Essays in Little Part 5

M. De Banville revived old measures--the _rondeau_ and the "poor little triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les Cariatides" they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often recalls Keats in his choice of cla.s.sical themes. "Les Exiles," a poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion."

"Le Triomphe de Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Ba.s.sarids in "Endymion"--

"So many, and so many, and so gay."

There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse:

"Il reve a Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries, Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal, Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal."

The Bacchus of t.i.tian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering G.o.d still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous pa.s.sion by the fresh wind blowing from Thrace. Of all the Olympians, Diana has been most often hymned by M. De Banville: his imagination is haunted by the figure of the G.o.ddess. Now she is manifest in her h.e.l.lenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad at heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be known where all are fair" (Odyssey, vi.). Again, Artemis appears more thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean Goujon, touched with the sadness of moonlight. Yet again, she is the weary and exiled spirit that haunts the forest of Fontainebleau, and is a stranger among the woodland folk, the _fades_ and nixies. To this G.o.ddess, "being triple in her divided deity," M. De Banville has written his hymn in the characteristic form of the old French _ballade_. The translator may borrow Chaucer's apology--

"And eke to me it is a grete penaunce, Syth rhyme in English hath such sca.r.s.ete To folowe, word by word, the curiosite Of _Banville_, flower of them that make in France."

"BALLADE SUR LES HOTES MYSTERIEUX DE LA FORET

"Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old, Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree; The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold, And still wolves dread Diana roving free, In secret woodland with her company.

Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite When now the wolds are bathed in silver light, And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey, Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.

"With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, The sudden G.o.ddess enters, tall and white, With one long sigh for summers pa.s.sed away; The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.

"She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee, Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled, But her delight is all in archery, And nought of ruth and pity wotteth she More than the hounds that follow on the flight; The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might, And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay, She tosses loose her locks upon the night, And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way.

ENVOI.

"Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite, The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight; Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray There is the mystic home of our delight, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way."

The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville's genius. Through his throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of the ballet the cold Muse sometimes pa.s.ses, strange, but not unfriendly. He, for his part, has never degraded the beautiful forms of old religion to make the laughing- stock of fools. His little play, _Diane au Bois_, has grace, and gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the failings of immortals. "The G.o.ds are jealous exceedingly if any G.o.ddess takes a mortal man to her paramour, as Demeter chose Iasion." The least that mortal poets can do is to show the Olympians an example of toleration.

"Les Cariatides" have delayed us too long. They are wonderfully varied, vigorous, and rich, and full of promise in many ways. The promise has hardly been kept. There is more seriousness in "Les Stalact.i.tes" (1846), it is true, but then there is less daring. There is one morsel that must be quoted,--a fragment fashioned on the air and the simple words that used to waken the musings of George Sand when she was a child, dancing with the peasant children:

"Nous n'irons plus an bois: les lauries sont coupes, Les amours des ba.s.sins, les naiades en groupe Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux decoupes Les flots silencieux qui coulaient de leur coupe, Les lauriers sont coupes et le cerf aux abois Tressaille au son du cor: nous n'irons plus au bois!

Ou des enfants joueurs riait la folle troupe Parmi les lys d'argent aux pleurs du ciel trempes, Voici l'herbe qu'on fauche et les lauriers qu'on coupe; Nous n'irons plus au bois; les lauriers sont coupes."

In these days Banville, like Gerard de Nerval in earlier times, RONSARDISED. The poem 'A la Font Georges,' full of the memories of childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, is written in a favourite metre of Ronsard's. Thus Ronsard says in his lyrical version of five famous lines of Homer--

"La gresle ni la neige N'ont tels lieux pour leur siege Ne la foudre oncques la Ne devala."

(The snow, and wind, and hail May never there prevail, Nor thunderbolt doth fall, Nor rain at all.)

De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its sad emphatic cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his childish memories:

"O champs pleins de silence, Ou mon heureuse enfance Avait des jours encor Tout files d'or!"

O ma vieille Font Georges, Vers qui les rouges-gorges Et le doux rossignol Prenaient leur vol!

So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, "tout file d'or," and closes when the dusk is washed with silver--

"A l'heure ou sous leurs voiles Les tremblantes etoiles Brodent le ciel changeant De fleurs d'argent."

The "Stalact.i.tes" might detain one long, but we must pa.s.s on after noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats' "Ode to a Greek Urn":

"Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante, La verveine, melee a des feuilles d'acanthe, Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement S'avancent deux a deux, d'un pas sur et charmant, Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites."

In the same volume of the definite series of poems come "Les Odelettes,"

charming lyrics, one of which, addressed to Theophile Gautier, was answered in the well-known verses called "L'Art." If there had been any rivalry between the writers, M. De Banville would hardly have cared to print Gautier's "Odelette" beside his own. The tone of it is infinitely more manly: one seems to hear a deep, decisive voice replying to tones far less sweet and serious. M. De Banville revenged himself n.o.bly in later verses addressed to Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of that workman better, we think, than anything else that has been written of him in prose or rhyme.

The less serious poems of De Banville are, perhaps, the better known in this country. His feats of graceful metrical gymnastics have been admired by every one who cares for skill pure and simple. "Les Odes Funambulesques" and "Les Occidentales" are like ornamental skating. The author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred fantastic figures with a perfect ease and smoothness. At the same time, naturally, he does not advance nor carry his readers with him in any direction. "Les Odes Funambulesques" were at first unsigned. They appeared in journals and magazines, and, as M. de Banville applied the utmost lyrical skill to light topics of the moment, they were the most popular of "Articles de Paris." One must admit that they bore the English reader, and by this time long _scholia_ are necessary for the enlightenment even of the Parisian student. The verses are, perhaps, the "bird-chorus" of French life, but they have not the permanent truth and delightfulness of the "bird-chorus" in Aristophanes. One has easily too much of the Carnival, the masked ball, the _debardeurs_, and the _pierrots_. The people at whom M. De Banville laughed are dead and forgotten. There was a certain M. Paul Limayrac of those days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and other great men, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. In his honour De Banville wrote a song which parodied all popular aspirations to be a flower. M. Limayrac was supposed to have become a blossom:

"Sur les coteaux et dans les landes Voltigeant comme un oiseleur Buloz en ferait des guirlandes Si Limayrac devenait fleur!"

There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which became as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the G.o.d of battles. It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in the opera- house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The turbulent waltz stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers of every hue howled at the critic

"Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!"

Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town thirty years ago, and the students were certain to be largely represented at the ball.

The "Odes Funambulesques" contain many examples of M. De Banville's skill in reviving old forms of verse--_triolets_, _rondeaux_, _chants royaux_, and _ballades_. Most of these were composed for the special annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called himself De Mirecourt.

The _rondeaux_ are full of puns in the refrain: "Houssaye ou c'est; lyre, l'ire, lire," and so on, not very exhilarating. The _pantoum_, where lines recur alternately, was borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive _pantoum_, in which the last two lines of each stanza are the first two of the next, occur in old French folk-song. The popular trick of repet.i.tion, affording a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all refrains. De Banville's later satires are directed against permanent objects of human indignation--the little French debauchee, the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty _chauviniste_. Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes back to his youth--

"Lorsque la levre de l'aurore Baisait nos yeux souleves, Et que nous n'etions pas encore La France des pet.i.ts creves."

The poem "Et Tartufe" prolongs the note of a satire always popular in France--the satire of Scarron, Moliere, La Bruyere, against the clerical curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe's stronghold at the moment. "French interests" demanded that Italy should be headless.

"Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux cremus Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est a Rome, Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus Nous tetterons la louve a jamais--le pauvre homme."

The new Tartufe worships St. Cha.s.sepot, who once, it will not be forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the morality of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is addressed as she hovers above the Geneva Convention,--

"Quoi, nymphe du canon raye, Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles Et ce pet.i.t air effraye Devant les balles exploisibles?"

De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom from _Weltschmerz_, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. "Le Sang de la Coupe" contains a very powerful poem, "The Curse of Venus," p.r.o.nounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial enterprise:

"Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin!

L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; La neige vierge est la pour fournir ta glaciere; Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, Et vole, diamant, neige, ec.u.me et poussiere, N'est plus bon qu'a tourner tes meules de moulin!"

In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less impressive.

The outcast G.o.ds of h.e.l.las, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's "Hyperion." Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere la-bas dans l'ile," is not forgotten:

"Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, Et qui sembles sourire a l'ocean bruyant, Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles."

The hoa.r.s.est note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken, how victory is to him--

" . . . qui se cela Dans un trou, sous la terre noire."

He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he carried in his tunic.

It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour in the mood of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His "Trente Six Ballades Joyeuses"

make a far more pleasant subject for a last word. There is scarcely a more delightful little volume in the French language than this collection of verses in the most difficult of forms, which pour forth, with absolute ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, joy in the spring, in letters, art, and good-fellowship.

"L'oiselet retourne aux forets; Je suis un poete lyrique,"--