have styled Asia barbarous, without thinking that they thus outraged
their Mother, the one from whom both had their origin and their first
instructions. Europe, more impartial today, begins to feel as she
should toward this ancient and noble country, and rendering to her
venerable scars a filial respect, does not judge her according to her
present weakness, but according to the vigour that she possessed in
the age of her strength, and of which her magnificent productions
still bear the imprint. A philosophical observer, academician of
Calcutta, turning an investigating eye upon that part of the
terrestrial continent, has recognized there five principal nations,
among which that of the Indians holds the first rank; the others are
those of the Chinese, Tartars, Persians, and Arabs.[195] According to
this able writer, primitive India should be considered as a sort of
luminous focus which, concentrating at a very remote epoch the
learning acquired by an earlier people, has reflected it, and has
dispersed the rays upon the neighbouring nations.[196] She has been
the source of Egyptian, Greek, and Latin theogony; she has furnished
the philosophical dogmas with which the first poets of Thrace and
Ionia have adorned the beauties of Eumolpœia and Epopœia; it is she
who has polished the Persians, Chaldeans, Arabs, and Ethiopians; and
who by her numerous colonies has entertained relations with the
Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavians, Celts, Etruscans, and even with the
Peruvians of the other hemisphere.[197]
If one listens to the discourse of those who have been much inclined
to study the savant language of the Indians, Sanskrit, he will be
persuaded that it is the most perfect language that man has ever
spoken. Nothing, according to them, can surpass its riches, its
fertility, its admirable structure; it is the source of the most
poetic conceptions and the mother of all the dialects which are in use
from the Persian Gulf to the waters of China.[198] It is certain that
if anything can prove to the eyes of savants the maternal rights that
this tongue claims over all the others, it is the astonishing variety
of its poetry: what other peoples possess in detail, it possesses _in
toto_. It is there that Eumolpœia, Epopœia, and Dramatic Art shine
with native _éclat_: it is there that poetry divine and rational,
poetry allegorical and passionate, poetry stirring and even romantic,
find their cradle. There, all forms are admitted, all kinds of verse
received. The _Vedas_, pre-eminently sacred books, are, like the Koran
of Mohammed, written in cadenced prose.[199] The _Pouranas_, which
contain the theosophy and philosophy of the Brahmans, their system
concerning Nature, their ideas upon morals and upon natural
philosophy, are composed in philosophical verse not rhymed; they are
attributed to Vyasa, the Orpheus of the Indians. Valmiki, who is their
Homer, has displayed in the _Ramayana_ an epopœia magnificent and
sublime to the highest degree; the dramas, which they call Nataks,
are, according to their style, rhymed and not rhymed: Bheret is
considered as their inventor; Kalidasa as their perfecter.[200] The
other kinds of poetry are all rhymed; their number is immense; their
variety infinite. Nothing equals the industry and delicacy of the
Indian rhymers in this style. The Arabs all skilful as they were, the
Oscan troubadours whose rhyme was their sole merit, have never
approached their models.[201] Thus, not only does one find among the
Indians the measured verse of the Greeks and Romans, not only does one
see there rhythms unknown to these two peoples, but one recognizes
also there our rhyme with combinations of which we have no idea.
I ought to make an important observation here: it is, that whereas
India, mistress of Asia, held the sceptre of the earth, she still
recognized only the eumolpœia of the _Vedas_ and the _Pouranas_, only
the epopœia of _Maha-Bharata_ and the _Ramayana_; her poetry was the
language of the gods and she gave herself the name of _Ponya-Rhoumi_,
Land of Virtues. It was only when a long prosperity had enervated her,
that the love for novelty, the caprice of fashion and perhaps, as it
happened in Greece, the deviation of the theatre, caused her to seek
for beauties foreign to veritable poetry. It is not a rare thing to
pass the point of perfection when one has attained it. The astonishing
flexibility of Sanskrit, the abundance of its final consonants opens a
double means for corruption. Poets multiplied words believing to
multiply ideas; they doubled rhymes; they tripled them in the same
verse believing to increase proportionably its harmony. Their
imagination bending before an inspiring genius became vagabond; they
thought to rise to the sublime, and fell into the bombastic. At last,
knowing no longer how to give emphasis and importance to their
extravagant thoughts, they created words of such length that, in order
to contain them, it was necessary to forge verses of four _cæsuras_ of
nineteen syllables each.[202]
It was, therefore, at the epoch of the decadence of the Indian Empire,
that rhyme usurped poetry. It would be difficult today to say whether
it was an innovation or a simple renovation. However it may be, it is
probable that it passed rapidly from the ruling nation to subject
nations where it was diversely welcomed according to the language and
particular mind of each people.
If one can believe the annals of the Indians, China was one of their
colonies for a long time schismatic and rebellious.[203] If one can
lend faith to the most ancient tradition of the Chinese, they form
from time immemorial a body of autochthonous people.[204] The
discussion of this historic difficulty would be out of place here.
Suffice it to say, that the Chinese having commenced by having rhymed
verses, and preserving by character and by religion, with an
inviolable respect, the ancient usages, have never had but a mediocre
poetry, absolutely foreign to epopœia.[205] Their principal sacred
books, called _Kings_, are composed of symbolic or hieroglyphic
characters, forming by groups sorts of tableaux, of profound and often
sublime conception, but bereft of what we would call eloquence of
language. These are mute images, incommunicable by means of the voice,
and which the reader must consider with the eyes and meditate long
upon in order to comprehend them.
The Tartars who reign today in China and who are distinguished from
the others by the epithet of Manchus, although possessors of a formed
tongue whose richness certain authors praise,[206] have not any kind
of poetry as I have already remarked.[207] The other Tartars were
hardly more advanced before being placed by their conquests within
reach of the learning of the vanquished people. The Turks had no
alphabetical characters. The Huns were ignorant even of its existence.
The proud vanquisher of Asia, Genghis Khan did not find, according to
the best historians, a single man among the Mongolians capable of
writing his despatches. The alphabet of fourteen letters that the
Uïgurian Tartars possess, appears to have been given them by the
ancient Persians,[208] from whom they also received the little that
they knew of poetry.
These Persians, today imitators of the Arabs, were in very remote
times disciples of the Indians. Their sacred tongue then called Zend,
in which are written the fragments that remain to us of Zoroaster, was
a dialect of Sanskrit.[209] These fragments that we owe to the
indefatigable zeal of Anquetil Duperron, appear to be written, as the
Vedas, or as all the sacred books of India, in cadenced prose. After
the _Zend-Avesta_, the most famous book among the Parsees is the
_Boun-Dehesh_, written in Pehlevi, and containing the cosmogony of
Zoroaster. Pehlevi, which is derived from Chaldaic Nabatæan, indicates
a translation,[210] and testifies that Persia had already passed from
under the dominion of India to that of Assyria. But when, thanks to
the conquests of Cyrus, Persia had become free and mistress of Asia,
Pehlevi, which recalled its ancient servitude, was banished from the
court by Bahman-Espandiar, whom we call Artaxerxes Longimanus.[211]
The Parsee replaced it; this last dialect, modified by Greek under the
successors of Alexander, mixed with many Tartar words under the
Parthian kings, polished by the Sassanidæ, usurped at last by the
Arabs and subjected to the intolerant influence of Islamism, had no
longer its own character: it has taken, in the modern Persian, all the
movements of the Arabic, notwithstanding its slight analogy with
it[212]; following its example, it has concentrated all the beauties
of poetry in rhyme and since then it has had neither Eumolpœia nor
Epopœia.
As to the Arab, no one is ignorant of the degree to which he is a
slave to rhyme. Already, by a sufficiently happy conjecture, a French
writer had made the first use of rhyme in France coincide with the
irruption of the Moors into Europe at the beginning of the eighth
century.[213] He has said that Provence had been the door by which
this novelty was introduced into France. However difficult it may
appear of proving rigorously this assertion, lacking monuments, it
cannot, however, be denied that it may be very probable, above all
considering what influence the Arabs exercised upon the sciences and
arts in the south of France after they had penetrated through Spain.
Now, there is no country on earth where the poetry that I have called
romantic has been cultivated with more constancy and success than in
Arabia; rhyme, if she has received it from India, was naturalized
there by long usage, in such a way as to appear to have had birth
there. If it must be said, the Arab tongue seems more apt at receiving
it than the Sanskrit. Rhyme seems more requisite to poetry there, on
account of the great quantity and inflexibility of the monosyllables,
which joining together only with much difficulty to form the numerous
and rhythmic combinations, had need of its assistance to soften their
harshness and to supply the harmony which they lacked.
Neverthless, whatever may be the pretension of Arabia to the invention
of rhyme, and even to that of romantic poetry, one cannot be
prevented, when one possesses without prejudice and to a certain
extent the distinguishing character of the Asiatic languages, from
seeing that there are proofs in the Arabic itself which give evidence
in favour of India. Such is, for example, the word _Diwan_,[214] by
which the Arabs designate the collection of their ancient
poetries.[215] This word, which is attached to the Sanskrit expression
_Dewa_ or _Diwa_, designates all that is divine, celestial; all that
emanates from the Universal Intelligence[216]: it is the poetry of the
Greeks, the language of the gods, or the voice of the Universal Being
of the Egyptians and the Phœnicians.
However, the Arabic _Diwan_――that is to say, the poetic collection of
that nation, goes back to most ancient times. One finds in it verses
attributed to the first Hebrew patriarchs and even to Adam[217]; for
since the introduction of Islamism, the cosmogony of Moses has become
that of the Mussulmans, as it has been ours since the establishment of
Christianity. It is there, in this _diwan_, that the most authentic
traditions are preserved: they are all in verse and resemble greatly,
as to form and doubtless as to substance, that which the monk of St.
André has transmitted to us through the court of Charlemagne. It is
the same chivalrous spirit and the same romantic fictions. The Persian
poet Firdausi appears to have followed similar traditions
concerning the ancient kings of Iran, in his famous poem entitled
_Shah-Namah_.[218] The wonders which reign in these traditions have
been transmitted no doubt by the Arabs, with the artifice of rhyme:
both have the same spirit. The protecting fairies of the knights, the
giant persecutors of ladies, the enchanters, the magic, and all those
illusions are the fruits of that brilliant and dreamy imagination
which characterizes the modern Orientals. We have enthusiastically
enjoyed them in the depths of the barbarity where we were plunged; we
have allowed ourselves to be drawn by the charms of rhyme, like
children in the cradle, whom their nurses put to sleep by the
monotonous sound of a lullaby. Escaped from that state of languor, and
struck at last with a gleam of real intelligence, we have compared
Greece and Arabia, the songs of epopœia and those of the ballads; we
have blushed at our choice; we have wished to change it; but owing to
the captivating form always more or less the substance, we have only
succeeded in making mixtures more or less happy, according to the
secondary mode that we follow.
Rhyme, brought into Europe by the Arabs more than a thousand years
ago, spread by degrees among all nations, in such a way that when one
wishes to examine its origin with accuracy, one no longer knows
whether it is indigenous there or exotic. One finds on all sides only
rhymed verses. The Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, French, Germans of
all dialects, Hollanders, Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, all
rhyme.[219] The modern Greeks themselves have forgotten their ancient
rhythm in order to assume our style.[220] If anything could, however,
make one doubt that rhyme may be natural to Europe, it is that ancient
Scandinavian, in which are written the precious fragments which have
come down to us concerning the mythological cult of the Celts, our
ancestors, does not rhyme; also it rises often to the sublimity of
Eumolpœia.[221] This observation, which makes us reject Arabia, will
take us back to India, if we consider that there is plausible
presumption in believing that the Phœnicians and the Egyptians who had
so much intercourse with the Arabs, did not rhyme, since the sacred
book of the Hebrews, the _Sepher_, that we call the _Bible_, and which
appears to have issued from the Egyptian sanctuaries, is written in
cadenced rhyme, as the _Zend-Avesta_ of the Parsees and the _Vedas_ of
the Indians.[222]
The outline that I have just sketched confirms, _Messieurs_, what I
have wished to prove to you and which is the subject of this
discourse, the distinction that should be made between the essence and
the form of poetry, and the reciprocal influence that should be
recognized between these two parts of the science. You have seen that
wherever rhyme has dominated exclusively, as in Asia among the
Chinese, Arabians, Persians; as in Europe among all the modern
peoples, it has excluded epopœia and has replaced allegorical genius
by the spirit of romantic fictions; you have seen that wherever
eumolpique poetry has wished to appear, whether moral or rational,
theosophical or philosophical, it has been obliged to have recourse to
a particular prose, when the form of poetry has resisted it, as has
happened in China for the _Kings_, in Persia for the _Zend-Avesta_, in
Arabia for the _Koran_; you have seen that wherever poetry has been
preserved purely rhythmical, as in Greece and with the Romans, it has
admitted eumolpœia and epopœia without mixture; and finally, that
wherever the two forms meet each other with all their modifications,
as in India, it gives way in turn to all the different kinds,
intellectual and rational, epic, dramatic, and romantic.
Now, what Hindustan was for Asia, France should be for Europe. The
French tongue, as the Sanskrit, should tend towards universality; it
should be enriched with all the learning acquired in the past
centuries, so as to transmit it to future generations. Destined to
float upon the _débris_ of a hundred different dialects, it ought to
be able to save from the shipwreck of time all their beauties and all
their remarkable productions. Nevertheless, how will it be done, if
its poetic forms are not open to the spirit of all the poetries, if
its movement, arrested by obstacles cannot equal that of the tongues
which have preceded it in the same career? By what means, I ask you,
will it succeed to the universal dominion of Sanskrit, if, dragging
always after it the frivolous jingling of Arabic sounds, it cannot
even succeed to the partial domination of Greek or Latin? Must it be
necessary then that it betray its high destinies, and that the
providential decree which founds the European empire, exempt it from
the glory which it promises to the French name?
I have told you, _Messieurs_, in beginning this discourse, that it was
in the interest of science alone, that I entered this career: it is
assuredly not by my poor poetic talent that I have aspired to the
honour of occupying your attention; but by a generous instinct, which,
making me ignore many of the considerations which might have arrested
me, has persuaded me that I could be useful. I have dared to conceive
the possibility of composing, in French, eumolpique verse, which might
neither be measured by musical rhythm foreign to our tongue, nor
enchained by rhyme opposed to all intellectual and rational movement,
and which however might have neither the harshness, nor the discord of
that which has been called, up to this time, blank verse.
Many French writers have tried to make verse deprived of rhyme. Some
have sought to imitate the measures of the ancients, others have
satisfied themselves with copying certain moderns who do not rhyme.
Each of them has misunderstood the essential character of his tongue.
Vossius alone appears to have foreseen the principles without
developing them, when he has said that French verse might be
considered as having only one foot.[223] This is exactly true in
examining rhythm only in itself, and giving to each hemistich the name
of time: but if one considers this one foot, whether hexameter or
pentameter, as formed of two times equal or unequal, it is perceived
that it participates, through its final, in two natures: the one
strong and forceful, that we name masculine; the other soft and
languid, that we call feminine. Therefore, French verse having but one
rhythmic foot, differs, however, in the style of this foot and can be
considered in two relations. Let us take for example the hexameter
verse. The rhythmic foot which constitutes it is composed of two equal
times distinguished by the cæsura, the last of which is masculine or
feminine: Masculine, as in:
Rome, l’unique objet de mon ressentiment!
Rome, à qui vient ton bras d’immoler mon amant!
Feminine, as in:
Rome qui t’a vu naître et que ton cœur adore!
Rome enfin que je hais parce qu’elle t’honore!
In rhymed verses, such as these I have just cited, two feet of the
same kind are obliged to follow one another on account of the rhyme
which links them; they then form but one whole and, proceeding abreast
without being separated, they injure by their forced mass the rapidity
of expression and flight of thought. If a third foot of the same kind
occur with the other two feet, rhyming together, it would have to
rhyme with them to prevent an insupportable discordance, which is not
tolerated; a fourth or a fifth foot would submit to the same law, so
that, if the poet wished to fill his piece with masculine verses
alone, it would be necessary that he should make them proceed upon a
single rhyme, as the Arabs do today and as our early troubadours did,
following their example. The French poet can vary his rhyme only by
varying the style of his verses and by mingling alternately together
the masculine and feminine finals.
As these two kinds of finals are dissimilar without being opposed,
they may be brought together without the need of rhyming; their
meeting, far from being disagreeable is, on the contrary, only
pleasing; two finals of the same kind, whether masculine or feminine,
can never clash without causing the same sound――that is, without
rhyming; but it is not thus with the finals of different kinds, since
the rhyme is impossible in this case. So that, to make what I call
eumolpique verses, it suffices to avoid the meeting of finals of the
same kind, whose impact necessitates the rhyme, by making one kind
succeed another continually, and opposing alternately the masculine
and feminine, the mingling of which is irrelevant to eumolpœia. Here
is all the mechanism of my verses: they are fluent as to form; as to
the essence which is expedient for them――that is another thing: for it
is rarely encountered.
Those who have made blank verse in French have spoken justly of it
with the greatest contempt; these verses, miserable as to substance,
without poetic fire, written as the flattest prose, lacking movement
and grace, had, furthermore, the insupportable fault of not
recognizing the genius of the French tongue, by making finals of the
same kind clash constantly, and by not distinguishing that which is
called rhyme from that which repels it.
Now that I have made as clear as possible my motives and my means,
there remains only, _Messieurs_, for me to submit to your judgment the
translation that I have made, in eumolpique verse, of the piece of
Greek poetry which comprises the doctrine of Pythagoras in seventy-one
lines called, _par excellence_, Golden Verses. This piece, venerable
by its antiquity and by the celebrated philosopher whose name it
bears, belonging to eumolpœia, without any mixture of passion, is
sufficiently known to savants so that I need not speak about what
concerns its particular merit. This would mean, moreover, a matter of
some explanations. At any rate, I believe it advisable before passing
to this final subject, to give you certain examples of the use of my
verses as applied to epopœia, so that you may judge, since they are in
hands as incapable as mine, what they might become when used by men of
superior genius and talent. I will choose, for this purpose, the
exposition and invocation of the principal epic poems of Europe, in
order to have a fixed subject for comparison. I will translate line by
line, and will imitate, as well as is possible for me, the movement
and harmony of the poet that I may have before me. This labour, which
I hope will not be without some interest for the illustrious
academicians whom I am addressing, will furnish me the occasion of
showing by certain characteristic traits the genius of the language
and poetry of the different modern peoples of Europe; and I will
terminate thus the outline that I have sketched touching the poetic
conditions of the principal nations of the earth.
§ VII
I am beginning with the creator of epopœia, with Homer. It is easy to
see by the manner in which this divine man blends, from the opening
lines of the _Iliad_, the exposition and invocation, that, full of a
celestial inspiration that he was the first to receive, he seeks to
pour forth the superabundant fire which consumes him, and to throw
into the soul of his hearer the impassioned enthusiasm which masters
and controls his own. The following lines will suffice to make known
the subject of a work which fills twenty-four cantos.
Déesse! viens chanter la colère d’Achille,
Fatale, et pour les Grecs si fertile en malheurs,
Qui, d’avance, aux enfers, précipitant en foule
Les âmes des héros, livra leurs corps sanglants
Aux dogues affamés: ainsi Jupiter même
Le voulut, quand la haine eut divisé les cœurs
Du roi des rois Atride et du divin Achille.
Lequel des Immortels provoqua ce courroux?
Apollon irrité, qui, pour punir Atride,
Ravagea son armée: et les peuples mourraient!
O Goddess! sing the wrath of Peleus’ son,
Achilles; sing the deadly wrath that brought
Woes numberless upon the Greeks, and swept
To Hades many a valiant soul, and gave
Their limbs a prey to dogs and birds of air,――
For so had Jove appointed,――from the time
When the two chiefs, Atrides, King of men,
And great Achilles, parted first as foes.
Which of the gods put strife between the chiefs,
That they should thus contend? Latona’s son
And Jove’s. Incensed against the king, he bade
A deadly pestilence appear among
The army, and the men were perishing.
BRYANT.
Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος,
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκεν,
πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι (Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή),
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρείδης τε, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
Τίς τ’ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;
Λητοῦς καὶ Διὸς υἱός. Ὁ γὰρ βασιλῆϊ χολωθεὶς
νοῦσον ἀνὰ στρατὸν ὦρσε κακὴν, ὀλέκοντο δὲ λαοὶ.
I dispense with making any reflection upon the charm of the original
verses and upon the admirable sentiment which terminates them. It
would be a very strange thing not to be impressed by the beauties of
this poetry. Let us pass on to Vergil.