Elle dort dans l'ombre des branches,
Parmi les fleurs du bel ete.
Une fleur au soleil se penche....
N'est ce pas un cygne enchante?
Elle dort doucement et songe.
Son sein respire lentement.
Vers son sein nu la fleur allonge
Son long col frele et vacillant.
Et sans qu'elle s'en effarouche,
La longue, pale fleur a mis,
Silencieusement, sa bouche
Autour du bean sein endormi.
"Ce que nous enseigne Charles van Lerberghe," says Albert Mockel in his
masterly book on his friend, "c'est la puissance de la grace. Le charme
de ses vers est unique; le sentiment dont ils nous penetrent a une sorte
de plenitude heureuse qui console le coeur en appelant l'ame vers la
clarte. Une onde invisible nous rafraichit, nous pacifie ... Mais la
force des plus grands peut seule se flechir a une pareille douceur, et
il faut la surete d'un incomparable artiste pour faire de la parole
ecrite cette chose lumineuse et imponderable qui semble autour de nous
comme une poussiere d'or suspendue."
It is scarcely necessary to enter into details here about Maeterlinck;
he needs no introduction to English readers. He has only published one
volume of lyrics, _Serres Chaudes_ (1889), which is now printed with the
fifteen songs he wrote later. In a music laden with sleep rise the
faint, forced lilies of a super-sensitive soul, looking through glass
darkly at a world whose contradictions seem irreconcilable. Verhaeren
has characterized these poems as follows: "C'etait d'une inattendue
angoisse, d'une extraordinaire et infinie tristesse, d'une plainte
profonde et simple sortie de l'instinct scelle au fond de nous-memes.
Cela ne s'expliquait pas, mais cela perforait le fond de notre ame et
trouvait sa justification dans tout l'inexplicable et dans tout
l'inconnu. L'inconscient ou plutot la subconscience y reconnaissait son
langage, ou plutot son balbutiement...."
Gregoire Le Roy has been an electrician, and is now Librarian of the
_Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts_ at Brussels. He is the poet of
retrospection, as Maeterlinck is the poet of introspection. His heart
"pleure d'autrefois." He is the hermit bowed down by silver hair,
bending at eventide over the embers of the past, visited by weird guests
draped with legend. The weft of his verse is torn by translation, it
cannot be grasped, it is wafted through shadows.
Max Elskamp is a poet who reminds one that Mariolatry is Minnesong.
There is no reason why the devout should not be edified by his poems,
but his intention is rather to give a subtle idealization of Flemish
life. Those who know Flemish painting will easily read themselves into
the enchanting version of Flanders that he gives us, a Flanders how
different to that of Verhaeren and yet how equally true!
"Et c'est alors un pays d'ailes
Aux hirondelles,
Flandres des tours
Et de naif et bon sejour;
Et c'est alors un pays d'ailes
Et tout d'amour."
Thomas Braun, Victor Kinon, and Georges Ramaekers are fervent Roman
Catholics. Braun's _Livre des Benedictions_ is a beautifully printed
book illustrated by the quaint woodcuts of his brother, who is a
Benedictine monk. It is a thoroughly Flemish book; but a volume of verse
which he has just published, _J'ai plie le genou_ (published by Deman),
is Walloon in feeling. His other volume, _Philatelie_ (Bibliotheque de
l'Occident, Paris, 1910) is poetry for stamp-collectors! Braun and Kinon
are bucolic poets, somewhat in the manner of the French poet Francis
Jammes, who aims at uncompromising fidelity to nature and the utmost
simplicity of diction. But part of Kinon's work is in the style of Max
Elskamp, fascinating poetry concerning pilgrimages,[10] and the
devotional life of Flanders. Ramaekers, the editor of _Le Catholique,_
is inspired "par la vision si riante et si forte du Brabant jovial,
intime, et monastique." _Le Chant des Trois Regnes_ is a forest of
mysticism. The "Three Reigns" are those of the Father = the cult of
minerals; the Son = of plants; the Holy Ghost = of Love. Some of the
poems would delight an architect. His knowledge of paintings appears
equally well in his other volume of verse, _Les Saisons mystiques_
(Librairie moderne, Brussels, 1910).
Andre Fontainas is a symbolist of the symbolists. Mallarme himself could
not have bettered the following exciting sonnet:
Le givre: vivre libre en l'ire de l'hiver,
Rumeur qui se retrait au regard d'une vitre
Ou, peut-etre, fremit ephemere l'elytre
De tel vol ou d'un souffle epais de menu-vair.
Le ciel gris s'est, fanfare! a soi-meme entr'ouvert:
N'est-ce pas qu'y ruisselle au front morne une mitre?
Non! senile noblesse ou nul n'elude un titre
A se mentir moins vil que ne rampe le ver.
L'heure suit l'heure encore, aucune n'est la seule:
Pareille a soi, voici venir qui l'enlinceule
Pour brusque naitre d'elle et pour mourir soudain.
Un chardon bleu, pas meme, au suaire, ni cirse
Offrant, reve chetif et dedain du jardin,
Ne fut-ce qu'une epine a s'en former un thyrse.
But the great mass of his poetry is perfectly intelligible. He is a
romanticist, but in a new sense; for whereas the old romanticists turned
from the sordid present to the motley middle ages and the choral pomp of
Rome, Fontainas haunts the labyrinths of his soul, and projects his
conscience beyond the bounds of space and time. In Fontainas, as in
Gerardy, knights ride through pathless forests, but these are not the
knights of Spenser. The _Faery Queen_ is a record of events in the outer
world; Fontainas is a _chevalier errant_ in the inner world of the
spirit, and his castles are only settling-places for the dove of thought
winging out of the unknown.
Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud are Satanists. Gilkin's _La Nuit_, "une
vision terrifiante des turpitudes humaines," is the most interesting
book in Baudelaire's style since Baudelaire. He began it with the
intention of continuing his pilgrimage in two following books through
Purgatory and Paradise; but, as he warns his readers in the preface to
_La Nuit: This is Hell!_ Gilkin seems to have had no aptitude for
Purgatory and Paradise after Hell; at all events, his following works
have nothing to make an Englishman blush. _Le Cerisier Fleuri_ (1899) is
a collection of verse in the classical style; but Gilkin has since
given his best work to the drama: _Promethee_ (1899), _Etudiants russes_
(1906), _Savonarole_ (1906). _Jonas_ (1900) is a satire predicting the
conquest of Europe by Asia.
Albert Giraud is undoubtedly a poet of high rank. His colouring is
marvellous. Above all, he is a very personal poet; one can always hear
the beating of his heart--"A maint endroit le sentiment mal contenu
creve l'enveloppe de serenite."[11] He is a pessimist and a
Baudelairian: "Il se plait," says Desire Horrent, "a remuer le fond
vaseux des ames, a gouter le charme morbide des voluptes rares et
raffinees."
Albert Mockel is one of those very rare cases in which a good critic is
at the same time a good poet. As a critic[12] he has probably no rival
except Remy de Gourmont. His hall-mark is subtlety; but his learning,
too, makes one gasp. (He might, no doubt, have been a professor if he
had not been so brilliant). His poetry is philosophy; and the wonderful
thing is that it should be such poetry. It is as light as a breeze, and
like a deep river that shows its pebbles. He has in preparation a book
of verse, _La Flamme Immortelle_, which will be a magnificent
realization of his doctrine of _Aspiration._ Verhaeren interprets the
outer world, Mockel the inner world as reflected in the outer world: for
existence is double, form and shadow. Mockel has written, too, a child's
story-book, _Contes pour les enfants d'hier_[13] which should not be
given to children.
Paul Gerardy is a well-known German poet as well as a French one. He
belongs to the school of Stefan George.
In Georges Marlow's poetry the prevailing note is refinement. He has
written little, but what he has written is of the first water. Some of
the verse in his collection _L'Ame en Exil_ is like Brussels lace:
Aline, au fil de l'eau tremblante
Ou les tourelles refletees
Parlent d'une ville noyee,
Pourquoi baigner tes mains dolentes!
Princesse trop frele surgie
D'un recueil de miniatures,
Gracile fee aux levres pures
Du vain prestige des magies,
Ta peine etrange quelle est-elle
Pour qu'en cette onde puerile
Mirant ta candeur infantile
Tu songes aux fleurs immortelles
Du jardin vague ou les ephebes
Nimbes d'equivoques lueurs,
Sur l'autel d'or de la langueur
Immolent l'ange de leurs reves?
Fernand Severin, who is lecturer in French literature at the University
of Ghent, is a poet of great charm. His diction is apparently that of
Racine, but in substance he is essentially modern. "Virginal" is the
epithet the French critics apply to him, and it describes his chaste,
transparent poetry very well. "Tout y est en nuances, mysterieusement
fuyantes et fondues" (Victor Kinon). He dreams:
"les mains pleines de roses
Et le coeur enlace de longs rameaux de lys."
He is full of languor:
"Car mes reves sont las comme de blancs oiseaux
En qui verse l'ennui de l'azur et des eaux
Le supreme desir de dormir sur les greves."
Isi-Collin's _La Vallee heureuse_ is full of fine things. In such a poem
as _La Mort d'Ophelie_ the influence of pre-Raphaelite paintings may be
discerned. There is Wordsworthianism in his verse (especially _Le
Patre_), as there is in Severin's; not a voluntary absorption into the
outer world, but a passing reflection of it in the inner being; no
direct message, but a statement of a state.
The only poetess in our collection is Jean Dominique. Besides _L'Anemone
des Mers_ she has published _La Gaule Blanche_ and _L'Aile Mouillee_
(Mercure de France, 1903 and 1909). Her verse is exquisitely feminine,
shimmering like shot silk, intimately personal, and perfect in form.
"She notes the very shadow that roses cast on her soul." She has written
poems which are worthy of Sappho, as that which begins:
"Dans la chaleur muette le ciel lisse ses plumes
Comme un grand epervier aux ailes floconneuses;
Mais ce soir, l'oiseau d'or entrave dans les brumes,
Blotti contre la terre humble et delicieuse,
Dormira sur le coeur des femmes amoureuses."
Georges Rency's Pegasus was a delicate steed with iridescent blue wings
when he took it out into the shadows, and the moonlights, and the dawns,
and recorded its flights on excellent paper. Since then it seems to
have died of inanition, but he himself has produced a robust body of
novels and criticism.
As to Sylvain Bonmariage, he is a prodigy. He is twenty-four years of
age, and he has written twelve books. Every one of his plays has seen
the footlights. "Precoce a epouvanter le diable et candide a ravir les
saints," is Albert Giraud's description of him.
Our collection does not exhaust the poetry of Belgium. Perhaps no poem
we have selected has so good a chance of immortality as a snatch of song
by Leon Montenaeken:
La vie est vaine:
Un peu d'amour,
Un peu de haine....
Et puis--bonjour!
La vie est breve:
Un peu d'espoir,
Un peu de reve ...
Et puis--bonsoir!