Whitman's criticism of rhyme is significant. The argument that rhyme produces a comic effect is one often used against it by partisans of the vers libre. The verslibristes themselves started by weakening the rhyme-endings, and paying less attention to this feature of the verse, which had been so important for the Parnassians'. In his Art poétique, a sacred text for the Symbolists, Paul Verlaine writes: Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie Oh! qui dira les torts de la Rime! And again (Art poétique): Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, Le rêve au rêve et la flûte au cor. Half-tints, music, fading prospects and deliberate indefiniteness are eminently characteristic of Symbolist poetry to which we might apply Whitman's description of his own poetry: The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here.' Allied to the extensive use of allegory, these effects naturally lead to obscurity. The charge of obscurity is one of the most frequent made against these poets, who say with Whitman, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them 2. They reply to this charge much in the terms of his justification of the same supposed defect in Leaves of Grass. In certain parts of these flights...,' he says, 'I have not been afraid of the charge of obscurity,... because human thought, poetry or melody, must leave dim escapes and outlets, must possess a certain fluid aerial character, akin to space itself, obscure to those of little or no imagination, but indispensable to the highest purposes. Poetic style, when address'd to the soul, is less definite form, outline, sculpture, and becomes vista, music, half-tints, and even less than half-tints. True, it may be architecture; but again it may be the forest wildwood, or the best effect thereof, at twilight, the waving oaks and cedars in the wind, and the impalpable odor3.' These last remarks, laying stress on 'the best effect' of the forest, 'the waving oaks' and 'impalpable odor,' remind one of the famous 1 See Théodore de Banville, Petit Traité de Versification française. 2 Calamus, L. of G., i, p. 156. 3 Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and Two Rivulets, Complete Prose Works, ii, pp. 202 f. dictum of Mallarmé: 'Abolie, la prétention...d'inclure au papier subtil du volume autre chose que par exemple l'horreur de la forêt, ou le tonnerre muet épars au feuillage: non le bois intrinsèque et dense des arbres'. This goes to the roots of Symbolist poetry, which aims at suggesting, not describing. 'Nommer un objet,' says Mallarmé, 'c'est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu; le suggérer, voilà le rêve.' For us,' says Whitman, quoting Sainte-Beuve, the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize. The greatest poet is not he who has done the best; it is he who suggests the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your turn. In thus citing the great French critic whose writings have been shown to contain many of the germs of the later poetic movement, Whitman anticipates one of the fondest ideals of the Symbolists. He says elsewhere: The words of the true poems give you more than poems, He goes a step further and realises that all the poet can do is to suggest: The best poetic utterance, after all, can merely hint, or remind, often very indirectly, or at distant removes. Aught of real perfection, or the solution of any deep problem, or any completed statement of the moral, the true, the beautiful, eludes the greatest, deftest poet-flies away like an always uncaught bird".' He constantly reminds his reader that he would appeal to him as much by indirections as by directions.' As for the Leaves, 'The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand at last,' says their author, ‘is the word Suggestiveness".' More than is the case with any other poet, Whitman's greatest value is in what he implies rather than in what he portrays. Nowhere are the devices of symbol and suggestion oftener used than in Calamus, where he says, For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book, For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not 1 Vers et Prose, pp. 184 f. 2 Jules Huret, L'Enquête sur l'évolution littéraire, p. 60. 5 Complete Prose Works, iii, p. 127. L. of G., i, p. 205. 6 A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads, L. of G., iii, p. 58. Many of Whitman's poems are symbols', and none is so typical as this gem which emits the varying rays of a series of images, symbolising his songs: Roots and leaves themselves alone are these, Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side, Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than vines, Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun is risen, Breezes of land and love sent from living shores to you on the living sea, to you O sailors! Frost-mellow'd berries and Third-month twigs offer'd to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up, Love-buds put before you and within you wherever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms, If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open and bring form, colour, perfume to you, If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees2. The adoption of a suggestive mode of expression was not a pose on the part of the Symbolists, but reveals the presence of a lofty ideal— that of attempting a synthesis of life. Life to them was something so immense, so varied, yet so evasive as to be incapable of direct or descriptive treatment: it could only be suggested symbolically. Far from neglecting life, the Symbolists plumbed the depths of their own souls to seek communion with the ultimate Reality. 'La réforme prosodique, la façon de concevoir le lyrisme, l'évolution d'une poésie plus intériorisée, plus proche de l'âme des choses, plus palpitante, plus idéaliste, c'est-à-dire plus immanente au réel, plus intuitive, n'ont tendu qu'à une plus large compréhension de l'idée de vie, qu'à un art plus expressif, plus intensement dynamique.' This broad vision of life seems to combine in one supreme synthesis the Symbolist poets of France with the great American mystic: I will not make poems with reference to parts, But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble, And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days, And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul, Because having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul. Whitman and the Symbolists have in common a general lyrical 1 Whitman often uses a symbol consciously. In the Song of the Banner at Daybreak (L. of G., ii, p. 46) he conceives of the poet as one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future.' And in one of his last poems Death's Valley (L. of G., iii, p. 36) he claims his 'right to make a symbol too.' 2 L. of G., p. 149. 3 M. Tancrède de Visan, L'Attitude du lyrisme contemporain, p. 12. 4 Starting from Paumanok, Leaves of Grass, i, p. 25. attitude which may be conceived of as being initiated by Whitman and fulfilled, to a greater or less degree, in the work of the French poets. It is remarkable how clearly Whitman saw the trend of the coming changes and how closely his ideals of the new poetry approximate to those of the Symbolists. The poetry of the future,' he writes in a passage which sums up all the tendencies of the recent movement, 'aims at the free expression of emotion (which means far, far more than appears at first) and to arouse and initiate, more than to define or finish. Like all modern tendencies, it has direct or indirect reference continually to the reader, to you or me, to the central identity of everything, the mighty Ego....It is more akin, likewise, to outside life and landscape (resuming mainly to the antique feeling), real sun and gale, and woods and shores-to the elements themselves-not sitting at ease in parlor or library listening to a good tale of them, told in good rhyme. Character, a feature far above style or polish-a feature not absent at any time but now first brought to the fore-gives predominant stamp to advancing poetry. Its born sister, music, already responds to the same influences...'.' To sum up, we see, then, that Whitman and the Symbolists had certain common sources; their idealism derives from German philosophy, their mysticism owes much to Eastern literatures. We have traced connections on both sides with Poe, Wagner and Sainte-Beuve. In the matter of form, the resemblances are closer. There is the same fear of fettering the inspiration, the same quest of a more adaptable, more personal medium free from the restraints of metre and possessing the flexibility of prose. Whitman and the Symbolists realised that the lyric was the only possible form for future poetry. They insisted upon the kinship of poetry and music; hence on the essential power of poetry to suggest. Unlike Whitman, the Symbolists were refined artists. Frequently, it must be admitted, they did not realise the high ideals of their numerous manifestos, and much of their poetry is precisely what Whitman would have abhorred, because it is a 'poésie d'élite.' Thus it is surprising that one or two of the most fanciful Symbolists, like Laforgue and M. Stuart Merrill, should have loved Whitman and even translated some of his poems; others had a more concrete view of life, which only links them the closer to Whitman, who was as much a realist as an idealist. M. Vielé-Griffin's more virile work is more akin to Whitman's; while the majesty and force of M. Émile Verhaeren's lyrico-epics make him a successful rival of Whitman as a singer of the Complete Prose Works, ii, p. 216. 1 modern world. Lastly, it must be remembered that it was the Symbolists who first introduced Whitman into France. And though he can scarcely be said to have had any influence on their work, we can perceive, in their ideals as well as at whiles in their poetry, the preparation for that whole-hearted appreciation which the work of Walt Whitman now receives in France. II. Although it is only since the publication of M. Léon Bazalgette's two works-Whitman l'homme et son œuvre (1908), and Les Feuilles d'herbe (1909)-that Whitman has become a force in French literature, he had nevertheless been known in France, to a small but increasing number of admirers, for over thirty years. Before the appearance of these two books, articles and translations had given a few French readers a foretaste of the first essentially American poetry. But, beside the fact that a knowledge of English was necessary for a true appreciation of Whitman's works, the works themselves were difficult to find, the most accessible edition being Mr W. M. Rossetti's selection, from which the sex poems are excluded. Gradually, however, the curiosity of the public was awakened. 'On nous interrogeait nous autres Whitmaniens,' writes M. Valéry Larbaud in an interesting article published in 1909, 'on nous demandait quel homme avait été ce Whitman, et on écoutait attentivement nos traductions orales. Vincent Muselli pourrait témoigner que dès 1901-1902, dans une chambre d'étudiant, rue de la Sorbonne, quelques amis commémoraient, simplement mais avec dignité, la naissance et la mort du Poète de la Démocratie. Quels projets notre enthousiasme nous faisait faire alors! Je devais parler sur "Walt Whitman et la guerre de Sécession" dans une sorte de cercle populaire, à Grenelle (j'ai encore mes notes). Nous voulions proposer la vie de notre poète en exemple aux ouvriers! De tout cela rien ne sortit et l'article que je destinais à La Plume (et que son directeur a longtemps attendu) fut retardé de mois en mois par des circonstances indépendantes de ma volonté, jusqu'à la disparition de La Plume, et ne fut jamais achevé. Je crois bien que plusieurs articles et des traductions de nombreuses pièces des Feuilles d'herbe furent ainsi préparés, et ne virent jamais le jour, pour des motifs restés inexpliqués, ou plutôt par une sorte de fatalité singulière1.' 1 La Phalange, 20 Avril, 1909. |