torrent of outlandish terms poured forth in the most admirable
verse, or Les Djinns, where some of the stanzas have lines of
two syllables each) that the grand provocation was thrown
to the believers in alexandrines, careful caesuras and strictly
separated couplets. Les Feuilles d’automne, Les Chants du
crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures, Les Rayons et les ombres, the
productions of the next twenty years, were quieter in style and
tone, but no less full of poetical spirit. The Revolution of 1848,
the establishment of the empire and the poet’s exile brought
about a fresh determination of his genius to lyrical subjects.
Les Châtiments and La Légende des siècles, the one political, the
other historical, reach perhaps the high-water mark of French
verse; and they were followed by the philosophical Contemplations,
the lighter Chansons des rues et des bois, the Année
terrible, the second Légende des siècles, and the later work to be
found noticed sub nom. We have been thus particular here
because the literary productiveness of Victor Hugo himself has
been the measure and sample of the whole literary productiveness
of France on the poetical side. At five-and-twenty he was
acknowledged as a master, at seventy-five he was a master still.
His poetical influence has been represented in three different
schools, from which very few of the poetical writers of the
century can be excluded. These few we may notice first. Alfred Musset.
de Musset, a writer of great genius, felt part of the
Romantic inspiration very strongly, but was on the
whole unfortunately influenced by Byron, and partly out of
wilfulness, partly from a natural want of persevering industry
and vigour, allowed himself to be careless and even slovenly
in composition. Notwithstanding this, many of his lyrics are
among the finest poems in the language, and his verse, careless
as it is, has extraordinary natural grace. Auguste Barbier
(1805–1882) whose Iambes shows an extraordinary command of
nervous and masculine versification, also comes in here; and the
Breton poet, Auguste Brizeux (1803–1858), much admired by
some, together with Hégésippe Moreau, an unequal writer
possessing some talent, Pierre Dupont (1821–1870), one of much
greater gifts, and Gustave Nadaud (1820–1893), a follower of
Béranger, also deserve mention. Of the school of Lamartine
rather than of Hugo are Alfred de Vigny (1799–1865) and
Victor de Laprade (1812–1887), the former a writer of little
bulk and somewhat over-fastidious, but possessing one of the
most correct and elegant styles to be found in French, with a
curious restrained passion and a complicated originality, the
latter a meditative and philosophical poet, like Vigny an admirable
writer, but somewhat deficient in pith and substance, as
well as in warmth and colour. Madame Ackermann (1813–1890)
is the chief philosophical poetess of France, and this style has
recently been very popular; but for actual poetical powers,
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786–1859) perhaps excelled her,
though in a looser and more sentimental fashion. The poetical
schools which more directly derive from the Romantic movement
as represented by Hugo are three in number, corresponding in
point of time with the first outburst of the movement, with the
period of reaction already alluded to, and with the closing years
of the second empire. Of the first by far the most distinguished
member was Théophile Gautier (1811–1872), the most perfect Gautier.
poet in point of form that France has produced. When
quite a boy he devoted himself to the study of 16th-century
masters, and though he acknowledged the supremacy
of Hugo, his own talent was of an individual order, and developed
itself more or less independently. Albertus alone of his poems
has much of the extravagant and grotesque character which
distinguished early romantic literature. The Comédie de la
mort, the Poésies diverses, and still more the Émaux et camées,
display a distinctly classical tendency—classical, that is to say,
not in the party and perverted sense, but in its true acceptation.
The tendency to the fantastic and horrible may be taken as best
shown by Petrus Borel (1809–1859), a writer of singular power
almost entirely wasted. Gerard Labrunie or de Nerval (1808–1855)
adopted a manner also fantastic but more idealistic than
Borel’s, and distinguished himself by his Oriental travels and
studies, and by his attention to popular ballads and traditions,
while his style has an exquisite but unaffected strangeness
hardly inferior to Gautier’s. This peculiar and somewhat
quintessenced style is also remarkable in the Gaspard de la nuit
of Louis Bertrand (1807–1841), a work of rhythmical prose
almost unique in its character. One famous sonnet preserves
the name of Félix Arvers (1806–1850). The two Deschamps
were chiefly remarkable as translators. The next generation
produced three remarkable poets, to whom may perhaps be
added a fourth. Théodore de Banville (1823–1891), adopting
the principles of Gautier, and combining with them a considerable
satiric faculty, composed a large amount of verse, faultless in
form, delicate and exquisite in shades and colours, but so entirely
neutral in moral and political tone that it has found fewer
admirers than it deserved. Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle
(1818–1894), carrying out the principle of ransacking foreign
literature for subjects, went to Celtic, classical or even Oriental
sources for his inspiration, and despite a science in verse not much
inferior to Banville’s, and a far wider range and choice of
subject, diffused an air of erudition, not to say pedantry, over
his work which disgusted some readers, and a pessimism which
displeased others, but has left poetry only inferior to that of
the greatest of his countrymen. Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867),
by his choice of unpopular subjects and the terrible truth of his
analysis, revolted not a few of those who, in the words of an
English critic, cannot take pleasure in the representation if they
do not take pleasure in the thing represented, and who thus
miss his extraordinary command of the poetical appeal in
sound, in imagery and in suggestion generally. Thus, by a
strange coincidence, each of the three representatives of the
second Romantic generation was for a time disappointed of
his due fame. A fourth poet of this time, Joséphin Soulary
(1815–1891), produced sonnets of rare beauty and excellence.
A fifth, Louis Bouilhet (1822–1869), an intimate friend of Flaubert,
pushed even farther the fancy for strange subjects, but
showed powers in Melænis and other things. In 1866 a collection
of poems, entitled after an old French fashion Le Parnasse
contemporain, appeared. It included contributions by many
of the poets just mentioned, but the mass of the contributors
were hitherto unknown to fame. A similar collection appeared
in 1869, and was interrupted by the German war, but continued
after it, and a third in 1876.
The first Parnasse had been projected by MM. Xavier de Ricard (b. 1843) and Catulle Mendès (1841–1909) as a sort of manifesto of a school of young poets: but its contents were largely coloured by the inclusion among them of work by representatives of older generations—Gautier, Laprade, Leconte de Lisle, Banville, Baudelaire and others. The continuation, however, of the title in the later issues, rather than anything else, led to the formation and promulgation of the idea of a “Parnassien” or an “Impassible” school which was supposed to adopt as its watchword the motto of “Art for Art’s sake,” to pay especial attention to form, and also to aim at a certain objectivity. As a matter of fact the greater poets and the greater poems of the Parnasse admit of no such restrictive labelling, which can only be regarded as mischievous, though (or very mainly because) it has been continued. Another school, arising mainly in the later ’eighties and calling itself that of “Symbolism,” has been supposed to indicate a reaction against Parnassianism and even against the main or Hugonic Romantic tradition generally; with a throwing back to Lamartine and perhaps Chénier. This idea of successive schools (“Decadents,” “Naturists,” “Simplists,” &c.) has even been reduced to such an absurdum as the statement that “France sees a new school of poetry every fifteen years.” Those who have studied literature sufficiently widely, and from a sufficient elevation, know that these systematisings are always more or less delusive. Parnassianism, symbolism and the other things are merely phases of the Romantic movement itself—as may be proved to demonstration by the simple process of taking, say, Hugo and Verlaine on the one hand, Delille or Escouchard Lebrun on the other, and comparing the two first mentioned with each other and with the older poet. The differences in the first case will be found to be
