Paul Verlaine Part 3

These were _Femmes_ and _Hombres_. They could not appear publicly but were sold in five hundred numbered copies each. In them Verlaine broke abruptly with the tradition of agreeable nastiness of a Grecourt, in order to produce works of an unheard-of subjective shamelessness. In form the poems are smooth and in structure they are clever, but their subject matter and the poet's self-revelation is such as to place these volumes among the most unhappy that have ever been produced. They are naked and obscene.

From an aesthetic point of view this publication, even if it was clandestine was without excuse, and it was the deepest descent of the poet. The effect of this depravity of an old man writing down with unsteady hand vices and nakednesses on prescription blanks for the sake of a few francs with which to buy an absinthe, is tragic. The existence and the spread of these books must destroy absolutely the legend of the "guileless fool." This is the only value which can be attributed to them.

The carnival comedy took place before Ash Wednesday. When Leconte de Lisle died, the younger generation advertised and arranged for the choice of the king of poets, never realizing to what extent they were guilty in bringing about the artistic degeneration of the chosen poet.

The faun-like, mockingly sagacious head of Paul Verlaine, who was ill and growing old, received the crown. Poor Lelian became "king of the poets," a mark of great affection on the part of the younger men, but only a t.i.tle after all, which was unable to give Paul Verlaine the necessary dignity and strength of personality. After Verlaine, Stephane Mallarme inherited the imaginary crown, and after him it was worn in obscurity by Leon Dierx,[3] a not very distinguished, but agreeable and dignified poet of the former Parna.s.sus. The coronation was only a pose and voluntary choice, and would hardly be worth considering were it not for the fact that this admiration for Verlaine's work indicated an underlying tendency in modern French poetry.

[3] Leon Dierx died in 1912 at the age of 74, and Paul Fort, the author of the famous _Ballades Francaises_, was chosen as "king of the poets" to succeed him.

To the younger generation Verlaine represented not only a great poet, but to them he was also the regenerator of French lyric poetry. The legend that Verlaine consciously changed poetic valuations is entirely due to a single poem, the "_Art Poetique_." It is absolutely necessary to quote it, because on the one hand it is characteristic of Verlaine's instinct concerning his own work, and because on the other hand it is the basis of all the formulas which became dogmas among the verse jugglers. (An English translation of this poem is given on page 90.)

"De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela prefere l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air, Sans rien en lui, qui pese ou qui pose.

"Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point Choisir tes mots sans quelque meprise: Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Ou l'Indecis au Precis se joint.

"C'est des beaux yeux derriere les voiles, C'est le grand jour tremblant de midi, C'est, par un ciel d'automne attiedi, Le bleu fouillis des claires etoiles!

"Car nous voulons la Nuance encore, Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!

Oh, la nuance seule fiance Le reve au reve et la flute au cor!

"Fuis du plus loin la Pointe a.s.sa.s.sine, L'Esprit cruel et le Rire impur, Qui font pleurer les yeux d'Azur Et tout cet ail de ba.s.se cuisine!

"Prends l'eloquence et tords-lui son cou!

Tu feras bien, en train d'energie, De rendre un peu la Rime a.s.sagie, Si l'on n'y veille, elle ira jusqu'ou?

"Oh! qui dira les torts de la Rime?

Quel enfant sourd ou quel negre fou Nous a forge ce bijou d'un sou Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime?

"De la musique encore et toujours!

Que ton vers soit la chose envolee Qu'on sent qui fuit d'une ame en allee Vers d'autres cieux a d'autres amours.

"Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure epa.r.s.e au vent crispe du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym ...

Et tout le reste est litterature."

Without question certain words in these lines, somewhat veiled by the poetic form of expression, harmonize with the fundamental conceptions of modern impressionistic lyric poetry. France never was the land of pure emotional poetry. There is too much sense of the formal, too much of a keen-sighted almost mathematical type of intellect mingled with a gallant pleasure in pointedness among the French, and these make them turn into logic the elements of mysticism which must be in every poem, whether in its emotional content or its vague form of expression. Goethe has proclaimed the incommensurable as the material of all poetry, but among the French the tendency to crystallize it in the solution of their positivist habit of thought is ever imperceptibly betrayed. The feeling for the line and style shows through. For them poetry is architecture; intuition, their intellectual formula; the marble of conceptions is their material, and rhyme the mortar.

Clarity and orderly arrangement are the preliminary conditions for Victor Hugo, for the Parna.s.sians and even for Baudelaire, even though the latter, by his visionary form and the opiate of his dark words, created for the first time solemn, that is to say poetical, impressions instead of those of pomp alone. It seems therefore an error to look for the revolutionary tendency and literary importance of a Verlaine in the looseness of his verse structure and more careless (or intentionally careless) use of rhyme. His merit is rather that he was able to illume chaos, darkness, and presentiments by the very indefiniteness and the vague music of his soul. This enabled him to endue his poems with their mystical trembling melody, not by abstracting his inner music in definite melodies, but by fixing it in a.s.sonance, rhymes and rhythmic waves.

Unconsciously he recognized that lyric art is the most immaterial of all and is most nearly related to music. Its aerial trembling and immateriality may meet the soul in waves of glowing fire, but intellectually it is unseizable. He tried to preserve this musical element by means of harmony and a.s.sonance, but it was not he himself so much as the unconscious gift of poetry that played mysteriously in him and made him find the fundamental secret of lyric effects. emile Verhaeren, the only other French poet who is a more vehement and constructive character, sought and found the musical element of lyric poetry by the only other way, that is, in verbal rhythm or consonantal music. Thus to volatilize the material simultaneously in the form and to join the technical with the intuitive elements is the highest quality of lyric poetry. It makes it immediate, organic, that is to say, its spiritual elements permeate the material in immanent reaction, and thus the mystery of life is renewed in individual artifacts. Self-evidently this intuitive recognition is no discovery. It has been present in the great lyric poets of all time, a mystery like that of s.e.xual reproduction, which awakens only at the age of ripeness. It was new in France only because, besides Villon, Verlaine was the first lyric genius of the French.

The mystery of the German folk-song with its simple, sweetly mysterious essence became realized in him, perhaps because there was an undercurrent of national relations.h.i.+p. Because of the weakness, submissiveness and child-like confusion of his emotionality, the vibrations became tonality, sound and, because he was a poet, music, instead of intellectual structures.

Such art must be more effective as contrasted with all intellectualism because it springs from deeper sources, just as simple weeping is more eloquent than pa.s.sionate wailing aloud. Surely it also contains an artificial element, not artistry, but magic art, or the "alchemy of the word" which Rimbaud believed to have discovered, a relations.h.i.+p between colors, vowels and sounds depending on idiosyncrasy. It is a secret touching of the ultimate roots of different stems. It is always necessary to a.s.sume an inter-relation between lyricism and the lawless, enigmatic and magic elements of the human soul and to a.s.sociate vague threshold emotions with soft music.

Verlaine's poetry during his creative period possesses this vagueness, which is like a voice in the dark or music of the soul. It also has the lack of coherence which emotions must have when they sweep in halting pain through the body. This element must remain incomprehensible to commercially sharp intelligences of the type of Max Nordau, who try in a way to subtract the net value of purely intellectual elements and "contents" which could be reduced to prose from the gross value of poems. Lyricism is magic and the precious possession of a spiritual communion which finds its deepest enjoyment in just these almost impalpable elements.

To limit the most important element of Verlaine's significance to his neglect of rhyme is showing poor judgment. In the first place it is unimportant and secondly incorrect, for he never wrote a poem without rhyme, except in the later unworthy years, when now and then he subst.i.tuted a.s.sonances. In addition he has himself protested in _L'Hommes d'Aujourd'hui_:

"In the past and at present too I am honored by having my name mingled with these disputes, and I pa.s.s for a bitter adversary of rhyme because of a selection published in a recent collection.--Besides absolute liberty is my device if it were necessary for me to have one--and I find good everything which is good in despite and notwithstanding rules."

To many it was insufficient to celebrate Verlaine as one of the marvels of a nation, a truly elemental human being whose soul uttered the finest and most tender lyric moods and who, as if awakened out of bell-like and clear dreams, produced true and melodic poetry out of the darkness of his life. His admirers have also praised him as a prose writer. But the prose-writer must be an intellectual creator, and know how to master form. This Verlaine was unable to do. He never really understood the world, and knew only how to tell of himself, and accordingly his novelettes are for the most part concealed autobiographies. They have brilliant portions of characterization. His intellect, which is paradoxical, self-willed, lyrical, and abrupt, flashes up and then crumbles.

His _Confessions_, which have been highly praised, remind one of Rousseau's all too confidential and hypocritical confessions. They are only doc.u.ments of personal sharp-sightedness, unfortunately much over-clouded by literary pose. He also tried the theatre. His comedy, _Les Uns et les Autres_, has Watteau-like style and Pierrot elegances, as well as flexibility, but is of no importance. Another play, _Louis XVI_, remained a fragment. All Verlaine's literary productions, like biographies, introductions, etc., give a painful impression because they are forced and have sprung from evil _camaraderie_.

He has also been called a great draftsman. It is true that an excellent and characteristic skill in the figures and scribblings which he sprinkled throughout his letters cannot be gainsaid. There is even a pathetic element in their self-confessed technical imperfections. The caricatures are playful, without malicious or serious intent, jotted down with childish self-satisfaction, but, of course, they need not be taken seriously. They are little marginalia to his life, and addenda to the numerous sharp and bright sketches with which his intimate friend and artistic Eckermann, F. A. Cazals, has fixed him for posterity.

They show Verlaine in all his moods--in his bonhomie, despair, grief, "_gaminerie_," s.e.xuality, disease, even to the last sketches which show him in death. They form a gallery of his life from childhood to childhood along the dark way of his destiny. And as in his poetry, notwithstanding all the exuberant pa.s.sages, the final impression is a wailing note of sadness--the stroke of melancholy's bow.

POSTLUDE

The only thing which now remains is to ascertain whether Paul Verlaine's life-work, beginning in Metz and ending in a small lodging-house room in Paris on a January day in 1896, contains the elements which we would call "lasting" because we are afraid of the proud and resounding word "eternal." The significance of great poets pa.s.ses the boundaries of literature and ignores what is known as "influences" and "artistic atmosphere." The eternal element of great works of poetry reaches back toward eternity. For humanity poetry is infinity which it joins with the ether, and the great poets are those who were able to help in elaborating the wonderful bond which stretches from the distant darkness to the red of the new dawn.

It does not diminish Verlaine's stature if we do not count him among the heroes of life. He was an isolated phenomena, too significant to be typical and too weak to become eternal. There was beauty in his pure humanness, but not of the kind which remains permanent. He has given nothing which was not already in us. He was a fleeting stream of life pa.s.sing by; he was the sublime echo of the mysterious music which rises within us on every contact of things, like the ring of gla.s.ses on a cupboard under every footstep and impact.

His effect is deep, but yet on that account not great. To have become great it would have been necessary for him to conquer the destiny which he could not master and to liberate his will from the thousand little vices and pa.s.sions which enwrapped it. He is one of the writers who could be spared, whom nevertheless no one would do without. He is a marvel, beautiful and unnecessary, like a rare flower which gives sweetness and wonderful peace to the senses, but which does not make us n.o.ble, strong, brave and humble.

He was, and herein lies his greatness and power, the symbol of pure humanity, splendid creative force in the weak vessel of his personality.

He was a poet who in his works became one with the poetry of life, the sounds of the forest, the kiss of the wind, the rustling of the reeds and the voice of the dusk of evening. Humanly he was like us who love him. He was one of those who, no matter how great a chaos they have made of their own life, are yet inappeasable, and drink the stranger's pain and the stranger's bliss in the precious cup of glorious poetry. They manifold their being and their emotions because of a blind and uncreative yearning for the universal and infinity.

ART POeTIQUE

No laws should rule by force or guile, But let your verse go singing soft, And in the solvent air aloft Find music, music all the while.

Nor be too diffident in phrase, But let your song grow drunk with wine Where mystic unions vaguely s.h.i.+ne In luminous and errant ways.

Like veiled eyes your song should be, Like noondays trembling in the sun, Like autumn dusks when days are done And stars and sky join secretly.

Not vivid colors should adorn, But shades alone when dream to dream Is wed, and tender shadows gleam Like flute notes mingled with the horn.

The "point" which slays and cruel wit, And smile impure you should despise, For like base garlic they arise To spoil the poem exquisite.

Take eloquence and twist its neck!

And sophist rhyming which would lead You headlong into sing-song speed 'Tis well for you to hold in check.

Oh, who shall tell of evil rhyme!

A trinket coin with hollow ring, A barbarous or childish thing Pa.s.sed downward idly to our time.

Music, music, evermore, The burden of your song should be, Inherent like the melody Of souls a-wing to distant sh.o.r.e;

Or like the brave emprise and pure Of morning breezes which imbue The thyme and mint with honey dew-- The rest belongs to literature.