Domaine De Fée, a Song of Songs recited by one lone voice, very
charming and very amorous, in a Verlainian setting,--O eternal Verlaine!
O bel avril épanoui,
Qu'importe ta chanson franche,
Tes lilas blancs, tes aubépines et l'or fleuri
De ton soleil par les branches,
Si loin de moi la bien-aimée
Dans les brumes du nord est restée.
(Tr. 57)
That is the tone. It is very simple, very delicate, very pure and
sometimes biblical:
J'étais allé jusu'au fond du jardin,
Quand dans la nuit une invisible main
Me terrassa plus forte que moi--
Une voix me dit: C'est pour ta joie.
(Tr. 58)
_Dilectus meus descendit in hortum_ ... but here the poet, as chaste,
is less sensual: The Orient has thrown a surplice over an Occidental
soul, and if he still cultivates large white lilies in his enclosed
garden, he has learned the pleasure of escaping, by secret paths known
to fairies, "in the forest noiselessly laughing", as they gather
bindweed, broom,
Et les fleurettes aventurières le long des haies.
(Tr. 59)
This poem of twenty-four leaves is doubtless the most delicious little
book of love verses given us since the _Fêtes Galantes_, and with the
_Chansons d'amant_ are perhaps the only verses of these last years
where sentiment dare confess in utter frankness, with the perfect and
touching grace of divine sincerity. If, in some of these pages, there
still remains a touch of rhetoric, it is because Kahn, even at the feet
of the Sulamite, has not renounced the pleasure of surprising by the
ever novel deftness of the jongleur and virtuoso, and if he sometimes
treats the French language tyrannically, it is that for him she has
always had the affectionate yieldings of a slave. He abuses his power a
little, giving some words meanings that hang on the skirts of others,
making phrases yield to a too summary syntax, but these are mischievous
habits not exclusively personal to him. His science of rhythm and
mastery in wielding free verse, he borrows from no one.
Was Kahn the first? To whom do we owe free verse? To Rimbaud, whose
_Illuminations_ appeared in _Vogue_ in 1886, to Laforgue, who at
the same period, in the same precious little review,--conducted by
Kahn--published _Légende_ and _Solo de lune_, and, finally, to Kahn
himself; at that time he wrote:
Void l'allégresse des âmes d'automne,
La Ville s'évapore en illusions proches,
Void se voiler de violet et d'orangé les porches
De la nuit sans lune
Princesse, qu'as tu fait de ta tiare orfévrée?
(Tr. 60)
--and particularly to Walt Whitman, whose majestic license was then
beginning to be appreciated.
How joyfully this tiny _Vogue_, which today sells at the price of
miniature parchments, was read under the galleries of the Odéon by
timid youths drunk with the odor of novelty which these pale little
pages exhaled.
Kahn's last collection, _la Pluie et le Beau temps_, has not changed
our opinion of his talent and originality: he remains equal to himself
with his two tendencies, here less in harmony, towards sentiment and
the picturesque, quite apparent if one compares with _Image_, that so
mournful hymn,
O Jésus couronné de ronces,
Qui saigne en tous coeurs meurtris,
(Tr. 61)
the _Dialogue de Zélanae_,
Bonjour mynher, bonjour myffrau,
(Tr. 62)
as pretty and sweet as some old almanac print. Here, in the middle
tone, is a truly faultless lied:
L'heure du nuage blanc s'est fondue sur la plaine
En reflets de sang, en flocons de laine,
O bruyères roses, ô ciel couleur de sang.
L'heure du nuage d'or a pâli sur la plaine,
Et tombent des voiles lents et longs de blanche laine
O bruyères mauves--ô ciel couleur de sang.
L'heure du nuage d'or a crevé sur la plaine,
Les roseaux chantaient doux sous le vent de haine,
O bruyères rouges--ô ciel couleur de sang.
L'heure du nuage d'or a passé sur la plaine
Ephémèrement: sa splendeur est lointaine,
O bruyère d'or--ô ciel couleur de sang.
(Tr. 63)
Words, words! Doubtless, but well selected and artistically blended.
Kahn is before everything else an artist: sometimes he is more.