There are literary reputations in France and England which seem, like the
fairies, to be unable to cross running water. Dean Swift, according to
M. Paul de Saint-Victor, is a great man at Dover, a pigmy at Calais--"Son
talent, qui enthousiasme l'Angleterre, n'inspire ailleurs qu'un morne
etonnement." M. Paul De Saint-Victor was a fair example of the French
critic, and what he says about Swift was possibly true,--for him. There
is not much resemblance between the Dean and M. Theodore de Banville,
except that the latter too is a poet who has little honour out of his own
country. He is a charming singer at Calais; at Dover he inspires _un
morne etonnement_ (a bleak perplexity). One has never seen an English
attempt to describe or estimate his genius. His unpopularity in England
is illustrated by the fact that the London Library, that respectable
institution, does not, or did not, possess a single copy of any one of
his books. He is but feebly represented even in the collection of the
British Museum. It is not hard to account for our indifference to M. De
Banville. He is a poet not only intensely French, but intensely
Parisian. He is careful of form, rather than abundant in manner. He has
no story to tell, and his sketches in prose, his attempts at criticism,
are not very weighty or instructive. With all his limitations, however,
he represents, in company with M. Leconte de Lisle, the second of the
three generations of poets over whom Victor Hugo reigned.
M. De Banville has been called, by people who do not like, and who
apparently have not read him, _un saltimbanque litteraire_ (a literary
rope-dancer). Other critics, who do like him, but who have limited their
study to a certain portion of his books, compare him to a worker in gold,
who carefully chases or embosses dainty processions of fauns and maenads.
He is, in point of fact, something more estimable than a literary rope-
dancer, something more serious than a working jeweller in rhymes. He
calls himself _un raffine_; but he is not, like many persons who are
proud of that title, _un indifferent_ in matters of human fortune. His
earlier poems, of course, are much concerned with the matter of most
early poems--with Lydia and Cynthia and their light loves. The verses of
his second period often deal with the most evanescent subjects, and they
now retain but a slight petulance and sparkle, as of champagne that has
been too long drawn. In a prefatory plea for M. De Banville's poetry one
may add that he "has loved our people," and that no poet, no critic, has
honoured Shakespeare with brighter words of praise.
Theodore de Banville was born at Moulin, on March 14th 1823, and he is
therefore three years younger than the dictionaries of biography would
make the world believe. He is the son of a naval officer, and, according
to M. Charles Baudelaire, a descendant of the Crusaders. He came much
too late into the world to distinguish himself in the noisy exploits of
1830, and the chief event of his youth was the publication of "Les
Cariatides" in 1842. This first volume contained a selection from the
countless verses which the poet produced between his sixteenth and his
nineteenth year. Whatever other merits the songs of minors may possess,
they have seldom that of permitting themselves to be read. "Les
Cariatides" are exceptional here. They are, above all things, readable.
"On peut les lire a peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He
admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) _vers de
societe_, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin
said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many
cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature of
that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of Dorat,
the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. There is more
than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his lifelong devotion
to letters and to great men of letters--Shakespeare, Moliere, Homer,
Victor Hugo. These are his gods; the memory of them is his muse. His
enthusiasm is worthy of one who, though born too late to see and know the
noble wildness of 1830, yet lives on the recollections, and is
strengthened by the example, of that revival of letters. Whatever one
may say of the _renouveau_, of romanticism, with its affectations, the
young men of 1830 were sincere in their devotion to liberty, to poetry,
to knowledge. One can hardly find a more brilliant and touching belief
in these great causes than that of Edgar Quinet, as displayed in the
letters of his youth. De Banville fell on more evil times.
When "Les Cariatides" was published poets had begun to keep an eye on the
Bourse, and artists dabbled in finance. The new volume of song in the
sordid age was a November primrose, and not unlike the flower of Spring.
There was a singular freshness and hopefulness in the verse, a wonderful
"certitude dans l'expression lyrique," as Sainte-Beuve said. The mastery
of musical speech and of various forms of song was already to be
recognised as the basis and the note of the talent of De Banville. He
had style, without which a man may write very nice verses about heaven
and hell and other matters, and may please thousands of excellent people,
but will write poetry--never. Comparing De Banville's boy's work with
the boy's work of Mr. Tennyson, one observes in each--"Les Cariatides" as
in "The Hesperides"--the _timbre_ of a new voice. Poetry so fresh seems
to make us aware of some want which we had hardly recognised, but now are
sensible of, at the moment we find it satisfied.
It is hardly necessary to say that this gratifying and welcome
strangeness, this lyric originality, is nearly all that M. De Banville
has in common with the English poet whose two priceless volumes were
published in the same year as "Les Cariatides?" The melody of Mr.
Tennyson's lines, the cloudy palaces of his imagination, rose
"As Ilion, like a mist rose into towers,"
when Apollo sang. The architecture was floating at first, and confused;
while the little theatre of M. De Banville's poetry, where he sat piping
to a dance of nixies, was brilliantly lit and elegant with fresh paint
and gilding. "The Cariatides" support the pediment and roof of a theatre
or temple in the Graeco-French style. The poet proposed to himself
"A cote de Venus et du fils de Latone
Peindre la fee et la peri."
The longest poem in the book, and the most serious, "La Voie Lactee,"
reminds one of the "Palace of Art," written before the after-thought,
before the "white-eyed corpses" were found lurking in corners. Beginning
with Homer, "the Ionian father of the rest,"--
"Ce dieu, pere des dieux qu'adore Ionie,"--
the poet glorifies all the chief names of song. There is a long
procession of illustrious shadows before Shakespeare comes--Shakespeare,
whose genius includes them all.
"Toute creation a laquelle on aspire,
Tout reve, toute chose, emanent de Shakespeare."