Emotions to Henry James were more or less things that other people had
and that one didn't go into; at any rate not in drawing rooms. The gods
had not visited James, and the Muse, whom he so frequently mentions,
appeared doubtless in corsage, the narrow waist, the sleeves puffed at
the shoulders, à la mode 1890-2.
De Gourmont is interested in hardly anything save emotions, and the
ideas that will go into them, or take life in emotional application.
(Apperceptive rather than active.)
One reads LES CHEVAUX DE DIOMÈDE (1897) as one would have listened to
incense in the old Imperial court. There are many spirits incapable. De
Gourmont calls it a "romance of possible adventures"; it might be called
equally an aroma, the fragrance of roses and poplars, the savor of
wisdoms, not part of the canon of literature, a book like "Daphnis and
Chloe" or like Marcel Schwob's "Livre de Monelle"; not a solidarity like
Flaubert; but an osmosis, a pervasion.
"My true life is in the unspoken words of my body."
In "UNE NUIT AU LUXEMBOURG," the characters talk at more length, and the
movement is less convincing. "Diomède" was de Gourmont's own favorite
and we may take it as the best of his art, as the most complete
expression of his particular "façon d'apercevoir"; if, even in it, the
characters do little but talk philosophy, or rather drift into
philosophic expression out of a haze of images, they are for all that
very real. It is the climax of his method of presenting characters
differentiated by emotional timbre, a process which had begun in
"HISTOIRES MAGIQUES" (1895); and in "D'UN PAYS LOINTAIN" (published
1898, in reprint from periodicals of 1892-4).
"SONGE D'UNE FEMME" (1899) is a novel of modern life, de Gourmont's
sexual intelligence, as contrasted to Strindberg's sexual stupidity well
in evidence. The work is untranslatable into English, but should be used
before 30 by young men who have been during their undergraduate days too
deeply inebriated with the Vita Nuova.
"Tout ce qui se passe dans la vie, c'est de la mauvaise littérature."
"La vraie terre natale est celle où on a eu sa première émotion forte."
"La virginité n'est pas une vertu, c'est un état; c'est une
sous-division des couleurs."
_Livres de chevet_ for those whom the Strindbergian school will always
leave aloof.
"Les imbéciles ont choisi le beau comme les oiseaux choisissent ce qui
est gras. La bêtise leur sert de cornes."
"CŒUR VIRGINAL" (1907) is a light novel, amusing, and accurate in its
psychology.
I do not think it possible to overemphasize Gourmont's sense of beauty.
The mist clings to the lacquer. His spirit was the spirit of Omakitsu;
his _pays natal_ was near to the peach-blossom-fountain of the
untranslatable poem. If the life of Diomède is overdone and done badly
in modern Paris, the wisdom of the book is not thereby invalidated. It
may be that Paris has need of some more Spartan corrective, but for the
descendants of witch-burners Diomède is a needful communication.