The Symbolist Movement in Literature/Bibliography and Notes
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES
(1799- 1850)
La Comédie Humaine
Scenes 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; La Femme abandonnée, 1832; Honorine, 1843; Béatrix, 1838; Gobseck, 1830; La Femme de trente ans, 1834; La Père Goriot, 1834; Le Colonel Chabert, 1832; La Messa de l'Athée, 1836; L'Interdiction, 1836; Le Contrat de mariage, 1835; Autre étude de femme, 1839; La Grande Bretéche, 1832.
Scènes de la vie de Province
Scènes de la Vie Parisienne
Ferragus, 1833; La 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 Bohême, 1839; Guadissart II, 1844; Les Employés, 1836; Les Comédiens sans le savoir, 1845; Les Petits Bourgeois, 1845;
Scènes de la Vie Militarie
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. Marcas, 1840; L'Envers de l'Histoire contemporaine, 1847; Le Député d'Arcis.
Scènes de la Vie de Campagne
Le Médecin de campgne, 1832; Le Curé de village, 1837; Lés 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; Maitre Cornélius, 1831; Cathérine 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; Melanges Historiques et Littéraires, 1855; Les Cosaques d'Autre-fois, 1865; Étude sur les Arts au Moyen-Age, 1875; Les Faux Démétrius, 1853; Étude sur l'Histoire Romaine, 1844; Histoire de Don 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, Morçeaux cho sis et traduits, 1830; Choix de Poésies de Ronsand et de Regnier, 1830; Nos Adieux à la Chambre de Députés de l'an 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 Monténegrins, 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 Bohême, 1853; Les Filles du Feu, 1854; Misanthropie et Repentir, drame de Kotzebue, 1855; La Bohême 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 Bohême 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 Nevrosés, 1898. THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
(1811-1872)
Les Poésies, 1830; Albertus, où l'êmet 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 Peri, ballet, 1843; Les Grotesques, 1844.
Une Nuit de Cléopâtre, 1845; Premières Poèsies, 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; Aria 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 Vosges, 1860; Trésors d'Art de la Russie, 1860-1863; Histoire de l'art théâtrale en France depuis vignt-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 pompeien de l'Avenue Montaigne, 1866; Rapport sur le progrès des Lettres, 1868; Ménagere 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; Le Tentation de Saint Antoine, 1874; L'Education Sentimentale, 1870; Trois Contes, 1877; Bouvard et Péchuché, 1881; Le Candidat, 1874; Sur 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 pendent la Revolution, 1854; Histoire de la Société Française pendent 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, 1874; La Patrie en Danger, 1879; L'Amour au XVIII Siècle, 1874; 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 grave d'Antoine Watteau, 1873; Catalogue de l'œuvre de P. Proudhun, 1876; La Fille Élisa, 1879; Les Frères Zamganno, 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 Gumiard, 1893; À 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 Poétes 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. Préface 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 Oeil, 1885; Tity Royssac 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 sees 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.
ÉMILE 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'abbe 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 Ferat, 1885; La Confession de Claude, 1886; Contes à Ninon, 1891; Nouveaux Contes à Ninon, 1874; Le Captaine 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 Réve, 1892; Paris, 1898; Rome, 1896; Lourdes, 1894; Fécondité, 1899; Travail, 1901; Verité, 1903.
STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ
(1842-1898)
Le Corbeau (traduit de Poe), 1875; La Dernière Mode, 1875; L'Après-Midi d'un Faune, 1876; La Vathek de Backford, 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, Letterature 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. Rothenstien 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 published 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 fatalitéau 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 und 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 producé sur lui une forte impression. Il avait deniché, 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 und Morgue à Norte-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 Héredita 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 "cût une grande responsabilité dans les désordres de l'éxistence 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 maïveté was left, and the poems became mere outcries and gestures. Lepelletier is justly indignant at the action of Vanier in publishing after Verlaine's death 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 et 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 Medan, 1880, and the pantomime, Pierrot Sceptique, 1881, in collaboration with Léon Hennique. En Route was translated into English b Mr. Kegan Paul, in 1896; and La Cathédrale by Miss Clara Bell, in 1898.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
(1854-1891)
Une Sainson en Enfer, 1873; Les Illuminations, 1886; Reliquaire, 1891 (containing several poems falsely attributed to Rimbaud); Les Illuminations: Une Sainson 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. Rickett's 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 a 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 Saïs 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 Shakespeare," 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; Pelleas and Melisande 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 Selysette (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 Péleas et Mélisande. 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.