The question of versification and scansion, disdained by all those who
have no appreciation of form--and they are numerous to-day--has been
rightly judged by Baudelaire as one of the utmost importance. Nothing
is more common now than to mistake technique in art for poetry itself.
These are things which have no relation.
Fénelon, J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Chateaubriand,
George Sand are poetic in principle, but not poets--that is to say,
they are incapable of writing in verse, even mediocre verse, a special
faculty often possessed by people of inferior merit to that of the
great masters. To wish to separate technique from poetry is a modern
folly which will lead to nothing but the annihilation of Art itself. We
encountered, in an excellent article of Sainte-Beuve on Taine, à propos
of Pope and Boileau, lightly treated by the author of "The History of
English Literature" this clear and judicial paragraph, where things are
brought to light by the great critic who was from the beginning, and is
always, a great poet.
"But, à propos of Boileau, must I then accept this strange judgment of
a man of _esprit_, this contemptuous opinion that M. Taine takes of
him, and fear to endorse it in passing?--'There are two sorts of verse
in Boileau: the most numerous, which are those of a pupil of the third
form of his school; the less numerous, which are those of a pupil of
rhetoric.' The man of letters who speaks thus (Guillaume Guizot) does
not feel that Boileau is a poet, and, I will go further, he ought not
to be sensible of poetry in such a poet. I understand that one does
not put all the poetry into the metre; but I cannot at all understand
that, when the point in question is Art, one takes no account of Art
itself, and depreciates the perfect workers who excel in it. Suppress
with a single blow all the poetry in verse, or else speak with esteem
of those who possess the secrets. Boileau was of the small number of
those; Pope equally." One could not express it better nor more justly.
When it is a question of a poet, the composition of his verse is a
considerable thing and worthy of study, for it constitutes a great part
of his intrinsic value. It is with this stamp his gold, his silver, his
copper are coined.
The verse of Baudelaire is written according to modern methods and
reform. The mobility of the cesura, the use of the _mot d'ordre_, the
freedom of expression, the writing of a single Alexandrine, the clever
mechanism of prosody, the turn of the stanza and the strophe--whatever
its individual formula, its tabulated structure, its secrets of
metre--bear the stamp of Baudelaire's sleight of hand, if one may
express it thus. His signature, C. B., claims each rhyme he has made.
Among his poems there are many pieces which have the apparent
disposition and exterior design of a sonnet, though "sonnet" is not
written at the head of each of them. That undoubtedly comes from a
literary scruple, and a prosodical conscience, the origin of which
seems to us traceable to an article where he recounts his visit to us
and relates our conversation. It must not be forgotten that he had
just brought us a volume of verses of two absent friends, that he
was commissioned to make known, and we remarked these lines in his
narrative: "After having rapidly run through the volume, he remarked
to me that the poets in question allowed themselves too often to write
libertine sonnets, that is to say unorthodox, willingly breaking
through the rule of the quadruple rhyme."
At this period the greater part of the "Flowers of Evil" was already
composed, and in it there are to be found a large number of libertine
sonnets, which not only have the quadruple rhyme, but in which also the
rhymes are alternated in a quite irregular manner.
The young scholar always allows himself a number of libertine sonnets,
and we avow it is particularly disagreeable to us. Why, if one wishes
to be free and to arrange the rhyme according to individual fancy,
choose a fixed form which admits of no digression, no caprice? The
irregular in what should be regular, lack of form in what should be
symmetrical--what can be more illogical and annoying? Each infraction
of a rule disturbs us like a doubtful or a false note. The sonnet is
a sort of poetical fugue in which the theme ought to pass and repass
until its final resolution in a given form. One must be absolutely
subservient to law, or else, if one finds these laws antiquated,
pedantic, cramping, not write sonnets at all.
Baudelaire often sought musical effect by one or more particularly
melodious lines recurring alternately, as in the Italian strophe called
sextine, of which M. le Comte de Gramont offers in his poetry several
happy examples. He applied this form, which has the vague, rocking
sound of a magical incantation half heard in a dream, to the subjects
of melancholy memory and unhappy loves. The stanzas, with their
monotonous rustling, carry and express the thoughts, balancing them as
the waves carry on their crests a drowning flower fallen from the shore.
Like Longfellow and Poe, Baudelaire sometimes employed alliteration;
that is to say, the repetition of a certain consonant to produce in the
interior of the verse a harmonious effect. Sainte-Beuve, to whom none
of these delicate touches is unknown, and who continually practises
them in his exquisite art, has once said in an Italian sonnet of deep
gentleness: "So_rr_ente m'a _r_endu mon doux _r_eve infini."
Any sensitive ear can understand the charm of this liquid sound four
times repeated, and which seems to sweep one away to the infinity of
a dream, like the wing of a gull in the surging blue of a Neapolitan
sea. Alliteration is often to be found in the prose of Beaumarchais,
and the Scandinavian poets make great use of it. These trifles will
undoubtedly appear frivolous to utilitarians, progressive and practical
men who think, with Stendhal, that verse is a childish form, good for
primitive ages, and ask that poetry should be written in prose to suit
a reasonable age. Yet all the same, these are details which make verse
good or bad, and which make a man a poet or not.
Many-syllabled and full-sounding words pleased Baudelaire, and, with
three or four of these, he often makes a line which seems immense,
the sound of which is vibrant and prolongs the metre. For the poet,
words have in themselves, and apart from the meanings they express,
intrinsic beauty and value, like precious stones still uncut and not
set in bracelets, in necklaces or in rings. They charm the connoisseur
who watches and sorts them in the little chalice where they are put in
reserve, as a goldsmith would his jewels. There are words of diamond,
ruby, sapphire, emerald, and others which glisten phosphorescently when
struck.
The great Alexandrines of which we have spoken, that come in times
of lull and calm to die on the shore in the tranquillity and gentle
undulation of the swelling surge, sometimes dash themselves to pieces
in the foam and throw up their white spray against the sullen rocks,
only to be tossed back immediately into the salt sea.
The lines of eight feet are brisk, strong, striking, like a
cat-o'-nine-tails, lashing the shoulders of those who, with a wicked
conscience, perform hypocritical actions. They also display strange
caprices; the author encases in his metre, as in a frame of ebony, the
nightly sights of a cemetery where the eyes of the owls shine in the
shadows; and, behind the bronze-green curtains of the yew-trees, slide,
with spectral steps, pick-pockets, devastators of tombs, thieves of the
dead.
In these eight-feet lines he paints sinister skies where, above the
gibbet, rolls a moon, grown sickly from the incantations of Canidies.
He describes the chill ennui of a dead person, who has exchanged his
bed of luxury for the coffin, who dreams in his solitude, starting at
each drop of icy rain that filters through his coffin-lid. He shows
us, in his curiously disordered bouquet of faded flowers, old letters,
ribbons, miniatures, pistols, daggers, and phials of laudanum. We see
the room of the coward gallant where, in his absence, the ironical
spectre of suicide comes, for Death itself cannot quench the fires of
lust.