint, sans lumiere; Des seaux pa.s.sent, vides ou non.--
La, sa pauvre Muse pucelle Fit le trottoir en _demoiselle._ Ils disaient: Qu'est-ce qu'elle vend?
--Rien.--Elle restait la, stupide, N'entendant pas sonner le vide Et regardant pa.s.ser le vent....
II
La: vivre a coups de fouet!--pa.s.ser En fiacre, en correctionnelle; Repa.s.ser a la ritournelle, Se depa.s.ser, et trepa.s.ser!--
--Non, pet.i.t, il faut commencer Par etre grand--simple ficelle-- Pauvre: remuer l'or a la pelle; Obscur: un nom a tout ca.s.ser!...
Le coller chez les mastroquets, Et l'apprendre a des perroquets Qui le chantent ou qui le sifflent--
--Musique!--C'est le paradis Des mahomets ou des houris, Des dieux souteneurs qui se giflent!
People, at least some of them, think more highly of his Breton subjects than of the Parisian, but I can not see that he loses force on leaving the sea-board; for example, his ”Frere et Sur Jumeaux” seems to me ”by the same hand” and rather better than his ”Roscoff.” His language does not need any particular subject matter, or prefer one to another.
”Mannequin ideal, tete-de-turc du leurre,” ”Fille de marbre, en rut!”, ”Je voudrais etre chien a une fille publique” are all, with a constant emission of equally vigorous phrases, to be found in the city poems. At his weakest he is touched with the style of his time, i.e., he falls into a phrase _a la Hugo_,--but seldom. And he is conscious of the will to break from this manner, and is the first, I think, to satirize it, or at least the first to hurl anything as apt and violent as ”garde nationale epique” or ”inventeur de la larme ecrite” at the Romantico-rhetorico and the sentimento-romantico of Hugo and Lamartine.
His nearest kins.h.i.+ps in our period are to Gautier and Laforgue, though it is Villon whom most by life and temperament he must be said to resemble.
Laforgue was, for four or five years, ”reader” to the ex-Kaiser's mama; he escaped and died of _la misere._ Corbiere had, I believe, but one level of poverty.
Un beau jour--quel metier!--je faisais, comme ca Ma croisiere.--Metier!....--Enfin. Elle pa.s.sa.
--Elle qui,--La Pa.s.sante! Elle, avec son ombrelle!
Vrai valet de bourreau, je la frolai....--mais Elle Me regarda tout bas, souriant en dessous, Et--me tendit sa main, et....
m'a donne deux sous.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
(1854-1891)
Rimbaud's first book appeared in '73. His complete poems with a preface by Verlaine in '95. Laforgue conveys his content by comment, Corbiere by e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, as if the words were wrenched and knocked out of him by fatality; by the violence of his feeling, Rimbaud presents a thick suave color, firm, even.
_Cinq heures du soir_