His study of history casts a shadow of deeper discouragement on his vision of life; but he finds in it the distraction that Lucretius found in watching the sea-fight from the hill, recovering his serenity in the contemplation of far-off suffering, and relief from the puzzle of his own life in the cyclopean struggles of his giant city, Henokia, where Cain rises from his tomb to justify his rebellion by making God the author of his crime, and declares that he will avenge himself by preserving mankind from the threatened destruction of the deluge, and by aiding them to shake off the dominion of "thy priests, wolves with ravening jaws, gorged with fat of men, and thin with rage," until the hour shall come when Cain foresees that "God shall annihilate himself in his sterility." This "protest," as a French critic has called it, "of the body against pain, the heart against injustice, and reason against the unintelligible," has naturally suggested to many the Prometheus of Eschylus and the "Graius homo" of Lucretius (i. 66). But in our day the contradictions of nature have become more acute, its antinomies more obvious, and the need of a solution urges itself more imperiously on the human heart, as science enlarges the borders of our knowledge and nourishes our intellectual pride. And so it is fitting that "Cain” Au fond de tes fureurs, comme au fond de tes joies, (Poèmes barbares, p. 176.) Compare "La Forêt vierge;' "La Fontaine aux lianes; "La Panthère noire;" "Le Jaguar," parts of which resemble very closely the noted "Löwenritt" of Freiligrath; Les Éléphants (Barbares, pp. 186, 136, 198, 208, 183); Midi (Antiques, p. 292). In "Effet de lune and "Les Hurleurs" (Barbares, pp. 211, 172) Nature is a destroyer. Rarely she shows a milder face, as in "Claires de lune" and "Bernica" (Barbares, pp. 178, 205); still more rarely her sublimity, as in "Sommeil du condor" (Barbares, p. 193). should be elaborated with all that archæology and anthropology have to teach of primitive man. Other poems in this connection deal with heathen and Hellenic legends, and many of them show the same curious preoccupation with death that haunted Gautier and Baudelaire. Such titles as "Dies Iræ," "Solvet Sæclum," "Les Spectres," "Fiat Nox," "Mort du soleil," Aux morts," sufficiently suggest the nature of these lugubriously beautiful aspirations toward Nirvana. "O divine Death," exclaims the poet, "deliver us from time, number, space; give us back the repose that life has troubled."2 One cannot repress a little smile of irony as one pictures Leconte de Lisle at his desk filing these verses, and living on, toying with despair. From the primeval man and Hebrew tradition the poet turns to the more sympathetic mysticism of India. Indeed, impelled perhaps by the disappointment of his political hopes and by his religious disillusionment, he has confessed his attachment to Buddhism and its contemplative founder, some part of whose esoteric philosophy has passed into the "Vision de Brahma,” and the "Baghavat," though "Çunacepa" takes us back to the still more primitive philosophy that it is not the love of Nirvana but the love of youth and maid that gives the greatest impulse to effort and sacrifice. In passing from India to Greece, De Lisle finds freer action and greater beauty, but a moral horizon 1 Antiques, p. 309; Barbares, pp. 361, 241, 237, 240, 232. 2 Et toi, divine Mort . . . Affranchis-nous du temps, du nombre, de l'espace Et rends-nous le répos que la vie a troublé. (Dies Iræ, Antiques, p. 311.) always fatalistic, bounded by the grave, and saved only from melancholy speculation by national glory and personal activity. So he paints them in their myths and their worship of beauty. In two dramas, whose stately simplicity suggests and almost rivals that of Eschylus, he has told the tales of Helen and Orestes. Briefer pieces recount the hapless daring of Khiron, overbold to conceive gods better than the Olympians, and of Niobe, who mourned the vanquished Titans. Others are pure idyls of beauty suggesting Theocritus in all but his unrivalled naïveté.1 But Nature to him is always forceful, dominant, overcoming man and his works, not the kindly nurturing mother of the classic poets. From Greece we are borne to a field as different from it as the Ganges. The Great Migration inspires pictures of fierce energy and passion,2 and the weird mythology of the Elder Edda, as told in his legend of the Nornes, serves as the psychological preparation for the ascetic teaching of the early Christian missionaries. Everywhere, from Iceland to the Ganges, the poet had found that reflection led men to puzzled dissatisfaction with the course of the world; but nowhere did he find life held a less precious gift than by the race that produced the "Bard of Temrah" and invited the "Massacre of Mona." 3 Of all the world-philosophies the medieval Christian system is least sympathetic to Leconte de Lisle,1 perhaps because he sees in it what he thinks a perversion 1 E. g., Glaucë, Klytie, La Source (Antiques, pp. 75, 130, 139). 2 E. g., Le Massacre de Mona, La Mort de Sigurd, Le Cœur de Hjalmar (Barbares, pp. 113, 96, 77). 3 Barbares, pp. 61, 113. 4 Cp., especially, Les Siècles maudits, La Bête escarlate (Tragiques, pp. 59, 107). of the true message of Christ. Here, first, we find the purely satiric vein in "Une Acte de charité” (Barbares, p. 282), a subject borrowed from the Rhenish legend of Bishop Hatto, who burned the mendicants in his empty granary, or in the "Paraboles de Dom Guy" (Barbares, p. 315), a sermon of mediæval directness on the seven deadly sins and their embodiments in the age of the preacher. More completely objective are other poems that help us to realize the crushing weight on the medieval mind of its belief in hell. Especially the dehumanizing religion of old Spain, where all colors are heightened and all passions intensified, has been ruthlessly presented in its barbarity, while recently published fragments of De Lisle's posthumous "États du diable" show that the subject haunted him still.2 The question of the ages finds no answer in Leconte de Lisle. To those who think they know the answer he has only a message of warning; but for those who can enjoy poetry apart from its teaching, he has much more than that. "There are hours," says Lemaître, "when you are infamous enough to find that Lamartine says 'Gnan-Gnan' and Hugo 'Boum-Boum,' when the cries and apostrophes of De Musset 3 seem childish. Then you can enjoy Gautier; but there is something better. Never mind if you have n't the great Flaubert at hand; even he has too much feeling. Just read 1 E. g., L'Accident de Don Iñigo, La Tête du comte, La Xiména (Barbares, pp. 289, 285, 293). 2 In the “Revue des deux mondes," 1894. They deal with the Borgias. Others in the "Derniers Poèmes " (1895) appeared too late to be used for this study. 3 It is to such singers of their own woe that De Lisle addresses the scathing sonnet "Les Montreurs" (Barbares, p. 222). A fine instance of impassive force is "Le Soir d'une bataille" (Barbares, p. 230). Leconte de Lisle. For a moment you will have vision without pain, the serenity of Olympians, or of Satans appeased." In 1866 Leconte de Lisle joined with several younger poets in "Le Parnasse contemporain," which, being followed by two like volumes in 1869 and 1876, gave to the group the name "Parnassians," by which was meant the school that prized, above all else, purity and beauty of form. Many of the group have attained really remarkable excellence in this kind, though their production, as is usual with poets of their type, is small, slow, and labored. The best continuation of De Lisle's spirit is in the Buddhistic poetry of Jean Lahor (Dr. Cazalis) 1 and the marionette-plays of Maurice Bouchor.2 His peculiar art has been best learned by De Heredia, who perhaps has bettered the instruction.3 1 The recent popularity of this writer is interesting, for it marks a revival of a stricter taste and a reaction against the fantastic license of the school of Baudelaire, the Naturalist and Symbolist poets who have been most in evidence in recent years, and to whom we shall recur. De Heredia, as his name suggests, is a Spaniard, born in Cuba (1842). Indeed it is a little disquieting to see how many foreign names one meets in this literary generation, though any literature might be glad to welcome such a guest. He is the supreme flower of the Parnassian cultus of form, most picturesque, and so impersonal that his verses have not even 1 L'Illusion, 1888 and, enlarged, 1893. 2 Tobie, Noël, Sainte Cécile, Mystères d'Eleusis (1889–1894). Lyric: Les Symboles, 1894. 8 Cp. Brunetière, Poésie lyrique, ii. 189; Lemaître, Contemporains, ii. 49; and Revue bleue, May, 1895. |