Une tentation des pires. Fuis l’infâme …
Si la vieille folie était encore en route?
‘Ces souvenirs, va-t-il falloir les retuer?
Un assaut furieux, le suprême, sans doute!
O va prier contre l’orage, va prier! …
‘C’est vers le Moyen-Age énorme et delicat
Qu’il faudrait que mon cœur en panne naviguât,
Loin de nos jours d’esprit charnel et de chair triste …
‘Et là que j’eusse part …
… à la chose vitale,
Et que je fusse un saint, actes bons, pensers droits,
‘Haute théologie et solide morale,
Guidé par la folie unique de la Croix
Sur tes ailes de pierre, ô folle Cathédrale!’
This example serves to show that there is not wanting in Verlaine that religious fervour which usually accompanies morbidly intensified eroticism. This finds a much more decided expression in several other poems. I should wish to quote only from two.[126]
‘O mon Dieu, vous m’avez blessé d’amour,
Et la blessure est encore vibrante,
O mon Dieu, vous m’avez blessé d’amour.
‘O mon Dieu, votre crainte m’a frappé,
Et la brûlure est encore là qui tonne
O mon Dieu, votre crainte m’a frappé.
(Observe the mode of expression and the constant repetitions.)
‘O mon Dieu, j’ai connu que tout est vil,
Et votre gloire en moi s’est installée,
O mon Dieu, j’ai connu que tout est vil.
‘Noyez mon âme aux flots de votre vin,
Fondez ma vie au pain de votre table,
Noyez mon âme aux flots de votre vin.
‘Voici mon sang que je n’ai pas versé,
Voici ma chair indignée de souffrance,
Voici mon sang que je n’ai pas versé.’
Then follows the ecstatic enumeration of all the parts of his body, which he offers up in sacrifice to God; and the poem closes thus:
‘Vous connaissez tout cela, tout cela,
Et que je suis plus pauvre que personne,
Vous connaissez tout cela, tout cela,
Mais ce que j’ai, mon Dieu, je vous le donne.’
He invokes the Virgin Mary as follows:
‘Je ne veux plus aimer que ma mère Marie.
Tous les autres amours sont de commandement,
Nécessaires qu’ils sont, ma mère seulement
Pourra les allumer aux cœurs qui l’ont chérie.
‘C’est pour Elle qu’il faut chérir mes ennemis,
C’est pour Elle que j’ai voué ce sacrifice,
Et la douceur de cœur et le zèle au service.
Comme je la priais, Elle les a permis.
‘Et comme j’étais faible et bien méchant encore,
Aux mains lâches, les yeux éblouis des chemins,
Elle baissa mes yeux et me joignit les mains,
Et m’enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore.’
The accents here uttered are well known to the clinics of psychiatry. We may compare them to the picture which Legrain[127] gives of some of his patients. ‘His speech continually reverts to God and the Virgin Mary, his cousin.’ (The case in question is that of a degenerate subject who was a tramway conductor.) ‘Mystical ideas complete the picture. He talks of God, of heaven, crosses himself, kneels down, and says that he is following the commandments of Christ.’ (The subject under observation is a day labourer.) ‘The devil will tempt me, but I see God who guards me. I have asked of God that all people might be beautiful,’ etc.
The continual alternation of antithetical moods in Verlaine—this uniform transition from bestial lust to an excess of piety, and from sinning to remorse—has struck even observers who do not know the significance of such a phenomenon. ‘He is,’ writes M. Anatole France,[128] ‘alternately devout and atheistical, orthodox and sacrilegious.’ These he certainly is. But why? Simply because he is a circulaire. This not very happy expression, invented by French psychiatry, denotes that form of mental disease in which states of excitement and depression follow each other in regular succession. The period of excitement coincides with the irresistible impulses to misdeeds and blasphemous language; that of dejection with the paroxysms of contrition and piety. The circulaires belong to the worst species of the degenerate. ‘They are drunkards, obscene, vicious, and thievish.’[129] They are also in particular incapable of any lasting, uniform occupation, since it is obvious that in such a condition of mental depression they cannot accomplish any work which demands strength and attention. The circulaires are, by the nature of their affliction, condemned to be vagabonds or thieves, unless they belong to rich families. In normally constituted society there is no place for them. Verlaine has been a vagabond the whole of his life. He has loafed about all the highways of France, and roamed as well through Belgium and England. Since his release from prison he has spent most of his time in Paris, where, however, he has no residence, but resorts to the hospitals under the pretext of rheumatism, which for that matter he may easily have contracted during the nights which, as a tramp, he has spent under the open sky. The administration winks at his doings, and grants him food and shelter gratis, out of regard for his poetical capacity. Conformably with the constant tendency of the human mind to beautify what cannot be altered, he persuades himself that his vagrancy, which was forced upon him by his organic vice, is a glorious and enviable condition; he prizes it as something beautiful, artistic, and sublime, and looks upon vagabonds with especial tenderness. Speaking of them he says (Grotesques):
‘Leur jambes pour toutes montures,
Pour tous biens l’or de leurs regards,
Par le chemin des aventures
Ils vont haillonneux et hagards.
‘Le sage, indigné, les harangue;
Le sot plaint ces fous hasardeux;
Les enfants leur tirent la langue
Et les filles se moquent d’eux.’
We find in every lunatic and imbecile the conviction that the rational minds who discern and judge him are ‘blockheads.’
‘… Dans leurs prunelles
Rit et pleure—fastidieux—
L’amour des choses éternelles,
Des vieux morts et des anciens dieux!
‘Donc, allez, vagabonds sans trêves,
Errez, funestes et maudits,
Le long des gouffres et des grèves,
Sous l’œil fermé des paradis!
‘La nature à l’homme s’allie
Pour châtier comme il le faut
L’orgueilleuse mélancolie
Qui vous fait marcher le front haut.’
In another poem (Autre) he calls to his chosen mates:
‘Allons, frères, bons vieux voleurs,
Doux vagabonds