Part 12 (1/2)
mange lentement son pain Parce que ses dents sont usees; Et il boit avec beaucoup de mal Parce qu'il a de peine plein sa gorge.
Quand il a fini, Il hesite, puis timide Va s'a.s.seoir un peu A cote du feu.
Ses mains creva.s.sees epousent Les bosselures dures de ses genoux.
Then of the other man in the story:
”qui n'etait pas des notres....
”Mais comme il avait l'air cependant d'etre des notres!”
The story or incident in ”Visite” is that of a man stirring himself out of his evening comfort to visit some pathetic dull friends.
Ces gens helas, ne croyaient pas Qu'il fut venu a l'improviste Si tard, de si loin, par la neige ...
Et ils attendaient l'un et l'autre Que brusquement et d'un haleine il exposat La grave raison de sa venue.
Only when he gets up to go, ”ils oserent comprendre”
Il leur promit de revenir.
Mais avant de gagner la porte Il fixa bien dans sa memoire Le lieu ou s'abritait leur vie.
Il regarda bien chaque objet Et puis aussi l'homme et la femme, Tant il craignait au fond de lui De ne plus jamais revenir.
The relation of Vildrac's verse narratives to the short story form is most interesting.
JULES ROMAINS
The reader who has gone through Spire, Romains, and Vildrac, will have a fair idea of the poetry written by this group of men. Romains has always seemed to me, and is, I think, generally recognized as, the nerve-centre, the dynamic centre of the group,
Les marchands sont a.s.sis aux portes des boutiques; Ils regardent. Les toits joignent la rue au ciel Et les paves semblent feconds sous le soleil Comme un champ de mas.
Les marchands ont laisse dormir pres du comptoir Le desir de gagner qui travaille des l'aube.
On dirait que, malgre leur ame habituelle, Une autre ame s'avance et vient au seuil d'eux-memes Comme ils viennent au seuil de leurs boutiques noires.
We are regaining for cities a little of what savage man has for the forest. We live by instinct; receive news by instinct; have conquered machinery as primitive man conquered the jungle. Romains feels this, though his phrases may not be ours. Wyndham Lewis on giants is nearer Romains than anything else in English, but vorticism is, in the realm of biology, the hypothesis of the dominant cell. Lewis on giants comes perhaps nearer Romains than did the original talks about the Vortex.
There is in inferior minds a pa.s.sion for unity, that is, for a confusion and melting together of things which a good mind will want kept distinct. Uninformed English criticism has treated Unanimism as if it were a vague general propaganda, and this criticism has cited some of our worst and stupidest versifiers as a corresponding manifestation in England. One can only account for such error by the very plausible hypothesis that the erring critics have not read ”Puissances de Paris.”
Romains is not to be understood by extracts and fragments. He has felt this general replunge of mind into instinct, or this development of instinct to cope with a metropolis, and with metropolitan conditions; in so far as he has expressed the emotions of this consciousness he is poet; he has, aside from that, tried to formulate this new consciousness, and in so far as such formulation is dogmatic, debatable, intellectual, hypothetical, he is open to argument and dispute; that is to say he is philosopher, and his philosophy is definite and defined.
Vildrac's statement ”Il a change la pathetique” is perfectly true. Many people will prefer the traditional and familiar and recognizable poetry of writers like Klingsor. I am not dictating people's likes and dislikes. Romains has made a new kind of poetry. Since the sc.r.a.pping of the Aquinian, Dantescan system, he is perhaps the first person who had dared put up so definite a philosophical frame-work for his emotions.
I do not mean, by this, that I agree with Jules Romains; I am prepared to go no further than my opening sentence of this section, concerning our growing, or returning, or perhaps only newly-noticed, sensitization to crowd feeling; to the metropolis and its peculiar sensations. Turn to Romains:
Je croyais les murs de ma chambre impermeables.