Chapter VIII: Conclusion

Our only chance, in this world, of a complete happiness, lies in the measure of our success in shutting the eyes of the mind, and deadening its sense of hearing, and dulling the keenness of its apprehension of the unknown. Knowing so much less than nothing, for we are entrapped in smiling and many-coloured appearances, our life may seem to be but a little space of leisure, in which it will be the necessary business of each of us to speculate on what is so rapidly becoming the past and so rapidly becoming the future, that scarcely existing present which is after all our only possession. Yet, as the present passes from us, hardly to be enjoyed except as memory or as hope, and only with an at best partial recognition of the uncertainty or inutility of both, it is with a kind of terror that we wake up, every now and then, to the whole knowledge of our ignorance, and to some perception of where it is leading us. To live through a single day with that overpowering consciousness of our real position, which, in the moments in which alone it mercifully comes, is like blinding light or the thrust of a flaming sword, would drive any man out of his senses. It is our hesitations, the excuses of our hearts, the compromises of our intelligence, which save us. We can forget so much, we can bear suspense with so fortunate an evasion of its real issues; we are so admirably finite.

And so there is a great, silent conspiracy between us to forget death; all our lives are spent in busily forgetting death. That is why we are active about so many things which we know to be unimportant; why we are so afraid of solitude, and so thankful for the company of our fellow-creatures. Allowing ourselves, for the most part, to be but vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art; each a forgetfulness, each a symbol of creation; religion being the creation of a new heaven, passion the creation of a new earth, and art, in its mingling of heaven and earth, the creation of heaven out of earth. Each is a kind of sublime selfishness, the saint, the lover, and the artist having each an incommunicable ecstasy which he esteems as his ultimate attainment, however, in his lower moments, he may serve God in action, or do the will of his mistress, or minister to men by showing them a little beauty. But it is, before all things, an escape: and the prophets who have redeemed the world, and the artists who have made the world beautiful, and the lovers who have quickened the pulses of the world, have really, whether they knew it or not, been fleeing from the certainty of one thought: that we have, all of us, only our one day; and from the dread of that other thought: that the day, however used, must after all be wasted.

The fear of death is not cowardice; it is, rather, an intellectual dissatisfaction with an enigma which has been presented to us, and which can be solved only when its solution is of no further use. All we have to ask of death is the meaning of life, and we are waiting all through life to ask that question. That life should be happy or unhappy, as those words are used, means so very little; and the heightening or lessening of the general felicity of the world means so little to any individual. There is something almost vulgar in happiness which does not become joy, and joy is an ecstasy which can rarely be maintained in the soul for more than the moment during which we recognize that it is not sorrow. Only very young people want to be happy. What we all want is to be quite sure that there is something which makes it worth while to go on living, in what seems to us our best way, at our finest intensity; something beyond the mere fact that we are satisfying a sort of inner logic (which may be quite faulty) and that we get our best makeshift for happiness on that so hazardous assumption.

Well, the doctrine of Mysticism, with which all this symbolical literature has so much to do, of which it is all so much the expression, presents us, not with a guide for conduct, not with a plan for our happiness, not with an explanation of any mystery, but with a theory of life which makes us familiar with mystery, and which seems to harmonise those instincts which make for religion, passion, and art, freeing us at once of a great bondage. The final uncertainty remains, but we seem to knock less helplessly at closed doors, coming so much closer to the once terrifying eternity of things about us, as we come to look upon these things as shadows, through which we have our shadowy passage. "For in the particular acts of human life," Plotinus tells us, "it is not the interior soul and the true man, but the exterior shadow of the man alone, which laments and weeps, performing his part on the earth as in a more ample and extended scene, in which many shadows of souls and phantom scenes appear." And as we realise the identity of a poem, a prayer, or a kiss, in that spiritual universe which we are weaving for ourselves, each out of a thread of the great fabric; as we realise the infinite insignificance of action, its immense distance from the current of life; as we realise the delight of feeling ourselves carried onward by forces which it is our wisdom to obey; it is at least with a certain relief that we turn to an ancient doctrine, so much the more likely to be true because it has so much the air of a dream. On this theory alone does all life become worth living, all art worth making, all worship worth offering. And because it might slay as well as save, because the freedom of its sweet captivity might so easily become deadly to the fool, because that is the hardest path to walk in where you are told only, walk well; it is perhaps the only counsel of perfection which can ever really mean much to the artist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES

The essays contained in this book are not intended to give information. They are concerned with ideas rather than with facts; each is a study of a problem, only in part a literary one, in which I have endeavoured to consider writers as personalities under the action of spiritual forces, or as themselves so many forces. But it has seemed to me that readers have a right to demand information in regard to writers who are so often likely to be unfamiliar to them. I have, therefore, given a bibliography of the works of each writer with whom I have dealt, and I have added a number of notes, giving various particulars which I think are likely to be useful in fixing more definitely the personal characteristics of these writers.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

(1799-1850)

La Comédie Humaine

_Scènes de la Vie Privée_

_Préface. La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote,_ 1829; _Le Bal de Sceaux,_ 1829; _Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées,_ 1841; _La Bourse,_ 1832; _Modeste Mignon,_ 1844; _Un Début dans la vie,_ 1842; _Albert Savarus,_ 1842; _La Vendetta,_ 1830; _La Paix du ménage,_ 1829; _Madame Firmiani,_ 1832; _Étude de femme,_ 1830; _La Fausse maîtresse,_ 1842; _Une Fille d'Eve,_ 1838; _Le Message,_ 1832; _La Grenadière,_ 1832; _La Femme abandonnée,_ 1832; _Honorine,_ 1843; _Beatrix,_ 1838; _Gobseck,_ 1830; _La Femme de trente ans,_ 1834; _La Père Goriot,_ 1834; _Le Colonel Chabert,_ 1832; _La Messe de l'Athée,_ 1836; _L'Interdiction,_ 1836; Le _Contrat de mariage,_ 1835; Autre _étude de femme,_ 1839; La _Grande Bretêche,_ 1832.

_Scènes de la vie de Province_

_Ursule Mirouët,_ 1841; _Eugénie Grandet,_ 1833; _Le Lys dans la vallée_, 1835; _Pierrette,_ 1839; _Le Curé de Tours_, 1832; _La Ménage d'un garçon,_ 1842; _L'illustre Gaudissart,_ 1833; _La Muse du département,_ 1843; _Le Vieille fille_, 1836; _Le Cabinet des Antiques,_ 1837; _Les Illusions Perdues,_ 1836.

_Scènes de la Vie Parisienne_

_Ferragus,_ 1833; _Là Duchesse de Langeais,_ 1834; _La Fille aux yeux d'or,_ 1834; _La Grandeur et la Décadence de César Birotteau,_ 1837; _La Maison Nucingen,_ 1837; _Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,_ 1838; _Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan,_ 1839; _Facino Cane,_ 1836; _Sarrasine,_ 1830; _Pierre Grassou,_ 1839; _La Cousine Bette,_ 1846; _Le Cousin Pons,_ 1847; _Un Prince de la Bohème,_ 1839; _Gaudissart II,_ 1844; _Les Employés,_ 1836; _Les Comédiens sans le savoir,_ 1845; _Les Petits Bourgeois,_ 1845.

_Scènes de la Vie Militaire_

_Les Chouans,_ 1827; _Une Passion dans le désert,_ 1830.

_Scènes de la Vie Politique_

_Un Épisode sous la Terreur,_ 1831; _Une Ténébreuse Affaire,_ 1841; _Z. Marcos,_ 1840; _L'Envers de l'Histoire contemporaine,_ 1847; _Le Député d'Arcis._

_Scènes de la Vie de Campagne_

_Le Médecin de campagne,_ 1832; _Le Curé de village,_ 1837; _Les Paysans,_ 1845.

_Études Philosophiques_

_La Peau de Chagrin,_ 1830; _Jésus-Christ en Flandres,_ 1831; _Melmoth réconcilié,_ 1835; _Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu,_ 1832; _Gambara,_ 1837; _Massimilla Doni,_ 1839; _La Recherche de l'Absolu,_ 1834; _L'Enfant Maudit,_ 1831; _Les Maranas,_ 1832; _Adieu,_ 1830; _Le Réquisitionnaire,_ 1831; _El Verdugo,_ 1829; _Un Drame au bord de la mer,_ 1834; _L'Auberge rouge,_ 1831; L'_Élixir de longue vie,_ 1830; _Maître Cornélius,_ 1831; _Catherine de Médicis,_ 1836; _Les Proscrits,_ 1831; _Louis Lambert,_ 1832; _Séraphita,_ 1833.

_Études Analytiques_

_La Physiologie du mariage,_ 1829; _Petites misères de la vie conjugale._

_Théâtre_

_Vautrin, Drame_5 _Actes,_ 1840; _Les Ressources de Quinola, Comédie_ 5 _Actes,_ 1842; _Paméla Giraud, Drame_5 _Actes,_ 1843; _La Marâtre, Drame_5 _Actes,_ 1848; _La Faiseur (Mercadet), Comédie_ 5 _Actes,_ 1851; _Les Contes Drolatiques,_ 1832, 1833, 1839.

PROSPER MÉRIMÉE

(1803-1870)

_La Guzla,_ 1827; _La Jacquerie,_ 1828; _Le Chronique du Temps de Charles IX,_ 1829; _La Vase Etrusque,_ 1829; _Vénus d'Ille,_ 1837; _Colomba,_ 1846; _Carmen,_ 1845; _Lokis,_ 1869; _Mateo Falcone,_ 1876; _Mélanges Historiques et Littéraires,_ 1855; _Les Cosaques d'Autrefois,_ 1865; _Étude sur les Arts au Moyen-Age,_ 1875; _Les Faux Démétrius,_ 1853; _Étude sur l'Histoire Romaine,_ 1844; _Histoire de Dom Pedro,_ 1848; _Lettres à une Inconnue,_ 1874.

GÉRARD DE NERVAL

(1808-1855)

_Napoléon et la France Guerrière, élégies nationales,_ 1826; _La mort de Talma,_ 1826; _L'Académie, ou les Membres Introuvables, comédie satirique en vers,_ 1826; _Napoléon et Talma, élégies nationales nouvelles,_ 1826; _M. Dentscourt, ou le Cuisinier Grand Homme,_ 1826; _Elégies Nationales et Satires Politiques,_ 1827; _Faust, tragédie de Goethe,_ 1828 (suivi du second _Faust,_ 1840); _Couronne Poétique de Béranger,_ 1828; _Le Peuple, ode,_ 1830; _Poésies Allemandes, Morceaux choisis et traduits,_ 1830; _Choix de Poésies de Ronsard et de Régnier,_ 1830; _Nos Adieux à la Chambre de Députés de Van_ 1830, 1831; _Lénore, traduite de Burger,_ 1835; _Piquilo, opéra comique_ (with Dumas), 1837; l'_Alchimiste, drame en vers_ (with Dumas), 1839; _Léo Burckhardt, drame en prose_ (with Dumas), 1839; _Scènes de la Vie Orientale,_ 2 vols., 1848-1850; _Les Monténégrins, opéra comique_ (with Alboize), 1849; _Le Chariot d'Enfant, drame en vers_ (with Méry), 1850; _Les Nuits du Ramazan,_ 1850; _Voyage en Orient,_ 1851; _L'Imagier de Harlem, légende en prose et en vers_ (with Méry and Bernard Lopez), 1852; _Contes et Facéties,_ 1852; _Lorely, souvenirs d'Allemagne,_ 1852; _Les Illuminés,_ 1852; _Petits Châteaux de Bohème,_ 1853; _Les Filles du Feu,_ 1854; _Misanthropie et Repentir, drame de Kotzebue,_ 1855; _La Bohème galante,_ 1855; _Le Rêve et la Vie; Aurélia,_ 1855; _Le Marquis de Fayolle_ (with E. Gorges), 1856; _Œuvres Complètes,_ 6 vols. (1, _Les Deux Faust de Goethe;_ 2, 3, _Voyage en Orient;_ 4, _Les Illuminés, Les Faux Saulniers;_ 5, _Le Rêve et la Vie, Les Filles du Feu, La Bohème galante;_ 6, _Poésies Complètes),_ 1867.

The sonnets, written at different periods and published for the first time in the collection of 1854, "Les Filles du Feu," which also contains "Sylvie," were reprinted in the volume of _Poésies Complètes,_ where they are imbedded in the midst of deplorable juvenilia. All, or almost all, of the verse worth preserving was collected, in 1897, by that delicate amateur of the curiosities of beauty, M. Remy de Gourmont, in a tiny volume called _Les Chimères,_ which contains the six sonnets of "Les Chimères," the sonnet called "Vers Dorés," the five sonnets of "Le Christ aux Oliviers," and, in facsimile of the autograph, the lyric called "Les Cydalises." The true facts of the life of Gérard have been told for the first time, from original documents, by Mme. Arvède Barine, in two excellent articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes,_ October 15 and November 1, 1897, since reprinted in _Les Névrosés,_1898.

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(1811-1872)

_Les Poésies,_ 1830; _Albertus, ou l'âme et le péché,_ 1833; _Les Jeunes-France,_ 1833; _Mademoiselle de Maupin,_ 1835; _Fortunio,_ 1838.

_La Comédie de la Mort,_ 1838; _Tras les Montes,_ 1839; _Une Larme du Diable,_ 1839; _Gisèle, ballet,_ 1841; _Une Voyage en Espagne,_ 1843; _Le Péri, ballet,_ 1843; _Les Grotesques,_ 1844.

_Une Nuit de Cléopâtre,_ 1845; _Premières Poésies,_ 1845; _Zigzags,_ 1845; _Le Tricorne Enchanté,_ 1845; _La Turquie,_ 1846.

_La Juive de Constantine, drama,_ 1846; _Jean et Jeannette,_ 1846; _Le Roi Candaule,_ 1847.

_Les Roués innocents,_ 1847; _Histoire des Peintres,_ 1847; _Regardez, mais n'y touche pas,_ 1847; _Les Fêtes de Madrid,_ 1847; _Partie carrée,_ 1851; _Italia,_ 1852; Les _Émaux et Camées,_ 1852; L'Art _Moderne,_ 1859; _Les Beaux Arts_ en _Europe,_ 1852; _Caprices et Zigzags,_ 1852; Ario _Marcella,_ 1852; Les _Beaux-arts en Europe,_ 1855; _Constantinople,_ 1854; _Théâtre de poche,_ 1855; Le _Roman de la Momie,_ 1856; _Jettatura,_ 1857; _Avatar_, 1857; _Sakountala, Ballet,_ 1858; Honoré de Balzac, 1859; Les Fosses, 1860; _Trésors d'Art de la Russie,_1860-1863; _Histoire de l'art théâtrale en France depuis vingt-cinq ans,_ 1860; Le _Capitaine Fracasse,_ 1863; Les _Dieux et les Demi-Dieux de la peintre,_ 1863; _Poésies nouvelles,_ 1863; _Loin de Paris,_ 1864; _La Belle Jenny,_ 1864; _Voyage en Russie,_ 1865; _Spirite,_ 1866; _Le Palais pompéien de l'Avenue Montaigne,_ 1866; _Rapport sur le progrès des Lettres,_ 1868; _Ménagère intime,_ 1869; _La Nature chez Elle,_ 1870; _Tableaux de Siege,_ 1871; _Théâtre,_ 1872; _Portraits Contemporaines,_ 1874; _Histoire du Romantisme,_ 1874; _Portraits et Souvenirs littéraires,_ 1875; _Poésies complètes,_ 1876: 2 vols.; _L'Orient,_ 1877; _Fusins et eaux-Fortes,_ 1880; _Tableaux à la Plume,_ 1880; _Mademoiselle Daphné,_ 1881; Guide de _l'Amateur au Musés du Louvre._ 1882; _Souvenirs de Théâtre d'Art et de critique,_ 1883.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

(1821-1880)

_Madame Bovary,_ 1857; _Salammbô,_ 1863; _La Tentation de Saint Antoine,_ 1874; _L'Education Sentimentale,_ 1870; _Trois Contes,_ 1877; _Bouvard et Pécuchet,_ 1881; _Le Candidat,_ 1874; _Par les Champs et par les Grèves,_ 1886; _Lettres à George Sand,_ 1884; _Correspondances,_ 1887-1893.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

(1821-1867)

_Salon de_ 1845, 1845; _Salon de_ 1846, 1846; _Histoires Extraordinaires, traduit de Poe,_ 1856; _Nouvelle Histoires Extraordinaires,_ 1857; _Les Fleurs du Mal,_ 1857; _Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym (Poe),_ 1858; _Théophile Gautier,_ 1859; _Les Paradis Artificiels: Opium et Haschisch,_ 1860; _Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris,_1861; _Euréka: Poe,_1864; _Histoires Grotesques: Poe,_ 1865; _Les Épaves de Charles Baudelaire,_ 1866.

EDMOND and JULES DE GONCOURT

(1822-1896; 1830-1870)

_En_ 18, 1851; _Salon de_ 1852, 1852; _La Lorette,_ 1853; _Mystères des Théâtres,_ 1853; _La revolution dans les Mœurs,_ 1854; _Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Revolution,_ 1854; _Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Directoire,_ 1855; _Le Peinture à l'Exposition de Paris de_ 1855, 1855; _Une Voiture des Masques,_ 1856; _Les Actrices,_ 1856; _Sophie Arnauld,_ 1857; _Portraits intimes du XVIII Siècle,_ 1857-1858; _Histoire de Marie Antoinette,_ 1858; _L'Art du XVIII Siècle,_ 1859-1875; _Les Hommes de Lettres,_ 1860; _Les Maîtresses de Louis VI,_ 1860; _Sœur Philomène,_ 1861; _Les Femmes au XVIII Siècle,_ 1864; _Renée Mauperin,_ 1864; _Germinie Lacerteux,_ 1864; _Idées et Sensations,_ 1860; _Manette Salomon,_ 1867; _Madame Gervaisais,_ 1869; _Gavarni,_ 1873; _La Patrie en Danger,_ 1879; _L'Amour au XVIII Siècle,_ 1873; _La du Barry,_ 1875; _Madame de Pompadour,_ 1878; _La Duchesse de la Châteauroux,_ 1879; _Pages retrouvées,_ 1886; _Journal des Goncourts,_ 1887-1896, 9 Vols.; _Préfaces et manifestes littéraires,_ 1888; _L'Italie d'hier,_ 1894; _Edmond de Goncourt: Catalogue raisonée de l'œuvre peinte, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau,_ 1873; _Catalogue de l'œuvre de P. Proudhon,_ 1876; _La Fille Élisa,_ 1879; _Les Frères Zemganno,_ 1879; _La Maison d'un Artiste,_ 1881; _La Faustin,_ 1882; _La Saint-Hubert,_ 1882; _Chérie,_ 1884; _Germinie Lacerteux, pièce,_ 1888; _Mademoiselle Clairon,_ 1890; _Outamoro, le peintre des maisons vertes,_ 1891; _La Guimard,_ 1893; _A bas le progrès,_ 1893; _Hokouseï,_ 1896.

VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM

(1838-1889)

_Premières Poésies,_1859; _Isis,_ 1862; _Elën,_ 1864; _Morgane,_ 1865; _Claire Lenoir_(in the _Revue des Lettres et des Arts),_ 1867; _L'Evasion,_ 1870; _La Révolte,_ 1870; _Azraël,_ 1878; _Le Nouveau Monde,_ 1880; _Contes Cruels,_ 1880; _L'Eve Future,_ 1886; _Akëdysséril,_ 1886; _L'Amour Suprême,_ 1886; _Tribulat Bonhomet,_ 1887; _Histoires Insolites,_ 1888; _Nouveaux Contes Cruels,_ 1889; Axël, 1890; Chez les Passants, 1890; _Propos d'Au-delà,_ 1893; _Histoires Souveraines,_ 1899 (a selection).

Among works announced, but never published, it may be interesting to mention: _Seid, William de Strally, Faust, Poésies Nouvelles (Intermèdes; Gog; Ave, Mater Victa; Poésies diverses), La Tentation sur la Montagne, Le Vieux de la Montagne, L'Adoration des Mages, Méditations Littéraires, Mélanges, Théâtre_ (2 vols.), _Documents sur les Règnes de Charles VI. et de Charles VII., L'Illusionisme, De la Connaissance de l'Utile, L'Exégèse Divine._

A sympathetic, but slightly vague, Life of Villiers was written by his cousin, Vicomte Robert du Pontavice de Heussey: _Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ 1893; it was translated into English by Lady Mary Lloyd, 1894. See Verlaine's _Poètes Maudits,_ 1884, and his biography of Villiers in _Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui,_ the series of penny biographies, with caricature portraits, published by Vanier; also Mallarmé's _Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ the reprint of a lecture given at Brussels a few months after Villiers, death. _La Révolte_ was translated by Mrs. Theresa Barclay in the _Fortnightly Review,_ December, 1897, and acted in London by the New Stage Club in 1906. I have translated a little poem, _Aveu,_ from the interlude of verse in the _Contes Cruels_ called _Chant d'Amour,_ in _Days and Nights,_ 1889. An article of mine, the first, I believe, to be written on Villiers in English, appeared in the _Woman's World_ in 1889; another in the _Illustrated London News_ in 1891.

LÉON CLADEL

(1835-1892)

_Les Martyrs Ridicules. Preface par Charles Baudelaire,_ 1862; _Pierre Patient,_ 1862; _L'Amour Romantique,_ 1882; _Le Deuxième Mystère de l'Incarnation,_ 1883; _Le Bouscassié,_ 1889; _La Fête-Votive de Saint Bartholomée Porte-Glaive,_ 1872; _Les Vas-nu-Pieds,_ 1874; _Celui de la Croix-aux-Bœufs,_ 1878; _Bonshommes,_ 1879; _Ompdrailles Le Tombeau des Lutteurs,_ 1879; _N'a q'un Œil,_ 1885; _Tity Foyssac IV,_ 1886; _Petits Chiens de Léon Cladel,_ 1879; _Par Devant Notaire,_ 1880; _Crête-Rouge,_ 1880; _Six Morceaux de la Littérature,_ 1880; _Kerkades Garde-Barrière,_ 1884; _Urbains et Ruraux,_ 1884; _Léon Cladel et ses Kyrielle des Chiens,_ 1885; _Héros et Pantins,_ 1885; _Quelques Sires,_ 1885; _Mi-Diable,_ 1886; _Gueux de Marque,_ 1887; _Effigies d'Inconnus,_ 1888; _Raca,_ 1888; _Seize Morceaux de Littérature,_ 1889; _L'ancien,_ 1889; _Juive-Errante,_ 1897.

EMILE ZOLA

(1840-1902)

Les _Rougon-Macquart,_ 1871-1893; _La Fortune des Rougons,_ 1871; _La Curée,_ 1872; _Le Ventre de Paris,_ 1873; _La Conquête de Pluisans,_ 1874; _La Faute de l'abbé Mouret,_ 1875; _Son Excellence Eugène Rougon,_ 1876; _L'Assommoir,_ 1876; _Une Page d'Amour,_ 1878; _Nana,_ 1880; _Pot.-Bouille,_ 1882; _Au Bonheur des Dames,_ 1883; _La Joie de Vivre,_ 1884; _Madeleine Fer at,_ 1885; _La Confession de Claude,_ 1886; _Contes à Ninon,_ 1891; _Nouveaux Contes à Ninon,_ 1874; _Le Capitaine Burle,_ 1883; _La joie de vivre,_ 1884; _Les Mystères de Marseilles,_ 1885; _Mes Haines,_ 1866; _Le Roman Expérimental,_ 1881; _Nos Auteurs dramatiques,_ 1881; _Documents littéraires,_ 1881; _Une Compagne,_ 1882. _Théâtre: Thérèse Raquin, Les Héritiers Rabourdin, La Bouton de Rose,_ 1890; _L'Argent,_ 1891; _L'Attaque du Moulin,_ 1890; _La Bête Humaine,_ 1890; La _Débâcle,_ 1892; _Le Doctor Pascal,_ 1893; _Germinie,_ 1885; Mon Salon, 1886; Le _naturalisme au Théâtre,_ 1889; _L'Œuvre,_ 1886; _Le Rêve,_ 1892; _Paris_, 1898; _Rome,_ 1896; _Lourdes,_ 1894; _Fécondité,_ 1899; _Travail,_ 1901; _Vérité_, 1903.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ

(1842-1898)

_Le Corbeau_ (traduit de Poe), 1875; _La Dernière Mode,_ 1875; L'_Après-Midi d'un Faune,_ 1876; _Le Vathek de Beckford,_ 1876; _Petite Philologie à l'Usage des Classes et du Monde: Les Mots Anglais,_ 1877; _Poésies Complètes_ (photogravées sur le manuscrit), 1887; _Les Poèmes de Poe,_ 1888; _Le Ten o'Clock de M. Whistler,_ 1888; _Pages,_ 1891; _Les Miens: Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ 1892; _Vers et Prose,_ 1892; _La Musique et les Lettres_ (Oxford, Cambridge), 1894; _Divagations,_ 1897; _Poésies,_ 1899.

See, on this difficult subject, Edmund Gosse, _Questions at Issue,_ 1893, in which will be found the first study of Mallarmé that appeared in English; and Vittorio Pica, _Letteratura d'Eccezione,_1899, which contains a carefully-documented study of more than a hundred pages. There is a translation of the poem called "Fleurs" in Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_1893, and translations of "Hérodiade" and three shorter poems will be found in the first volume of my collected poems. Several of the poems in prose have been translated into English; my translation of the "Plainte d'Automne," contained in this volume, was made in momentary forgetfulness that the same poem in prose had already been translated by Mr. George Moore in _Confessions of a Young Man._ Mr. Moore also translated "Le Phénomène Futur" in the _Savoy,_ July, 1896.

PAUL VERLAINE

(1844-1896)

_Poèmes Saturniens,_ 1866; _Fêtes Galantes,_ 1869; _La Bonne Chanson,_ 1870; _Romances sans Paroles,_ 1874; _Sagesse,_ 1881; _Les Poètes Maudits,_ 1884; _Jadis et Naguère,_ 1884; _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf,_ 1886; _Louise Leclercq_ (suivi de _Le Poteau, Pierre Duchatelet, Madame Aubin),_ 1887; _Amour,_ 1888; _Parallèlement,_ 1889; _Dédicaces,_ 1890; _Bonheur,_ 1891; _Mes Hôpitaux,_ 1891; Chansons _pour Elle,_ 1891; _Liturgies Intimes,_ 1892; _Mes Prisons,_ 1893; _Odes en son Honneur,_ 1893; _Elégies,_ 1893; _Quinze Jours en Hollande,_ 1894; _Dans les Limbes,_ 1894; _Epigrammes,_ 1894; _Confessions,_ 1895; _Chair_, 1896; _Invectives,_ 1896; _Voyage en France d'un Français_ (posthumous), 1907.

The complete works of Verlaine are now published in six volumes at the Librairie Léon Vanier (now Messein); the text is very incorrectly printed, and it is still necessary to refer to the earlier editions in separate volumes. _A Choix de Poésies,_1891, with a preface by François Coppée, and a reproduction of Carrière's admirable portrait, is published in one volume by Charpentier; the series of _Hommes d'Aujourd'hui_ contains twenty-seven biographical notices by Verlaine; and a considerable number of poems and prose articles exists, scattered in various magazines, some of them English, such as the _Senate;_ in some cases the articles themselves are translated into English, such as "My Visit to London," in the _Savoy_ for April, 1896, and "Notes on England: Myself as a French Master," and "Shakespeare and Racine," in the _Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1894, and September, 1894. The first English translation in verse from Verlaine is Arthur O'Shaughnessy's rendering of "Clair de Lune" in _Fêtes Galantes,_ under the title "Pastel," in _Songs of a Worker,_ 1881. A volume of translations in verse, _Poems of Verlaine,_ by Gertrude Hall, was published in America in 1895. In Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_ 1893, there are translations of "Parsifal," "A Crucifix," "Le Chevalier Malheur," "Spleen," "Clair de Lune," "Mon Dieu m'a dit," and "Green."

As I have mentioned, there have been many portraits of Verlaine. The three portraits drawn on lithographic paper by Mr. Rothenstein, and published in 1898, are but the latest, if also among the best, of a long series, of which Mr. Rothenstein himself has done two or three others, one of which was reproduced in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1894, when Verlaine was in London. M. F. A. Cazals, a young artist who was one of Verlaine's most intimate friends, has done I should not like to say how many portraits, some of which he has gathered together in a little book, _Paul Verlaine: ses Portraits,_ 1898. There are portraits in nine of Verlaine's own books, several of them by M. Cazals (roughly jotted, expressive notes of moments), one by M. Anquetin (a strong piece of thinking flesh and blood), and in the _Choix de Poésies_ there is a reproduction of the cloudy, inspired poet of M. Eugène Carrière's painting. Another portrait, which I have not seen, but which Verlaine himself calls, in the _Dédicaces, un portrait enfin reposé,_ was done by M. Aman-Jean. M. Niederhausern has done a bust in bronze, Mr. Rothenstein a portrait medallion. A new edition of the _Confessions,_ 1899, contains a number of sketches; _Verlaine Dessinateur,_ 1896, many more; and there are yet others in the extremely objectionable book of M. Charles Donos, _Verlaine Intime,_ 1898. The _Hommes d'Aujourd'hui_ contains a caricature-portrait, many other portraits have appeared in French and English and German and Italian magazines, and there is yet another portrait in the admirable little book of Charles Morice, _Paul Verlaine,_ 1888, which contains by far the best study that has ever been made of Verlaine as a poet. I believe Mr. George Moore's article, "A Great Poet," reprinted in _Impressions and Opinions,_ 1891, was the first that was written on Verlaine in England; my own article in the _National Review_ in 1892 was, I believe, the first detailed study of the whole of his work up to that date. At last, in the _Vie de Paul Verlaine,_ of Edmund Lepelletier, there has come the authentic record.

An honest and instructed life of Verlaine has long been wanted, if only as an antidote to the defamatory production called _Verlaine Intime,_ made up out of materials collected by the publisher Léon Vanier in his own defense, in order that a hard taskmaster might be presented to the world in the colours of a benefactor. A "legend" which may well have seemed plausible to those who knew Verlaine only at the end of his life, has obtained currency; and a comparison of Verlaine with Villon, not only as a poet (which is to his honour), but also as a man, has been made, and believed. Lepelletier's book is an exact chronicle of a friendship which lasted, without a break, for thirty-six years--that is, from the time when Verlaine was sixteen to the time of his death; and a more sane, loyal and impartial chronicle of any man's life we have never read. It is written with full knowledge of every part of the career which it traces; and it is written by a man who puts down whatever he knows exactly as he believes it to have been. His conclusion is that "on peut fouiller sa vie au microscope: on y reconnaîtra des fautes, des folies, des faiblesses, bien des souffrances aussi, avec de la fatalité au fond, pas de honte véritable, pas une vile et indigne action. Les vrais amis du poète peuvent donc revendiquer pour lui l'épithete d'honnête homme, sans doute très vulgaire, mais qui, aux yeux de certains, a encore du prix."

In 1886 Verlaine dedicated _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf_ to Lepelletier, affirming the resolve, on his part, to "garder intacte la vielle amitié si forte et si belle." The compact has been kept nobly by the survivor.

It may, indeed, be questioned whether Lepelletier does not insist a little too much on the bourgeois element which he finds in Verlaine. When a man has suffered under unjust accusations, it is natural for his friends to defend him under whatever aspect seems to them most generally convincing. So it is interesting to know that for seven years Verlaine was in a municipal office, the Bureau des Budgets et Comptes, and that later, in 1882, he made an application, which was refused, for leave to return to his former post. Lepelletier reproaches the authorities for an action which he takes to have precipitated Verlaine into the final misery of his vagabondage. He would have lived quietly, he says, and written in security. Both assumptions may be doubted. What was bourgeois, and contented with quiet, was a small part of the nature of one who was too strong as well as too weak to remain within limits. The terrible force of Verlaine's weakness would always, in the process of making him a poet, have carried him far from that "tranquilité d'une sinécure bureaucratique" which Lepelletier strangely regrets for him. It is hardly permitted, in looking back over a disastrous life which has expressed itself in notable poetry, to regret that the end should have been attained, by no matter what means.

On moral questions Lepelletier speaks with the authority of an intimate friendship, and from a point of view which seems wholly without prejudice. He defends Verlaine with evident conviction against the most serious charges brought against him, and he shows at least, on documentary evidence, that nothing of the darker part of his "legend" was ever proved against him in any of his arrests and imprisonments. Drink, and mad rages let loose by drink, account, ignobly enough, for all of them. In the famous quarrel with Rimbaud, which brought him into prison for eighteen months, the accusation reads:

"Pour avoir, à Bruxelles, le 10 juillet, 1873, volontairement portés des coups et fait des blessures ayant entraîné une incapacité de travail personnel à Arthur Rimbaud."

The whole account of this episode is given by M. Lepelletier in great detail, and from this we learn that it was by the merest change of mind on the part of Rimbaud, or by sudden treachery, that the matter came into the courts at all. Lepelletier supplies an unfavourable account of Rimbaud, whom he looks upon as the evil counsellor of Verlaine--probably with justice. There is little doubt that Rimbaud, apart from his genuine touch of precocious power, which had its influence on the genius of Verlaine, was a "mauvais sujet" of a selfish and mischievous kind. He was destructive and pitiless; and having done his worst, he went off carelessly into Africa.

It will surprise some readers to learn that Verlaine took his degree of "bachelier-ès-lettres," and that on leaving the Lycée Bonaparte he received a certificate placing him "au nombre des sujets distingués que compte l'établissement." He was well grounded in Latin, and fairly well in English, and at several intervals in his life attempted to master Spanish, with the vague desire of translating Calderon. At an early period he read French literature, classical and modern, with avidity; translations of English, German and Eastern classics; books of criticism and philosophy.

"Il admirait beaucoup Joseph de Maîstre. _Le Rouge et le Noir_ de Stendhal avait produce sur lui une forte impression. Il avait déniché, on ne sait où, une Vie de sainte Thérèse, qu'il lisait avec ravissement."

He was absorbed in Baudelaire, Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Banville; he read Pétrus Borel and Aloysius Bertrand. The only poem that remains of this early period is the "Nocturne Parisien" of the _Poèmes Saturniens,_ which dates from about his twentieth year. Jules de Goncourt defined it as "un beau poème sinistre mêlant comme une Morgue à Notre-Dame." Baudelaire, as Sainte-Beuve, in a charming letter of real appreciation, pointed out, is here the evident "point de départ, pour aller au delà."

The chapter in which Lepelletier tells the story of the origin of the most famous literary movement since that of 1830, the "Parnasse," is one of the most entertaining in the book, and gives, in its narrative of the receptions "chez Nina" (a _salon_ which Lepelletier describes as the ancestor of the "Chat Noir"), a vivid picture of the days when Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and François Coppée were beginners together. Nina de Villars was one of the oddest people of her time: she made a kind of private Bohemia for poets, musicians, all kinds of artists and eccentric people, herself the most eccentric of them all. It was at her house that the members of the "Parnasse" gathered, while they selected as their more formal meeting-place the _salon_ of Madame Ricard. It is not generally known that Verlaine's _Poèmes Saturniens_ was the third volume to be issued by the house of Lemerre, afterwards to become a famous "publisher of poets," and it was in this volume that the new laws of the Parnasse were first formulated--that impassivity, that "marble egoism," which Verlaine was so soon to reject for a more living impulse, but which neither Leconte de Lisle nor Héredia was ever to abandon. When one thinks of the later Verlaine, it is curious to turn to that first formula:

Est-elle en marvre où non, le Vénus de Milo?

Verlaine's verse suddenly becomes human with _La Bonne Chanson,_ though the humanity in it is not yet salted as with fire. It is the record of the event which, as Lepelletier says, dominated his whole life; the marriage with Mathilde Maute, the young girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight, and whose desertion of him, however explicable, he never forgot nor forgave. Nothing could be more just or delicate than Lepelletier's treatment of the whole situation and there is no doubt that he is right in saying that the young wife "eût une grande responsabilité dans les désordres de l'existence désorbitée du poète." Verlaine, as he says, "était bon, aimant, et c'était comme un souffrant qu'il fallait le traiter." "Vous n'avez rien compris à ma simplicité," he wrote long afterwards, addressing the woman of whom Lepelletier says, "Il l'aima toujours, il n'aima qu'elle."

With his marriage Verlaine's disasters begin. Rimbaud enters his life and turns the current of it; the vagabondage begins, in France and England, and the letters written from London are among the most vivid documents in the book: thumbnail sketches full of keen observation. Then comes his imprisonment and conversion to Catholicism. Here Lepelletier, while he gives us an infinity of details which he alone could give, adopts an attitude which we cannot think to be justified, and which, as a matter of fact, Verlaine protested against during his lifetime. "Cette conversion fut-elle profonde et véridique?" he asks; and he answers, "Je ne le crois pas." That his conversion had much influence on Verlaine's conduct cannot be contended, but conduct and belief are two different things. Sincerity of the moment was his fundamental characteristic, but the moments made and remade his moods in their passing. The religion of _Sagesse_ is not the less genuine because that grave and sacred book was followed by the revolt of _Parallèment._ Verlaine tried to explain--in the poems themselves, in prefaces, and in conversation with friends--how natural it was to sin and to repent, and to use the same childlike words in the immediate rendering of sin and of repentance. This _naïveté,_ which made any regular existence an impossibility, was a part of him which gave a quality to his work unlike that of any other poet of our time. At the end of his life hardly anything but the _naïvetê_ was left, and the poems became mere outcries and gestures. Lepelletier is justly indignant at the action of Vanier in publishing after Verlaine's deaths the collection called _Invectives,_ made up of scraps and impromptus which the poet certainly never intended to publish. Here we see part of the weakness of a great man, who becomes petty when he puts off his true character and tries to be angry. "J'ai la fureur d'aimer," he says somewhere, and there is no essential part of his work which is not the expression of some form of love, grotesque or heroic, human or divine.

Of all this later, more and more miserable part of the life of Verlaine, Lepelletier has less to tell us. It has been sufficiently commented on, not always by friendly or understanding witnesses. What we get in this book, for the first time, is a view of the life as a whole, with all that is beautiful, tragic, and desperate in it. It is not an apology: it is a statement. It not only does honor to a great and unhappy man of genius; it does him justice.

JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS

(1848-1907)

Le _Drageoir à épices,_ 1874; _Marthe: Histoire d'une Fille,_ 1876; _Les Sœurs Vatard,_ 1879; _Croquis Parisiens,_ 1880; _En Ménage,_ 1881; _A Vau-l'Eau,_ 1882; _L'Art Moderne,_ 1883; _A Rebours,_ 1884; _Un Dilemme,_ 1887; _En Rade,_ 1887; _Certains,_1889; _La Bièvre,_1890; _Là-Bas,_ 1891; _En Route,_ 1895; La _Cathédrale,_ 1898; _La Bièvre Saint-Séverin,_ 1898; Pages _Catholiques,_ 1900; Sainte _Lydwine de Schiedam,_ 1901; De Tout, 1902; L'Oblat, 1903; Trois _Primitifs,_ 1905; Les Foules de _Lourdes,_ 1906; See also the short story, _Sac au Dos,_ in the _Soirées de Médan,_ 1880, and the pantomime, _Pierrot Sceptique,_ 1881, in collaboration with Léon Hennique. _En Route_ was translated into English by Mr. Kegan Paul, in 1896; and _La Cathédrale_ by Miss Clara Bell, in 1898.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

(1854-1891)

_Une Saison en Enfer,_ 1873; _Les Illuminations,_ 1886; _Reliquaire,_ 1891 (containing several poems falsely attributed to Rimbaud); _Les Illuminations: Une Saison en Enfer,_ 1892; _Poésies Complètes,_ 1895; _Œuvres,_ 1898.

See also Paterne Berrichon, _La Vie de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud,_ 1898, and _Lettres de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud,_ 1899; Paul Verlaine, _Les Poètes Maudits,_1884, and the biography by Verlaine in _Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui._ Mr. George Moore was the first to write about Rimbaud in England, in "Two Unknown Poets" (Rimbaud and Laforgue) in _Impressions and Opinions,_ 1891. In Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_ 1893, there are translations of "Charleville" and "Sensation." The latter, and "Les Chercheuses de Poux," are translated by Mr. T. Sturge Moore in _The Vinedresser, and other Poems,_ 1899.

JULES LAFORGUE

(1860-1887)

_Les Complaintes,_ 1885; _L'Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune,_ 1886; _Le Concile Féerique,_ 1886; _Moralités Légendaires,_ 1887; _Derniers Vers,_ 1890 (a privately printed volume, containing _Des Fleurs de Bonne Volonté, Le Concile Féerique,_ and _Derniers Vers); Poésies Complètes,_ 1894; _Œuvres Complètes, Poésies, Moralités Légendaires, Mélanges Posthumes_ (3 vols.), 1902, 1903.

An edition of the _Moralités Légendaires_ was published in 1897, under the care of M. Lucien Pissarro, at the Sign of the Dial; it is printed in Mr. Ricketts' admirable type, and makes one of the most beautiful volumes issued in French during this century. In 1896 M. Camille Mauclair, with his supple instinct for contemporary values, wrote a study, or rather an eulogy, of Laforgue, to which M. Maeterlinck contributed a few searching and delicate words by way of preface.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

(1862)

_Serres Chaudes,_ 1889; _La Princesse Maleine,_ 1890; _Les Aveugles (L'Intruse, Les Aveugles),_ 1890; _L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles, de Ruysbroeck l'Admirable,_ 1891; _Les Sept Princesses,_ 1891; _Pelléas et Mélisande,_ 1892; _Alladine et Palomides, Intérieur, La Mort de Tintagiles,_ 1894; _Annabella, de John Ford,_ 1895; _Les Disciples à Sais et les Fragments de Novalis,_ 1895; _Le Trésor des Humbles,_ 1896; _Douze Chansons,_ 1896; _Aglavaine et Sélysette,_ 1896; _La Sagesse et la Destinée,_ 1898; _Théâtre,_ 1901 (3 vols.); _La Vie des Abeilles,_ 1901; _Monna Vanna,_ 1902; _Le Temple Enseveli,_ 1902; _Joyzelle,_ 1903; _Le Double Jardin,_ 1904; _L'Intelligence des Fleurs,_ 1907.

M. Maeterlinck has had the good or bad fortune to be more promptly, and more violently, praised at the beginning of his career than at all events any other writer of whom I have spoken in this volume. His fame in France was made by a flaming article of M. Octave Mirbeau in the _Figaro_ of August 24, 1890. M. Mirbeau greeted him as the "Belgian Shakepeare," and expressed his opinion of _La Princesse Maleine_ by saying "M. Maeterlinck has given us the greatest work of genius that has been produced in our time, and the most extraordinary and the most naïve too, comparable (dare I say?) superior in beauty to what is most beautiful in Shakespeare ... more tragic than _Macbeth,_ more extraordinary in thought than _Hamlet."_ Mr. William Archer introduced M. Maeterlinck to England in an article called "A Pessimist Playwright" in the _Fortnightly Review,_ September, 1891. Less enthusiastic than M. Mirbeau, he defined the author of _La Princesse Maleine_ as "a Webster who had read Alfred de Musset." A freely adapted version of _L'Intruse_ was given by Mr. Tree at the Haymarket Theatre, January 27, 1892, and since that time many of M. Maeterlinck's plays have been acted, without cuts, or with but few cuts, at various London theatres. Several of his books have also been translated into English: _The Princesse Maleine_ (by Gerard Harry) and _The Intruder_ (by William Wilson), 1892; _Pelléas and Mélisande_ and _The Sightless_ (by Laurence Alma-Tadema), 1892; _Ruysbroeck and the Mystics_ (by J. T. Stoddart), 1894; _The Treasure of the Humble_ (by A. Sutro), 1897; _Aglavaine and Sélysette_ (by A. Sutro), 1897; _Wisdom and Destiny_ (by A. Sutro), 1898; _Alladine and Palomides_ (by A. Sutro), _Interior_ (by William Archer), and _The Death of Tintagiles_ (by A. Sutro), 1899.

I have spoken, in this volume, chiefly of Maeterlinck's essays, and but little of his plays, and I have said all that I had to say without special reference to the second volume of essays, _La Sagesse et la Destinée._ Like _Le Trésor des Humbles,_ that book is a message, a doctrine, even more than it is a piece of literature. It is a treatise on wisdom and happiness, on the search for happiness because it is wisdom, not for wisdom because it is happiness. It is a book of patient and resigned philosophy, a very Flemish philosophy, more resigned than even _Le Trésor des Humbles._ In a sense it seems to aim less high. An ecstatic mysticism has given way to a kind of prudence. Is this coming nearer to the earth really an intellectual ascent or descent? At least it is a divergence, and it probably indicates a divergence in art as well as in meditation. Yet, while it is quite possible to at least indicate Maeterlinck's position as a philosopher, it seems to me premature to attempt to define his position as a dramatist. Interesting as his dramatic work has always been, there is, in the later dramas, so singular an advance in all the qualities that go to make great art, that I find it impossible at this stage of his development, to treat his dramatic work as in any sense the final expression of a personality. What the next stage of his development may be it is impossible to say. He will not write more beautiful dramas than he has written in _Aglavaine et Sélysette_ and in _Pelléas et Mêlisande._ But he may, and he probably will, write something which will move the general world more profoundly, touching it more closely, in the manner of the great writers, in whom beauty has not been more beautiful than in writers less great, but has come to men with a more splendid energy.

TRANSLATIONS

_From Stéphane Mallarmé_