Verlaine, Sagesse, OEuvres completes, t. I, p

THE NEW POETRY IN FRANCE

above. Here is another rarer fashion, and, at first, most disconcerting: « Le vent bleu d’outremonts fait palpiter les frênes ^ » The two words are concrete and picturesque, but their alliance destroys their objectivity. It is the analysis ol the mind which divides qualities among objects. The expression of the poet respects the synthetical integrity of sensation: he writes while placing himself at the centre of consciousness.

With picturesque precision departs intellectual precision. The business of the poet is to show the inner life, not to explain either the world or himself. Mallarmé desired that tlie poet should put away « even the temptation to explain himself » ; that he should be an impartial spectator of tlie work of words in bimself ; abdicating « all personal direction » of the phrase. « Pure work implies the lociitionarij disappearance of the poet, who gives up the initiative to the words mobilized through the shock of their inequalities ». This very arbitrary view presupposes that the spontaneous association of words in minds be adequate to tlie cliangeable relations of the deep life of the soul ; it led Mallarmé to the most unintelligible, and, at bottom, tbe least suggestive writing that ever existed. For the rest, this subtle and charming talker had not the creative gift.

The greater part of the symbolists bave retained, more or less, that part of the intelligible wliich it is illogical to wish wholly annulled, when one works on words. But they have tried to replace the logical structure of the sentence by a purely alfective order. They have placed in the background, behind veils of mist, the definite and common meaning of words, and especially do they utilize their unstable and vague values, these impressions and associations which envelop the solid core of the definition, these effects of physiognomy and of accent, which speak only to the mind and to the heart. Through the relations of grammar and of syntax, they no longer strive to translate the relations of ideas, of judgments, and of reasoning, but all that desultoriness of the coexisting and all that subtlevy of intercourse, which ceaselessly, in the mysterious harmony of life, dis-