poetry, joined by the Romans to the passionate part of that science, I
will say that this union created a new style, of which Horace was the
originator: this was the didactic style. This style ought not to be
confused with rational poetry, of which Hesiod has made use in his
poem of _Works and Days_, and which pertains to Eumolpœia; nor with
pure rational poetry, such as one finds in the writings of Parmenides
and Empedocles: it is a sort of poetry which, attaching itself to form
alone, depends much upon dramatic art. The didactic, satirical, or
simply descriptive poet is similar to an actor on the stage declaiming
a long monologue. Rational poetry was welcomed at Rome, and drawn from
the long oblivion into which it had fallen, by Lucretius who, being
inspired by the works of Leucippus and of Epicurus[177] wrote a book
upon the nature of things, which has never been as yet well
comprehended or well translated, the language not being understood.
Comedy, reformed by Menander, was again improved by Plautus and by
Terence who acquired much reputation in this style; as to dramatic art
in itself, it remained in its inertia. The Romans having the same gods
and nearly the same mythology as the Greeks, were neither sufficiently
elevated in intelligence to reinstate this art and make of it the
masterpiece of the human mind; nor sufficiently advanced in exact
knowledge to change wholly its forms and make of it, as we have, a new
art, whence allegory and the moral part of Eumolpœia have been
completely banished. But what the Romans were unable to do for
dramatic art, they unfortunately were able to do for Epopœia. Certain
writers, able versifiers, but absolutely deprived of intellectual
inspiration, incapable of distinguishing in poetry the essence from
the form, following what the degenerated theatre and the inspired
declamations of Euhemerus[178] had taught them, imagined foolishly
that the gods and heroes of antiquity having been only men stronger
and more powerful than the others, mythology was only a crude
collection of historic facts disfigured, and Epopœia only an emphatic
discourse upon these same facts.[179] Thereupon they believed that it
was only a question of taking any historic subject whatever, and
relating it in verse with certain embellishments, to create an epic
poem. Lucan and Silius Italicus, in choosing, the one the misfortunes
of Pompey, and the other the victories of Hannibal, considered
themselves superior to Homer or Vergil, as much as they supposed Rome
or Carthage superior to Ilium. But a just posterity, notwithstanding
the prejudices of their panegyrists, has put them in their place. It
has considered them merely the inventors of a kind of bastard poetry,
which might be called historic poetry. This poetry, entirely separated
from Eumolpœia, whose moral essence it is unable to realize, preserves
only the material and physical forms of true Epopœia. It is a body
without soul, which is moved by a mechanical mainspring applied by a
skilful workman.
As to the poetic form in itself, its only point of variance with the
Greeks and Romans was that of elegance. The verses written in the same
manner, depended likewise upon a fixed number of time or of feet
regulated by musical rhythm. If rhyme had been admitted there in the
first ages, it had been excluded early enough so that there remained
no longer the least trace of it. The Latin tongue, very far from the
Greek in flexibility, variety, and harmony, for a long time treated
with contempt by the Greeks who, regarding it as a barbarous dialect,
only learned it with repugnance[180]; the Latin tongue, I say,
unpleasing, obscure, not even supporting the mediocrity of ordinary
elocution, became, through the laborious efforts of its writers, a
tongue which in the works of Vergil, for example, attained such a
perfection, that it came to be doubted, owing to the grace, the
justice, and the force of its expression, whether the author of the
_Æneid_ did not surpass the author of the _Iliad_. Such is the empire
of forms. They alone make problematical that which, in its essence,
should not be subject to the least discussion.
But at last the Roman Eagle, after having soared some time in the
universe and covered with his extended wings the most beautiful
countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, fatigued by its own triumphs,
sank down again, allowed its power to be divided, and from the summit
of this same Capitol, whence it had for such a long time hurled its
thunderbolts, saw the vultures of the North divide among them its
spoils. The mythological religion, misunderstood in its principles,
attacked in its forms, given over to the corruption of things and men,
had disappeared to give place to a new religion, which born in
obscurity, was raised imperceptibly from the ranks of the humblest
citizens to the imperial throne. Constantine, who in embracing the
Christian cult had consolidated that religious revolution, believed
himself able to bring about another in politics, by transferring the
seat of his empire to the Bosphorus. Historians have often blamed this
last movement; but they have not seen that Providence, in inspiring
this division of the empire, foresaw that the darkness of ignorance
rolling with the waves of the barbarians was about to extend as far as
Rome, and that it would be necessary to concentrate at one point a
part of the learning, in order to save it from the general ruin.
Whereas the Empire of the Occident, assailed on all sides by the
hordes from the North, was overthrown, torn, divided into numberless
small sovereignties whose extent was often limited to the donjon where
the sovereign resided; the Empire of the Orient sustained the weight
of the hordes from the South, nourished continually in its midst
certain men, guardians of the sacred fire of science, and did not fall
until more than nine centuries later; and learning, commencing its
revival in the Occident, put minds in condition there, to appreciate
the models which were about to be presented to them and rendered them
capable of receiving their inspiration.
It was a very remarkable epoch, _Messieurs_, which saw grouped about
it in the space of less than a half century and coincident with the
downfall of the Empire of the Orient, the use of gunpowder, of the
compass, of the telescope in the Occident; the invention of engraving
upon copper, that of movable characters for printing, the extension of
commerce and navigation by the passage around the cape of Storms, and
finally the discovery of America. It was a very extraordinary century,
in which were born Mohammed II. and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Vasco da Gama
and Christopher Columbus, Theodoros Gaza and Pico della Mirandola,
Leonardo da Vinci and Bojardo, Leo X. and Luther. After the invasion
of the barbarians, Christian Europe had lost its political unity: it
was as a great republic whose divided members, struggling continuously
one against the other, tearing by turn a shadow of supremacy, were the
realms, the pontifical or laic principalities, the republics, the free
and commercial cities. The two chiefs of this gigantic and badly
organized body, the German Emperor and the Pope, bishop of Rome, were
vested only with a grandeur of opinion; their real power was void:
they were nothing more, in fact, than that which they appeared in
form. Since Charlemagne, who, in a century of darkness enlightened
with his own genius, had had the force to grasp the _débris_ of the
empire, uniting them in his hand and giving them a momentary
existence, it had not had an emperor. The vain efforts of Hildebrand
and of Charles V. had served only at different times and under
different conditions to demonstrate their impotence. It was reserved
for a much greater man to dominate Europe regenerated by violent
shocks, and to show to the universe the legitimate successor of
Augustus wreathed with the imperial crown.
But without in any way anticipating time, without even leaving our
subject which is poetry, let us continue to follow the developments of
this science.
The original poets of Greece and Rome, brought into Italy by the
savants whom the taking of Constantinople forced to go back towards
the Occident of Europe, brought there an unexpected brilliancy, which,
with the ancient germs deeply buried in its midst, soon awakened
certain new germs that the peculiar circumstances had also brought
there. In explaining what these germs were, I am giving occasion for
thinkers to make certain reflections, and critics to form certain
singular conjectures upon works hitherto badly judged.
It is necessary at first, that I repeat a truth which I have already
said: that intellectual nature is always one and the same, whereas
physical nature varies, changes unceasingly with time and place, and
is modified in a thousand ways according to circumstances. Now, it is
this latter nature which gives the form, that is to say, which renders
sentient and particular that which the former gives to it as universal
and intelligible; so that its aptitude more or less great, in
receiving and in working upon the intelligence, can make the things
which are more homogeneous in their principle appear more dissimilar
in their effect. I will give a proof. Whilst the most profound
obscurity covered Europe, whilst ignorance spread on all sides its
baleful veils, there were found, however, at long intervals, certain
privileged men, who, raising themselves above these thick vapours,
came to grasp certain faint glimmerings of the light shining always
above them. These men possessors of such rare gifts, would have indeed
wished to communicate them to their contemporaries, but if they
imprudently opened their mouths, the blind and fanatic horde which
surrounded them cried out forthwith against the heretic, the magician,
the sorcerer, and conducted them to torture as the price of their
lessons.[181] After several sorry examples, these men, having become
prudent, assumed the part of silence by retiring into monasteries or
hermitages, studying Nature there in quietude, and profiting alone by
their discoveries. If certain ones still dared to speak, it was by
borrowing the style of religion, or history, diverting from the
ordinary sense certain ideas received, explaining themselves by
enigmas, or by figures, which, when necessary, they were able to
explain as they wished.
Among this number was a man of strong imagination and of a genius
really poetic, who, having grasped certain truths of nature, and
judging it proper not to divulge them, took the expedient of enclosing
them in a book which he entitled: _Les Faits et Gestes de
Charles-Magne_. This extraordinary man who has, in these modern times,
obtained an ascendancy greater than one could ever have imagined,
since he is the vital source whence have come all the orders, all the
institutions of chivalry with which Europe has been inundated; this
man, I say, was a monk of _Saint-André de Vienne_, living from the
tenth to the eleventh century and perhaps a little before.[182] The
book that he composed had a success as much the more prodigious as it
was misunderstood, and such was the ignorance not only of the people,
but even of the clergy, that the most palpable fictions were taken for
realities. There are historians even who pretend that the council of
Rheims, celebrated in 1119, declared this work authentic[183]; and
thence came the habit of attributing it to Archbishop Turpin. However
that may be, it is to the allegorical history of Charlemagne, to that
of his twelve paladins, called peers of France, to that of the four
sons of Aymon and of Chevalier Bayard, to that of Renaud, Roland,
Richard, and the other heroes of the _bibliothèque bleue_, for a long
time our only _bibliotheca_, that we owe a new style of poetry, called
Romanesque, on account of the Romance tongue in which it had
birth.[184] This style is to the _eumolpique_ style, as a wild
offshoot, growing laboriously in an arid and bramble-covered land, is
to a cultivated tree which rises majestically in the heart of a
fertile country.
It was with the chivalrous ideas, inspired by the book of the monk of
Saint André, that the first poetic ideas were brought forth in France.
The Oscan troubadours seizing these first glimmerings of genius, threw
themselves with enthusiasm into a career which offered at the same
time pleasures, glory, and the gifts of fortune.[185] They sang of the
fair, of gallants and of kings; but their verses, monotonous enough
when a real passion did not animate them, hardly reached above eulogy
or satire. But little capable of feeling the moral beauties of poetry,
they stopped at form. The rhyme for them was everything. For them the
supreme talent was only rhyming much and with difficulty. One could
not imagine to what lengths they went in this style. Not content with
restricting themselves to follow the same rhyme throughout the entire
course of the poem, they sometimes doubled it at the end of each
verse, rhyming by echo, or else they made an initial rhyme.[186] These
obstacles becoming multiplied stifled their muse in its cradle. All
that art owed to these first modern poets was limited to a sort of
song, gay and sprightly, ordinarily a parody upon a more serious
subject, and which, because it was quite frequently sung with an air
of the dance accompanied by the _vielle_ or _hurdy-gurdy_, their
favourite instrument, was called _vau-de-vielle_, or as is pronounced
today, vaudeville.[187]
The Italians and Spaniards, who received from the Oscan troubadours
their first impulse toward poetry, would have been perhaps as limited
as they, to composing amorous sonnets, madrigals or, at the most,
certain vehement _sylves_,[188] if the Greeks, driven from their
country by the conquests of Mohammed II., had not brought them the
works of the ancients as I have already said. These works, explained
in the _chaire publique_, due to the munificence of the Medicis,
struck particularly the Italians: not however by exciting their poets
to take them as models; the turn of their mind and the form of their
poetry, similar in everything to that of the troubadours, were opposed
too obviously here; but by giving them that sort of emulation which,
without copying the others, makes one strive to equal them. At this
epoch the book of the monk of St. André, attributed as I have said to
Archbishop Turpin, already more than four centuries old, was known by
all Europe, whether by itself, or whether by the numberless imitations
of which it had been the subject. Not only France, Spain, Italy, but
also England and Germany were inundated with a mass of romances and
ballads, wherein were pictured the knights of the court of Charlemagne
and those of the Round Table.[1189] All these works were written in
verse, and the greater part, particularly those composed by the
troubadours or their disciples, intended to be sung, were cut into
strophes. Those of the imitator poets, who had had the force to go
back to the allegorical sense of their model, had only developed and
enriched it with their own knowledge; the others, following their
various methods of considering it, had chosen subjects real and
historical, or indeed had followed ingenuously without aim or plan,
the impulse of their vagabond imagination. In France could be seen
represented by the side of the stories of Tristan, of Lancelot, of the
Grail, and of Ogier-le-Danois, that of Alexander the Great and of the
Bible, that of the Seven Sages and of Judas Maccabeus, that of the
History of the Normands and the Bretons, and finally that of the Rose,
the most famous of all. A certain Guilhaume had published a
philosophical romance upon the nature of beasts.[190]
Already the Italian poets, after having received from the troubadours
the form of their verses and that of their works, had surpassed their
masters and had caused them to be forgotten. Petrarch in the sonnet
and Dante in the _sirvente_ assumed all the glory of their models, and
left not any for the successors[191]; already even Bojardo and some
others had attempted, with the example of Homer, to bring back to the
unity of epopœia, the incongruous and fantastic scenes of the romance,
when Ariosto appeared. This man, gifted with a keen and brilliant
imagination, and possessor of a matchless talent, executed what no one
else had been able to do before him; he was neither inspired by Homer,
nor by Vergil; he copied no one. He learned from them only to raise
himself to the poetic source, to see it where it was and to draw from
it his genius. Then he received a first inspiration and became the
creator of a particular style of poetry which may be called romantic.
Undoubtedly this style is greatly inferior to epopœia; but after all
it is original: its beauties as well as its faults belong to him.
Almost the same moment when Ariosto enriched Europe with his new
poetry, Camoëns wished to naturalize it in Portugal; but the _mélange_
of Vergil and Lucan that he essayed to make, betrayed his lack of
understanding and he did not succeed. I mention it only that you may
observe, _Messieurs_, that the form adopted by the Portuguese poet is
exactly the same as the one which Ariosto, his predecessors and his
successors, have followed in Italy: it is that of the troubadours. The
poems of each are long ballads, intersected by strophes of eight lines
of alternate rhymes which, succeeding one another with the same
measure, can be sung from one end to the other, with an appropriate
air, and which in fact, as J. J. Rousseau has very well remarked, were
sung frequently. In these poems, the essence is in accord with the
form, and it is this that makes their regularity. It is not the
epopœia of Homer drawn from the Orphic source, it is the romantic
poetry of Ariosto, an issue of the fictions attributed to Archbishop
Turpin, which is associated with the verses of the troubadours. These
verses subjected to rhyme are incapable in any tongue of attaining the
sublime heights of Eumolpœia or of Epopœia.
The French poets soon proved it, when coming to understand the works
of Homer and Vergil, they thought themselves able to imitate them by
making use of the same poetic forms by which the authors of _Perceval_
or _Berthe-au-grand-pied_ had profited. It was all to no purpose that
they worked these forms, striking them upon the anvil, polishing them,
they remained inflexible. Ronsard was the first who made the fatal
experiment; and after him a crowd of careless persons came to run
aground upon the same reef. These forms always called up the spirit
with which they were born; the melancholy and unceasing sound,
sonorous with their rhymes in couplets or alternate, had something
soporific which caused the soul to dream and which allured it in spite
of itself, not into the sublime regions of allegory where the genius
of Eumolpœia was nourished, but into vague spaces of fictions, where,
under a thousand whimsical forms the romantic mind evaporates.
Doubtless one would have been able, in France, to limit the Italian
poets, as had been done in Spain and Portugal; but besides, as it
would have been necessary to confine itself to the second inspiration
in a style already secondary, the spirit of the nation, sufficiently
well represented by that of Ronsard, foreseeing from afar its high
destinies, wished to command the summit of Parnassus, before having
discovered the first paths.
The disasters of the first epic poets did not discourage their
successors; vying with each other they sought to make amends; but
instead of seeing the obstacle where it really was, that is to say, in
the incompatible alliance of the essence of Epopœia with the form of
romance, they imagined that lack of talent alone had been prejudicial
to the success of their predecessors. Consequently they devoted
themselves to work with an indefatigable ardour, polishing and
repolishing the rhyme, tearing to pieces and revising twenty times
their works, and finally bringing the form to the highest perfection
that they were able to attain. The century of Louis XIV., so fertile
in able versifiers, in profound rhymers, saw, however, the dawn of
Epic poems only as a signal of their failure. Chapelain had,
nevertheless, shown talent before his catastrophe; wishing to interest
the French nation, he had chosen in its history the sole epic subject
which he found there. Why had he not succeeded? This point was
considered, and the truth still lacking, they went on to imagine that
the fault was inherent in the French tongue, and that it was no longer
capable of rising to the heights of Epopœia: deplorable error, which
for a long time has been harmful to the development of a tongue
destined to become universal and to carry to future centuries the
discoveries of past ones.
Ronsard had felt the difficulty most. Accustomed as he was to read
Greek and Latin works in the original, he had seen clearly that what
prevented the French tongue from following their poetic movement was
particularly the restraint of the rhyme; he had even sought to free it
from this servitude, endeavouring to make the French verses scan
according to the ancient rhythm; but, in another way he had not
appreciated the genius of that tongue which refused to follow this
rhythm. Jodelle, Baïf, Passerat, Desportes, Henri-Etienne, and certain
other savants, have made at different times the same attempt, and
always without results.[192] Each tongue has its own character which
it is necessary to know; ours has not at all the musical prosody of
the Greek and Latin; its syllables are not determined, long and short,
by the simple duration of time, but by the different accentuation and
inflection of the voice. Among our writers the one who has best
understood the nature of this prosody is certainly the abbé d’Olivet:
he declared firstly that he did not believe it possible to make French
verses measured by rhythm; and secondly, that even in the case where
this might be possible, he did not see how this rhythm could be
conformable to that of the Greeks and Latins.[193]
I am absolutely of his opinion on these two points; I am furthermore,
_en partie_, on what he says of the rhyme. I know as he, that it is
not an invention of the barbarous ages; I know even more, that it is
the luxurious production of a very enlightened age; I must say that it
has brought forth thousands of beautiful verses, that it is often to
the poet like a strange genius which comes to the assistance of his
own.[194] God forbid that I pretend to separate it from French verse
of which it is a charm. Rhyme is necessary, even indispensable, to
romantic poetry and to all that is derived from it; and songs,
ballads, vaudevilles, sylves of whatever sort they may be, whatever
form, whatever length they may have, cannot pass away. It adds an
infinite grace to all that is sung or recited with the chivalrous
sentiment. Even the lyric style receives from it a romantic harmony
which accords with it. All the secondary styles admit of this. It can,
up to a certain point, embellish descriptive verse, soften didactic
verse, add to the melancholy of the elegy, to the grace of the idyl;
it can at last become the ornament of dramatic art such as we
possess――that is to say, chivalrous and impassioned; but as to real
Eumolpœia and Epopœia――that is to say, as to what concerns
intellectual and rational poetry, pure or mingled with the enthusiasm
of the passions; prophetic verses or hymns, emanated from the Divinity
or destined to be raised to it; philosophical verse adapted to the
nature of things and developing the diverse moral and physical
systems; epic verses uniting talent to allegorical genius and joining
together the intelligible world to the sentient world; with all these,
rhyme is incompatible. As much as it delights in works of the mind
just so much is it rejected by genius. Fiction harmonizes with it,
allegory is opposed to it. It is chivalrous and not heroic; agreeable,
brilliant, clever, melancholy, sentimental, but it could never be
either profound or sublime.
Let us clear this up with the light of experience, and now that we can
do it to good purpose, let us make a rapid survey of the poetic
condition of the principal nations of the earth.
§ VI