INTRODUCTION

By w. p. ker

THE task of writing an essay on French poetry is too great an honour for me to refuse, and whatever the périls and hazards of the adventure, in one respect at any rate it is impossible to fail. In révérence and gratitude for the gifts of the French poets this slight discourse will not be found wanting, hovvever imperfect it may be in knowledge and skill. And I will begin, for good luck, with a salute to a French poet who was also an English scholar, Auguste Angellier, remembering more than one conversation with him in this country, and thanking him again for the gift of the poems which I was glad to receive from his hands, and am proud to hâve in my possession. Angellier's scientific work in English Philology (not in the false narrow modem sensé of that term) is proof that différences of nation and language may be overcome. His understanding and interprétation of the poetry of Burns will not be easily rivalled, yet it does not stand alone now, and English readers of English poetry are in debt to the scholars of France for many works of similar scope and scale. The barriers of language are not an impénétrable wall, though they are difficult enough. With Angellier's victorious life of Burns

vi Introduction

to show what can be done in spite of those hindrances, and on the other hand, on the other side of the narrovv seas, the light of his own poetry to provoke an answer from this Island, we may go on hopefully, believing that there is nothing in the nature of things to keep our northern minds eternally deprived of the music of 6 that sweet enemy — France \ And hère, with this old phrase of Sidney's coming to mind, as it needs must in this connexion, we may remember what is sometimes overlooked by those who quote it, that ' sweet enemy ' is lover' s language — douce ennemie, 4 my sweete foo ' in Chaucer. It is not simply an allusion to the ancient wars of France and England.

This présent collection of poems is not intended to represent ail varieties of mood, ail fashions and manners of verse in French poetry of the last hundred years. Of course it will meet with questions and cavils : why this ? why not that other ? But the life of anthologies would be nothing without this sort of controversy. It is a pleasant game ; one of the great interests of every golden treasury is to set people gleaning on their own account and showing to their own satisfaction how much better they could hâve done it themselves. Hère it is obvious that the editor has distinctly renounced certain kinds of poetry, and has chosen for this book chiefly poems of contemplation — elegiac, we might say, rather than lyrical. Is not this a kind of poetry — one of the kinds — in which France can provide what is more difficult to find in England ? Not that England is wanting in the poetry of solemn méditation.

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But in England the tradition of the old poetical discourse, like Pope's Moral Essays or Johnson's Van'ity of Human Wishes, is absolutely broken, nor is there any répétition of Gray's Elegy ; while Tintern Abley has no successor, not even in the Prélude or the Excursion. Byron in Childe Harold found for himself a mode in which discursive thought was turned into poetry ; but this again is the last of its race. But in France, as this book shows, there are traditional forms, not exhausted by Lamartine or Victor Hugo, in which the poet, without rising to the height of lyric, can reason and reflect, and yet not sink into the danger of prose pulpit oratory. The danger, no doubt, is there, but the French poet has an advantage denied to his English compeer ; he is not tempted to reason in blank verse. The Alexandrine, in couplet or in stanza, is the protecting Muse of French eîegiac poetry — let that name pass for ail the kinds that hâve their range below the very highest région. Satire may be found among them.

Angellier has a poem, Dans la lumière antique (1905) : ' Le Dialogue du Potier et de la Jeune Fille ' which is a review of différent thèmes for the artist, différent moods of imagination. The English reader will think of Keats's < Grecian Urn ', which was in the mind of the French poet when he composed this argument; he will also, perhaps, remember-Matthew Arnold's essay on Wordsworth, and the distinction drawn there between imagination that has corne to its proper home, and that which is still vagrant and insecure. In

Introduction

Angellier's poem the artist offers the maiden, in return for her ' good morning ! ', to make for her that day any story she chooses to be worked out in his clay.

Mon tour, impatient de son prochain essor Frémit : l'argile neuve en sa simple fraîcheur Attend, du front penché, la goutte de sueur Qui l'emplit, en tombant, d'un désir de beauté.

VVine, and the dance of Nymph and Faun, and even the marriage procession is not enough for the art that has promised to find something eternal in that auspicious day. The dialogue is the search jbr a story that shall express the victory of fortunate life over ail distractions. The Maiden speaks :

Ne peux-tu consacrer ton art, et cette argile, Et ton âme à vêtir un sujet moins fragile De la victorieuse et sereine durée Par les rayons du beau pour toujours conférée A la matière obscure arrêtée en sa fuite ? N'est-il point de sujets plus élevés qu'habite Quelque grave penser où tient la vie humaine Dans un des moments où, d'elle-même certaine, Elle se veut parmi ses flots d'inquiétude Digne d'être éternelle ? Alors quelque attitude, Où, par la force calme et le repos du geste, Ce ferme sentiment de constance s'atteste, Scelle et semble garder dans une noble empreinte Un long effort de vie intègre, altière ou sainte. Ton art peut bien fixer la fureur d'une danse, Mais combien lui sied mieux l'auguste concordance Du pouvoir qu'il détient d'accorder la durée, Avec une action qu'a déjà consacrée Ce qui mérite en nous de vivre impérissable ! Car ainsi que les grains toujours dissous du sable

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Sont fondus en cristal transparent et lucide

Où toute la clarté du firmament réside,

Dans nos êtres épars il se peut qu'une flamme

Fond en cristal aussi le sable de notre âme,

Et que cette poignée obscure de poussière

Se change en un foyer d'immortelle lumière

Que sur de tels moments ton art plus fin repose

Où tant de dignité déjà l'attend enclose,

Il atteindra plus haut en partant d'une cime,

Et, dans ces grands sujets que nul temps ne périme,

De leur éternité fortifiera sa gloire.

Noone knew better than Angellier the dangers of facile moralizing, and the différence between the poet and the preacher. If, in this parable and particularly in this quotation, he spoke of eternal life, it was because he saw it not less clearly than he saw the dancing Fauns or the dancing hailstones in another of his poems :

Le sol un instant étincelle Argenté de ce fin gravois ; Les légers grêlons de la grêle Bondissent sur le bord des toits.

His strong industrious careless mind took in as much as it could of the real world, and it would not miss what is most grave in it because the most divine things are most exposed to sacrilège and the most solemn things to professional hypocrisy. His ' Dialogue du Potier ' is quoted hère because it may stand for much more than itself, may serve as an explanation of much in the temper of the poems hère presented to the English reader, being itself a very noble thing.