Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la region où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.
And it will be in vain that
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie.
(Tr. 2)
the hour of deliverance will be past and only a few will have heard it sound.
Nevertheless, what means of hope in these pages where Maeterlinck, disciple of Ruysbroeck, Novalis, Emerson and Hello, only asking of these superior spirits (whose two lesser had intuitions of genius) the sign of the hand that stimulates mysterious voyages! The generality of men, and the more conscious, who have so many hours of indifference, would find here encouragement to enjoy the simplicity of days and muffled murmurs of deep life. They would learn the meaning of very humble gestures and very futile words, and that an infant's laugh or a woman's prattle equals, by what it holds of soul and mystery, the most resplendent words of sages. For Maeterlinck, with his air of being a sage, and quite wise, confidently narrates unusual thoughts with a frankness quite disrespectful of psychological tradition, and with a boldness quite contemptuous of mental habits, assumes the courage only to attribute to things the importance they will have in an ultimate world. Thus, sensuality is altogether absent in his meditations. He knows the importance, but also the insignificance of the stir of blood and nerves, storms that precede or follow, but never accompany thought. And if he speaks of women who are nothing but soul, it is to inquire into "the mysterious salt which forever conserves the memory of the touch of two lips".
Maeterlinck's literature, poems or philosophy, comes in an hour when we have most need to be fortified and strengthened, in an hour when it is not immaterial to learn that the supreme end of life is "to keep open the highways that lead from the visible to the invisible." Maeterlinck has not only kept open the highways frequented by so many good-intentioned souls, and where great-minded men here and there open their arms like oases. It rather seems that he has increased to infinity the extent of these highways; he has said "such specious words in low tones" that the brambles have made way of themselves, the trees have pruned themselves spontaneously, a step beyond is possible, and the gaze today travels farther than it did yesterday.
Others doubtless have or have had a richer language, a more fertile imagination, a clearer gift of observation, more fancy, faculties better fitted to trumpet the music of words. Granted; but with a timid and poor language, childish dramatic combinations, an almost enervating system of repetition in phraseology, with these awkwardnesses, with all his awkwardnesses, Maurice Maeterlinck works at books and booklets that have a certain originality, a novelty so truly new that it will long disconcert the lamentable troop of people who pardon audacity if there be a precedent—as in the protocol—but who hold in scorn genius, which is the perpetual audacity.
ÉMILE VERHAEREN
Of all the poets of today, narcissi along the river, Verhaeren is the least obliging in allowing himself to be admired. He is rude, violent, unskillful. Busied for twenty years in forging a strange and magical tool, he remains in a mountain cavern, hammering the reddened irons, radiant in the fire's reflection, haloed with sparks. Thus it is we should picture him, a forger who,
Comme s'il travaillait l'acier des âmes,
Martèle à grands coups pleins, les lames
Immenses de la patience et du silence.
(Tr. 3)
If we discover his dwelling and question him, he replies with a parable whose every word seems scanned on the forge, and, to conclude, he delivers a tremendous blow of his heavy hammer.
When he is not laboring at his forge, he goes forth through the fields, head and arms bare, and the Flemish fields tell him secrets they have not yet told anyone. He beholds miraculous things and is not astonished at them. Singular beings pass before him, beings whom everybody jostles without being aware, visible alone to him. He has met the November Wind:
Le vent sauvage de novembre.
Le vent,
L'avez-vous rencontré, le vent
Au carrefour des trois cents routes...?
(Tr. 4)
He has seen Death, and more than once; he has seen Fear; he has seen Silence
S'asseoir immensément du côté de la nuit.
(Tr. 5)
The characteristic word of Verhaeren's poetry is halluciné. The word leaps from page to page. An entire collection, the Campagnes hallucinées has not freed him from this obsession. Exorcism was not possible, for it is the nature and very essence of Verhaeren to be the hallucinated poet. "Sensations," Taine said, "are true hallucinations." But where does truth begin or end? Who shall dare circumscribe it? The poet, with no psychological scruples, wastes no time over troubling himself to divide hallucinations into truths or untruths. For him they are all true if they are sharp and strong, and he recounts them frankly—and when the recitation is made by Verhaeren, it is very lovely. Beauty in art is a relative result which is achieved by the mixture of very different elements, often the most unexpected. Of these elements, one alone is stable and permanent, and ought to be found in all combinations: that is novelty. A work of art must be new, and we recognize it as such quite simply by the fact that it gives a sensation not yet experienced.
If it does not give this, a work, perfect though it be adjudged, is everything that is contemptible. It is useless and ugly, since nothing is more absolutely useful than beauty. With Verhaeren, beauty is made of novelty and strength. This poet is a strong man and, since those Villes tentaculaires which surged with the violence of a telluric upheaval, no one dares to deny him the state and glory of a great poet. Perhaps he has not yet quite finished the magic instrument which for twenty years he has been forging. Perhaps he is not yet master of his language. He is unequal; he lets his most beautiful pages grow heavy with inopportune epithets, and his finest poems become entangled in what was once called prosaism. Nevertheless, the impression of power and grandeur remains, and yes: he is a great poet. Listen to this fragment from Cathédrales:
* * * * *
—O ces foules, ces foules
Et la misère et la détresse qui les foulent
Comme des houles!
Les ostensoirs, ornés de soie,
Vers les villes échafaudées,
En toits de verre et de cristal,
Du haut du choeur sacerdotal,
Tendent la croix des gothiques idées.
Ils s'imposent dans l'or des clairs dimanches
—Toussaint, Noël, Pâques et Pentecôtes blanches.
Ils s'imposent dans l'or et dans l'encens et dans la fête
Du grand orgue battant du vol de ses tempêtes
Les chapiteaux rouges et les voûtes vermeilles,
Ils sont une âme, en du soldi,
Qui vit de vieux décor et d'antique mystère
Autoritaire.
Pourtant, dès que s'éteignent le cantique
Et l'antienne naïve et prismatique,
Un deuil d'encens évaporé s'empreint
Sur les trépieds d'argent et les autels d'airain,
Et les vitraux, grands de siècles agenouillés
Devant le Christ, avec leurs papes immobiles