"Entre des murs de fer et pierre
Soudainement se lève altière
La force en rut de la matière,"
or even the Bourse itself, where he sings in feverish staccato rhythm
the
"Langues sèches, regards aigus, gestes inverses,
Et cervelles qu'en tourbillons les millions traversent."
But it is typical of Verhaeren's essential optimism that after
describing with Zolaesque detail both a strike and a "shop of luxury,"
he should find the ransom of the future in
"La maison de la science au loin dardée
Obstinément par à travers les faits jusqu'aux idées."
In _Les Heures Claires_ (1896) the drastic violence of _Les Villes
Tentaculaires_ abates for the time being into a mood of resigned, but
yet robust melancholy, which immortalises the sweetness, deepness, and
softness of the poet's love for his wife.
In _Les Forces Tumultueuses_, however, the poet has got once again
into the full swing of his drastic stride. The mood is to some extent
the same as that of _Les Villes Tentaculaires_, though the Zolaesque
concreteness of detail is merged in the broadness of a genuine
Lucretian sweep. The book consists of a series of lyrical poems,
lyrical, albeit, in the sense rather of Pindar than of Herrick, which
exalt the various phases of human energy. Thus in the poem, _L'Art,_
Verhaeren soars upwards with a tremendous rush:
"D'un bond
Son pied cassant le sol profond
Son double aile dans la lumière
Le cou tendu, le feu sous les paupières
Partit, vers le soleil et vers l'extase,
Ce dévoreur d'espace et de splendeur Pégase."
In _Les Maîtres_ the poet describes the various types of superman, from
"the monk" of the Middle Ages to the banker of the twentieth century,
who dominates the world as he "binds sinister destiny to his bourgeois
will," and sows in the distance his winged gold.
"Son or aile qui s'enivre d'espace,
Son or planant, son or rapace,
Son or vivant,
Son or dont s'éclairent et rayonnent les vents,
Son or qui boit la terre
Par les pores de son misère
Son or ardent, son or furtif, son or retors.
Morceau d'espoir et de soleil--son or!"
Some mention must also be made of the poem, _Les Femmes_, which,
subdivided into _L'Éternelle, L'Amante,_ _L'Amazone_, ranks in our view
as the greatest sex poem of the century. In contrast, for instance,
with Swinburne, who treats sex rather as a thing of beauty and of
pleasure than as an underlying world-force, and who has both the
advantage and the disadvantage of the specifically classical conception
of life, Verhaeren, whether he rings his changes in _L'Amante_ on the
soft refrain, "Mon rêve est embarqué dans une île flottante," shows in
_L'Amazone_ that the New Woman can be something considerably more poetic
than a Strindbergian monstrosity, or sings in _L'Éternelle_ her "who
thinks she encloses the whole world within her flesh," will boom out
again and again the cosmic and universal peal. The verse throughout is
as beautiful as can be desired. But it has something more than beauty;
it has stature, majesty, speed, force, that exaltation of reality which
is the essence of the highest poetry.
In the poems, _La Science_, _L'Erreur, La Folie_, _Les Cultes_,
Verhaeren proceeds to formulate his own philosophy of life, and his
prophetic enthusiasm for the new modern truths, under whose clear feet
the old texts have crumbled, as he expounds
"Comment la vie est une à travers tous les êtres
Qu'ils soient matière instruit esprit ou volonté
Forêt myriadaire et rouge où s'enchevêtrent
Les débordements fous de la fécondité."
Put shortly, his philosophy is a compound of those of Nietzsche and
of Bergson. His soul, no doubt, swings in unison with the universal
rhythm of the world, but, like Nietzsche, he finds in force and life
realities transcending all errors, and after a historic survey of the
more popular deities of humanity from Gog to Jehovah, and from Satan
to Christ, enunciates his belief in humanity in stanzas of sublime
blasphemy, far more truly religious than the ambiguous scrolls and
rubrics of any antiquarian creed:
"L'homme respire et sur la terre il marche, seul.
Il vit pour s'exalter du monde et de lui-même,
Sa langue oublie et la prière et le blasphême;
Ses pieds foulent le drap de son ancien linceul.
Il est l'heureuse audace au lieu d'être la crainte;
Tout l'infini ne retentit que de ses bonds
Vers l'avenir plus doux, plus clair et plus féconds
Dont s'aggrave le chant et s'alentit la plainte.
Penser, chercher, et découvrir sont ses exploits.
Il emplit jusqu'aux bords son existence brêve;
Il n'enfle aucun espoir, il ne fausse aucun rêve,
Et s'il lui faut des Dieux encore--qu'il les soit!"
In _La Multiple Splendeur_ and _Les Visages de la Vie_ the same
insatiable gusto for an infinitude of life darts again and again its
red tongue. It is impossible by mere quotation to do justice to the
full vastness of Verhaeren's lyric sweep. We would, however, at any
rate, refer to the majesty of _Le Monde_ with its combined crash and
concord of incessant life and the Cyclopean weight of the adamantine
line which buttresses at either end the flaming rivers of its verse,
"Le monde est fait avec des astres et des hommes,"
or to the sublimity of _Les Penseurs_ in which the poet tells how
"Autour de la terre obsédée
Circule au fond des nuits, au cœur des jours
Toujours
L'orage amoncelé des idées,"
and how
"Descartes et Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant et Hegel"
"fixed the highest pinnacles of inaccessible problems for the goal of
their silver arrows, and carried within themselves the grand obstinate
dream of one day, imprisoning eternity in the white ice of immobile
truth."
The very names, too, of some of the poems may possibly reflect some
of the facets of their multiplied splendour: _Le Verbe, Les Vieux
Empires, La Louange du Corps Humain, A la Gloire des Cieux, A la Gloire
du Vent, Les Rêves, L'Europe, La Conquête, Les Souffrances, La Joie,
La Ferveur, Les Idées, La Vie, L'Effort, L'Action, Plus Loin que les
Gares, Le Soir_. And again and again rings out in various keys the true
Nietzschean note. For "vast hopes come from the unknown" has displaced
the ancient balance whereof souls are now tired. But the only reality
is life:
"La vie en cris ou en silence,
La vie en lutte ou en accord
Avec la vie avec la mort
La vie âpre, la vie intense,
Elle est ici dans la fureur ou dans la haine
De l'ascendant et rouge ardeur humaine."
It is fine proof also of the vast vitality of Verhaeren that even in so
recent a work as _Les Rhythmes Souveraines_ the muscled majesty of his
verse, though possibly a trifle less violent, shows no abatement of its
essential strength. We would mention in particular the poems _Michel
Ange, Chant d'Hercule, Les Barbares_ with the swift crispness of its
one-foot lines, and above all _Le Paradis_ with its almost Miltonic
picture of
"L'archange endormant Ève au creux de sa grande aile."
But does not Verhaeren transcend Milton in the wideness of his humanity
when he describes not with regret but with the maximum of exalted
exultation how
"Ève bondit soudain hors de son aile immense,
Oh l'heureuse subite et féconde démence,
Que l'ange avec son cœur trop pur ne comprit pas."
In his latest volume, _Les Blés Mouvants_, Verhaeren sinks back no
doubt to a quieter and serener mood, but who shall say that these
eclogues do not simply represent the sage crouch for another leonine
spring?
We do not propose to make more than a passing reference to Verhaeren's
plays, for it is the lyric rather than the drama which is his true
medium of expression.
_Hélène de Sparte_, with all its graceful Alexandrines, is inferior
to any play by D'Annunzio, and even the socialist drama _Les Aubes_
is, notwithstanding the fine verses with which it is sown, simply
stiff and heavy when compared with Hauptmann's _Weavers_. It is by
his lyrics that Verhaeren lives, and will continue to live beyond his
mere death whenever it comes, as the greatest and most essentially
European poet of our new age. For his lyrics are equally great, both
in their message and the method of their expression. Disdaining alike
the cowardice and the perversity of those who, refusing to face the red
realities of the present century, fly for their comfort to the pale
shadows of the Middle Ages, Verhaeren has plunged boldly into the very
brazier of our modern existence. He affirms, he combats, he prophesies,
but he rarely, if ever, rests. He hymns every phase of life, from the
human brain to the human body, and from the winds and seas of nature
to the towns and marts of man. And no message is more virile, more
tonic, more essentially healthy, for is not his message the phœnix
of a new humanitarian faith soaring aloft on its fiery wings out of
the corpses of the decomposing dogmas? And his prosody has the supreme
excellence that it is not a mere æsthetic end in itself, but a drastic
instrument of expression. Your pure æsthete, no doubt, may cavil at
his ruggedness. For he is the Rodin of poetical rhyme, the veritable
Vulcan of verse, or rather a Siegfried forging the sword of the future
on the anvil of the present, as he drives in the stubborn nails of his
nouns with the hissing hammers of his adjectives. His lines no doubt
at times will growl, grind and boom, hit the reader in the face with
all the force of a clenched fist, and palpitate with a full-bloodedness
somewhat overpowering for the jaded and the anæmic. But is not this the
very seal of success in a man who specifically sets himself to sing
not the mere beauty of beauty, but the beauty of force, the beauty of
life, "life violent, prodigious, unsatiated, the universal spasm of all
things"?