Remy de Gourmont
ary notice is not, perhaps, the best place for analyzing his metric. Suffice it to say that the litanies are a marvel of rhythm, that they have not been followed or repeated that M. de Gourmont was not of "the young French school." If he is "grouped" anywhere he must be grouped, as poet, among les symbolistes. The litanies are evocation, not statement.
M. do Gourmont was indubitably "of the young" in the sense that his mind had not lost its vigor, that he was alive to contemporary impressions, that he had not gone gaga over catholicism like poor Francis Jammes, nor wallowed in metrical journalism like the ill-starred Paul Fort. He had never lost touch with the men born ten or twenty years after he was; for a man of fifty-seven that is a very considerable achievement. Or rather it is not an achievement, for it can not be done by effort; it can only come from a natural freshness and aliveness of the mind, and is a matter of temperament.
I had forgotten the French Academy until an article in L'Humanité reminded me that M. de Gourmont was not a member thereof; that the ancient association which contains Auguste Swallou, Thibaudet de Mimmil, and so many other "immortals" had not seen fit to elect him. It is evident that the "Académie Françoise" has outlived its usefulness, and if France does not set an example what can be expected of other academies? In M. de Gourmont's case the academy had no excuse. He had not only written supremely, but he had given back to the world a lost beauty—in Le Latin
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