(born 1868)
The bulk of Jammes' unsparable poetry is perhaps larger than that of any
man still living in France. The three first books of poems, and "Le
Triomphe de la Vie" containing "Existences," the more than "Spoon River"
of France, must contain about six hundred pages worth reading.
"Existences" can not be rendered in snippets. It is not a series of
poems, but the canvass of a whole small town or half city, unique,
inimitable and "to the life," full of verve. Only those who have read it
and "L'Angelus de l'Aube," can appreciate the full tragedy of Jammes'
débâcle. Paul Fort had what his friends boasted as "tone," and he has
diluted himself with topicalities; in Jammes' case it is more charitable
to suppose some organic malady, some definite softening of the brain,
for he seems perfectly simple and naive in his débâcle. It may be, in
both cases, that the organisms have broken beneath the strain of modern
existence. But the artist has no business to break.
Let us begin with Jammes' earlier work:
J'aime l'âne si doux
marchant le long des houx.
Il prend garde aux abeilles
et bouge ses oreilles;
et il porte les pauvres
et des sacs remplis d'orge.
Il va, près des fosses
d'un petit pas cassé.
Mon amie le croit bête
parce qu'il est poète.
Il réfléchit toujours,
Ses yeux sont en velours.
Jeune fille au doux cœur
tu n'as pas sa douceur.
* * * * * *
The fault is the fault, or danger, which Dante has labeled "muliebria";
of its excess Jammes has since perished. But the poem to the donkey can,
in certain moods, please one. In other moods the playful simplicity, at
least in excess, is almost infuriating. He runs so close to
sentimentalizing--when he does not fall into that puddle--that there are
numerous excuses for those who refuse him altogether. "J'allai à
Lourdes" has pathos. Compare it with Corbière's "St. Anne" and the
decadence is apparent; it is indeed a sort of half-way house between the
barbaric Breton religion and the ultimate deliquescence of French
Catholicism in Claudel, who (as I think it is James Stephens has said)
"is merely lying on his back kicking his heels in it."