It was in the already far-off and perhaps heroic times of the Art
Theatre; we were brought to hear and see _la Fille aux Mains coupées_:
To me there remains a most pleasant, complete and perfect memory
of a play that truly gave the exquisite and keen sensation of the
definitive. That hardly endured an hour; of it remains verses which
makes a poem with difficulty forgotten.
Pierre Quillard has reunited his early poetic writings under a title
which for more than one will be presumptuous: _La Gloire du Verbe_.
To dare this, is to be sure of oneself; to have the consciousness of
mastery; to affirm, more or less, that coming after Leconte de Lisle
and De Heredia, one will not flag in a craft demanding, along with
splendor of imagination, a singular sureness of hand. He has not lied;
a very skillful setter, he truly glorifies the multiple jewels of the
word. He makes the water of pearls smile and the rainbow of decomposed
diamonds laugh.
Captain of a galley filled with precious; slaves, he sails among the
tempting perils of purple archipelagos (as the Greek isles are said to
appear at certain hours), and when the night comes he seeks the sandy
shore of a violet gulf,
Dans la splendeur des clairs de lune violets.
(Tr. 24)
And he stays for the divine apparition:
Alors des profondeurs et des ténèbres saintes
Comme un jeune soleil sort des gouffres marins,
Blanche, laissant couler des épaules aux reins
Ses cheveux où nageaient de pâles hyacinthes,
Une femme surgit....
(Tr. 25)
whose eyes are gulfs of joy, love and terror, and where one sees
reflected the whole world of things from grass to the infinity of seas.
And she speaks: "Poet who, amidst life, exhibits astonishments and
desires and loves, you appear moved by sensual joys and you suffer, for
these joys you feel are truly vain, but
Si tu n'étreins que des chimères, si tu bois
L'enivrement de vins illusoires, qu'importe!
Le soleil meurt, la foule imaginaire est morte
Mais le monde subsiste en ta seule âme: vois!
Les jours se sont fanées comme des roses brèves,
Mais ton Verbe a créé le mirage où tu vis....
(Tr. 26)
and my beauty, you give it form and gesture; I am your creation, I
exist because you think of me and because you evoke me."
Such is the leading idea of that _Gloire du Verbe_, one of the rare
poems of that time, where the idea and word march in harmonious rhythm.
At sunrise the galley again set sail: Pierre Quillard departed for
distant countries.
His is a pagan soul, or which would like to be pagan, for if his eyes
eagerly seek sensible beauty, his dream lingers, wishing to force the
portal behind which sleeps the beauty enclosed in things. He is truly
the more disturbed that he deigns not to mention it, and the glance of
the captives disturbs him with more than a shudder. As he knows all the
théogonies and all literatures,
J'ai connu tous les dieux du ciel et de la terre,
(Tr. 27)
as he has drunk at all sources, he knows more than one way to get
intoxicated: dilettante of a superior kind, when he will have worn out
the joy of sailing, when he will have chosen his residence (doubtless
near an old, holy fountain), having collected much, having sown many
noble seeds, he will see himself master of a royal garden and of a
people odorous with flowers,
Fleurs éternelles, fleurs égales aux dieux!
(Tr. 28)