Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (41 page)

At last you will be at rest; at last, oh poor divine old man!, you have stopped dragging about your lamentable stiff leg and your existence filled with pain and dreams. No longer will you suffer
mal de vie,
complicated in you by the malign influence of Saturn.

You died, no doubt, in one of the hospitals you taught your disciples to love—one of those “winter palaces” of yours, the spas and rest homes that were home to your vagabond bones when you writhed from implacable attacks of rheumatism and the harsh miseries of Paris life.

You have died, no doubt, surrounded by your loved ones, your spiritual children, the young officiants of your church, the students of your school, oh lyrical Socrates of an impossible time!

But you die at a glorious moment, when your name begins to triumph and the seeds of your ideas have started to become magnificent flowers of art, even in countries distant from your own. For today we can say that now, around the world, your figure—your nimbus—shines resplendent among the chosen few of diverse languages and climes, as it does before the throne of immense Wagner.

[One critic] has portrayed Verlaine as a leper seated before the door of a cathedral—pitiable, mendicant, awakening compassion, a groat’s-worth of charity among the entering and departing faithful. [Another] compares him to Benoit Labre,
²⁸
the living symbol of disease and misery; León Bloy had once called him the Leper, and had painted him in the triptych
Un brelan d’excommuniés,
alongside the Enfant Terrible Barbey d’Aurevilly and the Madman Ernesto Hello. Ay, such was, indeed, his life! Seldom is a creature born of woman’s womb so fated to bear upon his shoulders such a weight of pain and grief. Job would say to him:
Mon frère!

I confess that after plunging into the agitated waters of the gulf of his books; after penetrating into the secret of that unique existence; after seeing that soul scarred and incurably wounded; after hearing all those echoes of celestial or profane music, always deeply enchanting; after contemplating that imposing figure in its pain, that superb head, those dark eyes, that face with its hint of Socrates, Pierrot, and a child; after gazing upon the fallen god, punished, perhaps, for Olympian crimes in some prior life; after knowing the sublime faith and furious love and immense poetry whose dwelling was that wretched, hobbling body—I felt a dolorous love being born in my heart, alongside my great admiration for this sad master.

As I passed through Paris in 1893, Enrique Gómez Carrillo offered to introduce me to him. My friend had published an impassioned “impression” . . . in which he spoke of a visit to a patient in the hospital in Broussais. “And there I found him, always ready with a fierce word of mockery, in a narrow hospital bed. His huge, friendly face, whose extreme paleness reminded me of the figures painted by Ribera, had a hieratic aspect. The nostrils of his small nose dilated often, to sniff at the delicious smoke of a cigar. His thick lips, which half-opened to lovingly recite several lines from Villón or curse the poems of Ronsard, always had upon them that bitter grimace in which vice and goodness mingle to form the expression of a smile. His blond Cossack beard had grown a bit, and had turned much grayer.”

Through Carrillo’s agency we penetrated into some of Verlaine’s inner thoughts. This was not the time of the worn, spent, feeble old man that one might imagine; he was, rather a “robust old fellow.” One might venture that he suffered from dreadful nightmares and visions in which the memories of the dark and mysterious legend of his life mingled with the sadness and terror of alcoholism. He passed his hours in illness, sometimes in pitiable isolation, abandoned and forgotten despite the kind initiatives of the likes of Mendès and León Deschamps.

My God! That man born to wear the crown of thorns, and to suffer the slings and arrows and afflictions of the world, looked to me like the living symbol of angelic grandeur and human misery. Angelic, Verlaine most surely was: No lute, no psaltery since Jacopone da Todi’s, since the
Stabat Mater,
has praised the Virgin with the filial, ardent, yet humble melody of
Sagesse
; no tongue, save perhaps the tongues of prostrate seraphim, has better sung the flesh and blood of the Lamb; in no hands have the sacred coals of penitence burned hotter; and no penitent has flagellated his naked back with greater ardor of repentance than Verlaine when he has rent his very soul and its fresh, pure blood has spilled forth in rhythmic roses of martyrdom.

Those who have looked into his
Confessions,
into his
Hospitals,
into his other intimate books, will understand the man—inseparable from the poet—and find that in that sea, tempestuous at first, dead calm later, there are treasure-stores of pearls. Verlaine was a wretched son of Adam in whom the paternal bequest was stronger than in other men. Of the three Enemies, the World did him the least harm. The Devil hounded and attacked him; he defended himself from the onslaught, as he could, with the shield of prayer. The Flesh, however, was invincible and implacable. Seldom has the serpent Sex bitten the human brain more furiously, and more venomously. The poet’s body was the lyre of sin; he was an eternal prisoner of desire. When he walked, one was tempted to look in his footprint for the cleft of the hoof. It was odd not to see upon his brow two little horns, for in his eyes one could see visions of white nymphs flit past, and upon his lips, once familiar with the flute, there oft appeared Pan’s rictus. Like Hugo’s satyr, he would have said to Venus, upon the splendor of the sacred mount:
Viens nous en!
. . .
²⁹
And that carnal pagan’s lust did not ebb, but waxed eternally, primitive and natural, as his Catholic conception of guilt grew stronger.

And yet—Have you not read those lovely stories, renewed recently by Anatole France, in which there are satyrs who worship God and believe in His heaven and His saints and even manage upon occasion to become satyr-saints? That to my mind is the case of Pauvre Lelian—half, horned flute player in the forest, violator of hamadryads; half, the Lord’s ascete, the hermit who, ecstatic, sings His psalms. The hairy body suffered the tyranny of the blood, the imperious domination of the nerves, the flame of spring, the aphrodisiac of the free and fecund mountain; the spirit was consecrated to praise of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but as well, and above all, the chaste, maternal Virgin, so that when Temptation sounded its clarion-call, the spirit, eyeless, did not look, but remained as though in a stupor, to the music of the fanfare of the flesh. There were times when the satyr would return from the forest and the soul would recover its empire and look up toward God; the remorse would be profound, and the psalm would issue forth. And so he would live, until, through the thick leaves of the woods, he would glimpse Calixto’s thigh again. . . .

When Nordau published his famous work on Dr. Tribulat Bonhomet, the figure of Verlaine—almost unknown to the general public, and among that general public I include many of the
élite
in other spheres—appeared for the first time, in the most curiously abominable of portraits. The poet of
Sagesse
was presented as one of those supposedly patent illustrations of the pseudo-scientific claim that contemporary aesthetic fashions are forms of intellectual decay. I will give a brief excerpt of Nordau’s presentation of the “case”: “We have before us the neatly-delineated figure of the most famous of the
Symbolistes.
We see a horrid degenerate with an asymmetrical cranium and a mongoloid face; an impulsive vagabond; a dipsomaniac; . . . an erotomaniac; . . . an emotional dreamer, weak in spirit, who struggles painfully against his evil instincts and finds sometimes in his anguish, moving moans and whimpers; a mystic whose smoky consciousness is filled with representations of God and the saints; a doddering old fool . . .”

Many writers were attacked; some defended themselves. Even the cabbalistic Mallarmé, descending from his tripod to give a lecture on Music and Literature in London, felt himself obliged to demonstrate the lack of intellect of that Austro-German “professor.” Pauvre Lelian did not defend himself, although several friends and disciples did, Charles Tennib perhaps with greatest vigor and aplomb, and his beautiful, justified diatribe was a fit reply to Nordau’s attack. . . .

Of the works of Verlaine, what is there to say? He has been among the greatest poets of this century. His work is scattered over the face of the earth. It is now seen as shameful for the official, earthbound writers of today not to quote Paul Verlaine from time to time, if only to damn him with faint praise. In Norway and Sweden, the young friends of Jonas Lee extend the master’s artistic influence. In England, where he was wont to give lectures, and thanks to new writers such as Symons and the contributors to the
Yellow Book,
his illustrious name is well known: the
New Review
has printed his verses in French. In the United States, even before the publication in
Harper’s Magazine
of Symons’ famous essay “The Decadent Movement in Literature,” the poet’s fame was firmly established. In Italy, D’Annunzio acknowledged him as one of the masters who aided his rise to glory; Vittorio Pica and the young artists of the Tavola Rotonda expound his doctrines. In Holland, the new literary generation salute him—Werwey’s study is a notable example. In Spain, he is almost unknown, and shall continue to be so for a long time; it is only Clarín, I believe, and the perspicacity of Clarín, that has held him in high esteem. Nothing worthy of Verlaine has been written in Spanish, save perhaps a few things published by Gómez Carrillo, for the notes and impressions by Bonafoux and Eduardo Pardo are very slight, indeed.

Let these lines serve, then, as an offering to the moment. On another occasion I shall consecrate to the grand Verlaine the study he so fully merits. For today, this shall be all.

“This sick leg does make me suffer some; on the other hand, it is easier to bear than my verses, which truly bring me anguish. . . . And if not for the rheumatism, I couldn’t live on my income—if one is well, the hospitals won’t have one.”

Those words paint the fraternal tragedy of Villon.

He was not evil; his
animula, blandula, vagula
³⁰
was ill.... God has taken him into heaven as though into a hospital!

 

“This was a king . . .” Thus, as in a fairy tale, should begin the story of the
monarque raté mais poète formidable
³¹
who in this life was known as the Comte Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. A fragment of his ideal history might be constructed thus:

“At that time—in the middle years of the indecorous nineteenth century—Greece saw a rebirth of its ancient splendor. A prince like the princes of antiquity was crowned in Athens, and he shone like a royal star. He was descended from the Knights of Malta; in him there was a pinch of Prince Hamlet and much more of King Apollo; silver trumpets announced his coming; he would ride through the countryside in a heroic chariot drawn by teams of white steeds; he evicted from his realms all the citizens of the United States; he showered largesse upon painters, sculptors, and rhymers, and soon the Attic bees began to buzz again to the sound of lyres and brushes. He filled the woods with statues; the eyes of shepherds were met once again with visions of nymphs and goddesses. He received the state visit of a sovereign named Louis of Bavaria, a gentleman as handsome as Lohengrin, beloved by Lorelei, who lived beside an azure lake dotted with snowdrifts of swans. He brought Wagner to the harmonious land of Olympus, so that the beautiful sun of Greece might set its golden halo upon the divine brow of Euphorion. He sent embassies to the lands of the Orient, and closed the gates of his kingdom to the Western barbarians. Thanks to him, the glory of the Muses returned, and when he died, no one knew whether it was an eagle or a unicorn that bore his body off to a mysterious place.”

But fate, oh sire!, oh poet sublime!, would not allow that happy dream to come to pass, in these times which have taken the abominable figure of a Franklin to the highest apotheosis.

Villiers de l’Isle-Adam is a being rare among the rare ones. All those who knew him preserve the impression of an extraordinary personage.

In the eyes of sublime, hermetic Mallarmé he was a man of dreams, a solitary, like the most beautiful gems and saintliest souls; in addition, in all things and by all things, he was a king—an absurd king, if you will, poetic and fantastic, but a king all the same. And then, a genius. “The most magnificently endowed youngster of his generation,” Henri Laujol has written. In 1884, Mendès wrote the following about Villiers:

“How wretched and unfortunate are the demigods! They are too far from us for us to love them like brothers and too close to be adored as teachers.” The type of the demi-genius, described by the poet of the
Panteleia,
is apt. We might name more than one man who might have have been, like a spark of the celestial fire from which God forms geniuses, a complete genius, a total genius, but who, like an eagle with clipped wings, could neither reach the supreme heights, like a condor, nor flit about the woods like a nightingale.

Demi-geniuses have more than talent, but they lack the voice to say to the gates of the Infínite, as on that page by Hugo: “Open. I am Dante.” And thus they float, alone, isolated, unable to rise to the titanic strength of Shakespeare, unable to seek refuge in the flowery stalls of Gautier. And they are wretched.

Today, when all the works of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam have been published, there is hardly any reticence to salute him as one of the august and superior spirits. His genius is that which creates and that which dives deepest into the divine and mysterious. Villiers was, indeed, a genius.

He was born to triumph, yet he died without seeing that victory. Descendant of a noble family, he lived in poverty, almost abject penury. An aristocrat by blood, art, and taste, he was obliged to frequent surroundings unsuitable to his delicacy and royalty. Verlaine was right to include him among his
poètes maudits.
That proud man, of a pride that sat comfortable upon his shoulders, that artist who wrote, “What does justice matter to us? Any man that is born without his own glory in his breast will never know the real meaning of that word,” made his pilgrimage through the world accompanied by suffering, and he was one of the damned.