Part 11 (1/2)
Madeline, Madeline, Pourquoi vos levres a mon cou, ah, pourquoi Vos levres entre les coups du hache du roi!
Madeline, et les cordaces et les fltes, Les fltes, les pas d'amour, les fltes, vous les voultes, Helas! Madeline, la fete, Madeline, Ne berce plus les flots au bord de l'ile, Et mes bouffons ne crevent plus des cerceaux Au bord de l'ile, pauvres bouffons.
Pauvres bouffons que couronne la sauge!
Et mes litieres s'effeuillent aux ornieres, toutes mes litieres a grand pans De nonchaloir, Madeline-aux-serpents....
A difference with Morris might have arisen, of course, over the now long-discussed question of vers libre, but who are we to dig up that Babylon? The schoolboys' papers of Toulouse had learnt all about it before the old gentlemen of _The Century_ and _Harper's_ had discovered that such things exist.
One will not have understood the French poetry of the last half-century unless one makes allowance for what they call the Gothic as well as the Roman or cla.s.sic influence. We should probably call it (their ”Gothic”) ”medievalism,” its tone is that of their XIII century poets, Crestien de Troies, Marie de France, or perhaps even D'Orleans (as we noticed in the quotation from Viele-Griffin). Tailhade in his ”Hymne Antique” displays what we would call Swinburnism (Greekish). Tristan Klingsor (a nom de plume showing definite tendencies) exhibits these things a generation nearer to us:
Dans son reve le vieux Prince de Touraine voit pa.s.ser en robe verte a longue traine Yeldis aux yeux charmeurs de douce reine.
or
Au verger ou sifflent les sylphes d'automne mignonne Isabelle est venue de Venise et veut cueillir des cerises et des pommes.
He was writing rhymed vers libre in 1903, possibly stimulated by translations in a volume called ”Poesie Arabe.” This book has an extremely interesting preface. I have forgotten the name of the translator, but in excusing the simplicity of Arab songs he says: ”The young girl in Germany educated in philosophy in Kant and Hegel, when love comes to her, at once exclaims 'Infinite!', and allies her vocabulary with the transcendental. The little girl in the tents 'ne savait comparer fors que sa gourmandise.'” In Klingsor for 1903, I find:
Croise tes jambes fines et nues Dans ton lit, Frotte de tes mignonnes mains menues Le bout de ton nez; Frotte de tes doigts poteles et jolis, Les deux violettes de tes yeux cernes, Et reve.
Du haut du minaret arabe s'echappe La melopee triste et breve De l'indiscret muezzin Qui nasillonne et qui eternue, Et toi tu bailles comme une pet.i.te chatte, Tu bailles d'amour brisee, Et tu songes au pa.s.sant d'Ormuz ou d'Endor Qui t'a quittee ce matin En te laissant sa legere bourse d'or Et les marques bleues de ses baisers.
Later he turns to Max Elskamp, addressing him as if he, Klingsor, at last had ”found Jesus”:
Je viens vers vous, mon cher Elskamp Comme un pauvre varlet de cur et de joie Vient vers le beau seigneur qui campe Sous sa tente d'azur et de soie.
However I believe Moreas was a real poet, and, being stubborn, I have still an idea which gor embedded in my head some years ago: I mean that Klingsor is a poet. As for the Elskamp phase and cult, I do not make much of it. Jean de Bosschere has written a book upon Elskamp, and he a.s.sures me that Elskamp is a great and important poet, and some day, perhaps, I may understand it. De Bosschere seems to me to see or to feel perhaps more keenly than any one else certain phases of modern mechanical civilization: the ant-like madness of men bailing out little boats they never will sail in, shoeing horses they never will ride, making chairs they never will sit on, and all with a frenzied intentness. I may get my conviction as much from his drawings as from his poems. I am not yet clear in my mind about it. His opinion of Max Elskamp can not be too lightly pa.s.sed over. Vide infra ”De Bosschere on Elskamp.”
OF OUR DECADE
Early in 1912 _L'Effort_, since called _L'Effort Libre,_ published an excellent selection of poems mostly by men born since 1880: Arcos, Chenneviere, Duhamel, Spire, Vildrac, and Jules Romains, with some of Leon Bazalgette's translations from Whitman.
SPIRE
(born 1868)
Andre Spire, writing in the style of the generation which has succeeded him, is well represented in this collection by his ”Dames Anciennes.”
The contents of his volumes are of very uneven value: Zionist propaganda, addresses, and a certain number of well-written poems.
DAMES ANCIENNES
En hiver, dans la chambre claire, Tout en haut de la maison, Le poele de faence blanche, Cercle de cuivre, provincial, doux, Chauffait mes doigts et mes livres.