It must not be thought that these very "modern" poets owe their
modernity merely to some magic chemical present in the Parisian milieu.
Moréas was born in 1856, the year after Verhaeren, but his
Madeline-aux-serpents might be William Morris on Rapunzel:
Et votre chevelure comme des grappes d'ombres,
Et ses bandelettes à vos tempes,
Et la kabbale de vos yeux latents,--
Madeline-aux-serpents, Madeline.
Madeline, Madeline,
Pourquoi vos lèvres à mon cou, ah, pourquoi
Vos lèvres entre les coups du hache du roi!
Madeline, et les cordaces et les flûtes,
Les flûtes, les pas d'amour, les flûtes, vous les voulûtes,
Hélas! Madeline, la fête, Madeline,
Ne berce plus les flots au bord de l'île,
Et mes bouffons ne crèvent plus des cerceaux
Au bord de l'île, pauvres bouffons.
Pauvres bouffons que couronne la sauge!
Et mes litières s'effeuillent aux ornières, toutes mes
litières à 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 classic 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'Orléans (as we noticed in the
quotation from Vielé-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 rêve le vieux Prince de Touraine
voit passer en robe verte à longue traîne
Yeldis aux yeux charmeurs de douce reine.
* * * * * * * *
or
Au verger où 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 "Poésie 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 potelés et jolis,
Les deux violettes de tes yeux cernés,
Et rêve.
Du haut du minaret arabe s'échappe
La mélopée triste et brève
De l'indiscret muezzin
Qui nasillonne et qui éternue,
Et toi tu bâilles comme une petite chatte,
Tu bâilles d'amour brisée,
Et tu songes au passant d'Ormuz ou d'Endor
Qui t'a quittée ce matin
En te laissant sa légère 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 cœur et de joie
Vient vers le beau seigneur qui campe
Sous sa tente d'azur et de soie.
* * * * * * * *
However I believe Moréas 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 Bosschère has written a book upon Elskamp, and he
assures me that Elskamp is a great and important poet, and some day,
perhaps, I may understand it. De Bosschère 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 passed over. Vide infra "De Bosschère on
Elskamp."