The productions of another celebrity, Verlaine, are not less affected and unintelligible. This, for instance, is the first poem in the section called "Ariettes Oubliés."
"Le vent dans la plaineSuspend son haleine."—Favart.
C'est l'extase langoureuse,C'est la fatigue amoureuse,C'est tous les frissons des boisParmi l'étreinte des brises,C'est, vers les ramures grises,Le chœur des petites voix.
O le frêle et frais murmure!Cela gazouille et susurre,Cela ressemble au cri douxQue l'herbe agitée expire....Tu dirais, sous l'eau qui vire,Le roulis sourd des cailloux.
Cette âme qui se lamenteEn cette plainte dormanteC'est la nôtre, n'est-ce pas?La mienne, dis, et la tienne,Dont s'exhale l'humble antiennePar ce tiède soir, tout bas?
What "chœur des petites voix"? and what "cri doux que l'herbe agitée expire"? and what it all means, remains altogether unintelligible to me.
And here is another "Ariette":—
VIII
Dans l'interminableEnnui de la plaine,La neige incertaineLuit comme du sable.
Le ciel est de cuivre,Sans lueur aucune.On croirait voir vivreEt mourir la lune.
Comme des nuéesFlottent gris les chênesDes forêts prochainesParmi les buées.
Le ciel est de cuivre,Sans lueur aucune.On croirait voir vivreEt mourir la lune.
Corneille poussiveEt vous, les loups maigres,Par ces bises aigresQuoi donc vous arrive?
Dans l'interminableEnnui de la plaine,La neige incertaineLuit comme du sable.
How does the moon seem to live and die in a copper heaven? And how can snow shine like sand? The whole thing is not merely unintelligible, but, under pretense of conveying an impression, it passes off a string of incorrect comparisons and words.
Besides these artificial and obscure poems there are others which are intelligible, but which make up for it by being altogether bad, both in form and in subject. Such are all the poems under the heading "La Sagesse." The chief place in these verses is occupied by a very poor expression of the most commonplace Roman Catholic and patriotic sentiments. For instance, one meets with verses such as this:—
Je ne veux plus penser qu'à ma mère Marie,Siège de la sagesse et source de pardons,Mère de France aussi de qui nous attendonsInébranlablement l'honneur de la patrie.
Before citing examples from other poets, I must pause to note the amazing celebrity of these two versifiers, Baudelaire and Verlaine, who are now accepted as being great poets. How the French, who had Chénier, Musset, Lamartine, and, above all, Hugo,—and among whom quite recently flourished the so-called Parnassiens: Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme, etc.,—could attribute such importance to these two versifiers, who were far from skilful in form and most contemptible and commonplace in subject-matter, is to me incomprehensible. The conception of life of one of them, Baudelaire, consisted in elevating gross egotism into a theory, and replacing morality by a cloudy conception of beauty, and especially artificial beauty. Baudelaire had a preference, which he expressed, for a woman's face painted rather than showing its natural color, and for metal trees and a theatrical imitation of water rather than real trees and real water.
The life-conception of the other, Verlaine, consisted in weak profligacy, confession of his moral impotence, and, as an antidote to that impotence, in the grossest Roman Catholic idolatry. Both, moreover, were quite lacking in naïveté, sincerity, and simplicity, and both overflowed with artificiality, forced originality and self-assurance. So that in their least bad productions one sees more of M. Baudelaire or M. Verlaine than of what they were describing. But these two indifferent versifiers form a school, and lead hundreds of followers after them.
There is only one explanation of this fact: it is that the art of the society in which these versifiers lived is not a serious, important matter of life, but is a mere amusement. And all amusements grow wearisome by repetition. And, in order to make wearisome amusement again tolerable, it is necessary to find some means to freshen it up. When, at cards, ombre grows stale, whist is introduced; when whist grows stale, écarté is substituted; when écarté grows stale, some other novelty is invented, and so on. The substance of the matter remains the same, only its form is changed. And so it is with this kind of art. The subject-matter of the art of the upper classes growing continually more and more limited, it has come at last to this, that to the artists of these exclusive classes it seems as if everything has already been said, and that to find anything new to say is impossible. And therefore, to freshen up this art, they look out for fresh forms.
Baudelaire and Verlaine invent such a new form, furbish it up, moreover, with hitherto unused pornographic details, and—the critics and the public of the upper classes hail them as great writers.
This is the only explanation of the success, not of Baudelaire and Verlaine only, but of all the Decadents.
For instance, there are poems by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck which have no meaning, and yet for all that, or perhaps on that very account, are printed by tens of thousands, not only in various publications, but even in collections of the best works of the younger poets.
This, for example, is a sonnet by Mallarmé:—
A la nue accablante tuBasse de basalte et de lavesA même les échos esclavesPar une trompe sans vertu.
Quel sépulcral naufrage (tuLe soir, écume, mais y baves)Suprême une entre les épavesAbolit le mât dévêtu.
Ou cela que furibond fauteDe quelque perdition hauteTout l'abîme vain éployéDans le si blanc cheveu qui traîneAvarement aura noyéLe flanc enfant d'une sirène.("Pan," 1895, No. 1.)
This poem is not exceptional in its incomprehensibility. I have read several poems by Mallarmé, and they also had no meaning whatever. I give a sample of his prose in Appendix I. There is a whole volume of this prose called "Divagations." It is impossible to understand any of it. And that is evidently what the author intended.
And here is a song by Maeterlinck, another celebrated author of to-day:—
Quand il est sorti,(J'entendis la porte)Quand il est sortiElle avait souri ....
Mais quand il entra(J'entendis la lampe)Mais quand il entraUne autre était là ....
Et j'ai vu la mort,(J'entendis son âme)Et j'ai vu la mortQui l'attend encore ....
On est venu dire,(Mon enfant j'ai peur)On est venu direQu'il allait partir ....
Ma lampe allumée,(Mon enfant j'ai peur)Ma lampe alluméeMe suis approchée ....
A la première porte,(Mon enfant j'ai peur)A la première porte,La flamme a tremblé ....
A la seconde porte,(Mon enfant j'ai peur)A la seconde porte,La flamme a parlé ....
A la troisième porte,(Mon enfant j'ai peur)A la troisième porte,La lumière est morte ....
Et s'il revenait un jourQue faut-il lui dire?Dites-lui qu'on l'attenditJusqu'à s'en mourir ....
Et s'il demande où vous êtesQue faut-il répondre?Donnez-lui mon anneau d'orSans rien lui répondre ....
Et s'il m'interroge alorsSur la dernière heure?Dites lui que j'ai souriDe peur qu'il ne pleure ....
Et s'il m'interroge encoreSans me reconnaître?Parlez-lui comme une sœur,Il souffre peut-être ....
Et s'il veut savoir pourquoiLa salle est déserte?Montrez lui la lampe éteinteEt la porte ouverte ....("Pan," 1895, No. 2.)
Who went out? Who came in? Who is speaking? Who died?
I beg the reader to be at the pains of reading through the samples I cite in Appendix II. of the celebrated and esteemed young poets—Griffin, Verhaeren, Moréas, and Montesquiou. It is important to do so in order to form a clear conception of the present position of art, and not to suppose, as many do, that Decadentism is an accidental and transitory phenomenon. To avoid the reproach of having selected the worst verses, I have copied out of each volume the poem which happened to stand on page 28.
All the other productions of these poets are equally unintelligible, or can only be understood with great difficulty, and then not fully. All the productions of those hundreds of poets, of whom I have named a few, are the same in kind. And among the Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, and us Russians, similar verses are printed. And such productions are printed and made up into book form, if not by the million, then by the hundred thousand (some of these works sell in tens of thousands). For type-setting, paging, printing, and binding these books, millions and millions of working days are spent—not less, I think, than went to build the great pyramid. And this is not all. The same is going on in all the other arts: millions and millions of working days are being spent on the production of equally incomprehensible works in painting, in music, and in the drama.
Painting not only does not lag behind poetry in this matter, but rather outstrips it. Here is an extract from the diary of an amateur of art, written when visiting the Paris exhibitions in 1894:—
"I was to-day at three exhibitions: the Symbolists', the Impressionists', and the Neo-Impressionists'. I looked at the pictures conscientiously and carefully, but again felt the same stupefaction and ultimate indignation. The first exhibition, that of Camille Pissarro, was comparatively the most comprehensible, though the pictures were out of drawing, had no subject, and the colorings were most improbable. The drawing was so indefinite that you were sometimes unable to make out which way an arm or a head was turned. The subject was generally 'effets'—Effet de brouillard, Effet du soir, Soleil couchant. There were some pictures with figures, but without subjects.
"In the coloring, bright blue and bright green predominated. And each picture had its special color, with which the whole picture was, as it were, splashed. For instance, in 'A Girl Guarding Geese,' the special color is vert de gris, and dots of it were splashed about everywhere; on the face, the hair, the hands, and the clothes. In the same gallery—'Durand Ruel'—were other pictures by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley—who are all Impressionists. One of them, whose name I could not make out,—it was something like Redon,—had painted a blue face in profile. On the whole face there is only this blue tone, with white-of-lead. Pissarro has a water-color all done in dots. In the foreground is a cow, entirely painted with various-colored dots. The general color cannot be distinguished, however much one stands back from, or draws near to, the picture. From there I went to see the Symbolists. I looked at them long without asking any one for an explanation, trying to guess the meaning; but it is beyond human comprehension. One of the first things to catch my eye was a wooden haut-relief, wretchedly executed, representing a woman (naked) who with both hands is squeezing from her two breasts streams of blood. The blood flows down, becoming lilac in color. Her hair first descends, and then rises again, and turns into trees. The figure is all colored yellow, and the hair is brown.
"Next—a picture: a yellow sea, on which swims something which is neither a ship nor a heart; on the horizon is a profile with a halo and yellow hair, which changes into a sea, in which it is lost. Some of the painters lay on their colors so thickly that the effect is something between painting and sculpture. A third exhibit was even less comprehensible: a man's profile; before him a flame and black stripes—leeches, as I was afterwards told. At last I asked a gentleman who was there what it meant, and he explained to me that the haut-relief was a symbol, and that it represented 'La Terre.' The heart swimming in a yellow sea was 'Illusion perdue,' and the gentleman with the leeches 'Le Mal.' There were also some Impressionist pictures: elementary profiles, holding some sort of flowers in their hands: in monotone, out of drawing, and either quite blurred or else marked out with wide black outlines."
This was in 1894; the same tendency is now even more strongly defined, and we have Böcklin, Stuck, Klinger, Sasha Schneider, and others.
The same thing is taking place in the drama. The play-writers give us an architect who, for some reason, has not fulfilled his former high intentions, and who consequently climbs on to the roof of a house he has erected, and tumbles down head foremost; or an incomprehensible old woman (who exterminates rats), and who, for an unintelligible reason, takes a poetic child to the sea, and there drowns him; or some blind men who, sitting on the seashore, for some reason always repeat one and the same thing; or a bell of some kind, which flies into a lake, and there rings.
And the same is happening in music—in that art which, more than any other, one would have thought, should be intelligible to everybody.
An acquaintance of yours, a musician of repute, sits down to the piano and plays you what he says is a new composition of his own, or of one of the new composers. You hear the strange, loud sounds, and admire the gymnastic exercises performed by his fingers; and you see that the performer wishes to impress upon you that the sounds he is producing express various poetic strivings of the soul. You see his intention, but no feeling whatever is transmitted to you except weariness. The execution lasts long, or at least it seems very long to you, because you do not receive any clear impression, and involuntarily you remember the words of Alphonse Karr, "Plus ça va vite, plus ça dure longtemps." And it occurs to you that perhaps it is all a mystification; perhaps the performer is trying you—just throwing his hands and fingers wildly about the keyboard in the hope that you will fall into the trap and praise him, and then he will laugh and confess that he only wanted to see if he could hoax you. But when at last the piece does finish, and the perspiring and agitated musician rises from the piano evidently anticipating praise, you see that it was all done in earnest.
The same thing takes place at all the concerts, with pieces by Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, and (newest of all) Richard Strauss, and the numberless other composers of the new school, who unceasingly produce opera after opera, symphony after symphony, piece after piece.
The same is occurring in a domain in which it seemed hard to be unintelligible,—in the sphere of novels and short stories.
Read "Là Bas," by Huysmans, or some of Kipling's short stories, or "L'Annonciateur," by Villiers de l'Isle Adam in his "Contes Cruels," etc., and you will find them not only "abscons" (to use a word adopted by the new writers), but absolutely unintelligible both in form and in substance. Such, again, is the work by E. Morel, "Terre Promise," now appearing in the Revue Blanche, and such are most of the new novels. The style is very high-flown, the feelings seem to be most elevated, but you can't make out what is happening, to whom it is happening, and where it is happening. And such is the bulk of the young art of our time.
