Upon the first appearance of his _Chauves-Souris_ in violet velvet,
the question was seriously put whether de Montesquiou was a poet
or an amateur of poetry, and whether the fashionable world could
be harmonized with the cult of the Nine Sisters, or of any one of
them, for nine women are a lot. But to discourse in such fashion is
to confess one's unfamiliarity with that logical operation called
the dissociation of ideas, for it seems elementary logic separately
to evaluate the worth or beauty of the tree and its fruit, of man
and his works. Whether jewel or pebble, the book will be judged in
itself, disregarding the source, the quarry or the stream from which
it comes, and the diamond will not change its name, whether hailing
from the Cape or from Golconda. To criticism the social life of a poet
matters as little as to Polymnia herself, who indifferently welcomes
into her circle the peasant Burns and the partician Byron, Villon the
purse-snatcher and Frederick II, the king: Art's book of heraldry and
that of Hozier are not written in the same style.
So we will not disturb ourselves with unraveling the flax from the
distaff, or ascertaining what of illusiveness de Montesquiou and his
status of a man of fashion have been able to add to the renown of the
poet.
The poet, here, is "a précieuse".
Were those women really so ridiculous, who, to place themselves in the
tone of some fine and gallant poets, imagined new ways of speech, and,
through a hatred of the common, affected a singularity of mind, costume
and gesture? Their crime, after all, was in not wishing to conform
with the world, and it seems that they paid dearly for this, they--and
the entire French poetry which, for a century and a half, truly feared
ridicule too much. Poets at last are freed from such horrors; in fact
they are now allowed to avow their originality; far from forbidding
them to go naked, criticism encourages them to assume the free easy
dress of the gymnosophist. But some of them are tattooed.
And that is really the true quarrel with de Montesquiou: his
originality is excessively tattooed. Its beauty recalls, not without
melancholy, the complicated figurations with which the old Australian
chieftains were wont to ornament themselves; there is even an odd
refinement in the nuances, the design, and the amusing audacities of
tone and lines. He achieves the arabesque better than the figure, and
sensation better than thought. If he thinks, it is through ideographic
signs, like the Japanese:
Poisson, grue, aigle, fleur, bambou qu'un oiseau ploie,
Tortue, iris, pivoine, anémone et moineaux.
(Tr. 54)
He loves these juxtapositions of words, and when he chooses them, like
those above, soft and vivid, the landscape he seeks is quite pleasantly
evoked, but often one sees, relieved against an artificial sky, hard
unfamiliar forms, processions of carnival larvae--Or rather, women,
girls, birds,--baubles deformed by a too Oriental fancy; baubles and
trinkets:
Je voudrais que ce vers fût un bibelot d'art,
(Tr. 55)
is the aesthetics of de Montesquiou, but the bauble is no more than an
amusing fragile thing to be placed under a glass case or closet,--yes,
preferably in a closet. Then, disburdened of all this grotto work,
all this lacquer, all this delicate paste, and as he himself wittily
says, all these "shelves of infusoria," the poet's museum would become
an agreeable gallery, where one would pleasantly muse before the many
metamorphoses of a soul anxious to give a new nuance-laden grace to
beauty. With the half of the _Hortensias bleus_ one could make a book,
still quite thick, which would be almost entirely composed of fine
or proud or delicate poetry. The author of _Ancilla,_ of _Mortuis
ignotis_, and of _Tables vives_ would appear what he truly is,
excluding all travesty,--a good poet.
Here is a part of the _Tables vives_, whose title is obscure, but whose
verses have beautiful clarity, despite the too familiar sound of some
too Parnassian rimes and some verbal incertitudes:
... Apprenez à l'enfant à prier les flots bleus,
Car c'est le ciel d'en bas dont la nue est l'écume,
Le reflet du soleil qui sur la mer s'allume
Est plus doux à fixer pour nos yeux nébuleux.
Apprenez à l'enfant à prier le ciel pur,
C'est l'océan d'en haut dont la vague est nuage.
L'ombre d'une tempête abondante en naufrage
Pour nos coeurs est moins triste à suivre dans l'azur.
Apprenez à l'enfant à prier toutes choses:
L'abeille de l'esprit compose un miel de jour
Sur les vivants _ave_ du rosaire des roses,
Chapelet de parfums aux dizaines d'amour....
(Tr. 56)
In short, de Montesquiou exists: blue hortensia, green rose or white
peony, he is of those flowers one curiously gazes upon in a bed of
flowers, whose name one asks and whose memory one cherishes.