A
1.109,066
... PauUu!
.
.
.
color
.
.
..
.
!..
.
.."
.
.
.

ab. LIBY
ZAIN
IVERSE
VYHJIWE
THLY
HOIW HO
HE UNT
CHIGAN
THE UN
OF MICA
HIGAN.
CHIGAN
VO
4
. Uy
BRARIES
LIBRA
SS3
ISX
LLISUB
c
.
2
IIIA
M
IVERSITZ
MARYL
DAIND
"SNV
HE UND
& MICHES
SIT. THA
HE UND
OF MICE
THE UN
TES.NO
INIVA
LISUELLES
HITA
THE UNIT
* LIBRA
fro
LIBRAL
IMA.
RII
OiOS.
alle
JERSITAS
WO MIO
V Nahol
th
V8170
WRITE
11.1
IVERSITY
eta SUI
ARIES
SCHIGAN
CHIGAN
CHIGAN,
DINO
UE UNIT
HLU
HIGAN
.
.
GANSA
& UNIVE
THE UA
MICHIGA
THE UN
THE UNIT
RUIT.
USHON
RIT
SITY OF
WISO
17
YUN?
BRARIES
VRIO
V OF M
AY
OFMIC
KIVERSIT
SIA
E MICA
BHLD
HIGAN.
'n......'
OF MICH
& MICHIS
L
TOT
CAICA
IS ONE
KCHIGA
SITY ON
OF MIC
SHIUVI.
UN
AIT. THE


RIA
HE UNIT
em
AICHIO
HE UNIT
OF MICH
E UNIVET
HIGAN.
GIGANTE
KULLI
1811
BRARIES
WISHLAS
Y OFM
STOFM
ARIES
fr
MICHIGA

HIGAN
. THE UN
OF MICG
DENTTO
SELAINDL
ARIES
TES.NO
ALISHA
OF MI
'LIBRA
TRIES
CRST
DE 210
ENI!
SS3
VI
SIVERST
GANO

FE UND
WEHL
♡
p• THE

ICHIGAN
CHIGAN
THE UNIT
OF MIC
TAVIO
AN. SCTE
'• LIBRA
TE UNIVA
T MICHT
NIVERS
4 OF M,
JERSITY
LIBRA
OF MICO
KIVERSIT

.
WUNDE
CHIGAN
TGAN.
TV
HL. Lib
WISHAN
BRARIES
IBRARY
com.my
SITY OD
N" SEM
UNIVA
.
NA.
CHIGA
THE UN
HEUNIN
MICHIGA


27
MICHI
E MICR
VOLLIE
BRARIES
KISHIALI
Y OF ME
FRIES
UCHIGA,
HI, LAP

RI
CHIGAN
HIGAN
M
3
CHIGAN
13:3
THE UN
PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS


BOOKS BY EZRA POUND
PROVENCA, being poems selected
from Personae, Exultations, and
Canzoniere
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE:
the charm of the pre-renaissance
literature of Latin-Europe
THE SONNETS AND BALLATE
OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI
RIPOSTES
DES IMAGISTES: an anthology
of the Imagists, Ezra Pound,
Richard Aldington, H. D., F. S.
Flint, William Carlos Williams,
and others
GAUDIER-BRZESKA: A memoir
NOH: A Study of the Classical
Stage of Japan (with Ernest
Fenollosa. Alfred A. Knopf,
New York)
LUSTRA with Earlier Poems, (Al-
fred A. Knopf, New York)
PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS.
(Prose. Alfred A. Knopf, New
York)

EZRA POUND
(CAMERA PORTRAIT BY E. O. HOPPÉ, LONDON]
PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS
S
EZRA POUND
NEW YORK · ALFRED A. KNOPF · MCMXVIII
Undergraduate
Library
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
EZRA POUND
Published June 1918
3531
vid CM
Burr
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
c.
1
Undergraduate
Library
trito G A D
TO
JOHN QUINN
Certain of these sketches and essays have appeared in
“Poetry," «The Fortnightly Review," "The New Age,"
“The Quarterly Review,” “The Future," "The Egoist,"
and “The Little Review,” to the editors of which pe-
riodicals the author wishes to make due acknowledg-
ment.
CONTENTS
Jodindranath Mawhwor's Occupation
An Anachronism at Chinon
Religio
Aux Etuves de Wiesbaden
L'Homme Moyen Sensuel
Pierrots
Stark Realism
Twelve Dialogues of Fontenelle:
I Alexander and Phriné
II Dido and Stratonice
III Anacreon and Aristotle
IV Homer and Æsop
V Socrates and Montaigne
VI Charles V and Erasmus
VII Agnes Sorel-Roxelane
VIII Brutus and Faustina
IX Helen and Fulvia
X Seneca and Scarron
XI Strato, Raphael of Urbino
XII Bombastes Paracelsus and Molière
A Retrospect:
« A Few Don'ts
"Prolegomena
96
102
CONTENTS
112
123
129
138
Remy de Gourmont
I
II
Ford Madox Hueffer and the Prose Tradition
in Verse
The Rev. G. Crabbe, LL.B.
Arnold Dolmetsch
Dolmetsch and Vers Libre
“Dubliners” and Mr. James Joyce
Meditations
Troubadours: Their Sorts and Conditions
Notes on Elizabethan Classicists
143
151
156
161
166
II
III
186
193
202
207
IV
210
219
Appendices
I The Serious Artist
II Extract From a Letter to "The
Dial”
III Ezra Pound Files Exceptions
IV Vortographs
V Arnold Dolmetsch
243
245
251
256
PAVANNES
PAVANNES
1.
JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR'S OCCUPATION
The soul of Jodindranath Mawhwor clove to the god
of this universe and he meditated the law of the Shas-
tras.
He was a man of moderate income inherited for the
most part from his fathers, of whom there were several,
slightly augmented by his own rather desultory opera-
tions of commerce. He had never made money by con-
quest and was inclined to regard this method of acquisi-
tion as antiquated; as belonging rather to the days of
his favorite author than to our own.
He had followed the advice of the Sutras, had be-
come the head of an house in the not unprosperous city
of Migdalb, in a quarter where dwelt a reasonable pro-
portion of fairly honest and honourable people not un-
averse to gossip and visits. His house was situated by
a watercourse, in lieu of new fangled plumbing, and in
It was divided in various chambers for various occupa-
tions, surrounded by a commodious garden, and pos-
sessed of the two chief chambers, the “exterior" and
the "interior" (butt and ben). The interior was the
place for his women, the exterior enhanced with rich
perfumes, contained a bed, soft, luscious, and agreeable
whiteness. It was a little humped in the middle, and
PAVANNES
surmounted with garlands and bundles of flowers, which
were sometimes renewed in the morning. Upon it were
also a coverlet brightly embroidered and two cylindrical
pillows, one at the head and the other placed at the foot.
There was also a sort of sofa or bed for repose, at the
head of which stood a case for unguents, and perfumes
to be used during the night, and a stand for flowers and
pots of cosmetic and other odoriferous substances, es-
sences for perfuming the breath, new cut slices of lemon
peel and such things as were fitting. On the floor near
the sofa rested a metal spittoon, and a toilet case, and
above it was a luth suspended from an elephant's tusk,
uncut but banded with silver. There was also a draw-
ing table, a bowl of perfume, a few books, and a garland
of amaranths. Further off was a sort of round chair
or tabouret, a chest containing a chess board, and a low
table for dicing. In the outer apartment were cages for
Jodindranath's birds. He had a great many too many.
There were separate small rooms for spinning, and one
for carving in wood and such like dilettantismes. In
the garden was a sort of merry-go-round of good rope,
looking more or less like a May-pole. There was like-
wise a common see-saw or teeter, a green house, a sort
of rock garden, and two not too comfortable benches.
2.
Jodindranath rose in the morning and brushed his
teeth, after having performed other unavoidable duties
as prescribed in the sutra, and he applied to his body
a not excessive, as he considered it, amount of unguents
and perfumes. He then blackened his eyebrows, drew
faint lines under his eyes, put a fair deal of rouge on
his lips, and regarded himself in a mirror. Then having
chewed a few betel leaves to perfume his breath, and
JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR 5
YA
munched another bonne-bouche of perfume, he set about
his day's business. He was a creature of habit. That
is to say, he bathed, daily. And upon alternate days
he anointed his person with oil, and on the third day
he lamented that the mossy substance employed by the
carliest orthodox hindoos was no longer obtainable. He
had never been brought to regard soap with com-
plaisance. His conscience was troubled, both as to the
religious and social bearing of this solidified grease. He
suspected the presence of beef-suet; it was at best a
parvenu and Mohametan substance. Every four days
he shaved, that is to say, he shaved his head and his
visage, every five or ten days he shaved all the rest of
his body. He meticulously removed the sweat from his
arm-pits. He ate three meals daily; in the morning,
afternoon and at evening as is prescribed in the Chara-
yana.
Immediately after breakfast he spent some time in-
structing his parrots in language. He then proceeded
to cock-fights, quail-fights and ram-fights; from them to
the classical plays, though their representations have
sadly diminished. He slept some hours at mid-day.
Then, as is befitting to the head of an house, he had him-
self arrayed in his ornaments and habiliment and passed
the afternoon in talk with his friends and acquaintance.
The evening was given over to singing. Toward the
end of it Jodindranath, as the head of his house, re-
taining only one friend in his company, sat waiting in
the aforementioned perfumed and well arranged cham-
ber. As the lady with whom he was at that time con-
nected did not arrive on the instant, he considered send-
ing a messenger to reproach her. The atmosphere grew
uneasy. His friend Mohon fidgeted slightly.
Then the lady arrived. Mohon, his friend, rose gra-
91
PAVANNES
ciously, bidding her welcome, spoke a few pleasant words
and retired. Jodindranath remained. And for that
day, the twenty fifth of August, 1916, this was his last
occupation. In this respect the day resembled all others.
This sort of thing has gone on for thirty five hundred
years and there have been no disastrous consequences.
3.
As to Jodindranath's thoughts and acts after Mohon
had left him, I can speak with no definite certainty. I
know that my friend was deeply religious; that he mod-
eled his life on the Shastras and somewhat on the Sutra.
To the Kama Sutra he had given minute attention. He
was firmly convinced that one should not take one's
pleasure with a woman who was a lunatic, or leprous,
or too white, or too black, or who gave forth an un-
pleasant odor, or who lived an ascetic life, or whose hus-
band was a man given to wrath and possessed of inordi-
nate power. These points were to him a matter of grave
religion.
He considered that his friends should be constant and
that they should assist his designs.
He considered it fitting that a citizen should enter into
relations with laundrymen, barbers, Cowmen, florists,
druggists, merchants of betel leaves, cab-drivers, and
with the wives of all these.
He had carefully considered the sizes and shapes and
ancient categories of women; to wit, those which should
be classified as she-dog, she-horse, and she-elephant, ac-
cording to their cubic volume. He agreed with the
classic author who recommends men to choose women
about their own size.
The doctrine that love results either from continuous
habit, from imagination, from faith, or from the percep-
JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR
tion of exterior objects, or from a mixture of some or all
of these causes, gave him no difficulty. He accepted the
old authors freely.
We have left him with Lalunmokish seated upon the
bed humped in the middle. I can but add that he had
carefully considered the definitions laid down in the
Sutra; kiss nominal, kiss palpitant, kiss contactic, the
kiss of one lip and of two lips (preferring the latter),
the kiss transferred, the kiss showing intention. Be-
yond this he had studied the various methods of scratch-
ing and tickling, and the nail pressures as follows:
sonorous, half moon and circle, peacock-claw, and blue-
lotus.
He considered that the Sutra was too vague when it
described the Bengali women, saying that they have large
nails, and that the southern women have small nails,
which may serve in divers manners for giving pleasure
but give less grace to the hand. Biting he did not much
approve. Nor was he very greatly impressed with the
literary tastes of the public women in Paraliputra. He
read books, but not a great many. He preferred con-
versation which did not leave the main groove. He did
not mind its being familiar.
(For myself I can only profess the deepest respect for
the women of Paraliputra, who have ever been the
friends of brahmins and of students and who have greatly
supported the arts.)
4.
Upon the day following, as Jodindranath was retir-
ing for his mid-day repose, his son entered the per-
fumed apartment. Jodindra closed the book he had
been reading. The boy was about twelve years of age.
Jodindra began to instruct him, but without indicating
PAVANNES
what remarks were his own and what derived from an-
cient authority. He said :-
"Flower of my life, lotus bud of the parent stem, you
must preserve our line and keep fat our ancestral spirits
lest they be found withered like bats, as is said in the
Mahabharata. And for this purpose you will doubtless
marry a virgin of your own caste and acquire a legal
posterity and a good reputation. Still, usage of women
is not for one purpose only. For what purpose is the
usage of women?”
"The use of women," answered the boy, "is for gen-
eration and pleasure."
“There is also a third use," said his father, “yet with
certain women you must not mingle. Who are the pro-
hibited women ?"
The boy answered, “We should not practise dalliance
with the women of higher caste, or with those whom
another has had for his pleasure, even though they are
of our own caste. But the practise of dalliance with
women of lower caste, and with women expelled from
their own caste, and with public women, and with women
who have been twice married is neither commanded us
nor forbidden."
“With such women,” said Jodindranath, “dalliance
has no object save pleasure. But there are seasons in
life when one should think broadly. There are circum-
stances when you should not merely parrot a text or
think only as you have been told by your tutor. As in
dalliance itself there is no text to be followed verbatim,
for a man should trust in part to the whim of the moment
and not govern himself wholly by rules, so in making
your career and position, you should think of more
things than generation and pleasure.
“You need not say merely: The woman is willing'
JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR 9
or ‘She has been two times married, what harm can
there be in this business ?' These are mere thoughts of
the senses, impractical fancies. But you have your life
before you, and perchance a time will come when you
may say, "This woman has gained the heart of a very
great husband, and rules him, and he is a friend of my
enemy, if I can gain favor with her, she will persuade
him to give up my enemy.' My son, you must manage
your rudder. And again, if her husband have some evil
design against you, she may divert him, or again you
may say, 'If I gain her favor I may then make an end
of her husband and we shall have all his great riches.'
Or if you should fall into misfortune and say, “A liaison
with this woman is in no way beset with danger, she will
bring me a very large treasure, of which I am greatly
in need considering my pestilent poverty and my inabil-
ity to make a good living.'
“Or again: "This woman knows my weak points,
and if I refuse her she will blab them abroad and tarnish
my reputation. And she will set her husband against
me.
“Or again: This woman's husband has violated my
women, I will give him his own with good interest.'
"Or again: 'With this woman's aid I may kill the
enemy of the Rajah, whom I have been ordered to kill,
and she hides him.'
“Or again: "The woman I love is under this fe-
male's influence, I will use one as the road to the other.'
“Or: This woman will get me a rich wife whom I
cannot get at without her.' No, my Blue Lotus, life is
a serious matter. You will not always have me to guide
you. You must think of practical matters. Under such
circumstances you should ally yourself with such
women."
10
PAVANNES
Thus spoke Jodindra; but the counsel is very ancient
and is mostly to be found in the Sutras. These books
have been thought very holy. They contain chapters
'on pillules and philtres.
When Jodindranath had finished this speech he sank
back upon one of the cylindrical cushions. In a few
for oil. The next day he shaved his whole body. His
life is not unduly ruffled.
Upon another day Jodindranath said to his son,
"There are certain low women, people of ill repute, ad-
dicted to avarice. You should not converse with them
at the street corners, lest your creditors see you."
His son's life was not unduly ruffled.
AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON
BEHIND them rose the hill with its grey octagonal
castle, to the west a street with good houses, gardens
occasionally enclosed and well to do, before them the
slightly crooked lane, old worm-eaten fronts low and
uneven, booths with their glass front-frames open, slid
aside or hung back, the flaccid bottle-green of the panes
reflecting odd lights from the provender and cheap
crockery; a few peasant women with baskets of eggs and
of fowls, while just before them an old peasant with one
hen in his basket alternately stroked its head and then
smacked it to make it go down under the strings.
The couple leaned upon one of the tin tables in the
moderately clear space by the inn, the elder, grey, with
thick hair, square of forehead, square bearded, yet with
a face showing curiously long and oval in spite of this
quadrature; in the eyes a sort of friendly, companion-
able melancholy, now intent, now with a certain blank-
ness, like that of a child cruelly interrupted, or of an
old man surprised and self-conscious in some act too
young for his years, the head from the neck to the crown
in contrast almost brutally with the girth and great
belly: the head of Don Quixote, and the corpus of
Sancho Panza, animality mounting into the lines of the
throat and lending energy to the intellect.
His companion obviously an American student.
Student: I came here in hopes of this meeting yet,
since you are here at all, you must have changed many
opinions.
11
· 12
PAVANNES
The Elder: Some. Which do you mean?
Student: Since you are here, personal and persist-
ing?
Rabelais: All that I believed or believe you will find
in De Senectute: “... that being so active, so swift
in thought; that treasures up in memory such multitudes
and varieties of things past, and comes likewise upon
new things . . . can be of no mortal nature.”
Student: And yet I do not quite understand. Your
outline is not always distinct. Your voice however is
deep, clear and not squeaky.
Rabelais: I was more interested in words than in my
exterior aspect, I am therefore vocal rather than spatial.
Student: I came here in hopes of this meeting, yet
I confess I can scarcely read you. I admire and close
the book, as not infrequently happens with classics.”
Rabelais: I am the last person to censure you, and
your admiration is perhaps due to a fault in your taste.
I should have paid more heed to DeBellay, young
Joachim.
Student: You do not find him a prig?
Rabelais: I find no man a prig who takes serious
thought for the language.
Student: And your own? Even Voltaire called it an
amassment of ordure.
Rabelais: And later changed his opinion.
Student: Others have blamed your age, saying you
had to half-bury your wisdom in filth to make it ac-
ceptable.
Rabelais: And you would put this blame on my age?
And take the full blame for your writing?
Student: My writing?
Rabelais: Yes, à quatrain, without which I should
scarcely have come here.
AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 13
Sweet C. ... in h. . . spew up some. ...
(pardon me for intruding my own name at this point,
but even Dante has done the like, with a remark that he
found it unfitting)—to proceed then:
..... .some Rabelais
To..... and ..... and to define today
In fitting fashion, and her monument
Heap up to her in fadeless ex .....
Student: My license in those lines is exceptional.
Rabelais: And you have written on journalists, or
rather an imaginary plaint of the journalists:
Where s. ...., S. .... and p. ....on jews conspire,
And editorial maggots .... about,
We gather .... -smeared bread, or drive a snout
Still deeper in the swim-brown of the mire.
0....0.....0 b. ..... b. ..... b....
Oc.... ........0....0......'s attire
Smeared with ............................
Really I can not continue, no printer would pass it.
Student: Quite out of my usual ......
Rabelais: There is still another on publishers, or
rather on la vie litteraire, a sestina almost wholly in as-
terisks, and a short strophe on the American president.
Student: Can you blame ...
Rabelais: I am scarcely ....... eh. ....
Student: Beside, these are but a few scattered out-
bursts, you kept up your flow through whole volumes.
Rabelais: You have spent six years in your college
and university, and a few more in struggles with editors;
I had had thirty years in that sink of a cloister, is it
14
PAVANNES
likely that your disgusts would need such voluminous
purging? Consider, when I was nine years of age they
put me in that louse-breeding abomination. I was forty
before I broke loose.
Student: Why at that particular moment?
Rabelais: They had taken away my books. Brother
Amy got hold of a Virgil. We opened it, sortes, the first
line:
Heu, fuge crudeles teeras, fuge litus avarum.
We read that line and departed. You may thank God
your age is different. You may thank God your life has
been different. Thirty years mewed up with monks!
After that can you blame me my style? Have you any
accurate gauge of stupidities?
Student: I have, as you admit, passed some years in
my university. I have seen some opposition to learn-
ing.
Rabelais: No one in your day has sworn to annihilate
the cult of Greek letters; they have not separated you
from your books; they have not rung bells expressly to
keep you from reading.
Student: Bells! later. There is a pasty-faced vicar
in Kensington who had his dam'd bells rung over my
head for four consecutive winters, L'Ile Sonnanto trans-
ferred to the middle of London! They have tried to
smother the good ones with bad ones. Books I mean,
God knows the chime was a musicless abomination. .
They have smothered good books with bad ones.
Rabelais: This will never fool a true poet; for the
rest, it does not matter whether they drone masses or lec-
tures. They observe their fasts with the intellect. Have
they actually sequestered your books ?
Student: No. But I have a friend, of your order, a
monk. They took away his book for two years. I ad-
i
AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 15
mit they set him to hearing confessions; to going about
in the world. It may have broadened his outlook, or
benefited his eyesight. I do not think it wholly irra-
tional, though it must have been extremely annoying.
Rabelais: Where was it?
Student: In Spain.
Rabelais: You are driven south of the Pyrenees to
find your confuting example. Would you find the like
in this country?
Student: I doubt it. The Orders are banished.
Rabelais: Or in your own?
Student: Never.
Rabelais: And you were enraged with your univer-
sity?
Rabelais: Can you conceive a life so infernally and
and excitement beside it?
Student: You speak of a time when scholarship was
new, when humanism had not given way to philology.
We have no one like Henry Stephen, no one comparable
to Helia Andrea. The rôle of your monastery is now
assumed by the “institutions of learning,” the spirit of
your class-room is found among a few scattered en-
thusiasts, men half ignorant in the present "scholarly”
sense, but alive with the spirit of learning, avid of
way bits of knowledge. Do you like this scrap of Pra-
tinas?
Rabelais (reads) :
Έμός εμος ο Βρομίος.
Εμε δεί κελαδεϊν,
Έμι δει παταγείν,
'Αν όρεα εσσύμενον
16
PAVANNES
Μετά Nαίδων
Οία τε κύκνον άγοντα
Ποικιλόπτερον μέλος
Tay dongav. ...
Student: The movement is interesting. I am “edu-
cated," I am considerably more than a “graduate." I
confess that I can not translate it.
Rabelais: What in God's name have they taught
you?!!
Student: I hope they have taught me nothing. I
managed to read many books despite their attempts at
suppression, or rather perversion.
Rabelais: I think you speak in a passion; that you
magnify petty annoyances. Since then, you have been
in the world for some years, you have been able to move
at your freedom.
Student: I speak in no passion when I say that the
whole aim, or at least the drive, of modern philology is
to make a man stupid; to turn his mind from the fire of
genius and smother him with things unessential. Ger-
many has so stultified her savants that they have had no
present perception, the men who should have perceived
were all imbedded in "scholarship.” And as for free-
dom, no man is free who has not the modicum of an in-
come. If I had but fifty francs weekly ......
Rabelais: Weekly? C. ....J....!
Student: You forget that the value of money has
very considerably altered.
Rabelais: Admitted.
Student: Well ?
Rabelais: Well, who has constrained you? The
press in your day is free.
Student: C. ....J....!
Rabelais: But the press in your day is free.
AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 17
Student: There is not a book goes to the press in my
country, or in England, but a society of ....... in
one, or in the other a pie-headed ignorant printer paws
over it to decide how much is indecent.
Rabelais: But they print my works in translation.
Student: Your work is a classic. They also print
Trimalcio's “Supper," and the tales of Suetonius, and
red-headed virgins annotate the writings of Martial, but
let a novelist mention a privvy, or a poet the rear side of
a woman, and the whole town reeks with an uproar. In
England a scientific work was recently censored. A
great discovery was kept secret three years. For the
rest, I do not speak of obscenity. Obscene books are sold
in the rubber shops, they are doled out with quack medi-
cines, societies for the Suppression of Vice go into all
details, and thereby attain circulation. Masterpieces are
decked out with lewd covers to entoil one part of the
public, but let an unknown man write clear and clean
realism; let a poet use the speech of his predecessors,
either being as antiseptic as the instruments of a sur-
geon, and out of the most debased and ignorant classes
they choose him his sieve and his censor.
Rabelais: But surely these things are avoidable ?
Student: The popular novelist, the teaser and tickler,
casts what they call a veil, or caul, over his language.
He pimps with suggestion. The printer sees only one
word at a time, and tons of such books are passed yearly,
the members of the Royal Automobile Club and of the
Isthmian and Fly Fishers are not concerned with the
question of morals.
Rabelais: You mistake me, I did not mean this sort
of evasion, I did not mean that a man should ruin his
writing or join the ranks of procurers.
Student: Well?
18
PAVANNES
Rabelais: Other means. There is what is called pri-
vate printing.
Student: I have had a printer refuse to print lines
"in any form" private or public, perfectly innocent
lines, lines refused thus in London, which appeared and
caused no blush in Chicago; and vice-versa, lines refused
in Chicago and printed by a fat-headed prude-Oh,
most fat-headed-in London, a man who will have no
ruffling of anyone's skirts, and who will not let you say
that some children do not enjoy the proximity of their
parents.
Rabelais: At least you are free from theology.
Student: If you pinch the old whore by the toes you
will find a press clique against you; you will come up
against “boycott”; people will rush into your publish-
er's office with threats. Have you ever heard of “the
libraries”?
Rabelais: I have heard the name, but not associated
with strange forms of blackmail.
Student: I admit they do not affect serious writers.
Rabelais: But you think your age as stupid as mine.
Student: Humanity is a herd, eaten by perpetual
follies. A few in each age escape, the rest remain sav-
ages, "That deyed the Arbia crimson.” Were the shores
of Gallipoli paler, that showed red to the airmen flying
thousands of feet above them?
Rabelais: Airmen. Intercommunication is civiliza-
tion. Your life is full of convenience.
Student: And men as stupid as ever. We have no
one like Henry Stephen Have you ever read Galdos'
“Dona Perfecta”? In every country you will find such
nests of provincials. Change but a few names and cus-
toms. Each Klein-Stadt has its local gods and will kill
those who offend them. In one place it is religion, in
AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 19
another some crank theory of hygiene or morals, or even
of prudery which takes no moral concern.
Rabelais: Yet all peoples act the same way. The
· same so-called "vices” are everywhere present, unless
your nation has invented some new ones.
Student: Greed and hypocrisy, there is little novelty
to be got out of either. At present there is a new tone,
a new timbre of lying, a sort of habit, almost a faculty
for refraining from connecting words with a fact. An
inconception of their interrelations.
Rabelais: Let us keep out of politics.
Student: Damn it, have you ever met presbyterians ?
Rabelais: You forget that I lived in the time of John
Calvin.
Student: Let us leave this and talk of your books.
Rabelais: My book has the fault of most books, there
are too many words in it. I was tainted with monkish
habits, with the marasmus of allegory, of putting one
thing for another: the clumsiest method of satire. I
doubt if any modern will read me.
Student: I knew a man read you for joy of the words,
for the opulence of your vocabulary.
Rabelais: Which would do him no good unless he
could keep all the words on his tongue. Tell me, can
you read them, they are often merely piled up in heaps.
Student: I confess that I can not. I take a page and
then stop.
Rabelais: Allegory, all damnable allegory! And can
you read Brantôme ?
Student: I can read a fair chunk of Brantôme. The
repetition is wearing.
Rabelais: And you think your age is as stupid as
mine? Even letters are better, a critical sense is de-
veloped.
20
PAVANNES
Student: We lack the old vigour.
Rabelais: A phrase you have got from professors !
Vigour was not lacking in Stendhal, I doubt if it is lack-
ing in your day. And as for the world being as stupid,
are your friends tied to the stake, as was Etienne Dolet,
with an “Ave” wrung out of him to get him strangled
instead of roasted. Do you have to stand making pro-
fessions like Budé?!!
Vivens vidensque gloria mea frui
Volo: nihil juvat mortuum
Quod vel diserte scripserit vel fecerit
Animose.
C
Student: What is that?
Rabelais: Some verses of Dolet's. And are you
starved like Desperiers, Bonaventura, and driven to
suicide?
Student: The last auto-da-fe was in 1759. The in-
quisition re-established in 1824.
Rabelais: Spain again! I was speaking of ...
Student: We are not yet out of the wood. There is
no end to this warfare. You talk of freedom. Have
you heard of the Hammersmith borough council, or the
society to suppress all brothels in “Rangoon and other
stations in Burmah”? If it is not creed it is morals.
Your life and works would not be possible nowadays.
To put it mildly, you would be docked your professor-
ship.
Rabelais: I should find other forms of freedom. As
for personal morals: There are certain so-called "sins"
of which no man ever repented. There are certain con-
traventions of hygiene which always prove inconvenient.
None but superstitious and ignorant people can ever
AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 21
confuse these two issues. And as hygiene is always
changing; as it alters with our knowledge of physick,
intelligent men will keep pace with it. There can be no
permanent boundaries to morals.
Student: The droits du seigneur were doubtless, at
one time, religious. When ecclesiastics enjoyed them,
they did so, in order to take the vengeance of the spirit-
world upon their own shoulders, thereby shielding and
sparing the husband.
Rabelais: Indeed you are far past these things. Your
age no longer accepts them.
Student: My age is beset with cranks of all forms
and sizes. They will not allow a man wine. They will
not allow him changes of women. This glass .
Rabelais: There is still some in the last bottle. De-
Thou has paid it a compliment:
(D
Aussi Bacchus ....
Jusqu'en l'autre monde m'envoye
De quoi dissiper mon chagrin,
Car de ma Maison paternelle
Il vient de faire un Cabaret
Où le plaisir se renouvelle
Entre le blanc et le clairet. . .
On n'y porte plus sa pensée
Qu'aux douceurs d'un Vin frais et net. '
Que si Pluton, que rien ne tente,
Vouloit se payer de raison,
Et permettre à mon Ombre errante
De faire un tour à ma Maison;
Quelque prix que j'eu püsse attendre,
Ce seroit mon premier souhait
De la louer ou de la vendre,
Pour l'usage que l'on en fait.
22
PAVANNES
Student: There are states where a man's tobacco is
not safe from invasion. Bishops, novelists, decrepit and
aged generals, purveyors of tales of detectives ......
Rabelais: Have they ever interfered with your pleas-
ures?
Student: Damn well let them try it !!!
Rabelais: I am afraid you would have been burned
in my century.
RELIGIO,
OR THE CHILD'S GUIDE TO KNOWLEDGE
WHAT is a god!
A god is an eternal state of mind.
What is a faun?
What is a nymph?
A nymph is an elemental creature.
When is a god manifest ?
When the states of mind take form.
When does a man become a god?
When he enters one of these states of mind.
What is the nature of the forms whereby a god is
manifest?
They are variable but retain certain distinguishing
characteristics.
Are all eternal states of mind gods?
We consider them so to be.
Are all durable states of mind gods?
They are not.
By what characteristic may we know the divine forms?
By beauty.
And if the presented forms are unbeautiful?
They are demons.
If they are grotesque ?
They may be well-minded genii.
What are the kinds of knowledge ?
23
24
PAVANNES
?
Is hearsay of any value ?
Of some.
What is the greatest hearsay?
The greatest hearsay is the tradition of the gods.
Of what use is this tradition?
It tells us to be ready to look.
In what manner do gods appear?
Formed and formlessly.
To what do they appear when formed?
To the sense of vision.
And when formless ?
To the sense of knowledge.
May they when formed appear to anything save the
sense of vision ?
We may gain a sense of their presence as if they were
standing behind us.
And in this case they may possess form?
We may feel that they do possess form.
Are there names for the gods?
The gods have many names. It is by names that they
are handled in the tradition.
Is there harm in using these names ?
There is no harm in thinking of the gods by their
names.
How should one perceive a god, by his name?
It is better to perceive a god by form, or by the sense
of knowledge, and, after perceiving him thus, to con-
sider his name or to "think what god it may be.”
Do we know the number of the gods?
It would be rash to say that we do. A man should
be content with a reasonable number.
What are the gods of this rite?
Apollo, and in some sense Helios, Diana in some of
her phases, also the Cytherean goddess.
RELIGIO
To what other gods is it fitting, in harmony or in
adjunction with these rites, to give incense?
To Koré and to Demeter, also to lares and to oreiads
and to certain elemental creatures.
How is it fitting to please these lares and other crea-
tures ?
It is fitting to please and to nourish them with flow-
ers.
Do they have need of such nutriment?
It would be foolish to believe that they have, never-
theless it bodes well for us that they should be pleased
to appear.
Are these things so in the East?
This rite is made for the West.
AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN
A. D. 1451
THEY entered between two fir trees. A path of irreg-
ular flat pentagonal stones led along between shrubbery.
Halting by the central court in a sort of narrow gallery,
the large tank was below them, and in it some thirty or
forty blond nereides for the most part well-muscled, with
smooth flaxen hair and smooth faces—a generic resem-
blance. A slender brown wench sat at one end list-
lessly dabbling her feet from the spring-board. Here
the water was deeper.
The rest of them, all being clothed in white linen
shifts held up by one strap over the shoulder and reach-
ing half-way to the knees,—the rest of them waded waist-
and breast-deep in the shallower end of the pool, their
shifts bellied up by the air, spread out like huge bobbing
cauliflowers.
The whole tank was sunken beneath the level of the
gardens, and paved and panelled with marble, a rather
cheap marble. To the left of the little gallery, where
the strangers had halted, an ample dowager sat in a per-
fectly circular tub formed rather like the third of an
hogshead, behind her a small hemicycle of yew trees
kept off any chance draught from the North. She like-
wise wore a shift of white linen. On a plank before her,
reaching from the left to the right side of her tank-
hogshead, were a salver with a large piece of raw smoked
ham, a few leeks, a tankard of darkish beer, a back-
scratcher, the ham-knife.
26
AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN 27
Before them, from some sheds, there arose a faint
steam, the sound of grunts and squeals and an aroma of
elderly bodies. From the opposite gallery a white-
bearded town-councillor began to throw grapes to the
nereides.
Le Sieur de Maunsier: They have closed these places
in Marseilles, causa flagitii, they were thought to be bad
for our morals.
Poggio: And are your morals improved ?
Maunsier: Nein, bin nicht verbessert.
Poggio: And are the morals of Marseilles any better?
Maunsier: Not that I know of. Assignations are
equally frequent; the assignors less cleanly; their health,
I presume, none the better. The Church has always
been dead set against washing. St. Clement of Alexan-
dria forbade all bathing by women. He made no excep-
tion. Baptism and the last oiling were enough, to his
thinking. St. Augustine, more genial and human, took
a bath to console himself for the death of his mother.
I suspect that it was a hot one. Being clean is a pagan
virtue, and no part of the light from Judaea.
Poggio: Say rather a Roman, the Greek philosophers
died, for the most part, of lice. Only the system of
empire, plus a dilettantism in luxuries, could have
brought mankind to the wash-tub. The christians have
made dirt a matter of morals: a son of God can have
no need to be cleansed; a worm begotten in sin and fore-
doomed to eternal damnation in a bottle of the seven
great stenches, would do ill to refine his nostrils and
unfit himself for his future. For the elect and the re-
jected alike, washing is either noxious or useless they
must be transcendent at all costs. The rest of the world
must be like them; they therefore look after our morals.
28
PAVANNES
Yet this last term is wholly elastic. There is no system
which has not been tried, wedlock or unwedlock, a breed-
ing on one mare or on many; all with equal success, with
equal flaws, crimes, and discomforts.
Maunsier: I have heard there was no adultery found
in Sparta.
Poggio: There was no adultery among the Lacedae-
monians because they held all women in common. A
rumour of Troy had reached the ears of Lycurgus: :“So
Lycurgus thought also there were many foolish vain joys
and fancies, in the laws and orders of other nations,
touching marriage: seeing they caused their bitches and
mares to be lined and covered with the fairest dogs
and goodliest stallions that might be gotten, praying
and paying the maisters and owners of the same: and
kept their wives notwithstanding shut up safe under
lock and key, for fear lest other than themselves might
get them with child, although themselves were sickly,
feeble-brained, extreme old." I think I quote rightly
from Plutarch. The girls of Lacedaemon played naked
before the young men, that their defects should be rem-
edied rather than hidden. A man first went by stealth
to his mistress, and this for a long space of time; thus
learning address and silence. For better breeding Ly-
curgus would not have children the property of any one
man, but sought only that they should be born of the
lustiest women, begotten of the most vigorous seed...
Maunsier: Christianity would put an end to all that,
yet I think there was some trace left in the lex Germanica,
and some in our Provençal love customs; for under the
first a woman kept whatever man she liked, so long as
she fancied: the children being brought up by her broth-
ers, being a part of the female family, cognati. The
chivalric system is smothered with mysticism, and is
AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN 29
focussed all upon pleasure, but the habit of older folk-
custom is at the base of its freedoms, its debates were
on matters of modus.
These girls look very well in their shifts. They con-
found the precepts of temperance.
Poggio: I have walked and ridden through Europe,
annoting, observing. I am interested in food and the
animal.
There was, before I left Rome, a black woman for sale
in the market. Her breasts stuck out like great funnels,
her shoulders were rounded like basins, her biceps was
that of a wheel-wright; these upper portions of her, to
say nothing of her flattened-in face, were disgusting and
hideous, but she had a belly like Venus, from below the
breasts to the crotch she was like a splendid Greek frag-
ment. She came of a tropical meat-eating tribe. I ob-
serve that gramenivorous and fruit-eating races have
shrunken arms and shoulders, narrow backs and weakly
distended stomachs. Much beer enlarges the girth in
old age, at a time when the form in any case, might
have ceased to give pleasure. The men of this nubian
tribe were not lovely; they were shaped rather like al-.
monds: the curious roundness in the front aspect, a grad-
ual sloping-in toward the feet, a very great muscular
power, a silhouette not unlike that of an egg, or perhaps
more like that of a tadpole.
Civilized man grows more frog-like, his members be-
come departmental.
Maunsier: But fixed. Man falls into a set gamut of
types. His thoughts also. The informed and the un-
informed, the clodhopper and the civilian are equally in-
capable of trusting an unwonted appearance. Last week
I met an exception, and for that cause the matter is now
in my mind, and I am, as they say “forming conclu-
30
PAVANNES
sions." The exception, an Englishman, had found a
parochial beauty in Savoia, in the inn of a mountain
town, a'local character” as he called her. He could not
describe her features with any minute precision, but she
wore, he remembered, a dress tied up with innumerable
small bits of ribbon in long narrow bow-knots, limp,
hanging like grass-blades cauglit in the middle. She
came in to him as a sort of exhibit. He kissed her hand.
She sat by his bedside and conversed with him pleasantly.
They were quite alone for some time. Nothing more
happened. From something in his manner, I am in-
clined to believe him. He was convinced that nothing
more ever did happen.
Poggio: Men have a curious desire for uniformity.
Bawdry and religion are all one before it.
Maunsier: They call it the road to salvation.
Poggio: They ruin the shape of life for a dogmatic
exterior. What dignity have we over the beasts, save
to be once, and to be irreplaceable!
I myself am a rag-bag, a mass of sights and citations,
but I will not beat down life for the sake of a model.
Maunsier: Would you be “without an ideal ?”
Poggio: Is beauty an ideal like the rest ? I confess
I see the need of no other. When I read that from the
breast of the Princess Hellene there was cast a cup of
sówhite gold,” the sculptor finding no better model; and
that this cup was long shown in the temple at Lyndos,
which is in the island of Rhodes; or when I read, as I
think is the textual order, first of the cup and then of
its origin, there comes upon me a discontent with human
imperfection. I am no longer left in the “slough of the
senses,” but am full of heroic life, for the instant. The
sap mounts in the twigs of my being.
AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN
31
The visions of the mystics give them like courage, it
may be.
Maunsier: My poor uncle, he will talk of the slough
of the senses and the "loathsome pit of contentment."
His "ideas” are with other men's conduct. He seeks to
set bounds to their actions.
I cannot make out the mystics; nor how far we may
trust to our senses, and how far to sudden sights that
come from within us, or at least seem to spring up within
us: a mirage, an elf-music; and how far we are prey to
the written word.
Poggio: I have seen many women in dreams, sur-
passing most mortal women, but I doubt if I have on
their account been stirred to more thoughts of beauty,
than I have had meditating upon that passage in latin,
concerning the temple of Pallas at Lyndos and its me-
morial cup of white gold. I do not count myself among
Plato's disciples.
Maunsier: And yet it is forced upon us that all these
things breed their fanatics; that even a style might be-
come a religion and breed bigots as many, and pestilent.
Poggio: Our blessing is to live in an age when some
can hold a fair balance. It can not last; many are half-
drunk with freedom; a greed for taxes at Rome will
raise up envy, a cultivated court will disappear in the
ensuing reaction. We are fortunate to live in the wink,
the eye of mankind is open; for an instant, hardly more
than an instant. Men are prized for being unique. I
do not mean merely fantastic. That is to say there
are a few of us who can prize a man for thinking, in
himself, rather than for a passion to make others think
with him.
Perhaps you are right about style; an established style
32
PAVANNES
could be as much a nuisance as any other establishment.
Yet there must be a reputable normal. Tacitus is too
crabbed. The rhetoricians ruined the empire. Let us
go on to our baths.
L'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL.1
“I hate a dumpy woman”.
-George Gordon, Lord Byron.
D
'Tis of my country that I would endite,
In hope to set some misconceptions right.
My country? I love it well, and those good fellows
Who, since their wit's unknown, escape the gallows.
But you stuffed coats who're neither tepid nor dis-
tinctly boreal,
Pimping, conceited, placid, editorial,
Could I but speak as 'twere in the “Restoration”
I would articulate your perdamnation.
This year perforce I must with circumspection-
For Mencken states somewhere, in this connection:
“It is a moral nation we infest."
1 [Note: It is through no fault of my own that this diversion
was not given to the reader two years ago; but the commercial
said it would not add to their transcendent popularity, and the
vers-libre fanatics pointed out that I had used a form of terminal
consonance no longer permitted, and my admirers (j'en ai), ever
nobly desirous of erecting me into a sort of national institution,
declared the work "unworthy" of my mordant and serious genius.
So a couple of the old gentlemen are dead in the interim, and,
alas, two of the great men mentioned in passing, and the reader
will have to accept the opusculus for what it is, some rhymes
written in 1915. I would give them now with dedication "To the
Anonymous Compatriot Who Produced the Poem 'Fanny,' Some-
where About 1820", if this form of centennial homage be per-
mitted me. It was no small thing to have written, in America,
at that distant date, a poem of over forty pages which one can
still read without labour. E. P.]
33
34
PAVANNES
Despite such reins and checks I'll do my best,
An art! You all respect the arts, from that infant
tick
Who's now the editor of The Atlantic,
From Comstock's self, down to the meanest resident,
Till up again, right up, we reach the president,
Who shows his taste in his ambassadors:
A novelist, a publisher, to pay old scores,
A novelist, a publisher and a preacher,
That's sent to Holland, a most particular feature,
Henry Van Dyke, who thinks to charm the Muse you
pack her in
A sort of stinking diliquescent saccharine.
The constitution of our land, O Socrates,
Was made to incubate such mediocrities,
These and a taste in books that's grown perennial
And antedates the Philadelphia centennial.
Still I'd respect you more if you could bury
Mabie, and Lyman Abbot and George Woodberry,
For minds so wholly founded upon quotations
Are not the best of pulse for infant nations.
Dulness herself, that abject spirit, chortles
To see your forty self-baptized immortals,
And holds her sides where swelling laughter cracks
'em
Before the “Ars Poetica" of Hiram Maxim.
All one can say of this refining medium
Is“Zut! Cinque lettres!” a banished gallic idiom,
Their doddering ignorance is waxed so notable
'Tis time that it was capped with something quotable.
Here Radway grew, the fruit of pantosocracy,
The very fairest flower of their gynocracy,
Radway? My hero, for it will be more inspiring
L'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL 35
If I set forth a bawdy plot like Byron
Than if I treat the nation as a whole.
Radway grew up. These forces shaped his soul;
These, and yet God, and Dr. Parkhurst's god, the
N. Y. Journal
(Which pays him more per week than The Supernal).
These and another godlet of that day, your day
(You feed a hen on grease, perhaps she'll lay
The sterile egg that is still eatable:
“Prolific Noyes” with output undefeatable).
From these he (Radway) learnt, from provosts and
from editors unyielding
And innocent of Stendhal, Flaubert, Maupassant and
Fielding.
They set their mind (it's still in that condition) -
May we repeat; the Centennial Exposition
At Philadelphia, 1876 ?
What it knew then, it knows, and there it sticks.
And yet another, a "charming man," "sweet nature,”
but was Gilder,
De mortuis verum, truly the master builder?
From these he learnt. Poe, Whitman, Whistler, men,
their recognition
Was got abroad, what better luck do you wish 'em,
When writing well has not yet been forgiven
In Boston, to Henry James, the greatest whom we've
seen living.
And timorous love of the innocuous
Brought from Gt. Britain and dumped down a'top
of us,
Till you may take your choice: to feel the edge of
satire or
Read Bennett or some other flaccid flatterer.
36
PAVANNES
Despite it all, despite your Red Bloods, febrile con-
cupiscence
Whose blubbering yowls you take for passion's es-
sence;
Despite it all, your compound predilection
For ignorance, its growth and its protection
(Vide the tariff), I will hang simple facts
Upon a tale, to combat other facts,
“Message to Garcia,” Mosher's propagandas
That are the nation's botts, collicks and glanders.
Or from the feats of Sumner cull it? Think,
Could Freud or Jung unfathom such a sink?
.
My hero, Radway, I have named, in truth,
Some forces among those which “formed” his youth:
These heavy weights, these dodgers and these preach-
ers,
Crusaders, lecturers and secret lechers,
Who wrought about his “soul” their stale infection.
These are the high-brows, add to this collection
The social itch, the almost, all but, not quite, fasci-
nating,
Piquante, delicious, luscious, captivating:
Puffed satin, and silk stockings, where the knee
Clings to the skirt in strict (vide: “Vogue”) pro-
priety.
Three thousand chorus girls and all unkissed,
Ostate sans song, sans home-grown wine, sans real-
ist!
"Tell me not in mournful wish-wash
Life's a sort of sugared dish-wash”!!
Radway had read the various evening papers
And yearned to imitate the Waldorf capers
As held before him in that unsullied mirror
L'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL: 37
The daily press, and monthlies nine cents dearer.
They held the very marrow of the ideals
That fed his spirit; were his mental meals.
Also, he'd read of christian virtues in
That canting rag called Everybody's Magazine,
And heard a clergy that tries on more wheezes
Than e'er were heard of by Our Lord Ch ....J....
So he “faced life” with rather mixed intentions,
He had attended country Christian Endeavour Con-
ventions,
Where one gets more chances
Than Spanish ladies had in old romances.
(Let him rebuke who ne'er has known the pure Pla-
tonic grapple,
Or hugged two girls at once behind a chapel.)
Such practices diluted rural boredom
Though some approved of them, and some deplored
'em.
Such was he when he got his mother's letter
And would not think a thing that could upset her....
Yet saw an “ad." "To-night, THE HUDSON
SAIL,
With forty queens, and music to regale
The select company: beauties you all would know
By name, if named.” So it was phrased, or rather
somewhat so
I have mislaid the "ad.,” but note the touch,
Note, reader, note the sentimental touch:
His mother's birthday gift. (How pitiful
That only sentimental stuff will sell!)
CD
Yet Radway went. A circumspectious prig!
And then that woman like a guinea-pig
Accosted, that's the word, accosted him,
38
PAVANNES
Thereon the amorous calor slightly frosted him.
(I burn, I freeze, I sweat, said the fair Greek,
I speak in contradictions, so to speak.)
I've told his training, he was never bashful,
And his pockets by ma's aid, that night with cash full,
The invitation had no need of fine ästhetic,
Nor did disgust prove such a strong emetic
That we, with Masefield's vein, in the next sentence
Record “Odd's blood! Ouch! Ouch!” a prayer, his
swift repentance.
No, no, they danced. The music grew much louder
As he inhaled the still fumes of rice-powder.
Then there came other nights, came slow but certain
And were such nights that we should “draw the cur-
tain”
In writing fiction on uncertain chances
Of publication; “Circumstances,"
As the editor of The Century says in print,
“Compel a certain silence and restraint.”.
Still we will bring our “fiction as near to fact” as
The Sunday school brings virtues into practice.
Soon our hero could manage once a week,
Not that his pay had risen, and no leak
Was found in his employer's cash. He learned the
lay of cheaper places,
And then Radway began to go the paces :
A rosy path, a sort of vernal ingress,
And Truth should here be careful of her thin dress-
Though males of seventy, who fear truths naked harm
us,
Must think Truth looks as they do in wool pyjamas.
L'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL
39
(My country, I've said your morals and your thoughts
are stale ones,
But surely the worst of your old-women are the male
ones.)
Why paint these days? An insurance inspector
For fires and odd risks, could in this sector
Furnish more date for a compilation
Than I can from this distant land and station,
Unless perhaps I should have recourse to
One of those firm-faced inspecting women, who
Find pretty Irish girls in Chinese laundries,
Up stairs, the third floor up, and have such quandaries
As to how and why and whereby they got in
And for what earthly reason they remain. ...
Alas, eheu, one question that sorely vexes
The serious social folk is “just what sex is.”
Though it will, of course, pass off with social science
In which their mentors place such wide reliance.
De Gourmont says that fifty grunts are all that will be
prized.
Of language, by men wholly socialized,
With signs as many, that shall represent 'em
When thoroughly socialized printers want to print 'em.
“As free of mobs as kings”? I'd have men free of
that invidious,
Lurking, serpentine, amphibious and insidious
Power that compels 'em
To be so much alike that every dog that smells 'em,
Thinks one identity is
Smeared o’er the lot in equal quantities.
Still we look toward the day when man, with unction,
Will long only to be a social function,
And even Zeus' wild lightning fear to strike
40
PAVANNES
Lest it should fail to treat all men alike.
And I can hear an old man saying: “Oh, the rub!
“I see them sitting in the Harvard Club,
“And rate 'em up at just so much per head,
“Know what they think, and just what books they've
read,
“Till I have viewed straw hats and their habitual cloth-
ing
“All the same style, same cut, with perfect loathing.”
So Radway walked, quite like the other men,
Out into the crepuscular half-light, now and then;
Saw what the city offered, cast an eye
Upon Manhattan's gorgeous panoply,
The flood of limbs upon Eighth Avenue
To beat Prague, Budapesth, Vienna or Moscow,1
Such animal invigorating carriage
As nothing can restrain or much disparage. ....
Still he was not given up to brute enjoyment,
An anxious sentiment was his employment,
For memory of the first warm night still cast a haze
o'er
The mind of Radway, whene'er he found a pair of
purple stays or
Some other quaint reminder of the occasion
That first made him believe in immoral suasion.
A temperate man, a thin potationist, each day
A silent hunter off the Great White Way,
He read The Century and thought it nice
To be not too well known in haunts of vice-
The prominent haunts, where one might recognize
him,
And in his daily walks duly capsize him.
1 Pronounce like respectable Russians: "Mussqu."
L'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL
41
Thus he eschewed the bright red-walled cafés and
Was never one of whom one speaks as “brazen’d.”
Some men will live as prudes in their own village
And make the tour abroad for their wild tillage
I knew a tourist agent, one whose art is
To run such tours. He calls 'em ..... house par-
ties.
But Radway was a patriot whose venality
Was purer in its love of one locality,
A home-industrious worker to perfection,
A senatorial jobber for protection,
Especially on books, lest knowledge break in
Upon the national brains and set 'em achin’.
('Tis an anomaly in our large land of freedom,
You can not get cheap books, even if you need 'em).
Radway was ignorant as an editor,
And, heavenly, holy gods! I can't say more,
Though I know one, a very base detractor,
Who has the phrase “As ignorant as an actor.”
But turn to Radway: the first night on the river,
Running so close to "hell” it sends a shiver
Down Rodyheaver's prophylactic spine,
Let me return to this bold theme of mine,
Of Radway. 0 clap hand ye moralists!
And meditate upon the Lord's conquests.
When last I met him, he was a pillar in
An organization for the suppression of sin ...
Not that he'd changed his tastes, nor yet his habits,
(Such changes don't occur in men, or rabbits).
Not that he was a saint, nor was top-loftical
In spiritual aspirations, but he found it profitable,
For as Ben Franklin said, with such urbanity:
“Nothing will pay thee, friend, like Christianity.”
42
PAVANNES
And in our day thus saith the Evangelist :
"Tent preachin' is the kind that pays the best.”
· 'Twas as a business asset pure an' simple
That Radway joined the Baptist Broadway Temple.
I find no moral for a peroration,
He is the prototype of half the nation.
PIERROTS
From the French of Jules Laforgue
(Scene courte mais typique)
YOUR eyes! Since I lost their incandescence
Flat calm engulphs my jibs,
The shudder of Vae soli gurgles beneath my ribs.
You should have seen me after the affray,
I rushed about in the most agitated way
Crying: My God, my God, what will she say?! -
My soul's antennæ are prey to such perturbations,
Wounded by your indirectness in these situations
And your bundle of mundane complications.
Your eyes put me up to it.
I thought: Yes, divine, these eyes, but what exists
Behind them? What's there? Her soul's an affair
for oculists.
And I am sliced with loyal æsthetics.
Hate tremolos and national frenetics.
In brief, violet is the ground tone of my phonetics.
I am not "that chap there" nor yet “The Superb”
But my soul, the sort which harsh sounds disturb,
Is, at bottom, distinguished and fresh as a March herb.
43
PAVANNES
My nerves still register the sounds of contra-bass',
I can walk about without fidgeting when people pass,
Without smirking into a pocket-looking-glass.
Yes, I have rubbed shoulders and knocked off my'
chips
Outside your set but, having kept faith in your eyes,
You might pardon such slips.
Eh, make it up?
Soothings, confessions;
These new concessions
Hurl me into such a mass of divergent impressions.
STARK REALISM
This Little Pig Went to Market
(A Search for the National Type)
THIS little American went to Vienna. He said it was
“Gawd's Owne City." He knew all the bath-houses
and dance halls. He was there for a week. He never
forgot it- No, not even when he became a Captain in
the Great American Navy and spent six months in
Samoa.
This little American went West-to the Middle-West,
where he came from. He smoked cigars, for cigarettes
are illegal in Indiana, that land where Lew Wallace died,
that land of the literary tradition. He ate pie of all
sorts, and read the daily papers—especially those of
strong local interest. He despised European culture as
an indiscriminate whole.
Peace to his ashes.
This little American went to the great city Manhattan.
He made two dollars and a half per week. He saw the
sheeny girls on the East Side who lunch on two cents
worth of bread and sausages, and dress with a flash on
the remainder. He nearly died of it. Then he got a
rise. He made fifteen dollars per weeek selling insur-
ance. He wore a monocle with a tortoise-shell rim. He
45
46
PAVANNES
dressed up to “Bond St.” No lord in The Row has
surpassed him.
He was a damn good fellow.
This little American went to Oxford. He rented Oscar's
late rooms. He talked about the nature of the Beautiful.
He swam in the wake of Santyana. He had a great cut
glass bowl full of lilies. He believed in Sin. His life
was immaculate. He was the last convert to catholicism.
This little American had always been adored—and quite
silent. He was bashful. He rowed on his college crew.
He had a bright pink complexion. He was a dealer in
bonds, but not really wicked. He would walk into a
man's office and say: “Do you want any stock? . . eh
.... eh .. I don't know anything about it. They say
it's all right.” Some people like that sort of thing;
though it is not the “ideal business man" as you read
of him in Success and in Mr. Lorimer's papers.
This little American had rotten luck; he was educated-
soundly and thoroughly educated. His mother always
bought his underwear by the dozen, so that he should
be thoroughly supplied. He went from bad to worse,
and ended as a dishwasher; always sober and indus-
trious; he began as paymaster in a copper mine. He
made hollow tiles in Michigan.
His end was judicious.
This little American spoke through his nose, because he
had catarrh or consumption. His scholastic merits were
obvious. He studied Roumanian and Arumaic. He
married a papal countess.
Peace to his ashes.
TWELVE
DIALOGUES OF
FONTENELLE
ALEXANDER AND PHRINÉ
PHRINÉ. You could learn it from all the Thebans who
lived in my time. They will tell you that I offered to
restore at my own expense the walls of Thebes which
you had ruined, provided that they inscribe them as fol-
1
the courtezan Phriné rebuilt them.
Alexander. Were you so afraid that future ages
would forget what profession you followed ?
Phriné. I excelled in it, and all extraordinary people,
of whatever profession, have been mad about monuments
and inscriptions.
Alexander. It is true that Rhodope preceded you.
The usufruct of her beauty enabled her to build a fa-
mous pyramid still standing in Egypt, and I remember
that when she was speaking of it the other day to the
shades of certain French women who supposed them-
selves well worth loving, they began to weep, saying
that in the country and ages wherein they had so recently
lived, pretty women could not earn enough to build
pyramids.
Phriné. Yet I had the advantage over Rhodope, for
by restoring the Theban walls I brought myself into
comparison with you who had been the greatest con-
queror in the world; I made it apparent that my beauty
Alexander. A new comparison. You were then so
proud of your gallantries ?
50
FONTENELLE
Phriné. And you? Were you so well content with
having laid waste a good half of the universe ? Had
there been but a Phriné in each of the ruined cities,
there would remain no trace of your ravages.
Alexander. If I should ever live again I would wish
to be an illustrious conqueror.
Phriné. And I a lovable conqueréss. Beauty has a
natural right to command men, valour has nothing but
a right acquired by force. A beautiful woman is of all
countries, yet kings themselves and even conquerors are
not. For better argument, your father Philip was val-
iant enough and you also; neither of you could rouse the
slightest fear in Demosthenes, who during the whole
course of his life did nothing but make violent speeches
against you; yet when another Phriné (for the name is
a lucky name) was about to lose a case of considerable
importance, her lawyer, having used his eloquence all
in vain, snatched aside the great veil which half covered
her, and the judges who were ready to condemn her,
put aside their intention at the sight of her beauties.
The reputation of your arms, having a great space of
years to accomplish the object, could not keep one orator
quiet, yet a fair body corrupted the whole severe Areo-
pagus on the instant.
Alexander. Though you have called another Phriné
to your aid, I do not think you have weakened the case
for Alexander. It would be a great pity if ....
Phriné. I know what you are going to say: Greece,
Asia, Persia, the Indes, they are a very fine shopful.
However, if I cut away from your glory all that does
not belong to you; if I give your soldiers, your captains,
and even chance what is due to them, do you think your
loss would be slight? But a fair woman shares the hon-
our of her conquests with no one, she owes nothing save
ALEXANDER AND PHRINÉ
51
to herself. Believe me, the rank of a pretty woman is
no mean one.
Alexander. So you seem to have thought. But do
you think the rôle is really all that you made it?
Phriné. No. I will be perfectly frank with you. I
exaggerated the rôle of a pretty woman, you strained
over hard against yours. We both made too many con-
quests. Had I had but two or three affairs of gallantry,
it would have been all quite in order, there would have
been nothing to complain of; but to have had enough
such affairs to rebuild the Theban wall was excessive,
wholly excessive. On the other hand, had you but con-
quered Greece, and the neighbouring islands, and per-
haps even part of lesser Asia, and made a kingdom of
them, nothing would have been more intelligent nor in
reason; but always to rush about without knowing
whither, to take cities without knowing why, to act al-
ways without any design, was a course that would not
have pleased many right-minded people.
Alexander. Let right-minded people say what they
like. If I had used my bravery and fortune as pru-
dently as all that, I should scarcely ever be mentioned.
Phriné. Nor I either, had I used my beauty so pru-
dently. But if one wishes merely to make a commotion,
one may be better equipped than by possessing a charac-
ter full of reason.
II
DIDO AND STRATONICE
Dido. Alas, my poor Stratonice, I am unhappy.
You know what my life was. I maintained so precise
a fidelity to my first husband, that I burned myself alive
to escape accepting another. For all that I have not
escaped evil rumour. It has pleased a poet, a certain
Virgil, to transform so strict a prude as I was into a
young flirt, charmed by a stranger's nice face the first
day she sees him. My whole story turned upside down!
The funeral pyre is left me, I admit, but my reason is
no more the fear of being forced into a second marriage;
I am supposed to be in despair lest the stranger abandon
me.
Stratonice. And the consequences might be most dan-
gerous. Very few women will care to immolate them-
selves for wifely fidelity, if a poet, after their deaths,
is to be left free to say what he likes of them. But, per-
haps, your Virgil was not so very far wrong; perhaps
he has unravelled some intrigue of your life which you
had hoped to keep hidden. Who knows? I should not
care to take oath about your pyre.
Dido. If there was the slightest likelihood in Virgil's
suggestion, I should not mind being suspected; but he
makes my lover Æneas, a man dead three centuries be-
fore I came into the world.
Stratonice. There is something in what you say.
And yet you and Æneas seem to have been expressly
52
DIDO AND STRATONICE
53
made for each other. You were both forced to leave
your native countries; you sought your fortunes with
strangers-he a widower, you a widow: all this is in har-
mony. It is true you were born three hundred years
after his death; but Virgil saw so many good reasons for
bringing you together that he has counted time for a
trifle.
Dido. Is that sensible? Good heavens, are not three
hundred years always three hundred, can two people
meet and fall in love, despite such an obstacle?
Stratonice. Oh, Virgil was very clever in that. As-
suredly he was a man of the world, he wished to show
that we must not judge other people's love affairs by
appearance, and that those which show least are often
the truest.
Dido. I am not at all pleased that he should attack
my reputation for the sake of this pretty fable.
Stratonice. But he has not turned you into ridicule,
has he? He has not filled your mouth with silliness?
Dido. Not in the least. He has recited me his poem.
The whole part that concerns me is divine, almost to
the slander itself. In it I am beautiful, I say very fine
things about my fictitious passion; and if Virgil had
been obliged in the Æneid to show me as a respectable
woman, the Æneid would be greatly impoverished.
Stratonice. Well, then, what do you complain of?
They ascribe to you a romance which does not belong
to you: what a misfortune! And in recompense they
ascribe to you a beauty and wit which may not have been
yours either.
Dido. A fine consolation !
Stratonice. I am not sufficiently your intimate to be
sure how you will feel this, but most women, I think,
would rather that people spoke ill of their character
54
FONTENELLE
than of their wit or their beauty. Such was my tem-
perament. A painter at the court of my husband, the
Syrian king, was discontented with me, and to avenge
himself he painted me in the arms of a soldier. He
showed the picture and fled. My subjects, zealous for
my glory, wished to burn the picture in public, but as
I was painted admirably well and with a great deal of
beauty-although the attitude was scarcely creditable
to my virtue-I forbade them the burning; had the
painter recalled, and pardoned him. If you will take
my advice, you will do likewise with Virgil.
Dido. That would be all very well if a woman's first
merit were to be beautiful or to be full of wit.
Stratonice. I cannot decide about this thing you call
the first merit, but in ordinary life the first question
about a woman one does not know is: Is she pretty ?
The second: Is she intelligent? People very rarely ask
a third question.
III
ANACREON AND ARISTOTLE
Aristotle. I should never have thought that a maker
of ditties would have dared compare himself to a phi-
losopher, to one with so great a reputation as mine.
Anacreon. You did very well for the name of phi-
losopher, yet I, with my “ditties,” did not escape being
called the wise Anacreon; and I think the title "phi-
losupher” scarcely worth that of the wise.”
Aristotle. Those who gave you that title took no great
care what they said. What had you done, at any time,
to deserve it?
Anacreon. I had done nothing but drink, sing, and
wax amorous; and the wonder is that people called me
"the wise” at this price, while they have called you
merely “philosopher” and even this has cost you infinite
trouble: for how many nights have you passed picking
over the thorny questions of dialectic? How many
plump books have you written on obscure matters, which
perhaps even you yourself do not understand very well?
Aristotle. I confess that you have taken an easier
road to wisdom, and you must have been very clever to
get more glory with a lute and a bottle than the greatest
of men have achieved with vigils and labour.
Anacreon. You pretend to laugh at it, but I main-
tain that it is more difficult to drink and to sing as I
have, than to philosophize as you have philosophized.
To sing and to drink, as I did, required that one should
55
FONTENELLE
have disentangled one's soul from violent passions; that
we should not aspire to things not dependent upon us,
that we be ready always to take time as we find it. In
short, to begin with, one must arrange a number of little
affairs in oneself; and although this needs small dialectic,
it is, for all that, not so very easy to manage. But one
may at smaller expense philosophize as you have phi-
losophized. One need not cure oneself of either ambi-
tion or avarice; one has an agreeable welcome at the
court of Alexander the Great; one draws half a million
crowns' worth of presents, and they are not all used in
physical experiments though such was the donor's in-
tention, in a word, this sort of philosophy drags in
things rather opposed to philosophy.
Aristotle. You have heard much scandal about me
down here, but, after all, man is man solely on account
of his reason, and nothing is finer than to teach men
how they ought to use it in studying nature and in un-
veiling all these enigmas which she sets before us.
Anacreon. That is how men destroy custom in all
things! Philosophy is, in itself, an admirable thing,
and might be very useful to men, but because she would
incommode them if they employed her in daily affairs,
or if she dwelt near them and kept some rein on their
passions, they have sent her to heaven to look after the
planets and put a span on their movements; or if men
walk out with her upon earth it is to have her scrutinize
all that they see there; they always keep her busy as
far as may be from themselves. However, as they wish
to be philosophers cheaply they have stretched the sense
of the term, and they give it now for the most part
to such as seek natural causes.
Aristotle. What more fitting name could one give
them.
ANACREON AND ARISTOTLE
57
Anacreon. A philosopher is concerned only with men
and by no means with the rest of the universe. An
astronomer considers the stars, a physicist nature, a
philosopher considers himself. But who would choose
this last rôle on so hard a condition ? Alas, hardly any
one. So we do not insist on philosophers being phi-
losophers, we are content to find them physicists or
astronomers. For myself, I was by no means inclined
to speculation, but I am sure that there is less phi-
losophy in a great many books which pretend to treat
of it, than in some of these little songs which you so
greatly despise, in this one, for example:
Would gold prolong my life
I'd have no other care
Than gathering gold,
And when death came
I'd pay the same
To rid me of his presence,
But since harsh fate
Permits not this
And gold is no more needful,
Love and good cheer
Shall share my care-
Ah-ah-ah-ah-
Shall share
My care.
Aristotle. If you wish to limit philosophy to the
questions of ethics you will find things in my moral
works worth quite as much as your verses: the obscurity
for which I am blamed, and which is present perhaps
in certain parts of my work, is not to be found in what
I have said on this subject, and every one has admitted
58
FONTENELLE
that there is nothing in them more clear or more beau-
tiful than what I have said of the passions.
Anacreon. What an error! It is not a matter of de-
fining the passions by rule, as I hear you have done, but
of keeping them under. Men give philosophy their trou-
bles to contemplate not to cure, and they have found a
method of morals which touches them almost as little as
does astronomy. Can one hold in one's laughter at the
sight of people who preach the contempt of riches, for
money; and of chicken-hearted wastrels brought even to
fisticuffs over a definition of the magnanimous ?
IV
HOMER AND ÆSOP
Homer. These fables which you have just told me
cannot be too greatly admired. You must have needed
great art to disguise the most important moral instruc-
tion in little stories like these, and to hide your thoughts
in metaphor so precise and familiar.
Æsop. It is very pleasant to be praised for such art
by you who understood it so deeply.
Homer. Me? I never attempted it.
Æsop. What, did you not intend to conceal profound
arcana in your great poems ?
Homer. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me.
Æsop. But in my time all the connoisseurs said so;
there was nothing in the Iliad or in the Odyssey to which
they did not give the prettiest allegorical meanings.
They claimed that all the secrets of theology and of
physics, of ethics, and even of mathematics were wound
into what you had written. Assuredly there was diffi-
culty in getting them unwrapped: where one found a
moral sense, another hit on a physical, but in the end
they agreed that you had known everything and that
you had said everything, if only one could well under-
stand it.
Homer. Lying aside, I suspected that people would
be found to understand subtleties where I had intended
none. There is nothing like prophesying far distant mat-
ters and waiting the event, or like telling fables and
awaiting the allegory.
59
60
FONTENELLE
Æsop. You must have been very daring to leave your
readers to put the allegories into your poems! Where
would you have been had they taken them in a flat
literal sense?
Homer. If they had! It would have incommoded me
a little.
Æsop. What! The gods mangling each other, thun-
dering Zeus in an assembly of divinities threatens Hera,
the august, with a pummelling; Mars, wounded by Dio-
med, howls, as you say, like nine or ten thousand men,
and acts like none (for instead of tearing the Greeks
asunder, he amuses himself complaining to Zeus of his
wound), would all this have been good without allegory?
Homer. Why not? You think the human mind
seeks only the truth: undeceive yourself. Human in-
telligence has great sympathy with the false. If you
intend telling the truth, you do excellently well to veil
it in fables, you render it far more bearable. If you
wish to tell fables they will please well enough without
containing any truth whatsoever. Truth must borrow
the face of falsehood to win good reception in the mind,
but the false goes in quite well with its own face, for it
so enters its birthplace and its habitual dwelling, the
truth comes there as a stranger. I will tell you much
more: if I had killed myself imagining allegorical fables,
it might well have happened that most folk would have
found the fables too probable, and so dispensed with the
allegory; as a matter of fact, and one which you ought
to know, my gods, such as they are, without mysteries,
have not been considered ridiculous.
Æsop. You shake me, I am terribly afraid that peo-
ple will believe that beasts really talked as they do in
my fables.
HOMER AND ÆSOP
Homer. A not disagreeable fear!
Æsop. What! if people believe that the gods held
such conversations as you have ascribed to them, why
shouldn't they believe that animals talked as I make
them?
Homer. That is different. Men would like to think
the gods as foolish as themselves, but never the beasts
as wise.
SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE
Montaigne. Is it really you, divine Socrates? How
glad I am of this meeting! I am quite newly come to
this country, and I have been seeking you ever since my
arrival. Finally, after having filled my book with your
name and your praises, I can talk with you, and learn
how you possessed that so naïve 1 virtue, whereof the
allures 1 were so natural, and which was without parallel
in even your happy age.
Socrates. I am very glad to see a ghost who appears
to have been a philosopher; but since you are newly de-
scended, and seeing that it is a long time since I have
met any one here (for they leave me pretty much alone,
and there is no great crowding to investigate my con-
versation), let me ask you for news. How goes the
world? Has it not altered ?
Montaigne. Immensely. You would not know it.
Socrates. I am delighted. I always suspected that
it would have to become better and wiser than I had
found it in my time.
Montaigne. What do you mean? It is madder and
more corrupt than ever before. That is the change I
was wishing to speak of, and I expected you to tell me
of an age as you had seen it, an age ruled by justice and
probity.
Socrates. And I on the other hand was expecting to
1 Termes de Montaigne.
62
SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE 63
learn the marvels of the age wherein you have but ceased
to exist. But, men at present, do you say, have not
corrected their classic follies ?
Montaigne. I think it is because you yourself are a
classic that you speak so disrespectfully of antiquity;
but you must know that our habits are lamentable,
things deteriorate day in and day out.
Socrates. Is it possible? It seemed to me in my time
that things were already in a very bad way. I thought
they must ultimately work into a more reasonable course,
and that mankind would profit by so many years of ex-
periment.
Montaigne. Do men ever experiment? They are like
birds, caught always in the very same snares wherein
have been taken a hundred thousand more of their spe-
cies. There is no one who does not enter life wholly
new, the stupidities of the fathers are not the least use
to their children.
Socrates. What! no experiments ? I thought the
world might have an old age less foolish and unruled
than its youth.
Montaigne. Men of all time are moved by the same
inclinations, over which reason is powerless. Where
there are men there are follies, the same ones.
Socrates. In that case why do you think that an-
tiquity was better than to-day?
Montaigne. Ah, Socrates, I knew you had a peculiar
manner of reasoning and of catching your collocutors
in arguments whereof they had not foreseen the conclu-
sions, and that you led them whither you would, and that
you called yourself the midwife of their thoughts con-
ducting accouchement. I confess that I am brought to
bed of a proposition contrary to what I proposed, but
still I will not give in. Certain it is that we no longer
LU
|
64
FONTENELLE
find the firm and vigorous souls of antiquity, of Aris-
tides, of Phocion, of Pericles, or, indeed, of Socrates.
Socrates. Why not? Is nature exhausted that she
should have no longer the power of producing great
souls? And why should she be exhausted of nothing
save reasonable men ? Not one of her works has de-
generated; why should there be nothing save mankind
which degenerates ?
Montaigne. It's flat fact: man degenerates. It seems
that in old time nature showed us certain great patterns
of men in order to persuade us that she could have made
more had she wished, and that she had been negligent
making the rest.
Socrates. Be on your guard in one thing. Antiquity
is very peculiar, it is the sole thing of its species : dis-
tance enlarges it. Had you known Aristides, Phocion,
Pericles and me, since you wish to add me to the num-
ber, you would have found men of your time to resemble
us. We are predisposed to antiquity because we dis-
like our own age, thus antiquity profits. Man elevates
the men of old time in order to abase his contemporaries.
When we lived we overestimated our forebears, and now
our posterity esteems us more than our due, and quite
rightly. I think the world would be very tedious if one
saw it with perfect precision, for it is always the same.
Montaigne. I should have thought that it was all in
movement, that everything changed; that different ages
had different characteristics, like men. Surely one sees
learned ages, and ignorant, simple ages and ages greatly
refined? One sees ages serious, and trifling ages, ages
polite, ages boorish ?
Socrates. True.
Montaigne. Why then are not some ages more vir-
tuous, others more evil ?
SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE 65
Socrates. That does not follow. Clothes change, but
that does not mean a change in the shape of the body.
Politeness or grossness, knowledge or ignorance, a higher
or lower degree of simplicity, a spirit serious or of
roguery, these are but the outside of a man, all this
changes, but the heart does not change, and man is all
in the heart. One is ignorant in one age, but a fashion
of knowledge may come, one is anxious for one's own
advantage but a fashion for being unselfish will not
come to replace this. Out of the prodigious number of
unreasonable men born in each era, nature makes two or
three dozen with reason, she must scatter them wide over
the earth, and you can well guess that there are never
enough of them found in one spot to set up a fashion of
virtue and rightness.
Montaigne. But is this scattering evenly done?
Some ages might fare better than others.
Socrates. At most an imperceptible inequality. The
general order of nature would seem to be rather con-
stant.
VI
CHARLES V AND ERASMUS
Erasmus. Be in no uncertainty, if there are ranks
among the dead, I shall not cede you precedence.
Charles. A grammarian! A mere savant, or to push
your claims to extremes, a man of wit, who would carry
it off over a prince who has been master of the best half
of Europe!
Erasmus. Add also America, and I am not the least
more alarmed. Your greatness was a mere conglomera-
tion of chances, as one, who should sort out all its parts,
would make you see clearly. If your grandfather Ferdi-
nand had been a man of his word, you would have had
next to nothing in Italy; if other princes had had sense
enough to believe in antipodes, Columbus would not have
come to him, and America would not have been beneath
your dominion; if, after the death of the last Duke of
Burgundy, Louis XI had well considered his actions,
the heiress of Burgundy would not have married Maxi-
milian, or the Low Countries descended to you; if Henry
of Castile, the brother of your grandmother Isabel, had
not had a bad name among women, or if his wife had
been of an unsuspectable virtue, Henry's daughter
would have passed for his daughter and the kingdom of
Castile have escaped you.
Charles. You alarm me. At this late hour I am to
lose Castile, or the Low Lands, or America, or Italy, one
or the other.
66
CHARLES V AND ERASMUS
67
Erasmus. You need not laugh. There could not
have been a little good sense in one place, or a little
good faith in another without its costing you dearly.
There was nothing to your great-uncle's impotence;
to the inconstancy of your great-aunt—that you could
have done without. How delicate is that edifice whose
foundation is such a collection of hazards.
Charles. There is no way of bearing so strict an ex-
amination as yours. I confess that you sweep away all
my greatness and all my titles.
Erasnius. They were the adornments whereof you
boasted, and I have swept them away without trouble.
Do you remember having heard said that the Athenian
Cimon, having taken prisoner a great number of Per-
sians, put up their clothing and their naked bodies for
sale, and since the clothes were greatly magnificent there
was great concourse to buy them, but no one would bid
for the men? Faith, I think what befell the Persians
would happen to a good number of others if one de-
tached their personal merit from that which fortune
has given them.
Charles. What is personal merit?
Erasmus. Need one ask that? Everything that is in
us, our mind, for example, our knowledge.
Charles. And can one reasonably boast of these
things?
Erasmus. Certainly. These are not gifts of chance
like high birth and riches.
Charles. You surprise me. Does not knowledge come
to the savant as wealth comes to most who have
it? Is it not by way of inheritance? You receive from
the ancients, as we receive from our fathers. If we have
been left all we possess, you have been left all that you
know, and on this account many scholars regard what
1
68
FONTENELLE
they have from the ancients with such respect as certain
men show their ancestral lands and houses, wherein they
would hate to have anything changed.
Erasmus. The great are born heirs of their father's
greatness, but the learned are not born inheritors of
the ancient learning. Knowledge is not an entail re-
ceived, it is an wholly new acquisition made by personal
effort, or if it is an entail it is so difficult to receive as
to be worthy of honour.
Charles. Very well. Set the trouble of acquiring
mental possessions against that of preserving the goods
of fortune, the two things are quite equal; for if diffi-
culty is all that you prize, there is as much in worldly
affairs as in the philosopher's study.
Erasmus. Then set knowledge aside and confine our-
selves to the mind, that at least does not depend upon
fortune.
Charles. Does not depend? The mind consists of a
certain formation of cerebrum, is there less luck in being
born with a respectable cerebrum than being born son
to a king? You were a man of great genius; but ask
all the philosophers why you weren't stupid and log-
headed; it depended on next to nothing, on a mere dis-
position of fibres so fine that the most delicate operation
of anatomy cannot find it. And after knowing all this,
the fine wits still dare to tell us that they alone are free
from the dominion of chance, and think themselves at
liberty to despise the rest of mankind.
Erasmus. You argue that it is as creditable to be rich
as to show fine intelligence.
Charles. To have fine intelligence is merely a luckier
chance, but chance it all is at the bottom.
Erasmus. You mean that all is chance?
Charles. Yes, provided we give that name to an order
CHARLES V AND ERASMUS
we do not understand. I leave you to decide whether
I have not plucked men cleaner than you have; you
merely strip from them certain advantages of birth, I
take even those of their understanding. If before being
vain of a thing they should try to assure themselves that
it really belonged to them, there would be little vanity
left in the world.
VII
AGNES SOREL-ROXELANE
Agnes. To tell you the truth, I don't understand
your Turkish gallantry. The beauties of the seraglio
have a lover who has only to say: I want it. They never
enjoy the pleasures of resistance, and they cannot pro-
vide the pleasures of victory, all the delights of love
are thus lost to sultans and sultanas.
Roxelane. How would you arrange it? The Turk-
ish emperors being extremely jealous of their authority
have set aside these refinements of dalliance. They are
afraid that pretty women, not wholly dependent upon
them, would usurp too great a sway over their minds,
and meddle too greatly in public affairs.
Agnes. Very well! How do they know whether that
would be a misfortune? Love has a number of uses,
and I who speak to you, had I not been mistress to a
French King, and if I had not had great power over him,
I do not know where France would be at this hour.
Have you heard tell how desperate were our affairs
under Charles VII; to what state the kingdom was re-
duced, with the English masters of nearly the whole of
it?
Roxelane. Yes, as the affair made a great stir, I know
that a certain virgin saved France. And you were then
this girl, La Pucelle? But how in that case were you
at the same time the king's mistress ?
70
AGNES SOREL-ROXELANE 71
Agnes. You are wrong. I have nothing in common
with the virgin of whom you speak. The king by whom
I was loved wished to abandon his kingdom to foreign
usurpers, he went to hide in a mountainous region, where
it would have been by no means too comfortable for me
to have followed him. I contrived to upset this plan.
I called an astrologer with whom I had a private agree-
ment, and after he had pretended to scan my nativity,
he told me one day in Charles's presence that if all the
stars were not liars I should be a king's mistress, and
loved with a long-lasting passion. I said at once:
“You will not mind, Sire, if I leave for the English
Court, for you do not wish to be king, and have not yet
loved me long enough for my destiny to be fulfilled.”
The fear which he had of losing me made him resolve
to be king, and he began from that time to strengthen
his kingdom. You see what France owes to love, and
how gallant she should be, if only from recognition.
Roxelane. It is true, but returning to La Pucelle.
What was her part? Was history wrong in attributing
to a young peasant girl what truly belonged to a court
lady and a king's mistress ?
Agnes. Were history wrong on this point, it were
no great wonder. However, it is true that La Pucelle
greatly stirred up the soldiers, but I before that had
animated the king. She was a great aid to this mon-
arch, whom she found armed against the English, but
without me she would not have found him so armed.
And you will no longer doubt my part in this great af-
fair when you hear the witness which one of Charles
VII's successors has borne to me in this quatrain :
“Agnes Sorel, more honour have you won in the
good cause, our France, her restoration, than e'er
72
FONTENELLE
was got by prayer and close cloistration of pious
eremite or devout nun.” 1
What do you say to it, Roxelane? Will you confess
that if I had been a sultana like you, and had I not
had the right to threaten Charles VII as I did, he would
have lost his all ?
Roxelane. I am surprised that you should be so vain
of so slight an action. You had no difficulty in gaining
great power over the mind of your lover, you who were
free and mistress of yourself, but I, slave as I was, sub-
jugated the sultan. You made Charles VII king, al-
most in spite of himself, but I made Soliman my hus-
band despite his position.
Agnes. What! They say the sultans never marry.
Roxelane. I agree, and still I made up my mind to
marry Soliman, although I could not lead him into mar-
riage by the hope of anything he did not already possess.
You shall hear a finer scheme than your own. I began
to build temples, and to do many deeds of piety. Then
I appeared very sorrowful. The sultan asked me the
reason over and over again, and after the necessary pre-
liminaries and crochets, I told him that I was melan-
choly because my good deeds, as I heard from our learned
men, would bring me no reward, seeing that I was merely
- a slave, and worked only for Soliman, my master. Soli-
man thereupon freed me, in order that I might reap
the reward of my virtuous actions, then when he wished
to cohabit with me and to treat me like a bride of the
harem, I appeared greatly surprised. I told him with
great gravity that he had no rights over the body of a
free woman. Soliman had a delicate conscience: he went
to consult a doctor of laws with whom I had a certain
1 François Premier.
AGNES SOREL-ROXELANE 73
agreement. His reply was that the sultan should ab-
stain, as I was no longer his slave, and that unless he
espoused me, he could not rightly take me for his. He
fell deeper in love than ever. He had only one course
to follow, but it was a very extraordinary course, and
even dangerous, because of its novelty; however, he took
it and married me.
Agnes. I confess that it is fine to subject those who
stand so on their guard 'gainst our empery.
Roxelane. Men strive in vain, when we lay hold of
them by their passions we lead them whither we will.
If they would let me live again, and give me the most
imperious man in the world, I would make of him what-
ever I chose, provided only that I had of wit much, of
beauty sufficient, and of love only a little.
VIII
BRUTUS AND FAUSTINA
Brutus. What! Is it possible that you took pleas-
ure in your thousand infidelities to the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, the most affable husband, and without doubt
the best man in Roman dominions ?
Faustina. And is it possible that you assassinated
Julius Cæsar, that so mild and moderate emperor?
Brutus. I wished to terrify all usurpers by the ex-
ample of Cæsar, whose very mildness and moderation
were no guarantee of security.
Faustina. And if I should tell you that I wished to
terrify likewise all husbands, so that no man should dare
to be a husband after the example I made of Aurelius,
whose indulgence was so ill requited ?
Brutus. A fine scheme! We must, however, have
husbands or who would govern the women? But Rome
had no need to be governed by Cæsar.
Faustina. Who told you that? Rome had begun to
have madcap crochets as humorous and fantastical as
those which are laid to most women's credit, she could
no longer dispense with a master, and yet she was ill-
pleased to find one. Women are of the identical char-
acter, and we may equally agree that men are too jeal-
ous of their domination, they exercise it in marriage
and that is a great beginning, but they wish to extend
it to love. When they ask that a mistress be faithful,
by faithful they mean submissive. The rule should be
74
BRUTUS AND FAUSTINA
equally shared between lover and mistress, however it
always shifts to one side or the other, almost always to
that of the lover.
Brutus. You are in a strange revolt against men.
Faustina. I am a Roman, and I have a Roman feel-
ing for liberty.
Brutus. The world is quite full of such Romans, but
Romans of my type are, you will confess, much more
rare.
Faustina. It is a very good thing that they are. I
do not think that any honest man would behave as you
did, or assassinate his benefactor.
Brutus. I think there are equally few honest women
who would have copied your conduct, as for mine, you
must admit it showed firmness. It needed a deal of
courage not to be affected by Cæsar's feeling of friend-
ship.
Faustina. Do you think it needed less vigour to hold
out against the gentleness and patience of Marcus Aure-
lius? He looked on all my infidelities with indifference;
he would not do me honour by jealousy, he took away
from me the joys of deceiving him. I was so greatly en-
raged at it, that I sometimes wished to turn pious. How-
ever, I did not sink to that weakness, and after my death
even, did not Marcus Aurelius do me the despite of
building me temples, of giving me priests, and of setting
up in my honour what is called the Faustinian festival ?
Would it not drive one to fury? To have given me a
gorgeous apotheosis !—to have exalted me as a goddess !
Brutus. I confess I no longer understand women.
These are the oddest complaints in the world.
Faustina. Would you not rather have plotted against
Sylla than Cæsar? Sylla would have stirred your in-
dignation and hate by his excess of cruelty. I should
76
FONTENELLE
greatly have preferred to hoodwink a jealous man, even
Cæsar, for example, of whom we are speaking. He had
insupportable vanity, he wished to have the empire of
the world all to himself, and his wife all to himself, and
because he saw Clodius sharing one and Pompey the
other, he could bear neither Pompey nor Clodius. I
should have been happy with Cæsar!
Brutus. One moment and you wish to do away with
all husbands, in the next you sigh for the worst.
Faustina. I could wish there were none in order that
women might ever be free, but if there are to be hus-
bands, the most crabbed would please me most, for the
sheer pleasure of gaining my liberty.
Brutus. I think for women of your temperament it
is much better that there should be husbands. The more
keen the desire for liberty, the more malignity there is
in it.
IX
HELEN AND FULVIA
Helen. I must hear your side of a story which Au-
gustus told me a little while ago. Is it true, Fulvia,
that you looked on him with some favour, but that, when
he did not respond, you stirred up your husband, Mark
Antony, to make war upon him ?
Fulvia. Very true, my dear Helen, and now that we
are all ghosts there can be no harm in confessing it.
Mark Antony was daft over the comedienne Citherida,
I would have been glad to avenge myself by a love affair
with Augustus; but Augustus was fussy about his mis-
tresses, he found me neither young enough nor suffi-
ciently pretty, and though I showed him quite clearly
that he was undertaking a civil war through default of
a few attentions to me, it was impossible to make him
agreeable. I will even recite to you, if you like, some
verses which he made of the matter, although they are
not the least complimentary:
Because Mark Antony is charmed with the Glaphira,
[It was by that name that he called Citherida.]
Fulvia wants to break me with her eyes,
Her Antony is faithless, what? Who cries:
Augustus pays Mark's debts, or he must fear her.
Must I, Augustus, come when Fulvia calls
Merely because she wants me?
At that rate, I'd have on my back
77
FONTENELLE
A thousand wives unsatisfied.
Love me, she says, or fight. The fates declare:
She is too ugly. Let the trumpets blare.
Helen. You and I, then, between us have caused the
two greatest wars on record ?
Fulvia. With this difference: you caused the Trojan
War by your beauty, I that of Antony and Augustus
by the defect of that quality.
Helen. But still you have an advantage, your war
was much more enjoyable. My husband avenged him-
self for an insult done him by loving me, which is quite
common, yours avenged himself because a certain man
had not loved you, and this is not ordinary at all.
Fulvia. Yes, but Antony didn't know that he was
making his war on my account, while Menelaus knew
quite well that his was on your account. That is what
no one can pardon him. For Menelaus with all the
Greeks behind him besieged Troy for ten years to tear
you from Paris' arms yet if Paris had insisted on giving
you up, would not Menelaus, instead of all this, have
had to stand ten years siege in Sparta to keep from
taking you back? Frankly I think your Trojans and
Greeks deficient in humour, half of them silly to want
you returned, the other half still more silly to keep you.
Why should so many honest folk be immolated to the
pleasures of one young man who was ignorant of what
he was doing? I cannot help smiling at that passage
in Homer where after nine years of war wherein one
had just lost so many people, he assembles a council
before Priam's palace. Antenor thinks they should sur-
render you, I should have thought there was scant cause
for hesitation, save that one might have regretted not
having thought of this expedient long before. How-
HELEN AND FULVIA
79
ever Paris bears witness that he mislikes the proposal,
and Priam, who was, as Homer tells us, peer to the gods
in wisdom, being embarrassed to see his Cabinet divided
on such a delicate matter, not knowing which side to
choose, orders every one to go home to supper.
Helen. The Trojan War has at least this in its fa-
vour, its ridiculous features are quite apparent, but the
war between Augustus and Antony did not show its
reality. When one saw so great a number of Imperial
eagles surging about the land, no one thought of sup-
posing that the cause of their mutual animosity was
Augustus' refusal to you of his favours.
Fulvia. So it goes, we see men in great commotions,
but the sources and springs are for the most part quite
trivial and ridiculous. It is important for the glory of
great events that their true causes be hidden.
X
SENECA AND SCARRON
Seneca. You fill full my cup of joy, telling me that
the stoics endure to this day and that in these latter ages
you professedly held their doctrine.
Scarron. I was, without vanity, more of a stoic than
you were, or than was Chrysippus, or Zeno, your founder.
You were all in a position to philosophize at your ease.
You yourself had immense possessions. The rest were
either men of property or endowed with excellent health,
or at least they had all their limbs. They came and went
in the ordinary manner of men. But I was the shuttle
of ill-fortune; misshapen, in a form scarcely human, im-
mobile, bound to one spot like a tree, I suffered contin-
ually, and I showed that these evils are limited by the
body but can never reach the soul of a sage. Grief
suffered always the shame of not being able to enter my
house save by a restricted number of doors.
Seneca. I am delighted to hear you speak thus. By
your words alone I recognize you for a great stoic.
Were you not your age's admiration?
Scarron. I was. I was not content to suffer my pangs
with patience, I insulted them þy my mockery. Steadi-
ness would have honoured another, but I attained gaiety.
Seneca. O stoic wisdom! You are, then, no chimera,
as is the common opinion! You are, in truth, among
men, and here is a wise man whom you have made no less
happy than Zeus. Come, sir, I must lead you to Zeno
80
SENECA AND SCARRON
81
and the rest of our stoics; I want them to see the fruit
of their admirable lessons to mankind.
Scarron. You will greatly oblige me by introducing
me to such illustrious shades.
Seneca. By what name must they know you?
Scarron. Scarron is the name.
Seneca. Scarron? The name is known to me. Have
I not heard several moderns, who are here, speak of
you?
Scarron. Possibly.
Seneca. Did you not write a great mass of humorous
and ridiculous verses ?
Scarron. Yes. I even invented a sort of poetry
which they call the burlesque. It goes the limit in mer-
riment.
Seneca. But you were not then a philosopher ?
Scarron. Why not?
Seneca. It is not a stoic's business to write ludicrous
books and to try to be mirth-provoking.
Scarron. Oh! I see that you do not understand the
perfections of humour. All wisdom is in it. One can
draw ridicule out of anything; I could even get it out
of your books, if I wished to, and without any trouble
at all: yet all things will not give birth to the serious,
and I defy you to put my works to any purpose save
that for which they were made. Would not this tend
to show that mirth rules over all things, and that the
world's affairs are not made for serious treatment? I
have turned your Virgil's sacred Æneid into burlesque,
and there is no better way to show that the magnificent
and the ludicrous are near neighbours, with hardly a
fence between them. All things are like these tours de
force of perspective where a number of separate faces
make, for example, an emperor if viewed from a par-
82
FONTENELLE
ticular angle; change the view-point and the figure
formed is a scoundrel's.
Seneca. I am sorry that people did not understand
that your frivolous verses were made to induce such pro-
found reflections. Men would have respected you more
than they did had they known you for so great a phi-
losopher; but it was impossible to guess this from the
plays you gave to the public.
Scarron. If I had written fat books to prove that
poverty and sickness should have no effect on the gaiety
of the sage, they would have been perhaps worthy of a
stoic?
Seneca. Most assuredly.
Scarron. And I wrote heaven knows how many books
which prove that in spite of poverty, in spite of infirm-
ity, I was possessed of this gaiety; is not this better?
Your treatises upon morals are but speculations on wis-
dom, my verses a continual practice.
Seneca. Your pretended wisdom was not a result of
your reason, but merely of temperament.
Scarron. The best sort of wisdom in the world.
Seneca. They are droll wiseacres indeed who are tem-
peramentally wise. Is it the least to their credit that
they are not stark raving? The happiness of being vir-
tuous may come sometimes from nature, but the merit
of being wise can never come but from reason.
Scarron. People scarcely pay any attention to what
you call a merit, for if we see that some man has a virtue,
and we can make out that it is not his by nature, we
rate it at next to nothing. It would seem, however, that
being acquired by so much trouble, we should the more
esteem it: no matter, it is a mere result of the reason
and inspires no confidence.
Seneca. One should rely even less on the inequality
SENECA AND SCARRON
83
of temperament in your wise men, who are wise only
as their blood pleases. One must know how the interiors
of their bodies are disposed ere one can gauge the reach
of their virtue. Is it not incomparably finer to be led
only by reason; to make oneself independent of nature,
so that one need fear no surprises ?
Scarron. That were better if it were possible; but,
unfortunately, Nature keeps perpetual guard on her
rights. Her rights are initial movements, and no one
can wrest them from her. Men are often well under
way ere reason is warned or awakened, and when she is
ready to act she finds things in great disorder, and it is,
even then, doubtful if she can do aught to help matters.
No, I am by no means surprised to see so many folk
resting but incomplete faith upon reason.
Seneca. Hers alone is the government of men and the
ruling of all this universe.
Scarron. Yet she seldom manages to maintain her
authority. I have heard that some hundred years after
your death a platonic philosopher asked the reigning
emperor for a little town in Calabria. It was wholly
ruined. He wished to rebuild it and to police it accord-
ing to the rules of Plato's Republic, and to rename it
Platonopolis. But the emperor refused the philosopher,
having so little trust in divine Plato's reason that he
was unwilling to risk to it the rule of a dump-heap.
You see thereby how Reason has ruined her credit. If
she were in any way estimable, men would be the only
creatures who could esteem her, and men do not esteem
her at all.
XI
STRATO, RAPHAEL OF URBINO
Strato. I did not expect that the advice I gave to
my slave would have such happy effects, yet in the world
above it saved me my life and my kingdom altogether,
and here it has won me the admiration of all the sages.
Raphael. What advice did you give ?
Strato. I was at Tyre. All the slaves revolted and
butchered their masters, yet one of mine was humane
enough to spare me, and to hide me from the fury of
the rest. They agreed to choose for their king the man
who, upon a set day, should see the sun rise before any
one else. They gathered in the plain, the whole multi-
tude gluing their eyes to the eastern heaven, where the
sun is wont to arise; my slave alone, in accordance with
my instructions, kept his eyes toward the west. You
may well believe that the others thought him a fool.
However, by turning his back on them he saw the first
rays of the sun which caught on a lofty tower, while his
fellows still sought the sun's body in the east. They
admired the subtlety of his mind, but he confessed that
it was my due and that I was still among the living.
They elected me king as a man descended of gods.
Raphael. I see that your advice was quite useful yet
do not find it a subject for wonder.
Strato. All our philosophers here will explain to you
that I taught my slave that the wise should ever turn
their backs on the mob, and that the general opinion is
usually sound if you take it to mean its own opposite.
84
STRATO, RAPHAEL OF URBINO
85
Raphael. These philosophers talk like philosophers.
It is their business to scoff at common opinion and preju-
dice; yet there is nothing more convenient or useful than
are these latter.
Strato. From the manner in which you speak, one
sees that you had no difficulty in complying with them.
Raphael. I assure you that my defence of prejudice
is disinterested, and that by taking prejudice's part I
laid myself open to no small ridicule. They were search-
ing the Roman ruins for statues and as I was a good
sculptor and painter they chose me to judge which were
antique. Michael Angelo, my competitor, made in se-
cret a perfect statue of Bacchus. He broke off one of
the fingers, then hid the statue in a place where he knew
we would dig. I declared it antique when we found it.
He said it was modern. I based my opinion chiefly on
the beauty of the work which, according to our rules,
was well worthy of Grecian carvers. Irritated at con-
tradiction I carried the matter further, and said it had
been done in the time of Polycletus or Phidias. Then
Michael Angelo brought out the broken irrefutable finger.
I was greatly mocked for my prejudice, but what would
I have done without prejudice? I was judge, and as
judge one must make decisions.
Strato. You would have decided according to reason.
Raphael. Does reason ever decide? I should never
have known by any process of reason to what age the
statue belonged, I should have seen only its excellent
beauty, then prejudice came to my aid, saying that a
beautiful statue was ancient, or should be. With such
a decision I judged.
Strato. It may well be that reason has no incon-
testable formula for things of such slight importance;
but upon all questions of human conduct she has deci-
86
FONTENELLE
sions quite sure. Unfortunately men do not consult
them.
Raphael. Let us then consult her on some point and
see if she will decide it. Ask her if we should weep or
laugh at the death of our friends and relations. On
one side she will say, “they are lost to you, therefore
weep.” On the other, “they are delivered from the
miseries of this life, you should therefore be joyful.”
In the face of such answers from reason, we act as local
custom decrees. We weep at her bidding, and we weep
so thoroughly that we cannot conceive laughter as pos-
sible; or we laugh so thoroughly that tears seem out of
the question.
Strato. Reason is not always so undecided. She al-
lows custom to decide such matters as are not worth
her attention, but think how many very considerable
things there are upon which she has clear-cut ideas, and
from which she draws consequences equally clear.
Raphael. Unless I am much mistaken there are very
few of these clear ideas.
Strato. No matter, they alone are worthy of absolute
trust.
Raphael. That cannot be, for reason offers us a very
small number of set maxims, and our mind is so made
as to believe in many more. The overplus of one's in-
clination to believe in something or other all counts on
the side of prejudice, and false opinions fill up the void.
Strato. But what need to cast oneself into error?
Cannot one keep one's judgment suspended, in these
unprovable matters ? Reason stops when she knows not
which way to turn.
Raphael. Very true, she has no other secret means
of keeping herself from mistakes, save that of standing
stock-still; but such a condition does violence to man's
STRATO, RAPHAEL OF URBINO 87
mind, the human mind is in movement, and it must con-
tinue to move. It is not every man who can doubt; we
have need of illumination to attain this faculty, we have
need of strength to continue it. Moreover doubt is with-
out action and among mankind we must act.
Strato. Thus one should preserve the prejudices of
custom in order to act like the next man, but destroy
the habits of thought in order to think like the sage.
Raphael. Better preserve them all. You seem to for-
get the old Samnite's answer when his compatriots sent
to ask him what should be done with the Roman army
which they had caught in the Caudine forks. The old
man replied that they should put them all to the sword.
The Samnites thought this too cruel; he then said they
should let them go free and unscathed, and in the end
they did neither, and reaped the evil result. It is the
same with prejudices, we must either keep the whole
lot or crush them out altogether, otherwise those you
have eliminated will make you mistrust those which re-
main. The unhappiness of being deceived in many
things will not be balanced by the pleasure of its being
an unconscious deceit, and you will have neither the
illumination of truth nor yet the comfort of error.
Strato. If there were no means of escaping your
alternative, one should not long hesitate about taking
a side. We should root out all prejudice.
Raphael. But reason would hunt out all our old
notions and leave nothing else in their place. She would
create a species of vacuum. And how could one bear
this? No, no, considering how slight an amount of rea-
son inheres in all men, we must leave them the prejudices
to which they are so well acclimatized. These preju-
dices are reason's supplement. All that is lacking on
one side can be got out of the other.
XII
BOMBASTES PARACELSUS AND MOLIÈRE
Molière. I should be delighted with you, if only be-
cause of your name, Paracelsus. One would have
thought you some Greek or Roman, and never have sus-
pected that Paracelsus was an Helvetian philosopher.
Paracelsus. I have made my name as illustrious as it
is lovely. My works are a great aid to those who would
pierce nature's secrets and more especially to those who
launch out into the knowledge of genii and elementals.
Molière. I can readily believe that such is the true
realm of science. To know men, whom one sees every
day, is nothing; but to know the invisible genii is quite
another affair.
Paracelsus. Doubtless. I have given precise infor-
mation as to their nature, employments, and inclinations,
as to their different orders, and their potencies through-
out the cosmos.
Molière. How happy you were to be possessed of this
knowledge, for before this you must have known man so
precisely, yet many men have not attained even this.
Paracelsus. Oh, there is no philosopher so inconsid-
erable as not to have done so.
Molière. I suppose so. And you yourself have no
indecisions regarding the nature of the soul, or its func-
tions, or the nature of its bonds with the body?
Paracelsus. Frankly, it's impossible that there should
not always remain some uncertainties on these subjects,
88
BOMBASTES PARACELSUS AND MOLIERE 89
but we know as much of them as philosophy is able to
learn.
Molière. And you yourself know no more?
Paracelsus. No. Isn't that quite enough?
Molière. Enough? It is nothing at all. You mean
that you have leapt over men whom you do not under-
stand, in order to come upon genii?
Paracelsus. Genii are much more stimulatory to our
natural curiosity.
Molière. Yes, but it is unpardonable to speculate
about them before one has completed one's knowledge
of men. One would think the human mind wholly ex-
hausted, when one sees men taking as objects of knowl-
edge things which have perhaps no reality, and when
one sees how gaily they do this. However, it is certain
that there are enough very real objects to keep one
wholly employed.
Paracelsus. The human mind naturally neglects the
sciences which are too simple, and runs after those more
mysterious. It is only upon these last that it can ex-
pend all its activity.
Molière. So much the worse for the mind; what you
say is not at all to its credit. The truth presents itself,
but being too simple it passes unrecognized, and ridicu-
lous mysteries are received only because of their mys-
tery. I believe that if most men saw the universe as it
is, seeing there neither "virtues" nor "numbers,” nor
"properties of the planets, nor fatalities tied to cer-
tain times and revolutions, they could not help saying
of its admirable arrangement: “What, is that all there
is to it?"
Paracelsus. You call these mysteries ridiculous, be-
cause you have not been able to reach into them, they
are truly reserved for the great.
90
FONTENELLE
S
Molière. I esteem those who do not understand these
mysteries quite as much as those who do understand
them; unfortunately nature has not made every one
incapable of such understanding.
Paracelsus. But you who seem so didactic, what pro-
fession did you follow on earth ?
Molière. A profession quite different from yours.
You studied the powers of genii, I studied the follies of
men.
Paracelsus. A fine subject. Do we not know well
enough that men are subject to plenty of follies ?
Molière. We know it in the gross, and confusedly;
but we must come to details, and then we can under-
stand the scope and extent of this science.
Paracelsus. Well, what use did you make of it?
Molière. I gathered in a particular place the greatest
possible number of people and then showed them that
they were all fools.
Paracelsus. It must have needed a terrible speech to
get that plain fact into their heads.
Molière. Nothing is easier. One proves them their
silliness without using much eloquence, or much pre-
meditated reasoning. Their acts are so ludicrous that
if you but show like acts before them, you overwhelm
them with their own laughter.
Paracelsus. I understand you, you were a comedian.
For myself I cannot conceive how one can get any pleas-
ure from comedy; one goes to laugh at a representation
of customs, why should one not laugh at the customs
themselves?
Molière. In order to laugh at the world's affairs one
must in some fashion stand apart, or outside them. Com-
edy takes you outside them, she shows them to you as a
pageant in which you yourself have no part.
BOMBASTES PARACELSUS AND MOLIÈRE 91
Paracelsus. But does not a man go straight back to
that which he has so recently mocked, and take his
wonted place in it?
Molière. No doubt. The other day, to amuse myself,
I made a fable on this same subject. A young gosling
flew with the usual clumsiness of his species, and during
his momentary flight, which scarcely lifted him from the
earth, he insulted the rest of the barnyard: “Unfor-
tunate animals, I see you beneath me, you cannot thus
cleave the æther.” It was a very short mockery, the
gosling fell with the words.
Paracelsus. What use then are the reflections of com-
edy, since they are like the flight of your gosling, and
since one falls back at once into the communal silliness?
Molière. It is much to have laughed at oneself; na-
ture has given us that marvellous faculty lest we make
dupes of ourselves. How often, when half of our being
is doing something with enthusiasm, does the other half
stand aside laughing? And if need were we might find
a third part to make mock of both of the others. You
might say that man was made of inlays.
Paracelsus. I cannot see that there is much in all
this to occupy one's attention. A few banal reflections,
a few jests of scanty foundation deserve but little esteem,
but what efforts of meditation may we not need to treat
of more lofty matters?
Molière. You are coming back to your genii, I recog-
nize only fools. However, although I have never worked
upon subjects save those which lie before all men's eyes,
I can predict that my comedies will outlast your exalted
productions. Everything is subject to the changes of
fashion, the labours of the mind are not exempt from this
destiny of doublets and breeches. I have seen, lord
knows how many, books and fashions of writing interred
92 i FONTENELLE
with their authors, very much in the manner that certain
races bury a man with his most valued belongings. I
know perfectly well that there may be revolutions in the
kingdom of letters, and, with all that, I guarantee that
my writings will endure. And I know why, for he who
would paint for immortality must paint fools.
FONTENELI
TRANSLATION FROM HADRIEN
Ma petite âme, ma mignonne,
Tu t'en vas donc, ma fille, et Dieu sçache où tu vas;
Tu pars seulette, nuê, et tremblotante, Helas !
Que deviendra ton humeur folichone ?
Que deviendront tant de jolis ébats ?
.
DIVISIONS
A RETROSPECT
THERE has been so much scribbling about a new fash-
ion in poetry, that I may perhaps be pardoned this brief
recapitulation and retrospect.
In the spring or early summer of 1912, “H. D.,” Rich-
ard Aldington and myself decided that we were agreed
upon the three principles following:
1. Direct treatment of the "thing” whether subjective
or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute
to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence
of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
Upon many points of taste and of predilection we
differed, but agreeing upon these three positions we
thought we had as much right to a group name, at least
as much right, as a number of French “schools” pro-
claimed by Mr. Flint in the August number of Harold
Munro's magazine for 1911.
This school has since been "joined" or "followed”
by numerous people who, whatever their merits, do not
show any signs of agreeing with the second specification.
Indeed vers libre has become as prolix and as verbose
as any of the flaccid varieties that preceded it. It has
brought faults of its own. The actual language and
phrasing is often as bad as that of our elders without
even the excuse that the words are shoveled in to fill a
metric pattern or to complete the noise of a rhyme-
sound. Whether or no the phrases followed by the fol-
95
96
DIVISIONS
lowers are musical must be left to the reader's decision. í
At times I can find a marked metre in "vers libres," as
stale and hackneyed as any pseudo-Swinburnian, at times
the writers seem to follow no musical structure what-
ever. But it is, on the whole, good that the field should
be ploughed. Perhaps a few good poems have come
from the new method, and if so it is justified.
Criticism is not a circumscription or a set of prohibi-
tions. It provides fixed points of departure. It may
startle a dull reader into alertness. That little of it
which is good is mostly in stray phrases; or if it be an
older artist helping a younger it is in great measure
but rules of thumb, cautions gained by experience.
I set together a few phrases on practical working about
the time the first remarks on imagisme were published.
The first use of the word “Imagiste” was in my note
to T. E. Hulme's five poems, printed at the end of my
"Ripostes” in the autumn of 1912. I reprint my cau-
tions from Poetry for March, 1913.
A FEW DON'TS
An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual
and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the
term "complex” rather in the technical sense employed
by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we
might not agree absolutely in our application.
It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantane-
ously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that
sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that
sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the
presence of the greatest works of art.
A RETROSPECT
97
It is better to present 'one Image in a lifetime than
to produce voluminous works.
All this, however, some may consider open to debate.
The immediate necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DON’TS
for those beginning to write verses. I can not put all
of them into Mosaic negative.
To begin with, consider the three propositions (de-
manding direct treatment, economy of words, and the
sequence of the musical phrase), not as dogma-never
consider anything as dogma-but as the result of long
contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's con-
templation, may be worth consideration.
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have
never themselves written a notable work. Consider the
discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek
poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-
Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.
LANGUAGE
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not
reveal something.
Don't use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.”
It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the
concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that
the natural object is always the adequate symbol.
Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre
verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't
think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when
you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably
difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition
into line lengths.
What the expert is tired of today the public will be
tired of tomorrow.
Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler
98
DIVISIONS
than the art of music, or that you can please the expert
before you have spent at least as much effort on the art
of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art
of music.
Be influenced by as many great artists as you can,
but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt
outright, or to try to conceal it.
Don't allow "influence” to mean merely that you
mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some
one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turk-
ish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed
babbling in his dispatches of “dove-gray” hills, or else
it was "pearl-pale,” I can not remember.
Use either no ornament or good ornament.
RHYTHM AND RHYME
Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences
he can discover, preferably in a foreign language i so
that the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert
his attention from the movement; e.g., Saxon charms,
Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics
of Shakespeare—if he can dissociate the vocabulary from
the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly
into their component sound values, syllables long and
short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and con-
sonants.
It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its
music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be
such as will delight the expert.
Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration,
rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic,
1 This is for rhythm, his vocabulary must of course be found in
his native tongue.
A RETROSPECT
99
TY
as a musician would expect to know harmony and coun-
terpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is
too great to give to these matters or to any one of them,
even if the artist seldom have need of them.
Don't imagine that a thing will “go” in verse just
because it's too dull to go in prose.
Don't be “viewy’_leave that to the writers of pretty
little philosophic essays. Don't be descriptive; remem- ,
ber that the painter can describe a landscape much bet-
ter than you can, and that he has to know a deal more
about it.
When Shakespeare talks of the “Dawn in russet man-
tle clad” he presents something which the painter does
not present. There is in this line of his nothing that ,
one can call description; he presents.
Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way
of an advertising agent for a new soap.
The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a
great scientist until he has discovered something. He
begins by learning what has been discovered already.
He goes from that point onward. He does not bank
on being a charming fellow personally. He does not
expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman
class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not
confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They
are "all over the shop.” Is it any wonder "the public
is indifferent to poetry?”
Don't chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don't
make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin
every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the
next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you
want a definite longish pause.
In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when
100
DIVISIONS
dealing with that phase of your art which has exact
parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are
bound by no others.
Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy
the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their
meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will
be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect
them very much, though you may fall a victim to all
sorts of false stopping due to line ends and cæsurae.
The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of
the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is
misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of
different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a
sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the
hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base.
A rhyme must have in it some slight element of sur-
prise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or
curious, but it must be well used if used at all.
Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme
in “Technique Poetique.”
That part of your poetry which strikes upon the im-
aginative eye of the reader will lose nothing by trans-
lation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the
ear can reach only those who take it in the original.
Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as
compared with Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of
Wordsworth as does not seem too unutterably dull.1
If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho,
Catullus, Villon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gautier
when he is not too frigid; or, if you have not the tongues,
seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you
no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by try-
ing to write it.
1 Vide infra.
A RETROSPECT
101
Translation is likewise good training, if you find that
your original matter “wobbles” when you try to rewrite
it. The meaning of the poem to be translated can not
“wobble.”
If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in
what you want to say and then fill up the remaining
vacuums with slush.
Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying
to define it in terms of another. This is usually only the
result of being too lazy to find the exact word. To this
clause there are possibly exceptions.
The first three simple proscriptions will throw out
nine-tenths of all the bad poetry now accepted as stand-
ard and classic; and will prevent you from many a
crime of production.
“... Mais d'abord il faut être un poète," as MM.
Duhamel and Vildrac have said at the end of their little
book, “Notes sur la Technique Poetique.”
Since March, 1913, Ford Madox Hueffer has pointed
out that Wordsworth was so intent on the ordinary or
plain word that he never thought of hunting for le mot
juste.
John Butler Yeats has handled or man-handled Words-
worth and the Victorians, and his criticism, contained
in letters to his son, is now printed and available.
I do not like writing about art, my first, at least I
think it was my first essay on the subject, was a protest
against it.
1 Page 000.
102
DIVISIONS
PROLEGOMENA1
Time was when the poet lay in a green field with
his head against a tree and played his diversion on a
ha’penny whistle, and Cæsar's predecessors conquered
the earth, and the predecessors of golden Crassus em-
bezzled, and fashions had their say, and let him alone.
And presumably he was fairly content in this circum-
stance, for I have small doubt that the occasional passer-
by, being attracted by curiosity to know why any one
should lie under a tree and blow diversion on a ha’penny
whistle, came and conversed with him, and that among
these passers-by there was on occasion a person of charm
or a young lady who had not read "Man and Super-
man”; and looking back upon this naïve state of affairs
we call it the age of gold.
Metastasio, and he should know if any one, assures
us that this age endures—even though the modern poet
is expected to holloa his verses down a speaking tube
to the editors of cheap magazines—S. S. McClure, or
some one of that sort—even though hordes of authors
meet in dreariness and drink healths to the “Copyright
Bill”; even though these things be, the age of gold per-
tains. Imperceivably, if you like, but pertains. You
meet unkempt Amyclas in a Soho restaurant and chant
together of dead and forgotten things—it is a manner
of speech among poets to chant of dead, half-forgotten
things, there seems no special harm in it; it has always
been done and it's rather better to be a clerk in the
Post Office than to look after a lot of stinking, verminous
sheep—and at another hour of the day one substitutes
the drawing-room for the restaurant and tea is prob-
1 Poetry and Drama (then the Poetry Review, edited by Harold
Monro), Feb., 1912.
A RETROSPECT
103
ably more palatable than mead and mare's milk, and
little cakes than honey. And in this fashion one sur-
vives the resignation of Mr. Balfour, and the iniquities
of the American customs-house, e quel bufera infernal,
the periodical press. And then in the middle of it, there
being apparently no other person at once capable and
available one is stopped and asked to explain oneself.
I begin on the chord thus querulous, for I would much
rather lie on what is left of Catullus' parlour floor and
speculate the azure beneath it and the hills off to Salo
and Riva with their forgotten gods moving unhindered
amongst them, than discuss any processes and theories
of art whatsoever. I would rather play tennis. I shall
not argue.
CREDO
Rhythm.-I believe in an “absolute rhythm," a
rhythm, that is, in poetry which corresponds exactly to
the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed. A
man's rhythm must be interpretative, it will be, there-
fore, in the end, his own, uncounterfeiting, uncounter-
feitable.
Symbols. I believe that the proper and perfect sym-
bol is the natural object, that if a man use “symbols”
he must so use them that their symbolic function does
not obtrude; so that a sense, and the poetic quality of the
passage, is not lost to those who do not understand the
symbol as such, to whom, for instance, a hawk is a hawk.
Technique. I believe in technique as the test of a
man's sincerity; in law when it is ascertainable; in the
trampling down of every convention that impedes or
obscures the determination of the law, or the precise
rendering of the impulse.
Torn. I think there is a “fluid” as well as a "solid”
YTYY
o
104
DIVISIONS
content, that some poems may have form as a tree has
form, some as water poured into a vase. That most sym-
metrical forms have certain uses. That a vast num-
ber of subjects cannot be precisely, and therefore not
properly rendered in symmetrical forms.
"Thinking that alone worthy wherein the whole art
is employed,”1 I think the artist should master all
known forms and systems of metric, and I have with
some persistence set about doing this, searching par-
ticularly into those periods wherein the systems came to
birth or attained their maturity. It has been com-
plained, with some justice, that I dump my note-books
will poetry attain such a degree of development, of, if
you will, modernity, that it will vitally concern people
who are accustomed, in prose, to Henry James and Ana-
tole France, in music to Debussy. I am constantly con-
tending that it took two centuries of Provençe and one
of Tuscany to develop the media of Dante's master-
work, that it took the latinists of the Renaissance, and
the Pleiade, and his own age of painted speech to pre-
pare Shakespeare his tools. It is tremendously im-
portant that great poetry be written, it makes no jot of
difference who writes it. The experimental demonstra-
tions of one man may save the time of many—hence my
furore over Arnaut Daniel—if a man's experiments try
out one new rime, or dispense conclusively with one iota
of currently accepted nonsense, he is merely playing fair
with his colleagues when he chalks up his result.
No man ever writes very much poetry that “matters.”
In bulk, that is, no one produces much that is final, and
when a man is not doing this highest thing, this saying
1 Dante, De Volgari Eloquio.
A RETROSPECT
105
,
the thing once for all and perfectly; when he is not
matching Ilockilópov, ådávar' 'Appódita, or “Hist-
said Kate the Queen,” he had much better be making
the sorts of experiment which may be of use to him in
his later work, or to his successors.
"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." It is
a foolish thing for a man to begin his work on a too
narrow foundation, it is a disgraceful thing for a man's
work not to show steady growth and increasing fineness
from first to last.
As for “adaptations”'; one finds that all the old mas-
ters of painting recommend to their pupils that they
begin by copying masterwork, and proceed to their own
composition.
As for “Every man his own poet.” The more every
man knows about poetry the better. I believe in every
one writing poetry who wants to; most do. I believe in
every man knowing enough of music to play “God bless
our home” on the harmonicum, but I do not believe in
every man giving concerts and printing his sin.
The mastery of any art is the work of a lifetime. I
should not discriminate between the “amateur” and the
"professional,” or rather I should discriminate quite
often in favour of the amateur, but I should discrimi-
nate between the amateur and the expert. It is certain
that the present chaos will endure until the Art of poetry
has been preached down the amateur gullet, until there
is such a general understanding of the fact that poetry
is an art and not a pastime; such a knowledge of tech-
nique; of technique of surface and technique of content,
that the amateurs will cease to try to drown out the
masters.
If a certain thing was said once for all in Atlantis
106
DIVISIONS
or Arcadia, in 450 Before Christ or in 1290 after, it is
not for us moderns to go saying it over, or to go obscur-
ing the memory of the dead by saying the same thing
with less skill and less conviction.
My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has
been one struggle to find out what has been done, once
for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to
find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does re-
main, for if we still feel the same emotions as those
which launched the thousand ships, it is quite certain
that we come on these feelings differently, through dif-
ferent nuances, by different intellectual gradations.
Each age has its own abounding gifts, yet only some
ages transmute them into matter of duration. No good
poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for
to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the
writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, and not
from life, yet a man feeling the divorce of life and his
art may naturally try to resurrect a forgotten mode if
he find in that mode some leaven, or if he think he sees
in it some element lacking in contemporary art which
might unite that art again to its sustenance, life.
In the art of Daniel and Cavalcanti, I have seen that
precision which I miss in the Victorians—that explicit
rendering, be it of external nature, or of emotion. Their
testimony is of the eyewitness, their symptoms are first
hand.
As for the nineteenth century, with all respect to its
achievements, I think we shall look back upon it as a
rather blurry, messy sort of a period, a rather senti-
mentalistic, mannerish sort of a period. I say this with-
out any self-righteousness, with no self-satisfaction.
As for there being a “movement” or my being of it,
A RETROSPECT
107
the conception of poetry as a "pure art” in the sense in
which I use the term, revived with Swinburne. From
the puritanical revolt to Swinburne, poetry had been
merely the vehicle--yes, definitely, Arthur Symons'
scruples and feelings about the word not withholding-
the ox-cart and post-chaise for transmitting thoughts
poetic or otherwise. And perhaps the “great Victori-
ans,” though it is doubtful, and assuredly the “nineties”
continued the development of the art, confining their
improvements, however, chiefly to sound and to refine-
ments of manner.
Mr. Yeats has once and for all stripped English poetry
of its perdamnable rhetoric. He has boiled away all
that is not poetic—and a good deal that is. He has
become a classic in his own lifetime and nel mezzo del
cammin. He has made our poetic idiom a thing pliable, i
a speech without inversions.
Robert Bridges, Maurice Hewlett and Frederic Man-
ning are 1 in their different ways seriously concerned
with overhauling the metric, in testing the language and
its adaptability to certain modes. Ford Hueffer is mak-
ing some sort of experiments in modernity. The Pro-
vost of Oriel continues his translation of the Divina Com-
media.
As to Twentieth century poetry, and the poetry which
I expect to see written during the next decade or so, it
will, I think, move against poppy-cock, it will be harder
and saner, it will be what Mr. Hewlett calls 'nearer the
bone." It will be as much like granite as it can be, its
force will lie in its truth, its interpretative power (of -
course, poetic force does always rest there); I mean it
will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and lux-
1 (Dec., 1911.)
108
DIVISIONS
urious riot. We will have fewer painted adjectives im-
peding the shock and stroke of it. At least for myself,
I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither.
What is there now, in 1917, to be added ?
RE VERS LIBRE
I think the desire for vers libre is due to the sense of
quantity reasserting itself after years of starvation.
But I doubt if we can take over, for English, the rules
of quantity laid down for greek and latin, mostly by
latin grammarians.
I think one should write vers libre only when one
"must,” that is to say, only when the "thing” builds
up a rhythm more beautiful than that of set metres, or
more real, more a part of the emotion of the "thing,"
more germane, intimate, interpretative than the meas-
ure of regular accentual verse; a rhythm which discon-
tents one with set iambic or set anapaestic.
Eliot has said the thing very well when he said, “No
vers is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.”
As a matter of detail, there is vers libre with accent
heavily marked as a drum-beat (as par example my
“Dance Figure”'), and on the other hand I think I have
gone as far as can profitably be gone in the other di-
rection (and perhaps too far). I mean I do not think
one can use to any advantage rhythms much more ten-
uous and imperceptible than some I have used. I think
progress lies rather in an attempt to approximate clas-
sical quantitative metres (NOT to copy them) than in
a carelessness regarding such things.
1 Let me date this statement 20. Aug., 1917.
A RETROSPECT
109
I agree with John Yeats on the relation of beauty to
certitude. I prefer satire, which is due to emotion, to
any sham of emotion.
I have had to write, or at least I have written a good
deal about art, sculpture, painting and poetry. I have
seen what seemed to me the best of contemporary work
reviled and obstructed. Can any one write prose of
permanent or durable interest when he is merely saying
for one year what nearly every one will say at the end
of three or four years? I have been battistrada for a
sculptor, a painter, a novelist, several poets. I wrote
also of certain French writers in The New Age in nine-
teen twelve or eleven.
I would much rather that people would look at Brzes-
ka's sculpture and Lewis' drawings, and that they would
read Joyce, Jules Romains, Eliot, than that they should
read what I have said of these men, or that I should be
asked to republish argumentative essays and reviews.
All that the critic can do for the reader or audiences
or spectator is to focus his gaze or audition. Rightly
or wrongly I think my blasts and essays have done their
work, and that more people are now likely to go to the
sources than are likely to read this book.
Jammes'"Existences” in “La Triomphe de la Vie” is
available. So are his early poems. I think we need a
convenient anthology rather than descriptive criticism.
Carl Sandburg wrote me from Chicago, “It's hell when
poets can't afford to buy each other's books.” Half
the people who care, only borrow. In America so few
people know each other that the difficulty lies more than
half in distribution. Perhaps one should make an an-
thology: Romains' "Un Etre en : Marche" and
"Prières,' Vildrac's “Visite." Retrospectively the
fine wrought work of La Forgue, the flashes of Rimbaud,
110
DIVISIONS
the hard-bit lines of Tristan Corbière, Tailhade's
sketches in “Poèmes Aristophanesques," the “Litanies”
of DeGourmont.
It is difficult at all times to write of the fine arts, it
is almost impossible unless one can accompany one's
prose with many reproductions. Still I would seize this
chance or any chance to reaffirm my belief in Wyndham
Lewis' genius, both in his drawings and his writings.
And I would name an out of the way prose book, the
"Scenes and Portraits” of Frederic Manning, as well
as James Joyce's short stories and novel, “Dubliners”
and the now well known “Portrait of the Artist,” as
well as Lewis' "Tarr,” if, that is, I may treat my
strange reader as if he were a new friend come into the
room, intent on ransacking my bookshelf.
ONLY EMOTION ENDURES
“ONLY emotion endures." Surely it is better for me
to name over the few beautiful poems that still ring in
my head than for me to search my flat for back num-
bers of periodicals and rearrange all that I have said
about friendly and hostile writers.
The first twelve lines of Padraic Colum's “Drover”;
his “O Woman shapely as a swan, on your account I
shall not die”; Joyce's “I hear an army”; the lines of
Yeats that ring in my head and in the heads of all young
men of my time who care for poetry: Braseal and the
Fisherman, “The fire that stirs about her when she
stirs”; the later lines of "The Scholars” the faces of
the Magi; William Carlos Williams' "Postlude,” Ald-
ington's version of "Atthis,” and “H. D.’s” waves like
pine tops, and her verse in “Des Imagistes” the first
A RETROSPECT
111
anthology; Hueffer's "How red your lips are” in his
translation from Von der Vogelweide, his “Three Ten,”
the general effect of his “On Heaven”; his sense of the
prose values or prose qualities in poetry; his ability to
write poems that will sing to music, as distinct from
poems that half-chant and are spoiled by a musician's
additions; beyond these a poem by Alice Corbin, “One
City Only,” and another ending “But sliding water
over a stone." These things have worn smooth in my
head and I am not through with them, nor with Alding-
ton's “In Via Sestina” nor his other poems in “Des
Imagistes” though people have told me their flaws. It
may be that their content is too much embedded in me
for me to look back at the words.
I am almost a different person when I come to take up
the argument for Eliot's poems.
REMY DE GOURMONT 1
It is foolish, perhaps, to say that a man "stands for
vague phrase, and the use of vague phrases is foolish,
and yet Remy de Gourmont had in some way made him-
self into a symbol of so much that is finest in France
that one is tempted to apply some such phrase to him.
I think no man in France could have died leaving so
personal a sense of loss among scattered groups of intel-
ligent young men who had never laid eyes on him. I
do not mean to say that he was the “greatest writer in
France.” That method of assessing authors by size is
unfortunate and Victorian. There were in France a few
Gourmont, Henri de Regnier, Francis Jammes, Laurent
Tailhade. There are popular figures and crazes like
Maeterlinck, Claudel, and Paul Fort. I am not an ex-
amining board trying to determine which of these gentle-
men is to receive the highest award. I am not determin-
ing a percentage of bay leaves. The writings of the five
first-mentioned men are all of them indispensable to one's
comfort.
Yet before the war Anatole France was so old that
communication between him and the active part of our
world had almost ceased. And Henri de Regnier was
set apart, as it were, amid “The Spoils of Poynton,”
1 The Fortnightly Revier, 1915.
112
REMY DE GOURMONT
113
or behind some such metaphorical barrier. And
Jammes, after four beautiful books to his credit, had
gone gaga over catholicism, and from Remy de Gour-
mont alone there proceeded a personal, living force.
“Force” is almost a misnomer; let us call it a personal
light.
The man was infused through his work. If you "hold
a pistol to my head” and say:"Produce the masterpiece
on which you base these preposterous claims for De
Gourmont!” I might not be able to lay out an array of
books to equal those of his elder friend, Anatole France,
or of De Regnier, or to find three volumes of poems to
compare with the first books by Francis Jammes, or, in-
deed, to uphold that test against various men whose
names I have not mentioned. You, on the other hand,
would be in very much the same fix if you were com-
manded suddenly to produce the basis of your respect
for De Quincey or Coleridge.
It is, I think, Coleridge who says that the test of a
great poet is not to be found in individual passages, but
in a mysterious pervasive essence, “everywhere present
and nowhere a distinct excitement.”
As you read De Gourmont's work it is not any par-
ticular phrase, poem, or essay that holds you, so much
as a continuing sense of intelligence, of a limpid, active
intelligence in the mind of the writer.
I express, perhaps, a personal and an unpopular emo-
tion when I say that this constant sense of the intelli-
gence of the man behind the writing is a great comfort.
I even hope that intelligence, in writers, is coming back,
if not into fashion, at least into favour with a public
large enough to make certain kinds of books once more
printable. We have suffered a period in which the glori-
fication of stupidity and the worship of unintelligent,
114
DIVISIONS
“messy” energy have been too much encouraged. (With
the appearance of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, and the
more “normal” part of Mr. Wyndham Lewis's narra-
tive writings, one may even hope that intelligence shall
once more have its innings, even in our own stalwart
tongue.)
The qualities of Remy de Gourmont's intelligence?
Limpidity and fairness and graciousness, and irony, and
a sensuous charm in his decoration when he chose to
make his keen thought flash out against a richly-coloured
background; these things were all in his writing. The
peculiarity of his narrative work may have been just
this method of resting the mind as it were by an
"aroma." What shall I call it?
He stirs the “senses of the imagination,” the reader
is pervaded by luxurious rest, and then when the mind
is most open, De Gourmont darts in with his acumen, a
thrust, an incisive or revolutionary idea, spoken so softly.
His “Diomèdes” searches for truth in the Rue Bona-
parte and environs. As Turgenev builds up a whole
novel to enforce two or three Russian proverbs; to make
you know that he, the author, has understood some very
simple phrase in all its profundity; as in the “Nichée
de Gentilshommes” he has put first, “The heart of
another is a dark forest," and then in the middle of the
book, man, his hero, opposed to the old trees of his dis-
mantled garden, and then finally old Maria Timofevna's
"Nothing but death is irrevocable,” so, in a very dif-
ferent manner Remy de Gourmont has embedded his
philosophy in a luxurious mist of the senses. But this
particularity of method would in itself amount to very
little.
De Gourmont wrote twice a month, a little "Epilogue"
in the Mercure de France. Early in his career he had
REMY DE GOURMONT
115
written a large and beautiful book “Le Latin Mystique
du Moyen Age,” and in this book he laid before his few
readers a great amount of forgotten beauty, the beauty
of a period slighted by philological scholars. These were
causes contributory to his position, but no one of them
would have accounted for it.
His work had what very little work ever has, despite
continuous advertisements to the contrary. It had a
personal charm, and this charm was that of intelligence.
Ideas came to him as a series of fine wines to a delicate
palate, and he was never inebriated. He never ran
amok. And this is the whole difference between the
French and Tedescan systems: a German never knows
when a thought is "only to be thought_to be thought
out in all its complexity and its beauty—and when it is
to be made a basis of action.
I believe England guards against such mistakes by
mistrusting thought altogether. At least I once saw a
very amusing encounter, as follows: A Russian, who
had taken degrees at Leipzig on prehistoric Greek philos-
ophers, came to England. He believed that “The Ger-
mans are the only Greeks of to-day.” He was going, at
least he said he was going, “to convert England to
philosophy.” It was a noble adventure.
He propounded his crusade in a company consisting of
two foreigners, myself, and one Englishman. All the
Englishman said was, “I don't believe in ideas.”
It was a very sincere personal statement. The Russian
shortly afterwards retired to Paris, to start a peripatetic
school in the “Jardins du Luxembourg,” but he finally
went to America, and was at once made a professor.1
England has been very safe with her “Don't believe
1 This tale is not a figment of my imagination; it is not alle-
gory, but fact.
116
DIVISIONS
in ideas." Germany has got decidedly and disgustingly
drunk. But Paris is the laboratory of ideas; it is there
that poisons can be tested, and new modes of sanity be
discovered. It is there that the antiseptic conditions of
the laboratory exist. That is the function of Paris.
It was peculiarly the function of De Gourmont.
For years he has written "controversially," if I may
use a word with such strong connotations. I believe he
has never once made an over-statement; or, for that mat-
ter, an under-statement of his thought. I don't say that
he has always been right. But he had this absolute fair-
ness, the fairness of a man watching his own experiment
in laboratory. And this absolute fairness, this absolute
openness to all thought, is precisely the most difficult
thing to attain.
We are all touched with the blight of Tertullian.
Whatever our aims and ambitions and our firm convic-
tion to the contrary, we have our moments off guard
when we become unfair, and partisan, and personal in
our spite, and intolerant.
De Gourmont carried his lucidity to the point of
genius. All ideas, all works of art, all writing came to
him, and he received them all graciously, and he praised
graciously, or ignored graciously. And he wrote beau-
tifully and graciously from himself. He was the friend
of intelligence. He had not lost touch with “les jeunes.”
And that last is more important and more difficult
than one might think. If a man has come in” with
one generation and taken part in the development of
and triumph of one “new” set of ideas, it is especially
and peculiarly difficult for him to adapt himself to the
next set, which comes in some twenty years later. No
man can lead two movements, and it is very hard for him
to understand two movements. A movement degenerates
REMY DE GOURMONT
117
into over-emphasis. It begins with the recognition of a
neglect. When youth is divided into acrimonious parties
it is perhaps difficult for age to tell which side has the
intelligence, but you could trust Remy de Gourmont to
discover intelligence in whatever form it might appear.
It is a slight thing that I am going to tell now, but it
is not without its minute significance. When I was in
Paris some years ago I happened, by merest accident,
to be plunged into a meeting, a vortex of twenty men,
and among them five or six of the most intelligent young
men in Paris. I should say that Paris is a place like
another; in "literature” the French are cursed with
amorphous thought, rhetoric, bombast, Claudel, &c., stale
Hugo, stale Corneille, &c., just as we are cursed here
with stale Victoriana, stale Miltoniana, &c. The young
party of intelligence in Paris, a party now just verging
on the threshold of middle-age, is the group that centred
about “L'Effort Libre.” It contains Jules Romains,
Vildrac, Duhamel, Chennevière, Jouve, and their friends.
These men were plotting a gigantic blague. A "blague''
when it is a fine blague is a satire upon stupidity, an
attack. It is the weapon of intelligence at bay; of in-
telligence fighting against an alignment of odds. These
men were thorough. They had exposed a deal of igno-
rance and stupidity in places where there should have
been the reverse. They were serious, and they were
"keeping it up.” And the one man they mentioned
with sympathy, the one older man to whom they could
look for comprehension, and even for discreet assist-
ance, was Remy de Gourmont. Remy would send them
a brief telegram to be read at their public meeting. .
That is, at first sight, a very trifling matter, but, if
examined closely, it shows a number of things: first,
that de Gourmont was absolutely independent, that he
118
DIVISIONS
was not tied to any institution, that his position was
based on his intelligence alone and not on his "connec-
tions" (as I believe they are called in our "literary
world”).
"Franchement d'écrire ce qu'on pense, seul plaisir
d'un écrivain." "To put down one's thought frankly,
a writer's one pleasure.” That phrase was the centre
of Gourmont's position. It was not a phrase under-
stood superficially. It is as much the basis of a clean
literature, of all literature worth the name, as is an anti-
septic method, the basis of sound surgical treatment.
“Franchement,” “Frankly,” is “Frenchly,” if one
may drag in philology. If, in ten lines or in a hundred
pages, I can get the reader to comprehend what that one
adjective means in literature, what it means to all civ-
ilisation, I shall have led him part of the way toward
an understanding of de Gourmont's importance.
“Frankly” does not mean "grossly.” It does not
mean the over-emphasis of neo-realism, of red-bloodism,
of slums dragged into light, of men writing while drugged
with two or three notions, or with the lust for an epi-
gram. It means simply that a man writes his thought,
that is to say, his doubts, his inconclusions as well as his
“convictions,” which last are so often borrowed affairs.
There is no lasting shelter between an intelligent man
and his own perception of truth, but nine-tenths of all
writing displays an author trying, by force of will, to
erect such shelter for others. De Gourmont was one of
the rare authors who did not make this stupid endeavour;
who wholly eschewed malingering.
It was not a puritanical privation for him, it was his
nature to move in this way. The mind, the imagination
is the proper domain of freedom. The body, the outer
'world, is the proper domain of fraternal deference.
REMY DE GOURMONT
119
The tedium and the habit of the great ruck of writers
is that they are either incoherent and amorphous, or
else they write in conformity to, or in defence of, a set
of fixed, rigid notions, instead of disclosing their
thought . . . which might, in rare cases, be interesting.
It is to be noted that de Gourmont is never tedious.
That is the magic of clarity.
“A very few only, and without gain or joy to them-
selves, can transform directly the acts of others into
their own personal thoughts, the multitude of men
thinks only thoughts already emitted, feels but feelings
used up, and has but sensations as faded as old gloves.
When a new word arrives at its destination, it arrives
like a post-card that has gone round the world and on
which the handwriting is blurred and obliterated with
blots and stains.” I open the “Chevaux de Diomèdes”
at random and come upon that passage of Gourmont's
thought.
“Non è mai tarde per tentar l'ignoto,
Non è mai tarde per andar più oltre,”
but it was never with the over-orchestration of the ro-
mantic period, nor with the acrid and stupid crudity
of societies for the propagation of this, that, and the
other, that de Gourmont's mind went placidly out into
new fields.
He never abandoned beauty. The mountain stream
may be as antiseptic as the sterilised dressing. There
was the quality and the completeness of life in de
wisdom, perhaps more “revolution,” in Whistler's por-
trait of young Miss Alexander than in all the Judaic
drawings of the "prophetic" Blake, so there is more
life in Remy than in all the reformers.
120
DIVISIONS
Voltaire called in a certain glitter to assist him. De
Gourmont's ultimate significance may not be less than
Voltaire's. He walked gently through the field of his
mind. His reach, his ultimate efficiency are just this;
he thought things which other men cannot, for an in-
definitely prolonged period of time, be prevented from
thinking. His thoughts were not merely the fixed men-
tal habits of the animal homo.
And I call the reader to witness that he, de Gour-
mont, differed from Fabians, Webbists, Shavians (all of
whom, along with all dealers in abstractions, are ulti-
mately futile). He differed from them in that his
thoughts had the property of life. They, the thoughts,
were all related to life, they were immersed in the mani-
fest universe while he thought them, they were not cut
out, put on shelves and in bottles.
Anyone who has read him will know what I mean.
Perhaps it is quite impossible to explain it to one who
has not.
hegan, I think,, of Goddeschalk
In poetry as in prose de Gourmont has built up
his own particular form. I am not sure that he was
successful, in fact I am rather convinced that he was
not successful in the “Simone,” where he stays nearer
the poetic forms invented by others. His own mode
began, I think, with the translation of the very beau-
tiful “sequaire” of Goddeschalk in “Le Latin Mys-
tique.” This he made, very possibly, the basis of his
“Livre de Litanies," at least this curious evocational
form, the curious repetitions, the personal sweeping
rhythm, are made wholly his own, and he used them
later in “Les Saints de Paradis," and last of all in the
prose sonnets.
or the basis of
REMY DE GOURMONT
121
These “sonnets” are among the few successful en-
deavours to write poetry of our own time. I know there
is much superficial modernity, but in these prose son-
nets Remy de Gourmont has solved the two thorniest
questions. The first difficulty in a modern poem is to
give a feeling of the reality of the speaker, the second,
given the reality of the speaker, to gain any degree of
poignancy in one's utterance.
That is to say, you must begin in a normal, natural
tone of voice, and you must, somewhere, express or cause
a deep feeling. I am, let us say, in an omnibus with
Miscio Itow. He has just seen some Japanese armour
and says it is like his grandfather's, and then simply
running on in his own memory he says: “When I
first put on my grandfather's helmet, my grandmother
cried ... because I was so like what my grandfather
was at eighteen.”
You may say that Itow is himself an exotic, but still,
there is material for an hokku, and poetry does touch
modern life, or at least pass over it swiftly, though it
does not much appear in modern verses.
De Gourmont has not been driven even to an exotic
speaker. His sonnets begin in the metropolis. The
speaker is past middle age. It is a discussion of what
he calls in the course of the sequence of poems “la
géométrie subordonnée du corps humain.”
I shall give a dozen or more phrases from the sequence
(which consists, if I remember rightly, of about two
dozen poems). By this means I shall try to give, not a
continuous meaning, but simply the tone, the conversa-
tional, ironic, natural tone of the writing, the scien-
tific dryness, even, as follows:
“Mes déductions sont certains. ...
"Mais le blanc est fondamental. ...
122
DIVISIONS
“J'ai plus aimé les yeux que toutes les autres manifestations
corporelles de la beauté. ...
"Les yeux sont le manomètre de la machine animale. ...
"Et leurs paroles signifient le désir de l'être, ou la placidité
de sa volonté. ...
"Mais on pense aussi avec les mains, avec les genoux, avec
les yeux, avec la bouche et avec le cour. On pense avec tous
les organes, ...
"Et à vrai dire, nous ne sommes peut-être que pensée. ...
"Je parlerais des yeux, je chanterais les yeux toute ma vie.
Je sais toutes leurs couleurs et toutes leurs volontés, leur
destinée. ...
"Dont je n'ignore pas les correspondances. ...
“C'est une belle chose qu'une tête de femme, librement in-
scrite dans le cercle esthétique. ..."
Or even more solidly :-
“Je sculpte une hypothèse dans le marbre de la logique
éternelle. ...
"Les épaules sont des sources d'où descend la fluidité des
bras. ..."
And then, when one is intent and wholly off guard,
comes, out of this "unpoetic,” unemotional constatation,
the passage :-
"Les yeux se font des discours entre eux.
Près de se ternir ... les miens te parleront encore, mais ils
n'emporteront pas bien loin ta réponse,
Car on n'emporte rien, on meurt. Laisse-moi donc regarder
les yeux que j'ai decouverts,
Les yeux qui me survivront."
He has worn off the trivialities of the day, he has
conquered the fret of contemporaneousness by exhaust-
ing it in his pages of dry discussion, and we come on the
REMY DE GOURMONT
123
feeling, the poignancy, as directly as we do in the old
poet's
Λέγοισιν αι γυναίκες
Ανακρέων γέρων εί.
“Dicunt mihi puellae
Anacreon senex es.”
It is the triumph of skill and reality, though it is
barbarous of me to try to represent the force of the
original poems by such a handful of phrases taken at
random, and I am not trying to convince anyone who
will not read the “Sonnets in Prose” for himself.
II 1
Remy de Gourmont is dead and the world's light is
darkened. This is another of the crimes of the war, for
de Gourmont was only fifty-seven, and if he had not
been worried to death, if he had not been grieved to
death by the cessation of all that has been "life" as he
understood it, there was no reason why we should not
have had more of his work and his company.
He is as much “dead of the war" as if he had died in
the trenches, and he left with almost the same words on
his lips. "Nothing is being done in Paris, nothing can
be done, faute de combattants." There was an elegy on
current writing by him in the Mercure. It was almost
the same tone in which Gaudier-Brzeska wrote to me a
few days before he was shot at Neuville St. Vaast: "Is
anything of importance or even of interest going on in
the world—I mean the 'artistic Londòn'?”.
Remy de Gourmont is irreplaceable. I think I do not
write for myself alone when I say no other Frenchman
could have died leaving so personal a sense of loss in
1 Poetry, Jan., 1916.
124
DIVISIONS
the minds of many young men who had never laid eyes
on him. Some fames and reputations are like that;
Mallarmé is almost a mantram, a word for conjuring.
A critique of de Gourmont's poetry would be by no
means a critique of his influence. For, again, I think
that every young man in London whose work is worth
considering at all, has felt that in Paris existed this
gracious presence, this final and kindly tribunal where
all work would stand on its merits. One had this sense
of absolute fairness--no prestige, no over-emphasis,
could work upon it.
"Permettre à ceux qui en valent la peine d'écrire
franchement ce qu'il pense-seul plaisir d'un écrivain":
these were almost the last words he wrote to me, save a
postscript on the outside of the envelope; and they are
almost his "whole law and gospel.” And indeed a
right understanding of them means the whole civiliza-
tion of letters.
Outside a small circle in Paris and a few scattered
groups elsewhere, this civilization does not exist. Yet
the phrase is so plain and simple: “to permit those who
are worth it to write frankly what they think.”
That is the destruction of all rhetoric and all journal-
ism. I mean that when a nation, or a group of men, or
an editor, arrives at the state of mind where he really
understands that phrase, rhetoric and journalism are
done with. The true aristocracy is founded, permanent
and indestructible. It is also the end of log-rolling,
the end of the British school of criticism for the preser-
vation of orderly and innocuous persons. It is the end
of that “gravity” to which Sterne alludes as “a mys-
terious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the
mind.”
REMY DE GOURMONT
125
Diomedes is a hero because he is facing life, he is facing
it quite sincerely, with no protection whatever. Ibsen
with his smoky lightning had rumbled out, “There is
no intermediator between God and man.” De Gour-
mont, with his perfect and gracious placidity, had im-
plied—yes, implied, made apparent rather than stated-
that no formula can stand between man and life; or
rather that no creed, no dogma, can protect the think-
ing man from looking at life directly, forming his own
thought from his own sensuous contact and from his con-
tact with thoughts.
Nietzsche has done no harm in France because France
has understood that thought can exist apart from action;
that it is perfectly fitting and expedient clearly to think
certain things which it is neither fitting nor expedient
to “spoil by action.”
“Spoil by action” is perhaps a bad memory of the
phrase; but just as Dante was able to consider two
thoughts as blending and giving off music, so Diomedes
in De Gourmont's story is able to think things which
translation into action would spoil. As for Diomedes'
career, I am perfectly willing to accept Robert Frost's
statement that "there is nothing like it in New Eng-
land.” What there is in all provincial places is an at-
tempt to suppress part of the evidence, to present life
out of proportion with itself, squared to fit some local
formula of respectability.
Remy de Gourmont had written throughout his life in
absolute single-blessedness; it was to express his thought,
his delicate, subtle, quiet and absolutely untrammeled
revery, with no regard whatsoever for existing belief,
with no after-thought or beside thought either to con-
form or to avoid conforming. That is the sainthood of
literature.
126
DIVISIONS
I think I can show what I mean almost by a single
sentence. In the midst of the present whirlwind of
abuse he said quietly: “By Kultur, the Germans mean
what we mean by 'state education.'”
It had been so all his life; on whatever matter, how-
ever slight the matter or however strong his own pas-
sion, there had been that same quiet precision, that same
ultimate justness.
The rest of us are caught in the flurry of controversy.
Remy de Gourmont had found—it might not be incor-
rect to say that Paris had given him—a place where all
things could be said quietly and openly, where one
would not think of circumlocution and prejudice, where
circumlocution and prejudice would have seemed un-
natural.
En tous les pays il y a un noyau de bons esprits,
d'esprits libres. Il faut leur donner quelque chose qui
les change de la fadeur des magazines, quelque chose qui
leur donne confiance en eux-mêmes, et leur soit un point
d'appui.
That is good news, but for years M. de Gourmont had
believed it and written accordingly. He had written
selflessly, and was glad when other men could write well.
He dared to write for the few, for the few who are not
a clique or a faction, but who are united by the ability
to think clearly, and who do not attempt to warp or to
smother this faculty; who do not suppress part of the
evidence.
The significance of Remy de Gourmont and the signifi-
cance of his poetry are two things apart. He has writ-
ten for the most part beautiful prose, much controversy,
a book on “Le Latin Mystique du Moyen Age,” etc.
He has written a poème champêtre and some Litanies.
12
REMY DE GOURMONT
127
I have praised these litanies elsewhere, and a man's
obituary notice is not, perhaps, the best place for analyz-
ing his metric. Suffice it to say that the litanies are a
marvel of rhythm, that they have not been followed or
repeated, that de Gourmont was not of "the young
French school.” If he is “grouped” anywhere he must
be grouped, as poet, among les symbolistes. The lit-
anies are evocation, not statement.
De Gourmont was indubitably “of the young" in the
sense that his mind had not lost its vigor, that he was
alive to contemporary impressions, that he had not gone
gaga over catholicism like poor Francis Jammes, nor
wallowed in metrical journalism like the ill-starred Paul
Fort. He had never lost touch with the men born ten
or twenty years after he was; for a man of fifty-seven
that is a very considerable achievement. Or rather it
is not an achievement, for it can not be done by effort;
it can only come from a natural freshness and aliveness
of the mind, and is a matter of temperament.
I had forgotten the French Academy until an article
in L'Humanité reminded me that de Gourmont was
not a member thereof; that the ancient association which
contains Auguste Swallou, Thibaudet de Mimmil, and
so many other “immortals” had not seen fit to elect him.
It is evident that the “Académie Françoise” has out-
lived its usefulness, and if France does not set an ex-
ample what can be expected of other academies? In
de Gourmont's case the academy had no excuse. He had
not only written supremely, but he had given back to
the world a lost beauty--in Le Latin Mystique, in the
Sequaire of Goddeschalk with its Amas ut facias pul-
chrani.
But perhaps, as a friend of mine wrote when Swin-
bure was refused sepulture in Westminster Abbey
128
DIVISIONS
(they said there was no room and buried the canon's
wife the week after), perhaps, as my friend wrote at the
time, "perhaps it is just as well—he suffered fools
badly.”
I have known also that the really distinguished mem-
ber, at a meeting of another “great body," encouraged
one of his more serious colleagues, who was showing
signs of tedium, with “Come, come, we are not here to
enjoy ourselves.”
De Gourmont has gone
Blandula, tenulla, vagula-
almost with a jest on his lips, for his satire on M. Cro-
quant et la Guerre continues in the current Mercure.
MR. HUEFFER AND THE PROSE TRADITION IN
VERSE 1
In a country in love with amateurs, in a country where
the incompetent have such beautiful manners and per-
sonalities so fragile and charming, that one can not bear
to injure their feelings by the introduction of competent
criticism, it is well that one man should have a vision
of perfection and that he should be sick to the death
and disconsolate because he can not attain it.
Mr. Yeats wrote years ago that the highest poetry is
so precious that one should be willing to search many a
dull tome to find and gather the fragments. As touch-
ing poetry this was, perhaps, no new feeling. Yet
where nearly everyone else is still dominated by an
eighteenth-century verbalism, Mr. Hueffer has had this
instinct for prose. It is he who has insisted, in the face
of a still-Victorian press, upon the importance of good
writing as opposed to the opalescent word, the rhetorical
tradition. Stendhal had said, and Flaubert, De Mau-
passant and Turgenev had proved, that “prose was the
higher art”-at least their prose.
It is impossible to talk about perfection without get-
ting yourself very much disliked. It is even more diffi-
cult in a capital where everybody's Aunt Lucy or
Uncle George has written something or other, and where
the victory of any standard save that of mediocrity would
at once banish so many nice people from the temple of
1 Poetry, June, 1914.
129
130
DIVISIONS
immortality. So it comes about that Mr. Hueffer is the
best critic in England, one might say the only critic of
any importance. What he says today the press, the re-
viewers, who hate him and who disparage his books,
will say in about nine years' time, or possibly sooner.
Shelley, Yeats, Swinburne, with, respectively, their "un-
acknowledged legislators,” with "Nothing affects these
people except our conversation,” with “The rest live
under us”; Remy de Gourmont, when he says that most
men think only husks and shells of the thoughts that have
been already lived over by others, have shown their very
just appreciation of the system of echoes, of the general
vacuity of public opinion. America is like England,
America is very much what England would be with the
two hundred most interesting people removed. One's
life is the score of this two hundred with whom one
happens to have made friends. I do not see that we
need to say the rest live under them, but it is certain
that what these people say comes to pass. They live in
their mutual credence, and thus they live things over
and fashion them before the rest of the world is aware.
I dare say it is a Cassandra-like and useless faculty, at
least from the world's point of view. Mr. Hueffer has
possessed the peculiar faculty of “foresight,” or of con-
And if you think things ten or fifteen or twenty years
before anyone else thinks them you will be considered
absurd and ridiculous. Some professor feels that if cer-
tain ideas gain ground he will have to rewrite his lec-
tures, some parson feels that if certain other ideas are
accepted he will have to throw up his position. They
Mr. Hueffer is still underestimated for another rea-
son: namely, that we have not yet learned that prose is,
THE PROSE TRADITION
131
perhaps, as precious and as much to be sought after as
verse, even its shreds and patches. So that, if one of
the finest chapters in English is hidden in a claptrap
novel, we cannot weigh the vision which made it against
the weariness or the confusion which dragged down the
rest of the work. Yet we would do this readily with a
poem. If a novel have a form as distinct as that of a
sonnet, and if its workmanship be as fine as that of some
Pleiade rondel, we complain of the slightness of the
motive. Yet we would not deny praise to the rondel.
So it remains for a prose craftsman like Mr. Arnold
Bennett to speak well of Mr. Hueffer's prose, and for
a verse-craftsman like myself to speak well of his verses.
And the general public will have little or none of him
because he does not put on pontifical robes, because
he does not take up the megaphone of some known and
accepted pose, and because he makes enemies among the
stupid by his rather engaging frankness.
We may as well begin with the knowledge that Mr.
Hueffer is a keen critic and a skilled writer of prose,
and we may add that he is not wholly unsuccessful as a
composer, and that he has given us, in On Heaven, the
best longish poem yet written in the "twentieth-century
fashion.”
Coleridge has spoken of "the miracle that might be
wrought simply by one man's feeling a thing more
clearly or more poignantly than anyone had felt it be-
fore.” The last century showed us a fair example when
Swinburne awoke to the fact that poetry was an art,
not merely a vehicle for the propagation of doctrine.
England and Germany are still showing the effects of
his perception. I can not belittle my belief that Mr.
Hueffer's realization that poetry should be written at
least as well as prose will have as wide a result. He
132
DIVISIONS
L
himself will tell you that it is "all Christina Rossetti,"
and that “it was not Wordsworth, for Wordsworth was
so busied about the ordinary word that he never found
time to think about le mot juste."
As for Christina, Mr. Hueffer is a better critic than I
am, and I would be the last to deny that a certain limpid-
ity and precision are the ultimate qualities of style; yet
I can not accept his opinion. Christina had these qual-
ities, it is true-in places, but they are to be found also
in Browning and even in Swinburne at rare moments.
Christina very often sets my teeth on edge,-and so for
that matter does Mr. Hueffer. But it is the function of
criticism to find what a given work is, not what it is not.
It is also the faculty of a capital or of high civilization
to value a man for some rare ability, to make use of him
and not hinder him or itself by asking of him faculties
which he does not possess.
Mr. Hueffer may have found certain properties of
style, first for himself, in Christina, but others have
found them elsewhere, notably in Arnaut Daniel and in
Guido and in Dante, where Christina herself would have
found them. Still there is no denying that there is less
of the ore rotundo in Christina's work than in that of
her contemporaries, and that there is also in Hueffer's
writing a clear descent from such passages as:
I listened to their honest chat:
Said one: "Tomorrow we shall be
Plod plod along the featureless sands
And coasting miles and miles of sea.”
Said one: "Before the turn of tide
We will achieve the eyrie-seat.”
Said one: "To-morrow shall be like
To-day, but much more sweet."
THE PROSE TRADITION
133
We find the qualities of what some people are calling
"the modern cadence” in this strophe, also in A Dirge,
in Up Hill, in-
The face not seen, the voice not heard,
and in-
Sometimes I said: “It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live?”–
Yet gave it all the same.
Mr. Hueffer brings to his work a prose training such
as Christina never had, and it is absolutely the devil to
try to quote snippets from a man whose poems are
gracious impressions, leisurely, low-toned. One would
quote The Starling, but one would have to give the whole
three pages of it. And one would like to quote patches
out of the curious medley, To All the Dead,--save that
the picturesque patches aren't the whole or the feel of
it; or Süssmund's capricious Address, a sort of Inferno
to the Heaven. But that also is too long, so I content
myself with the opening of an earlier poem, Finchley
Road.
As we come up at Baker Street
Where tubes and trains and 'buses meet
There's a touch of fog and a touch of sleet;
And we go on up Hampstead way
Toward the closing in of day, ...
You should be a queen or a duchess rather,
Reigning, instead of a warlike father,
134
DIVISIONS
In peaceful times o’er a tiny town,
Where all the roads wind up and down
From your little palace—a small, old place
Where every soul should know your face
And bless your coming.
I quote again, from a still earlier poem where the
quiet of his manner is less marked :
Being in Rome I wonder will you go
Up to the Hill. But I forget the name ....
Aventine? Pincio? No: I do not know.
I was there yesterday and watched. You came.
(I give the opening only to "place" the second portion
of the poem.)
Though you're in Rome you will not go, my You,
Up to that Hill . . . but I forget the name.
Aventine? Pincio? No, I never knew ...
I was there yesterday. You never came.
I have that Rome; and you, you have a Me,
You have a Rome, and I, I have my You;
My Rome is not your Rome: my You, not you.
...... For, if man knew woman
I should have plumbed your heart; if woman, man,
Your Me should be true I . . . If in your day-
You who have mingled with my soul in dreams,
You who have given my life an aim and purpose,
A heart, an imaged form—if in your dreams
You have imagined unfamiliar cities
And me among them, I shall never stand
Beneath your pillars or your poplar groves, ...
THE PROSE TRADITION
135
Images, simulacra, towns of dreams
That never march upon each other's borders,
And bring no comfort to each other's hearts !
I present this passage, not because it is an example of
Mr. Hueffer's present and no longer reminiscent style,
but because, like much that appeared four years ago in
Songs from London, or earlier still in From Inland,
it hangs in my memory. And so little modern work does
hang in one's memory, and these books created so little
excitement when they appeared. One took them as a
matter of course, and they are not a matter of course,
and still less is the later work a matter of course. Oh
well, you all remember the preface to the collected poems
with its passage about the Shepherd's Bush exhibition,
for it appeared first as a pair of essays in Poetry, so
there is no need for me to speak further of Mr. Hueffer's
aims or of his prose, or of his power to render an im-
pression.
There is in his work another phase that depends some-
what upon his knowledge of instrumental music. Dante
has defined a poem as a composition of words set to
music, and the intelligent critic will demand that either
the composition of words or the music shall possess a
certain interest, or that there be some aptitude in their
jointure together. It is true that since Dante's day-
and indeed his day and Cassella's saw a re-beginning of
it-"music” and “poetry” have drifted apart, and we
have had a third thing which is called “word music.”
I mean we have poems which are read or even, in a
fashion, intoned, and are "musical” in some sort of
complete or inclusive sense that makes it impossible or
inadvisable to set them to music.” I mean obviously
such poems as the First Chorus of Atalanta or many of
136
DIVISIONS
Mr. Yeats' lyrics. The words have a music of their own,
and a second "musician's" music is an impertinence or
an intrusion.
There still remains the song to sing : to be “set to
music," and of this sort of poem Mr. Hueffer has given
us notable examples in his rendering of Von der Vogel-
weide's Tandaradei and, in lighter measure, in his own
The Three-Ten:
When in the prime and May-day time dead lovers went
a-walking,
How bright the grass in lads' eyes was, how easy
poet's talking!
Here were green hills and daffodils, and copses to con-
tain them:
Daisies for floors did front their doors agog for maids
to chain them.
So when the ray of rising day did pierce the eastern
heaven
Maids did arise to make the skies seem brighter far by
seven.
Now here's a street where 'bus routes meet, and 'twixt
the wheels and paving
Standeth a lout who doth hold out flowers not worth
the having.
But see, but see! The clock strikes three above the
Kilburn Station,
Those maids, thank God, are 'neath the sod and all
their generation.
What she shall wear who'll soon appear, it is not hood
nor wimple,
But by the powers there are no flowers so stately or so
simple.
THE PROSE TRADITION
137
And paper shops and full 'bus tops confront the sun
so brightly,
That, come three-ten, no lovers then had hearts that
beat so lightly
As ours or loved more truly,
Or found green shades or flowered glades to fit their
loves more duly.
And see, and see! 'Tis ten past three above the Kil-
burn Station,
Those maids, thank God! are 'neath the sod and all
their generation.
Oh well, there are very few song writers in England,
and it's a simple old-fashioned song with a note of fu-
turism in its very lyric refrain; and I dare say you
will pay as little attention to it as I did five years ago.
And if you sing it aloud, once over, to yourself, I dare
say you'll be just as incapable of getting it out of your
head, which is perhaps one test of a lyric.
It is not, however, for Mr. Hueffer's gift of song-
writing that I have considered him at such length; this
gift is rare but not novel. I find him significant and
revolutionary because of his insistance upon clarity and
precision, upon the prose tradition; in brief, upon effi-
cient writing-even in verse.
THE REV. G. CRABBE, LL.B.
“SINCE the death of Laurence Sterne or thereabouts,
there has been neither in England nor America any
sufficient sense of the value of realism in literature, of
the value of writing words that conform precisely with
fact, of free speech without evasions and circumlocu-
tions."
I had forgotten, when I wrote this, the Rev. Crabbe,
LL.B.
Think of the slobber that Wordsworth would have
made over the illegitimate infant whom Crabbe dismisses
with: “There smiles your Bride, there sprawls your new-
born Son.”
Byron liked him, but the British Public did not. The
British public liked, has liked, likes and always will
like all art, music, poetry, literature, glass engraving,
sculpture, etc., in just such measure as it approaches
the Tennysonian tone. It likes Shakespear, or at least
accepts him in just so far as he is "Tennysonian.” It
has published the bard of Avon expurgated and even
emended. There has never been an edition of “Purified
Tennyson.”
"It is incredible that his (Tennyson's) whole mind
should be made up of fine sentiments,” says Bagehot. Of
course it wasn't. It was that lady-like attitude toward
the printed page that did it—that something, that in-
effable "something," which kept Tennyson out of his
works. When he began to write for Viccy's ignorant
ear, he immediately ceased to be the “Tennyson so muzzy
138
THE REV. G. CRABBE, LL.B. 139
that he tried to go out through the fireplace,” the Tenny-
son with the broad North accent, the old man with the
worst manners in England (except Carlyle's), the Ten-
nyson whom it kept the whole combined efforts of his
family and his publishers to keep respectable.” He be-
came the Tate Gallery among poets.
The afflatus which has driven great artists to blurt
out the facts of life with directness or with cold irony,
or with passion, and with always precision; which im-
pels Villon to write-
“Necessity makes men run wry,
And hunger drives the wolf from wood”;
which impels Homer to show Hermes replying to
Calypso-
“You, a goddess, ask of me who am a god,
Nevertheless I will tell you the truth”;
which in contact with Turgenev builds a whole novel
into the enforcement of some one or two speeches, so
that we have, as the gaunt culmination, some phrase
about the heart of another” or the wide pardon in
Maria Timofevna's "Nothing but death is irrevocable”;
this urge, this impulse (or perhaps it is a different urge
and impulse) leads Tennyson into pretty embroideries.
He refined the metric of England, at least he im-
proved on some of Shelley's but did not reach the
Elizabethans. Whereas Shakespear has never been re-
fined enough for his compatriots. The eighteenth cen-
tury set itself to mending his metres, and the nineteenth
to mending his morals.
The cult of the innocuous has debouched into the
adoration of Wordsworth. He was a silly old sheep with
140
DIVISIONS
a genius, an unquestionable genius, for imagisme, for a
presentation of natural detail, wild-fowl bathing in a
hole in the ice, etc., and this talent, or the fruits of this
talent, he buried in a desert of bleatings.
Blake denounced him as an atheist, but for all that
he has been deemed so innocuous that he has become,
if not the backbone, at least one of the ribs of British
kultur. And Crabbe?
The worst that should be said of him is that he still
clings to a few of Pope's tricks, and that he is not utterly
free from the habit of moralizing. What is, in actuality,
usually said of him is that he is “unpoetic,'' or, patroniz-
ingly, "that you can't call this really great poetry.”
Pope is sometimes an excellent writer, Crabbe is never
absolute slush, nonsense or bombast. That admission
should satisfy the multitudinous reader, but it will not.
If the nineteenth century had built itself on Crabbe?
Ah, if! But no; they wanted confections.
Crabbe has no variety of metric, but he shows no in-
considerable skill in the use of his one habitual metre,
to save the same from monotony.
I admit that he makes vague generalities about
“Vice,” “Villainy and Crime,” etc., but these para-
graphs are hardly more than short cuts between one
passage of poetry and another.
He does not bore you, he does not disgust you, he
does not bring on that feeling of nausea which we have
when we realize that we are listening to an idiot who
occasionally makes beautiful (or ornamental) verses.
Browning at his best went on with Crabbe's method.
He expressed an adoration of Shelley, and he might
have learned more from Crabbe, but he was nevertheless
the soundest of all the Victorians. Crabbe will perhaps
keep better than Browning, he will have a savour of
THE REV. G. CRABBE, LL.B. 141
freshness; of course he is not "the greater poet” of the
two, but then he gives us such sound satisfaction in his
best moments. And those moments are precisely the
moments when he draws his “Borough” with greatest
exactness, and when he refrains from commenting. They
are the moments “when he lets himself go,” when he is
neither "The Rev." nor the "LL.B.” but just good,
sensible Crabbe, as at the end of "Inns,” or reporting
conversations in “Amusements,” “Blaney,” “Clelia,”
and the people remembered by “Benbow.” If Eng-
lishmen had known how to select the best out of Crabbe
they would have less need of consulting French stylists.
Et pourtant,
“Then liv'd the good Squire Asgill—what a change
Has Death and Fashion shown us at the Grange?
He bravely thought it best became his rank,
That all his Tenants and his Tradesmen drank;
He was delighted from his favorite Room
To see them 'cross the Park go daily home,
Praising aloud the Liquor and the Host,
And striving who should venerate him most.
Along his valleys in the Evening Hours
The Borough-Damsels stray'd to gather Flowers,
Or by the Brakes and Brushwood of the Park
To take their pleasant rambles in the dark.
Some Prudes, of rigid kind, forebore to call
On the kind Females-Favorites at the Hall;
But better natures saw, with much delight,
The different orders of mankind unite;
'Twas schooling Pride to see the Footman wait,
Smile on his sister and receive her plate.
142
DIVISIONS
Or Sir Denys admitting Clelia to the alms-house
"With all her faults," he said, “the woman knew
How to distinguish-had a manner too;
And, as they say, she is allied to some
In decent station-let the creature come.”
Oh, well! Byron enjoyed him. And the people liked
Byron. They liked him for being "romantic.” They
adored Mrs. Hemans. And some day when Arthur's
tomb is no longer an object for metrical research, and
when the Albert Memorial is no longer regilded, Crabbe's
people will still remain vivid. People will read Miss
Austen because of her knowledge of the human heart,
and not solely for her refinement.
His, Crabbe's, realism is not the hurried realism of
ignorance, he describes an inn called “The Boar”; in
his day there was no "Maison Tellier” to serve for a
paradigm:
"There dwells a kind old aunt, and there you'll see
Some kind young nieces in her company:
What though it may some cool observers strike,
That such fair sisters should be so unlike;
And still another and another comes,
And at the Matron's table smiles and blooms;
A pious friend who with the ancient Dame
At sober cribbage takes an Evening-Game;
His cup beside him, through their play he quaffs
Or growing serious to the Text resorts,
And from the Sunday-Sermon makes reports, ..."
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
I HAVE seen the God Pan and it was in this manner:
I heard a bewildering and pervasive music moving from
precision to precision within itself. Then I heard a
different music, hollow and laughing. Then I looked
up and saw two eyes like the eyes of a wood-creature
peering at me over a brown tube of wood. Then some-
one said: Yes, once I was playing a fiddle in the forest
and I walked into a wasp's nest.
Comparing these things with what I can read of the
earliest and best authenticated appearances of Pan, I
can but conclude that they relate to similar occurrences.
It is true that I found myself later in a room covered
with pictures of what we now call ancient instruments,
and that when I picked up the brown tube of wood I
found that it had ivory rings upon it. And no proper
reed has ivory rings on it, by nature. Also, they told
me it was a “recorder,” whatever that is.
Our only measure of truth is, however, our own per-
ception of truth. The undeniable tradition of meta-
morphoses teaches us that things do not remain always
the same. They become other things by swift and un-
analysable process. It was only when men began to
mistrust the myths and to tell nasty lies about the Gods
for a moral purpose that these matters became hope-
lessly confused. Then some unpleasing Semite or Parsee
or Syrian began to use myths for social propaganda,
when the myth was degraded into an allegory or a
fable, and that was the beginning of the end. And the
U
143
144
DIVISIONS
Gods no longer walked in men's gardens. The first
myths arose when a man walked sheer into “nonsense,”
that is to say, when some very vivid and undeniable
adventure befell him, and he told someone else who
called him a liar. Thereupon, after bitter experience,
perceiving that no one could understand what he meant
when he said that he “turned into a tree,” he made a
myth—a work of art that is—an impersonal or objective
story woven out of his own emotion, as the nearest
equation that he was capable of putting into words.
That story, perhaps, then gave rise to a weaker copy
of his emotion in others, until there arose a cult, a com-
pany of people who could understand each other's non-
sense about the gods.
These things were afterwards incorporated for the
condemnable "good of the State," and what was once
à species of truth became only lies and propaganda.
And they told horrid tales to little boys in order to make
them be good; or to the ignorant populace in order to
preserve the empire; and religion came to an end and
civic science began to be studied. Plato said that
artists ought to be kept out of the ideal republic, and
the artists swore by their gods that nothing would drag
them into it. That is the history of "civilisation," or
philology, or Kultur.
When any man is able, by a pattern of notes or by
an arrangement of planes or colours, to throw us back
into the age of truth, everyone who has been cast back
into that age of truth for one instant gives honour to
the spell which has worked, to the witch-work or the art-
work, or to whatever you like to call it. I say, there-
fore, that I saw and heard the God Pan; shortly after-
wards I saw and heard Mr. Dolmetsch. Mr. Dolmetsch
was talking volubly, and he said something very deroga-
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
145
tory to music, which needs 240 (or some such number
of) players, and can only be performed in one or two
capitals. Pepys writes, that in the Fire of London,
when the people were escaping by boat on the Thames,
there was scarcely a boat in which you would not see
them taking a pair of virginals as among their dearest
possessions.
Older journalists tell me it is “cold mutton,” that
Mr. Dolmetsch was heard of fifteen years ago. This
shows a tendency that I have before remarked in a civ-
ilisation which rests upon journalism, and which has
only a sporadic care for the arts. Everyone in London
over forty “has heard of” Mr. Dolmetsch, his instru-
ments, etc. The generation under thirty may have
heard of him, but you cannot be sure of it. His topical
interest is over. I have heard of Mr. Dolmetsch for
fifteen years, because I am a crank and am interested
in such matters. Mr. Dolmetsch has always been in
France or America, or somewhere I wasn't when he was.
Also, I have seen broken-down spinets in portentous
and pretentious drawing-rooms. I have heard harpsi-
chords played in Parisian concerts, and they sounded
like the scratching of multitudinous hens, and I did not
wonder that pianos had superseded them. Also, I have
known good musicians and have favoured divers sorts
of good music. And I have supposed that clavichords
were things you might own if you were a millionaire;
and that virginals went with citherns and citoles in the
poems of the late D. G. Rossetti.
So I had two sets of adventures. First, I perceived a
sound which is undoubtedly derived from the Gods, and
then I found myself in a reconstructed century-in a
century of music, back before Mozart or Purcell, listen-
ing to clear music, to tones clear as brown amber. And
146
DIVISIONS
this music came indifferently out of the harpsichord or
the clavichord or out of virginals or out of odd-shaped
viols, or whatever they may be. There were two small
girls playing upon them with an exquisite precision;
with a precision quite unlike anything I have ever heard
from an orchestra. Then someone said in a tone of
authority: “It is nonsense to teach people scales. It
is rubbish to make them play this (tum, tum, tum, tum
tum). They must begin to play music. Three years
playing scales, that is what they tell you. How can
they ever be musicians ?”
It reduces itself to about this. Once people played
music. It was gracious, exquisite music, and it was
played on instruments which gave out the players'
exact mood and personality. “It is beautiful even if
you play it wrong.” The clavichord has the beauty of
three or four lutes played together. It has more than
that, but no matter. You have your fingers always en
rapport with the strings; it is not one dab and then
either another dab or else nothing, as with the piano;
the music is always lying on your own finger-tips.
This old music was not theatrical. You played it
yourself as you read a book of precision. A few people
played it together. It was not an interruption but a
concentration.
Now, on the other hand, I remember a healthy con-
cert pianist complaining that you couldn't "really give”
a big piano concert unless you had the endurance of an
ox; and that “women couldn't, of course”; and that
gradually the person with long hands was being elimi-
nated from the pianistic world, and that only people
with little, short fat fingers could come up to the techni-
cal requirements. Whether this is so or not, we have
come to the pianola. And one or two people are going
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
147
in for sheer pianola. They cut their rolls for the pianola
itself, and make it play as if with two dozen fingers when
necessary. That is, perhaps, better art than making a
pianola imitate the music of two hands of five fingers
each. But still something is lacking.
Oriental music is under debate. We say we “can't
hear it.” Impressionism has reduced us to such a
dough-like state of receptivity that we have ceased to
like concentration. Or if it has not done this it has at
least set a fashion of passivity that has held since the
romantic movement. The old music was fit for the old
instruments. That was natural. It is proper to play
piano music on pianos. But in the end we find that
nothing less than a full orchestra will satisfy our mod-
ernity.
That is the whole flaw of impressionist or “emo-
tional” music as opposed to pattern music. It is like
a drug; you must have more drug, and more noise each
time, or this effect, this impression which works from the
outside, in from the nerves and sensorium upon the
self—is no use, its effect is constantly weaker and
weaker. I do not mean that Bach is not emotional, but
the early music starts with the mystery of pattern; if
you like, with the vortex of pattern; with something
which is, first of all, music, and which is capable of
being, after that, many things. What I call emotional,
or impressionist music, starts with being emotion or im-
pression and then becomes only approximately music.
It is, that is to say, something in the terms of something
else. If it produces an effect, if, from sounding as
music, it moves at all, it can only recede into the orig-
inal emotion or impression. Programme music is merely
a weaker, more flabby and descriptive sort of impression-
ist music, needing, perhaps, a guide and explanation.
148
DIVISIONS
Mr. Dolmetsch was, let us say, enamoured of ancient
music. He found it misunderstood. He saw a beauty
so great and so various that he stopped composing.
He found that the beauty was untranslatable with mod-
ern instruments; he has repaired and has entirely re-
made "ancient instruments.” The comfort is that he
has done this not for a few rich faddists, as one had
been led to suppose. He makes his virginals and clavi-
chords for the price of a bad, of a very bad piano. You
can have a virginal for £25 if you order it when he is
making a dozen; and you can have a clavichord for a
few pounds more, even if he is not making more than
one.
My interest in these things is not topical. Mr. Dol-
metsch was a topic some years ago, but you are not
au courant, and you do not much care for music unless
you know that a certain sort of very beautiful music
is no longer impossible. It is not necessary to wait
for a great legacy, or to inhabit a capital city in order
to hear magical voices, in order to hear perfect music
which does not depend upon your ability to approxi-
mate the pianola, or upon great physical strength. Of
the clavichord, one can only say, very inexactly, that it
is to the piano what the violin is to the bass viol.
As I believe that Lewis and Picasso are capable of
revitalising the instinct of design so I believe that a re-
turn, an awakening to the possibilities, not necessarily
of “Old” music, but of pattern music played upon an-
cient instruments, is, perhaps, able to make music again
a part of life, not merely a part of theatricals. The
musician, the performing musician as distinct from the
composer, might again be an interesting person, an
artist, not merely a sort of manual saltimbanque or a
stage hypnotist. It is, perhaps, a question of whether
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
149
you want music, or whether you want to see an obsessed
personality trying to "dominate” an audience.
I have said little that can be called technical criticism.
I have perhaps implied it. There is precision in the
making of ancient instruments. Men still make pass-
able violins; I do not see why the art of beautiful-keyed
instruments need be regarded as utterly lost. There has
been precision in Mr. Dolmetsch's study of ancient texts
and notation; he has routed out many errors. He has
even, with certain help, unravelled the precision of an-
cient dancing. He has found a complete notation which
might not interest us were it not that this very dancing
forces one to a greater precision with the old music.
One finds, for instance, that certain tunes called dance
tunes must be played double the time at which they
are modernly taken.
One art interprets the other. It would almost touch
upon theatricals, which I am trying to avoid, if I should
say that one steps into a past era when one sees all the
other Dolmetsches dancing quaint, ancient steps of Six-
teenth Century dancing. One feels that the dance would
go on even if there were no audience. That is where
real drama begins, and where we leave what I have called,
with odium, “theatricals.” It is a dance, danced for
the dance's sake, not a display. It is music that exists
for the sake of being music, not for the sake of, as they
say, producing an impression.
Of course there are other musicians working with
this same ideal. I take Mr. Dolmetsch as perhaps a
unique figure, as perhaps the one man who knows most
definitely whither he is going, and why, and who has
given most time to old music.
U
1 Vide his “The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth
and XVIIIth Centuries."
150
DIVISIONS
They tell me "everyone knows Dolmetsch who knows
of old music, but not many people know of it.” Is that
sheer nonsense, or what is the fragment of truth or
rumour upon which it is based? Why is it that the
fine things always seem to go on in a corner? Is it a
judgment on democracy? Is it that what has once been
the pleasure of the many, of the pre-Cromwellian many,
has been permanently swept out of life? Musical Eng-
land? A wild man comes into my room and talks of
piles of turquoises in a boat, a sort of shop-house-boat
east of Cashmere. His talk is full of the colour of the
Orient. Then I find he is living over an old-clothes shop
in Bow. “And there they seem to play all sorts of
instruments.”
Is there a popular instinct for anything different from
what my ex-landlord calls "the four-hour-touch”? Is
it that the aristocracy, which ought to set the fashion,
is too weakened and too unreal to perform the due
functions of “aristocracy''? Is it that nature can, in
fact, only produce a certain number of vortices? That
the quattrocento shines out because the vortices of so-
cial power coincided with the vortices of creative in-
telligence? And that when these vortices do not coin-
cide we have an age of "art in strange corners” and of
great dullness among the quite rich? Is it that real
democracy can only exist under feudal conditions, when
no man fears to recognise creative skill in his neigh-
bour?
VERS LIBRE AND ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
POETRY is a composition of words set to music. Most
other definitions of it are indefensible, or metaphysical.
The proportion or quality of the music may, and does,
vary; but poetry withers and “dries out” when it leaves
music, or at least an imagined music, too far behind it.
The horrors of modern "readings of poetry” are due
to oratorical recitation. Poetry must be read as music
and not as oratory. I do not mean that the words
should be jumbled together and made indistinct and
unrecognizable in a sort of onomatopeic paste. I have
found few save musicians who pay the least attention
to the poet's own music. They are often, I admit, un-
critical of his verbal excellence or deficit, ignorant of
his "literary" value or bathos. But the literary qual-
ities are not the whole of our art.
Poets who are not interested in music are, or become,
bad poets. I would almost say that poets should never
be too long out of touch with musicians. Poets who
will not study music are defective. I do not mean that
they need become virtuosi, or that they need necessarily
undergo the musical curriculum of their time. It is
perhaps their value that they can be a little refractory
and heretical, for all arts tend to decline into the stereo-
type; and at all times the mediocre tend or try, semi-
consciously or unconsciously, to obscure the fact that the
day's fashion is not the immutable.
Music and poetry, melody and versification, alike fall
under the marasmus.
151
152
DIVISIONS
It is too late to prevent vers libre. But conceivably,
one might improve it, and one might stop at least a little
of the idiotic and narrow discussion based on an igno-
rance of music. Bigoted attack, born of this ignorance
of the tradition of music, was what we had to live
through.
Arnold Dolmetsch's book, “The Interpretation of the
Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries,”? 1 is full
of what we may call either “ripe wisdom” or “common
sense,” or “those things which all good artists at all
times have tried (perhaps vainly) to hammer into in-
sensitive heads.” Some of his dicta are, by their nature,
applicable only to instrumental music or melody, others
are susceptible of a sort of transposition into terms of
the sister arts, still others have a direct bearing on poetry,
or at least on versification. It is with these last that I
shall concern myself. Dolmetsch's style is so clear and
better quote with small comment.
Mace, “Musick's Monument” (1613):
(1)
... you must Know, That, although in our First Under-
takings, we ought to strive, for the most Exact Habit of Time-
keeping that possibly we can attain unto, (and for several
good Reasons) yet, when we come to be Masters, so that we
can command all manner of Time, at our own Pleasures; we
Then take Liberty, (and very often, for Humour, and good
Adornment-sake, in certain Places) to Break Time; sometimes
Faster, and sometimes Slower, as we perceive the Nature of
the Thing Requires, which often adds, much Grace, and Luster,
to the Performance."
1 (Novello, London, 10s. 6d.; H. W. Gray and Co., New York.)
VERS LIBRE AND ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 153
(2)
... the thing to be done, is but only to make a kind of
Cessation, or standing still ... in due place an excellent
grace.
Again, from Mace, p. 130: “If you find it uniform,
and retortive either in its bars or strains” you are told
to get variety by the quality of loud and soft, etc.,
and “if it expresseth short sentences” this applies.
And you are to make pauses on long notes at the end
of sentences.
Rousseau, 1687, in "Maître de Musique et de Viole”:
(1)
... At this word "movement” there are people who imagine
that to give the movement is to follow and keep time; but
there is much difference between the one and the other, for
(2)
... You must avoid a profusion of divisions, which only
disturb the tune, and obscure its beauty.
(3)
... Mark not the beat too much.
The accompanist is told to imitate the irregularities of
the beautiful voice.
François Couperin, 1717, "L'Art de toucher le
Clavecin":
(1)
... We write differently from what we play.
(2)
... I find that we confuse Time, or Measure, with what is
called Cadence or Movement. Measure defines the quantity
154
DIVISIONS
and equality of beats; Cadence is properly the spirit, the soul
that must be added.
(3)
... Although these Preludes are written in measured time,
there is however a customary style which should be followed.
... Those who will use these set Preludes must play them in
an easy manner, WITHOUT BINDING THEMSELVES TO STRICT
TIME, unless I should have expressly marked it by the word
mesuré.
One need seek no further for proof of the recognition
of vers libre in music—and this during the "classical
period."
I have pointed out elsewhere that the even bar meas-
ure is certainly not the one and important thing, or even
the first important thing; and that European musicians,
at least, did not begin to record it until comparatively
late in the history of notation. Couperin later notes the
barring as a convenience:
... One of the reasons why I have measured these Preludes
is the facility one will find to teach them or learn them.
That is to say, musical bars are a sort of scaffold to be
kicked away when no longer needed.
Disregard of bars is not to be confused with tempo
rubato, affecting the notes inside a single bar.
Dolmetsch's wisdom is not confined to the demon-
stration of a single point of topical interest to the
poet. I have not space to quote two whole chapters,
or even to elaborate brief quotations like: “You must
bind perfectly all that you play.” The serious writer
of verse will not rest content until he has gone to the
source. I do not wish to give the erroneous impression
VERS LIBRE AND ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 155
that old music was all vers libre. I state simply that
vers libre exists in old music. Quantzens, 1752, in so
far as he is quoted by Dolmetsch, only cautions the
player to give the shorter notes "inequality.” Chris-
topher Simpson, 1655, is much concerned with physical
means of getting a regular beat. His date is interesting.
The movement toward regularity in verse during the
seventeenth century seems condemnable if one compare
only Dryden and Shakespeare, but read a little bad
Elizabethan poetry and the reason for it appears. On
the other hand, Couperin's feeling for irregularity un-
derlying "classical” forms may give us the clue to a
wider unexpressed feeling for a fundamental irregu-
larity which would have made eighteeenth-century clas-
sicism, classicism of surface, tolerable to those who felt
the underlying variety as strongly as the first regular-
izers may have felt it.
These are historical speculations. If I were writing
merely a controversial article I should have stopped
with the first quotations from Couperin, concerning vers
libre. (I have never claimed that vers libre was the
only path of salvation. I felt that it was right and that
it had its place with the other modes. It seems that my
instinct was not wholly heretical and that the opposition
was rather badly informed.) Old gentlemen who talk
about "red riot and anarchy," "treachery to the im-
perium of poesy,” etc., etc., would do well to “get up
their history” and peruse the codices of their laws.?
1 Cf. The Quarterly that hospital for the infirm and aged.
“DUBLINERS” AND MR. JAMES JOYCE :
FREEDOM from sloppiness is so rare in contemporary
English prose that one might well say simply, “Mr.
Joyce's book of short stories is prose free from sloppi-
ness,” and leave the intelligent reader ready to run
from his study, immediately to spend three and sixpence
on the volume.
Unfortunately one's credit as a critic is insufficient to
produce this result.
The readers of The Egoist, having had Mr. Joyce
under their eyes for some months, will scarcely need to
have his qualities pointed out to them. Both they and
the paper have been very fortunate in his collaboration.
Mr. Joyce writes a clear hard prose. He deals with
subjective things, but he presents them with such clarity
of outline that he might be dealing with locomotives
or with builders' specifications. For that reason one
can read Mr. Joyce without feeling that one is con-
ferring a favour. I must put this thing my own way. I
know about 168 authors. About once a year I read
something contemporary without feeling that I am
softening the path for poor Jones or poor Fulano de Tal.
I can lay down a good piece of French writing and
pick up a piece of writing by Mr. Joyce without feeling
as if my head were being stuffed through a cushion.
There are still impressionists about and I dare say they
claim Mr. Joyce. I admire impressionist writers. Eng-
1 “Dubliners," by James Joyce. Grant Richards.
156
“DUBLINERS” AND MR. JAMES JOYCE 157
lish prose writers who haven't got as far as impression-
ism (that is to say, 95 per cent. of English writers of
prose and verse) are a bore.
Impressionism has, however, two meanings, or per-
haps I had better say, the word “impressionism” gives
two different “impressions.”
There is a school of prose writers, and of verse writers
for that matter, whose forerunner was Stendhal and
whose founder was Flaubert. The followers of Flaubert'
deal in exact presentation. They are often so intent on
exact presentation that they neglect intensity, selection,
and concentration. They are perhaps the most clarify-
ing and they have been perhaps the most beneficial force
in modern writing.
There is another set, mostly of verse writers, who
founded themselves not upon anybody's writing but !
upon the pictures of Monet. Every movement in paint-
ing picks up a few writers who try to imitate in words
what someone has done in paint. Thus one writer saw
a picture by Monet and talked of "pink pigs blossom-
ing on a hillside,” and a later writer talked of "slate-
blue” hair and “raspberry-coloured flanks.”
These “impressionists” who write in imitation of
Monet's softness instead of writing in imitation of Flau-
bert's definiteness, are a bore, a grimy, or perhaps I
should say, a rosy, floribund bore.
The spirit of a decade strikes properly upon all of the
arts. There are “parallel movements.” Their causes
and their effects may not seem, superficially, similar.
This mimicking of painting ten or twenty years late,
is not in the least the same as the literary movement”
parallel to the painting movement imitated.
The force that leads a poet to leave out a moral
reflection may lead a painter to leave out representation.
158
DIVISIONS
The resultant poem may not suggest the resultant paint-
ing.
Mr. Joyce's merit, I will not say his chief merit but
his most engaging merit, is that he carefully avoids tell-
ing you a lot that you don't want to know. He presents
his people swiftly and vividly, he does not sentimentalise
over them, he does not weave convolutions. He is a
realist. He does not believe "life" would be all right
if we stopped vivisection or if we instituted a new sort
of "economics." He gives the thing as it is. He is not
bound by the tiresome convention that any part of life,
to be interesting, must be shaped into the conventional
form of a “story.” Since De Maupassant we have had
so many people trying to write “stories and so few
people presenting life. Life for the most part does not
happen in neat little diagrams and nothing is more tire-
some than the continual pretence that it does.
Mr. Joyce's “Araby,” for instance, is much better
than a "story,” it is a vivid waiting.
It is surprising that Mr. Joyce is Irish. One is so
tired of the Irish or “Celtic” imagination (or "phan-
tasy” as I think they now call it) flopping about. Mr.
Joyce does not flop about. He defines. He is not an
institution for the promotion of Irish peasant industries.
He accepts an international standard of prose writing
and lives up to it.
He gives us Dublin as it presumably is. He does not
descend to farce. He does not rely upon Dickensian
caricature. He gives us things as they are, not only for
Dublin, but for every city. Erase the local names and
a few specifically local allusions, and a few historic
events of the past, and substitute a few different local
names, allusions and events, and these stories could be
retold of any town.
“DUBLINERS" AND MR. JAMES JOYCE 159
That is to say, the author is quite capable of dealing
with things about him, and dealing directly, yet these
details do not engross him, he is capable of getting at .
the universal element beneath them.
The main situations of “Madame Bovary” or of
“Doña Perfecta” do not depend on local colour or upon
local detail, that is their strength. Good writing, good
presentation can be specifically local, but it must not
depend on locality. Mr. Joyce does not present"types"
but individuals. I mean he deals with common emo-
tions which run through all races. He does not bank on
“Irish character.” Roughly speaking, Irish literature
has gone through three phases in our time, the shamrock
period, the dove-grey period, and the Kiltartan period.
I think there is a new phase in the works of Mr. Joyce.
He writes as a contemporary of continental writers. I .
do not mean that he writes as a faddist, mad for the
last note, he does not imitate Strindberg, for instance,
or Bang. He is not ploughing the underworld for hor-
ror. He is not presenting a macabre subjectivity.
He is classic in that he deals with normal things
and with normal people. A committee room, Little
Chandler, a nonentity, a boarding house full of
clerks--these are his subjects and he treats them all
in such a manner that they are worthy subjects of
art.
Francis Jammes, Charles Vildrac and D. H. Lawrence
have written short narratives in verse, trying, it would
seem, to present situations as clearly as prose writers
have done, yet more briefly. Mr. Joyce is engaged in a
similar condensation. He has kept to prose not needing
the privilege supposedly accorded to verse to justify his
method.
I think that he excels most of the impressionist writers
160
DIVISIONS
because of his more rigorous selection, because of his
exclusion of all unnecessary detail.
There is a very clear demarcation between unneces-
sary detail and irrelevant detail. An impressionist
friend of mine talks to me a good deal about “prepar-
ing effects,' and on that score he justifies much unneces-
sary detail, which is not "irrelevant," but which ends
by being wearisome and by putting one out of conceit
with his narrative.
Mr. Joyce's more rigorous selection of the presented
detail marks him, I think, as belonging to my own
generation, that is, to the "nineteen-tens," not to the
decade between “the ’nineties” and to-day.
At any rate these stories and the novel now appearing
in serial form are such as to win for Mr. Joyce a very
definite place among English contemporary prose writ-
ers, not merely a place in the “Novels of the Week”
column, and our writers of good clear prose are so few
that we cannot afford to confuse or to overlook them.
MEDITATIONS 1
ANENT THE DIFFICULTIES OF GETTING “A PORTRAIT OF THE
ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN” PRINTED IN ENGLAND
THOUGHTS, rages, phenomena. I have seen in the
course of the morning new ecclesiastical buildings, and
I know from the events of the last few months that it is
very difficult to get the two most remarkable novels,
written in English by our generation, published
"through the ordinary channels.”
Yet it is more desirable that a nation should have
a firm literature than that paste-board nonentities should
pour forth rehashed Victoriana on Sundays. Waste!
Waste, and again, multiplicitly, waste!
O Christian and benevolent reader, I am not attack-
ing your religion. I am even willing to confess a very
considerable respect for its founder, and for Confucius
and Mohammed, or any other individual who has striven
to implant a germ of intelligence in the soil of the cir-
cumjacent stupidity. And I respect him whatever his
means and his medium, that is, say, whether he has
worked by violent speech, or by suave and persuasive
paragraphs, or by pretending to have received his in-
structions, and gazed unabashed upon the hind side
of the intemperate and sensuous J'h'v, on the escarps
of Mount Sinai.
Because we, that is to say, you and I and the hy-
pothetical rest of our readers, in normal mood, have
1 Egoist. March 1st, 1916.
161
162
DIVISIONS
no concern with churches, we generally presume that
all this pother has been settled long since, and that no-
body bothers about it. It is indeed a rare thought that
there are thousands of prim, soaped little Tertullians
opposing enlightenment, entrenched in their bigotry,
mildly, placidly, contentedly entrenched in small livings
and in fat livings, and in miserable, degrading curacies,
and that they are all sterile, save perhaps in the pro-
duction of human offspring, whereof there is already a
superabundance.
Perhaps 10 per cent. of the activities of the Christian
churches are not wholly venal, mais passons! And the
arts, and good letters, serious writing ?
“Oh, you go on too much about art and letters!”
"Bleat about the importance of art!!!" Yes, I have
heard these phrases. And very annoying people will
“go on about” art.
“In no country in the world do the authorities take
such good care of their authors." There are various
points of view. There are various tyrannies.
“We are going to have an outbreak of rampant puri-
tanism after the war.”
"We shall have a Saturnalia!"
There are various points of view. The monster of
intolerance sniffs like a ghoul about the battlefields even.
Flammarion or someone said that the sun was about to
explode on, I think it was, February the fifth of this
year. The end of the world is approaching. Perhaps.
At any rate I am not the first author to remark that
the future is unknowable, or at least indefinite and un-
certain. Concerning the past we know a little. Con-
cerning progress,” how much?
It is about thirty-nine years since Edmond de Gon-
court wrote the preface I quote.
MEDITATIONS
163
Thirteen years ago my brother and I wrote in an introduc-
tion to "Germinie Lacerteux":
"Now that the novel is wider and deeper, now that it begins
to be the serious, passionate, living great-form of literary
study and of social research, now that it has become, by
analysis and psychological inquiry, the history of contem-
porary ethics-in-action (how shall one render accurately the
phrase "l'histoire morale contemporaine’?), now that the novel
has imposed upon itself the studies and duties of science, one
may again make a stand for its liberties and its privileges."
There ends his quotation of what they had set down
in the forties."
Now in one's normal mood, in one's normal existence,
one takes it for granted that De Goncourt's statement is
simple, concise, and accurate. One does not meet peo-
ple who hold any other view, and one goes on placidly
supposing that the question is settled, that it is settled
along with Galileo's quondam heresy.
If a man has not in the year of grace 1915 or 1916
arrived at this point of enlightenment carefully marked
by the brothers De Goncourt in A. D. 1863, he is not
admitted to the acquaintance of anyone worth knowing.
I do not say that a person holding a different view would
be physically kicked downstairs if he produced a differ-
ent opinion in an intelligent company; our manners are
softened; he would be excreted in some more spiritual
manner.
In December, 1876, Edmond de Goncourt added, among
others, the following sentences :
In 1877 I come alone and perhaps for the last time to de-
mand these privileges for this new book written with the same
feeling of intellectual curiosity and of commiseration for
human sufferings.
It has been impossible, at times, not to speak as a physician,
164
DIVISIONS
as a savant, as a historian. It would be insulting (injurieux)
to us, the young and serious school of modern novelists, to
forbid us to think, to analyse, to describe all that is permitted
to others to put into a volume which has on its cover "Study,"
or any other grave title. You cannot ask us at this time of
day to amuse the young lady in the rail-road carriage. I
think we have acquired, since the beginning of the century,
the right to write for formed men, without the depressing
necessity of fleeing to foreign presses, or to have, under a full
republican regime, our publishers in Holland, as we did in
the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV.
Well, there you have it. We were most of us un-
born, or at least mewling and puking, when those per-
fectly plain, simple and, one would have supposed, obvi-
ous sentences were put together.
And yet we are still faced with the problem: Is
literature possible in England and America ? Is it pos-
sible that the great book and the firm book can appear
"in normal conditions”? That is to say, under the
same conditions that make musical comedy, Edna
What's-her-name, Victoria Cross, Clement Shorter, etc.,
etc., so infernally possible among us!
It seems most unlikely. Of course, five hundred peo-
ple can do any mortal thing they like, provided it does
not imply the coercion of a large body of different peo-
ple. I mean, for instance, five hundred people can have
any sort of drama or novel or literature that they like.
It is possible that the Mercure de France has done
much to make serious literature possible in France
“under present conditions." The Yale University
Press in America claims that it selects its books solely
on their merit and regardless of public opinion (or per-
haps I am wrong, regardless of their vendibility” may
be the meaning of their phrase as I remember it).
1
MEDITATIONS
165
L
And England?
“Oh, Blink is afraid to face the Libraries, I thought
so." "The Censor,” etc., etc. "We don't think it
necessary to superintend the morals of our subscribers.”
“You can have it by taking a double subscription."
Let me say at once that I make no plea for smutti-
ness, for an unnecessary erotic glamour, etc., etc. I
have what I have been recently informed is a typically
“French” disgust at the coarseness of Milton's mind.
I have more than once been ridiculed for my prudery.
But if one can't, parfois, write “as a physician, as a
savant, as a historian," if we can't write plays, novels,
poems or any other conceivable form of literature with
the scientist's freedom and privilege, with at least the
chance of at least the scientist's verity, then where in
the world have we got to, and what is the use of any-
thing, anything?
.
I
TROUBADOURS: THEIR SORTS AND CONDI-
TIONS 2
The argument whether or no the troubadours are a
subject worthy of study is an old and respectable one.
It is far too old and respectable to be decided hastily or
by one not infallible person. If Guillaume, Count of
Peiteus, grandfather of King Richard Cæur de Lion, had
not been a man of many energies, there might have been
little food for this discussion. He was, as the old book
says of him, “of the greatest counts in the world, and
he had his way with women.” Beside this he made
songs for either them or himself or for his more ribald
companions. They say also that his wife was Countess
of Dia, "fair lady and righteous,” who fell in love with
Raimbaut d'Aurenga and made him many a song. How-
ever that may be, Count Guillaume made composition in
verse the best of court fashions, and gave it a social
prestige which it held till the accursed crusade of 1208
against the Albigenses. The mirth of Provençal song
is at times anything but sunburnt, and the mood is often
anything but idle. For example De Born advises the
barons to pawn their castles before making war, thus
if they won they could redeem them, if they lost the
loss fell on the holder of the mortgage.
The forms of the poetry are highly artificial, and as
artifice they have still for the serious craftsman an in-
terest, less indeed than they had for Dante, but by no
means inconsiderable. No student of the period can
doubt that the involved forms, and especially the veiled
1 The Quarterly Review, 1913.
166
TROUBADOURS
167
meanings in the "trobar clus,” grew out of living con-
ditions, and that these songs played a very real part in
love intrigue and in the intrigue preceding warfare.
The time had no press and no theatre. If you wish to
make love to women in public, and out loud, you must
resort to subterfuge; and Guillaume St. Leider even
went so far as to get the husband of his lady to do the
seductive singing.
If a man of our time be so crotchety as to wish emo-
tional, as well as intellectual, acquaintance with an age
so out of fashion as the 12th century, he may try in
several ways to attain it. He may read the songs them-
selves from the old books—from the illuminated vellum
--and he will learn what the troubadours meant to the
folk of the century just after their own. He will learn
a little about their costume from the illuminated capi-
tals. Or he may try listening to the words with the
music, for, thanks to Jean Beck and others, it is now
possible to hear the old tunes. They are perhaps a lit-
tle Oriental in feeling, and it is likely that the spirit
of Sufism is not wholly absent from their content. Or,
again, a man may walk the hill-roads and river roads
from Limoges and Charente to Dordogne and Narbonne
and learn a little, or more than a little, of what the
country meant to the wandering singers. He may
learn, or think he learns, why so many canzos open with
speech of the weather; or why such a man made war on
such and such castles. Once more, he may leam the
outlines of these events from the “razzos,” or prose
paragraphs of introduction, which are sometimes called
"lives of the troubadours.” And, if he have mind for
these latter, he will find in the Bibliothèque Nationale
i Walter Morse Rummel's "Neuf Chansons de Troubadours,"
pub. Augener, ltd., etc.; also the settings by Aubry.
168
DIVISIONS
at Paris the manuscript of Miquel de la Tour, written,
perhaps, in the author's own handwriting; at least we
read "I Miquel de la Tour, scryven, do ye to wit.”
Miquel gives us to know that such and such ladies
were courted or loved or sung with greater or less good
fortune by such and such minstrels of various degree,
for one man was a poor vavassour, and another was King
Amfos of Aragon; and another, Vidal, was son of a
furrier, and sang better than any man in the world; and
another was a poor knight that had but part of a castle;
and another was a clerk,' and he had an understanding
with a borgesa who had no mind to love him or to keep
him, and who became mistress to the Count of Rodez.
"Voila l'estat divers d'entre eulx."
There was indeed a difference of estate and fortune
between them. The monk, Gaubertz de Poicebot, "was
a man of birth; he was of the bishopric of Limozin, son
of the castellan of Poicebot. And he was made monk
when he was a child in a monastery, which is called Sain
Leonart. And he knew well letters, and well to sing,
and well trobar. And for desire of woman he went
forth from the monastery. And he came thence to the
man to whom came all who for courtesy wished honour
and good deeds—to Sir Savaric de Malleon-and this
man gave him the harness of a joglar and a horse and
clothing; and then he went through the courts and com-
posed and made good canzos. And he set his heart
upon a donzella gentle and fair and made his songs of
her, and she did not wish to love him unless he should get
himself made a knight and take her to wife. And he
told En Savaric how the girl had refused him, where-
fore En Savaric made him a knight and gave him land
1 Raimon de Miraval and Uc Brunecs respectively.
2 Poetical composition, literally “to find.”
TROUBADOURS
169
and the income from it. And he married the girl and
held her in great honour. And it happened that he
went into Spain, leaving her behind him. And a knight
out of England set his mind upon her and did so much
and said so much that he led her with him, and he kept
her long time his mistress and then let her go to the
dogs (malamen anar). And En Gaubertz returned
from Spain, and lodged himself one night in the city
where she was. And he went out for desire of woman,
and he entered the alberc of a poor woman; for they
told him there was a fine woman within. And he found
his wife. And when he saw her, and she him, great
was the grief between them and great shame. And he
stopped the night with her, and on the morrow he went
forth with her and took her to a nunnery where he had
her enter. And for this grief he ceased to sing and to
compose.” If you are minded, as Browning was in his
“One Word More,” you may search out the song that
En Gaubertz made, riding down the second time from
Malleon, flushed with the unexpected knighthood.
“Per amor del belh temps suau
E quar fin amor men somo." 1
"For love of the sweet time and soft” he beseeches this
"lady in whom joy and worth have shut themselves and
all good in its completeness” to give him grace and the
kisses due to him a year since. And he ends in envoi to
Savaric.
“Senher savaric larc e bo
Vos troba hom tota fazo
.
1“For love of the fair time and soft,
And because fine love calleth me to it."
170
DIVISIONS
Quel vostre ric fag son prezan
El dig cortes e benestan.” 1
La Tour has given us seed of drama in the passage ·
above rendered. He has left us also an epic in his
straightforward prose. “Piere de Maensac was of Al-
verne (Auvergne) a poor knight, and he had a brother
named Austors de Maensac, and they both were trouba-
dours and they both were in concord that one should
take the castle and the other the trobar.” And pre-
sumably they tossed up a marabotin or some such obso-
lete coin, for we read, “And the castle went to Austors
and the poetry to Piere, and he sang of the wife of
Bernart de Tierci. So much he sang of her and so much
he honoured her that it befell that the lady let herself
go (furar a del). And he took her to the castle of the
Dalfin of Auvergne, and the husband, in the manner of
the golden Menelaus, demanded her much, with the
church to back him and with the great war that they
made. But the Dalfin maintained him (Piere) so that
he never gave her up. He (Piere) was a straight man
(dreitz om) and good company, and he made charming
songs, tunes and the words, and good coblas of pleas-
ure.” And among them is one beginning
“Longa saison ai estat vas amor
Humils e francs, y ai faich son coman." 2
Dante and Browning have created so much interest in
Sordello that it may not be amiss to give the brief ac-
1 "Milord Savaric, generous
To thy last bond, men find thee thus,
That thy rich acts are food for praise
And courtly are thy words and days."
2 "For a long time have I stood toward Love
Humble and frank, and have done his commands."
TROUBADOURS
171
count of him as it stands in a manuscript in the Ambro-
sian library at Milan. "Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana.
Sordello was of Mantuan territory of Sirier (this would
hardly seem to be Goito), son of a poor cavalier who had
name Sier Escort (Browning's El Corte), and he de-
lighted himself in chançons, to learn and to make them.
And he mingled with the good men of the court. And
he learned all that he could and he made coblas and
sirventes. And he came thence to the court of the
Count of St. Bonifaci, and the Count honoured him
much. And he fell in love with the wife of the Count,
in the form of pleasure (a forma de solatz), and she
with him. (The Palma of Browning's poem and the
Cunizza of Dante's.) And it befell that the Count
stood ill with her brothers. And thus he estranged him-
self from her, and from Sier Sceillme and Sier Albrics.
Thus her brothers caused her to be stolen from the
Count by Sier Sordello and the latter came to stop with
them. And he (Sordello) stayed a long time with them
in great happiness, and then he went into Proenssa
where he received great honours from all the good men
and from the Count and from the Countess who gave
him a good castle and a wife of gentle birth.” (Brown-
ing with perfect right alters this ending to suit his own
purpose.)
The luck of the troubadours was as different as their
ranks, and they were drawn from all social orders. We
are led away far indeed from polite and polished society
when we come to take note of that Gringoire, Guillem
Figiera, "son of a tailor; and he was a tailor; and when
the French got hold of Toulouse he departed into Lom-
bardy. And he knew well trobar and to sing, and he
made himself joglar among the townsfolk (ciutadins).
He was not a man who knew how to carry himself
.
172
DIVISIONS
among the barons or among the better class, but much
he got himself welcomed among harlots and slatterns
and by inn-keepers and taverners. And if he saw com-
ing a good man of the court, there where he was, he was
sorry and grieved at it, and he nearly split himself to
take him down a peg (et ades percussava de lui abais-
sar)."
For one razzo that shows an unusual character there
are a dozen that say simply that such or such a man was
of Manes, or of Cataloigna by Rossilon, or of elsewhere,
"a poor cavalier."i They made their way by favour
at times, or by singing, or by some other form of utility.
Ademar of Gauvedan "was of the castle Marvois, son
of a poor knight. He was knighted by the lord of Mar-
vois. He was a brave man but could not keep up his
estate as knight, and he became jongleur and was re-
spected by all the best people. And later he went into
orders at Gran Mon.” Elias Cairels “was of Sarlat;
ill he sang, ill he composed, ill he played the fiddle and
worse he spoke, but he was good at writing out words
and tunes. And he was a long time wandering, and
when he quitted it, he returned to Sarlat and died
there." Perdigo was the son of a fisherman and made
his fortune by his art. Peirol was a poor knight who
was fitted out by the Dalfin of Auvergne and made love
to Sail de Claustra; and all we know of Cercamon is
that he made vers and pastorelas in the old way and
that "he went everywhere he could get to." Pistoleta
"was a singer for Arnaut of Marvoil, and later he took
to trobar and made songs with pleasing tunes and he
was well received by the best people, although a man
of little comfort and of poor endowment and of little
1 For example, Peire Bermon and Palazol.
TROUBADOURS
173
12
stamina. And he took a wife at Marseilles and became
a merchant and became rich and ceased going about the
courts." Guillems the skinny was a joglar of Manes,
and the capital letter shows him throwing 3, 5, and 4,
on a red dice board. “Never had he on harness, and
what he gained he lost malamen, to the taverns and the
women. And he ended in a hospital in Spain.”
The razzos have in them the seeds of literary criti-
cism. The speech is, however, laconic. Aimar lo Ners
was a gentleman. “He made such songs as he knew
how to.” Aimeric de Sarlat, a joglar, became a trou-
badour, "and yet he made but one song.” Piere Guil-
lem of Toulouse “Made good coblas, but he made too
many.” Daude of Pradas made cansos "per sen de
trobar,” which I think we may translate “from a men-
tal grasp of the craft.” “But they did not move from
love, wherefore they had not favour among folk. They
were not sung.” We find also that the labour and skill
were divided. One man played the viol most excel-
lently, and another sang, and another spoke his songs
to music, and another, Jaufre Rudel, Brebezieu's father-
in-law, made “good tunes with poor words to go with
them.”
The troubadour's person comes in for as much free
criticism as his performance. Elias fons Salada was
“a fair man verily, as to feature, a joglar, no good trou-
badour.” 2 But Faidit, a joglar of Uzerche, “was ex-
ceedingly greedy both to drink and to eat, and he be-
came fat beyond measure. And he took to wife a pub-
lic woman; very fair and well taught she was, but she
1 Richard of Brebezieu (disia sons).
2 The “joglar” was the player and singer, the "troubadour” the
“finder” or composer of songs and words.
174
DIVISIONS
became as big and fat as he was. And she was from a
rich town Alest of the Mark of Provenca from the
seignory of En Bernart d'Andussa.”
One of the noblest figures of the time, if we are to
believe the chronicle, was Savaric de Mauleon, a rich
baron of Peitieu, whom I have mentioned above, son of
Sir Reios de Malleon; “lord was he of Malleon and of
Talarnom and of Fontenai, and of castle Aillon and of
Boet and of Benaon and of St. Miquel en Letz and of the
isle of Ners and of the isle of Mues and of Nestrine and of
Engollius and of many other good places.” As one may
read in the continuation of this notice and verify from -
the razzos of the other troubadours, "he was of the most
open-handed men in the world.” He seems to have left
little verse save the tenzon with Faidit.
“Behold divers estate between them all!" Yet, de-
spite the difference in conditions of life between the 12th
century and our own, these few citations should be
enough to prove that the people were much the same,
and if the preceding notes do not do this, there is one
tale left that should succeed.
"The Vicomte of St. Antoni was of the bishopric of
Caortz (Cahors), Lord and Vicomte of St. Antoni; and
he loved a noble lady who was wife of the seignor of
Pena Dalbeges, of a rich castle and a strong. The lady
was gentle and fair and valiant and highly prized and
much honoured; and he very valiant and well trained
and good at arms and charming, and a good trobaire,
and had name Raimons Jordans; and the lady was
called the Vicontesse de Pena; and the love of these two
was beyond all measure. And it befell that the Vis-
count went into a land of his enemies and was grievous
wounded, so that report held him for dead. And at
the news she in great grief went and gave candles at
TROUBADOURS
175
church for his recovery. And he recovered. And at
this news also she had great grief.” And she fell a-mop-
ing, and that was the end of the affair with St. Antoni,
and "thus was there more than one in deep distress.”
"Wherefore” Elis of Montfort, wife of William à-Gor-
don, daughter of the Viscount of Trozena, the glass of
fashion and the mould of form, the pride of "youth,
beauty, courtesy,” and presumably of justice, mercy,
long-suffering, and so forth, made him overtures, and
successfully. And the rest is a matter much as usual.
If humanity was much the same, it is equally certain
that individuals were not any more like one another;
and this may be better shown in the uncommunicative
canzoni than in the razzos. Thus we have a pastoral
from the sensitive and little known Joios of Tolosa:
“Lautrier el dous temps de pascor
En una ribeira,''
which runs thus:
“The other day, in the sweet time of Easter, I went
across a flat land of rivers hunting for new flowers, walk-
ing by the side of the path, and for delight in the green-
ness of things and because of the complete good faith and
love which I bear for her who inspires me, I felt a melt-
ing about my heart and at the first flower I found, I
burst into tears.
“And I wept until, in a shady place, my eyes fell
upon a shepherdess. Fresh was her colour, and she was
white as a snow-drift, and she had doves' eyes,”
and the rest of it.
In very different key we find the sardonic Count of
176
DIVISIONS
Foix, in a song which begins mildly enough for a spring
song:
"Mas qui a flor si vol mesclar,"
and turns swiftly enough to a livelier measure:
“Ben deu gardar lo sieu baston
Car frances sabon grans colps dar
Et albirar ab lor bordon
E nous fizes in carcasses
Ni en genes ni en gascon."
“Let no man lounge amid the flowers
Without a stout club of some kind.
Know ye the French are stiff in stours
And sing not all they have in mind,
So trust ye not in Carcason,
In Genovese, nor in Gascon.”
My purpose in all this is to suggest to the casual
reader that the Middle Ages did not exist in tapestry
alone, nor in the 14th century romances, but that there
was a life like our own, no mere sequence of citherns and
citoles, nor a continuous stalking about in sendal and
diaspre. Men were pressed for money. There was un-
speakable boredom in the castles. The chivalric singing
was devised to lighten the boredom; and this very sing-
ing became itself in due time, in the manner of all
things, an ennui.
There has been so much written about the poetry of
the best Provençal period, to wit the end of the 12th
century, that I shall say nothing of it here, but shall
confine the latter part of this essay to a mention of
TROUBADOURS
177
three efforts, or three sorts of effort which were made to
keep poetry alive after the crusade of 1208.
Any study of European poetry is unsound if it does
not commence with a study of that art in Provence.
The art of quantitative verse had been lost. This loss
was due more to ignorance than to actual changes of
language, from Latin, that is, into the younger tongues.
It is open to doubt whether the Æolic singing was ever
comprehended fully even in Rome. When men began
to write on tablets and ceased singing to the barbitos,
a loss of some sort was unavoidable. Propertius may be
cited as an exception, but Propertius writes only one
metre. In any case the classic culture of the Renais-
sance was grafted on to medieval culture, a process
which is excellently illustrated by Andreas Divus Iusti-
nopolitanus' translation of the Odyssey into Latin. It
is true that each century after the Renaissance has tried
in its own way to come nearer the classic, but, if we are
to understand that part of our civilisation which is the
art of verse, we must begin at the root, and that root is
medieval. The poetic art of Provence paved the way
for the poetic art of Tuscany; and to this Dante bears *
sufficient witness in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquio."
The heritage of art is one thing to the public and quite
another to the succeeding artists. The artist's in-
heritance from other artists can be little more than
certain enthusiasms, which usually spoil his first work;
and a definite knowledge of the modes of expression,
which knowledge contributes to perfecting his more
mature performance. All this is a matter of technique.
After the compositions of Vidal and of Rudel and of
Ventadour, of Bornelh and Bertrans de Born and Arnaut
Daniel, there seemed little chance of doing distinctive
work in the “canzon de l'amour courtois.” There was
178
DIVISIONS
no way, or at least there was no man in Provence capable
of finding a new way of saying in seven closely rhymed
strophes that a certain girl, matron or widow was like a
certain set of things, and that the troubadour's virtues
were like another set, and that all this was very sorrow-
ful or otherwise, and that there was but one obvious
remedy. Richard of Brebezieu had done his best for
tired ears; he had made similes of beasts and of the stars
which got him a passing favour. He had compared
himself to the fallen elephant and to the self-piercing
pelican, and no one could go any further. Novelty is
reasonably rare even in modes of decadence and revival.
The three devices tried for poetic restoration in the early
13th century were the three usual devices. Certain men
turned to talking art and ästhetics and attempted to
dress up the folk-song. Certain men tried to make verse
more engaging by stuffing it with an intellectual and
argumentative content. Certain men turned to social
satire. Roughly, we may divide the interesting work of
the later Provençal period into these three divisions. As
all of these men had progeny in Tuscany, they are, from
the historical point of view, worth a few moments' at-
tention.
The first school is best represented in the work of
Giraut Riquier of Narbonne. His most notable feat was
the revival of the Pastorela. The Pastorela is a poem in
which a knight tells of having met with a shepherdess or
some woman of that class, and of what fortune and con-
versation befell him. The form had been used long be-
fore by Marcabrun, and is familiar to us in such poems
as Guido Cavalcanti's “In un boschetto trovai pas-
torella,” or in Swinburne's “An Interlude.” Guido,
who did all things well, whenever the fancy took him,
TROUBADOURS
179
has raised this form to a surpassing excellence in his
poem “Era in pensier d'Amor, quand' io trovai.”
Riquier is most amusing in his account of the inn-mis-
tress at Sant Pos de Tomeiras, but even there he is less
amusing than was Marcabrun when he sang of the shep-
herdess in “L’autrier iost' una sebissa." Riquier has,
however, his place in the apostolic succession; and there
is no reason why Cavalcanti and Riquier should not
have met while the former was on his journey to Campo-
stella, although Riquier may as easily have been in
Spain at the time. At any rate the Florentine noble
would have heard the pastorelas of Giraut; and this
may have set him to his ballate, which seem to date
from the time of his meeting with Mandetta in Toulouse.
Or it may have done nothing of the kind. The only
more or less settled fact is that Riquier was then the
best-known living troubadour and near the end of his
course.
The second, and to us the dullest of the schools, set to
explaining the nature of love and its effects. The nor-
mal modern will probably slake all his curiosity for this
sort of work in reading one such poem as the King of
Navarre's "De Fine amour vient science e beautez.”
“Ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit,” as Propertius put
it, or anglice:
“Knowledge and beauty from true love are wrought,
And likewise love is born from this same pair;
These three are one to whoso hath true thought," etc.
There might be less strain if one sang it. This peculiar
variety of flame was carried to the altars of Bologna,
whence Guinicello sang:
180
DIVISIONS
“Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore,
Come l'augello in selva alla verdura.”
And Cavalcanti wrote: “A lady asks me, wherefore I
wish to speak of an accident 1 which is often cruel.”
Upon this poem there are nineteen great and learned
commentaries. And Dante, following in his elders' foot-
steps, has burdened us with a “Convito.”
The third school is the school of satire, and is the only
one which gives us a contact with the normal life of the
time. There had been Provençal satire before Piere
Cardinal; but the sirventes of Sordello and de Born were
directed for the most part against persons, while the
Canon of Clermont drives rather against conditions. In
so far as Dante is critic of morals, Cardinal must be held
as his forerunner. Miquel writes of him as follows:
"Peire Cardinal was of Veillac of the city Pui Ma
Donna, and he was of honourable lineage, son of a knight
and a lady. And when he was little his father put him
for canon in the canonica major of Pui; and he learnt
letters, and he knew well how to read and to sing; and
when he was come to man's estate he had high knowl-
edge of the vanity of this world, for he felt himself gay
and fair and young. And he made many fair argu-
ments and fair songs. And he made cansos, but he
made only a few of these, and sirventes; and he did
best in the said sirventes where he set forth many fine
arguments and fair examples for those who understand
them; for much he rebuked the folly of this world and
much he reproved the false clerks, as his sirventes show.
And he went through the courts of kings and of noble
1 Accidente, used as a purely technical term of his scholastic
philosophy.
TROUBADOURS
181
barons and took with him his joglar who sang the sir-
ventes. And much was he honoured and welcomed by
my lord the good king of Aragon and by honourable
barons. And I, master Miquel de la Tour, escruian
(scribe), do ye to wit that N. Peire Cardinal when he
passed from this life was nearly a hundred. And I,
the aforesaid Miquel, have written these sirventes in the
city of Nemze (Nimes) and here are written some of his
sirventes."
If the Vicontesse de Pena reminds us of certain ladies
with whom we have met, these sirventes of Cardinal may
well remind us that thoughtful men have in every age
found almost the same set of things or at least the same
sort of things to protest against; if it be not a corrupt
press or some monopoly, it is always some sort of equiva-
lent, some conspiracy of ignorance and interest. And
thus he says, “Li clerc si fan pastor.” The clerks pre-
tend to be shepherds, but they are wolfish at heart.
If he can find a straight man, it is truly matter for
song; and so we hear him say of the Duke of Narbonne,
who was, apparently, making a fight for honest adminis-
tration:
“Coms raymon duc de Narbona
Marques de proensa
Que tot lo mon gensa,
Quar de la mar de bayona
En tro a valenca
Agra gent falsae fellona
Lai ab vil temensa,
Mas vos tenetz vil lor
Q’n frances bevedor
182
DIVISIONS
Plus qua? perditz austor
No vos fan temensa."' 2
Cardinal is not content to spend himself in mere
abuse, like the little tailor Figeira, who rhymes Christ's
“mortal pena” with
“Car voletz totzjors portar la borsa plena,''
which is one way of saying, “Judas!” to the priests.
He, Cardinal, sees that the technique of honesty is not
always utterly simple.
"Li postilh, legat elh cardinal
Fa cordon tug, y an fag establir
Que qui nos pot de traisson esdir,”
which may mean, "The pope and the legate and the
cardinal have twisted such a cord that they have brought
things to such a pass that no one can escape committing
treachery.” As for the rich:
1 Here lies the difficulty of all this sort of scholarship! Is this
“qua” or “que”? The change of the letter will shift us into irony.
2 "Now is come from France what one did not ask for”-he is
addressing the man who is standing against the North
“Count Raymon, Duke of Narbonne,
Marquis of Provence,
Your valour is sound enough
To make up for the cowardice of
All the rest of the gentry.
For from the sea at Bayonne,
Even to Valence,
Folk would have given in (sold out),
But you hold them in scorn,
[Or, reading laur, 'scorn the gold.']
So that the drunken French
Alarm you no more
Than a partridge frightens a hawk.”
TROUBADOURS
183
“Li ric home an pietat tan gran
Del autre gen quon ac cayn da bel
Que mais volon tolre q lop no fan
E mais mentir que tozas de bordelh.” 1
Of the clergy, “A tantas vey baylia," "So much the
more do I see clerks coming into power that all the
world will be theirs, whoever objects. For they'll have
it with taking or with giving” (i.e. by granting land,
belonging to one man, to someone else who will pay
allegiance for it, as in the case of De Montfort), “or
with pardon or with hypocrisy; or by assault or by
drinking and eating; or by prayers or by praising the
worse; or with God or with devilry.” We find him put-
ting the age-long query about profit in the following.
“He may have enough harness
And sorrel horses and bays;
Tower, wall, and palace,
May he have
-The rich man denying his God.”
The stanza runs very smoothly to the'end
“Si mortz no fos
Elh valgra per un cen.” 2.
The modern Provençal enthusiast who is in raptures
at the idea of chivalric love (a term which he usually
1 "The rich men have such pity
For other folk-about as much as Cain had for Abel.
For they would like to leave less than the wolves do,
And to lie more than girls in a brothel.”
2 “A hundred men he would be worth
Were there no death."
184
DIVISIONS
misunderstands), and who is little concerned with the
art of verse, has often failed to notice how finely the
sound of Cardinal's poems is matched with their mean-
ing. There is a lash and sting in his timbre and in his
movement. Yet the old man is not always bitter; or,
if he is bitter, it is with the bitterness of a torn heart
and not of a hard one. It is so we find him in the sir-
vente beginning :
“As a man weepeth for his son or for his father,
Or for his friend when death has taken him,
So do I mourn for the living who do their own ill,
False, disloyal, felon, and full of ill-fare,
Deceitful, breakers-of-pact,
Cowards, complainers,
Highwaymen, thieves-by-stealth, turn-coats,
Betrayers, and full of treachery,
Here where the devil reigns
And teaches them to act thus."
He is almost the only singer of his time to protest
against the follies of war. As here:
“Ready for war, as night is to follow the sun,
Readier for it than is the fool to be cuckold
When he has first plagued his wife!
And war is an ill thing to look upon,
And I know that there is not one man drawn into it
But his child, or his cousin or someone akin to him
Prays God that it be given over."
He says plainly, in another place, that the barons make
war for their own profit, regardless of the peasants.
"Fai mal senher vas los sieu.” His sobriety is not to
TROUBADOURS
185
be fooled with sentiment either martial or otherwise.
There is in him little of the fashion of feminolatry, and
the gentle reader in search of trunk-hose and the light
guitar had better go elsewhere. As for women: “L'una
fai drut.”
“One turns leman for the sake of great possessions; i
And another because poverty is killing her,
And one hasn't even a shift of coarse linen;
And another has two and does likewise.
And one gets an old man—and she is a young wench,
And the old woman gives the man an elixir."
As for justice, there is little now: “If a rich man
steal by chicanery, he will have right before Constan-
tine (i.e. by legal circumambience), but the poor thief
may go hang.” And after this there is a passage of pity
and of irony fine-drawn as much of his work is, for he
keeps the very formula that De Born had used in his
praise of battle, “Belh mes quan vey”; and, perhaps,
in Sir Bertrans' time even the Provençal wars may have
seemed more like a game, and may have appeared to
have some element of sport and chance in them. But
the 12th century had gone, and the spirit of the people
was weary, and the old canon's passage may well serve
as a final epitaph on all that remained of silk thread and
cisclatons, of viol and gai saber.
“Never again shall we see the Easter come in so fairly,
That was wont to come in with pleasure and with song.
No! but we see it arrayed with alarms and excursions,
Arrayed with war and dismay and fear,
Arrayed with troops and with cavalcades,
Oh, yes, it's a fine sight to see holder and shepherd
Going so wretched that they know not where they are."
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS
Ι
THE reactions and “movements” of literature are
scarcely, if ever, movements against good work or good
custom. Dryden and the precursors of Dryden did not
react against “Hamlet.” If the eighteenth-century
movement toward regularity is among those least sympa-
thetic to the public of our moment, it is “historically
justifiable,” even though the katachrestical vigours of
Marlowe's "Hero and Leander” may not be enough to
"explain” the existence of Pope. A single faulty work
showing great powers would hardly be enough to start
a "reaction”; only the mediocrity of a given time can
drive the more intelligent men of that time to "break
with tradition.”
I take it that the phrase "break with tradition” is
currently used to mean “desert the more obvious im-
becilities of one's immediate elders”; at least, it has had
that meaning in the periodical mouth for some years.
Only the careful and critical mind will seek to know
how much tradition inhered in the immediate elders.
Vaguely in some course of literature we heard of
“the old fourteeners,” vulgariter, the metre of the
"Battle of Ivry.” “Hamlet” could not have been
written in this pleasing and popular measure. The
“classics,” however, appeared in it. For Court ladies
and cosmopolitan heroes it is perhaps a little bewilder-
ing, but in the mouth of Oenone:
186
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 187
The Heroycal Epistles of the learned Poet Publius
Ovidius Naso. In English verse: set out and trans-
lated by George Tuberuile. 1567. London: Henry
Denham.
OENONE TO PARIS
To Paris that was once her owne
though now it be not so,
From Ida, Oenon greeting sendes
as these hir letters show,
May not thy nouel wife endure
that thou my Pissle reade.
That they with Grecian fist were wrought
thou needste not stand in dreade.
Pegasian nymph renounde in Troie,
Oenone hight by name,
Of thee (of thee that were mine owne), complaine
if thou permit the same,
What froward god doth seeke to barre
Oenone to be thine ?
Or by what guilt have I deserude
that Paris should decline?
Take paciently deserude woe
and never grutch at all:
a woman at the gall.
Scarce were thou of so noble fame,
as platly doth appeare:
When I (the offspring of a floud)
did choose the for my feere.
188
DIVISIONS
And thou, who now art Priams sonne
(all reuerence layde apart)
Were tho a Hyard to beholde
when first thou wanste my heart.
How oft have we in shaddow laine
whylst hungrie flocks have fedde?
How oft have we of grasse and greanes
preparde a homely bedde?
How oft on simple stacks of strawe
and bennet did we rest?
How oft the dew and foggie mist
our lodging hath opprest?
Who first discouerde thee the holtes
and Lawndes of lurcking game?
Who first displaid thee where the whelps
lay sucking of their Dame?
I sundrie tymes have holpe to pitch
thy toyles for want of ayde:
And forst thy Hounds to climbe the hilles
that gladly would have stayde.
One boysterous Beech Oenone's name
in outward barke doth beare:
And with thy caruing knife is cut
OENON, every wheare.
And as the trees in tyme doe ware
so doth encrease my name:
Go to, grow on, erect your selves
helpe to aduance my fame.
There growes (I minde it uerie well)
upon a banck, a tree
Whereon ther doth a fresh recorde
and will remaine of mee,
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 189
Live long thou happie tree, I say,
that on the brinck doth stande;
And hast ingraued in thy barke
these wordes, with Paris hande:
When Pastor Paris shall reuolte,
and Oenon's love forgoe:
Then Xanthus waters shall recoyle,
and to their Fountaines floe.
Now Ryuer backward bend thy course,
let Xanthus streame retier:
For Paris hath renounst the Nymph
and prooude himself a lier.
That cursed day bred all my doole,
the winter of my joy,
With cloudes of froward fortune fraught
procurde me this annoy;
When cankred crafte Iuno came
with Venus (Nurce of Love)
And Pallas eke, that warlike wench,
their beauties pride to proue.
The pastoral note is at least not unpleasing, and the
story more real than in the mouths of the later poets,
who enliven us with the couplet to the tune:
Or Paris, who, to steal that daintie piece,
Traveled as far as 'twas 'twixt Troy and Greece.
The old versions of Ovid are, I think, well worth a
week or so random reading. Turning from the Heroides
I find this in a little booklet said to be “printed abroad"
and undated. It bears “C. Marlow" on the title page.
190
DIVISIONS
AMORUM 1
Now on the sea from her olde loue comes shee
That drawes the day from heaven's cold axle-tree,
Aurora whither slidest thou down againe,
And byrdes from Memnon yeerly shall be slaine.
Now in her tender arms I sweetlie bide,
If euer, now well lies she by my side,
The ayre is colde, and sleep is sweetest now,
And byrdes send foorth shril notes from every bow.
Whither runst thou, that men and women loue not,
Holde in thy rosie horses that they moue not.
Ere thou rise stars teach seamen where to saile,
But when thou comest, they of their course faile.
Poore trauailers though tired, rise at thy sight,
The painful Hinde by thee to fild is sent,
Slow oxen early in the yoke are pent.
Thou cousnest boyes of sleep, and dost betray them
To Pedants that with cruel lashes pay them.
Any fault is more pleasing than the current fault of
the many. One should read a few bad poets of every
era, as one should read a little trash of every contem-
porary nation, if one would know the worth of the good
in either.
Turning from translations, for a moment, to The
Shepherde's Starre (1591), for the abandonment of syn-
tax and sense, for an interesting experiment in metric,
for beautiful lines astray in a maze of unsense, I find
the incoherent conclusion of much incoherence, where
1 Amorum, lib, i, elegia 13.
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 191
Amarylis says: “In the meane while let my Roundi-
lay end my follie”; and tilts at the age old bogie of
“Sapphics,” Aeolium Carmen, which perhaps Catullus
alone of imitators has imitated with success.
THE SHEPHERDES STARRE, 1591
Amaryllis. In the meane while let this my Roundilay
end my follie:
Sith the nymphs are thought to be happie creatures,
For that at faier Helicon a Fountaine,
Where all use like white Ritch iuorie foreheads
Daily to sprinckle,
Sith the quire of Muses atend Diana,
Ever use to bathe heauie thoughts refyning,
With the Silver skinne, Civet and Mir using
For their adornment,
Sith my sacred Nymphs priuiledge abateth,
Cause Dianas grace did elect the Myrtle,
To be pride of every branch in order
last of her handmaides ;
Should then I thus liue to behold euerted
Skies, with impure eyes in a fountaine harboured
Where Titans honor seated is as under
All the beholders ?
Helpe wofull Ecco, reabound relenting,
That Dianas grace on her helpe recalling,
May well heare thy voice to bewaile, reanswere
Faire Amaryllis.
192
DIVISIONS
Fairer in deede then Galatea, fairest
Of Dianas troope to bewitch the wisest,
With amasing eye to abandon humors
of any gallants,
Shee Thetis faier, Galataea modest,
-Albeit some say in a Chrystal often,
Tis but a false rule.
For what Yse is hid in a Diamond Ring,
Where the wise beholder hath eyes refusing,
Allabasters vaines to no workman hidden,
Gold to no Touchstone.
There bedeckes fairest Rosamond the fountaine,
Where resorts those greene Driades the waterie
Nimphs, of olive plants recreat by Phaebus
Till they be maried.
So beginning ends the report of her fame,
Whose report passing any pennes relation,
Doth entreat her loue, by reinspiration
To dull heads yeelding faer eies reflection,
Still to be present.
Surely among poems containing a considerable amount
of beauty, this is one of the worst ever written. Patient
endeavour will reveal to the reader a little more coher-
ence and syntax than is at first glance apparent, but
from this I draw no moral conclusion.
For all half-forgotten writing there is, to my mind,
little criticism save selection. "Those greene Driades”;
Oenone, “offspring of a floud”; the music of the Elegy
must make their own argument.
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 193
II
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great
age of translations; or follows it. The Victorians in
lesser degree had Fitzgerald, and Swinburne's Villon,
and Rossetti. One is at first a little surprised at the
importance which historians of Spanish poetry give to
Boscan, but our histories give our own translators too
little. And worse, we have long since fallen under the
blight of the Miltonic or noise tradition, to a stilted dia-
lect in translating the classics, a dialect which imitates
the idiom of the ancients rather than seeking their mean-
ing, a state of mind which aims at “teaching the boy his
latin” or greek or whatever it may be, but has long
since ceased to care for the beauty of the original; or
which perhaps thinks “appreciation” obligatory, and
the meaning and content mere accessories.
Golding was no inconsiderable poet, and the Marlow
of the translations has beauties no whit inferior to the
Marlowe of original composition. In fact, the skill of
the translations forbids one to balk at the terminal
“e.” We conclude the identity without seeking through
works of reference.
Compare (pardon the professional tone whereof I
seem unable to divest myself in discussing these mat-
ters), compare the anonymous rather unskilled work
in the translation of Sixe Idillia, with Marlow's version
of Amorum, lib. iii, 13.
194
DIVISIONS
THE XVIII JDILLION
HELLENS EPITHALAMION 1
In Sparta long agoe, where Menelaus wore the crowne,
Twelve noble Virgins, daughters to the greatest in the
towne,
All dight upon their haire in Crowtoe garlands fresh
and greene,
Danst at the chamber doore of Helena the Queene,
What time this Menelay, the younger Sonne of Atreus,
Did marry with this louely daughter of Prince Tyn-
darus.
And therewithal at eue, a wedding song they jointly
sung,
With such a shuffling of their feete, that all the Pallace
rung.
CYCLOPS TO GALATEA THE WATER-NYMPH
IX JDILLION
O Apple, sweet, of thee, and of myself I use to sing,
And that at midnight oft, for thee, aleavne faunes up
I bring,
All great with young, and foure beares whelps, I nour-
ish up for thee.
But come thou hither first, and thou shalt have them
all of me.
1 Sixe Idillia, published by Joseph Barnes, Oxford, 1588; 100
copies reprinted by H. Daniel, Oxford, 1883.
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 195
And let the blewish colorde Sea beat on the shore so
nie.
The night with me in cave, thou shalt consume more
pleasantlie.
There are the shadie Baies, and there tall Cypres-trees
doe sprout,
And there is Ivie blacke, and fertill Vines are al about.
Coole water there I haue, distilled of the whitest snowe,
A drinke divine, which out of wooddy Aetna mount
doth flowe.
In these respects, who in the Sea and waues would
rather be?
But if I seem as yet, too rough and sauage unto thee,
Great store of Oken woode I have, and never quenched
fire;
And I can well endure my soul to burn with thy desire,
With this my onely eie, then which I nothing think
more trimme.
Now woe is me, my mother bore not me with finns to
swimme,
That I might dive to thee,
The "shuffling of their feete” is pleasing, but the
Cyclops speaks perhaps too much in his own vein. Mar-
low is much more dexterous.
AMORUM 1
Ad amicam si pecatura est, ut occulte peccat
Seeing thou are faire, I bar not thy false playing,
But let not me poore soule wit of thy straying.
1 Amorum, lib. iii, elegia 13. These translations are reprinted
in the Clarendon Press edition of Marlowe's Works, 1910.
196
DIVISIONS
TY
Nor do I give thee counsaile to liue chast
But that thou wouldst dissemble when 'tis past.
She hath not trod awry that doth deny it,
Such as confesse haue lost their good names by it.
What madness ist to tell night sports by day,
Or hidden secrets openly to bewray,
The strumpet with the stranger will not do,
Before the room be cleare, and dore put too.
Will you make shipwracke of your honest name
And let the world be witnesse of the same?
Be more aduisde, walke as a puritaine,
And I shall think you chast do what you can.
Slippe still, onely deny it when tis done,
And before people immodest speeches shun,
The bed is for lasciuious toyings meete,
There use all toyes, and treade shame under feete,
When you are up and drest, be sage and graue,
And in the bed hide all the faults you haue.
Be not a shamed to strippe you being there,
And mingle thighes, mine ever yours to beare,
There in your rosie lips my tongue intomb,
Practise a thousand sports when there you come,
Forbare no wanton words you there would speake,
And with your pastime let the bedsted creake.
But with your robes, put on an honest face,
And blush and seeme as you were full of grace.
Deceiue all, let me erre, and think I am right
And like a wittal, thinke thee uoide of slight.
The reader, if he can divert his thought from matter to
manner, may well wonder how much the eighteenth
century authors have added, or if they added anything
save a sort of faculty for systematization of product, a
power to repeat certain effects regularly and at will.
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 197
But Golding's book published before all these others
will give us more matter for reverie. One wonders, in
reading it, how much more of the Middle Ages was
Ovid. We know well enough that they read him and
loved him more than the more Tennysonian Virgil.
Yet how great was Chaucer's debt to the Doctor
Amoris? That we will never know. Was Chaucer's
delectable style simply the first Ovid in English? Or,
as likely, is Golding's Ovid a mirror of Chaucer? Or
is a fine poet ever translated until another his equal
invents a new style in a later language? Can we, for
our part, know our Ovid until we find him in Golding ?
Is there one of us so good at his latin, and so ready in
imagination that Golding will not throw upon his mind
shades and glamours inherent in the original text, which
had for all that escaped him? Is any foreign speech
ever our own, ever so full of beauty as our lingua ma-
terna (whatever lingua materna that may be)? Or is
not a new beauty created, an old beauty doubled when
the overchange is well done?
Will
... cum super atria velum
Candida purpurium simulatus inficit umbras
quite give us the “scarlet curtain” of the simile in the
Flight from Hippomenes? Perhaps all these things
are personal matters, and not matter for criticism or
discussion. But it is certain that “we” have forgotten
our Ovid, “we” being the reading public, the readers
of English poetry, have forgotten our Ovid since Gold-
ing went out of print.
198
DIVISIONS
METAMORPHOSIS 1
While in this garden Proserpine was taking hir pas-
time,
In gathering eyther Violets blew, or Lillies white as
Lime,
And while of Maidenly desire she fillde hir Haund and
Lap,
Endeauoring to outgather hir companions there. By
hap
Dis spide her: lovde her: caught her up: and all at
once well nere.
So hastie, hote, and swift a thing is Loue as may
appeare.
The Ladie with a wailing voyce afright did often call
Hir mother and hir waiting Maides, but Mother most
of all.
ATALANTA 2
And from the Citie of Tegea there came the Paragone
Of Lycey forrest, Atalant, a goodly Ladie, one
Of Schænyes daughters, then a Maide. The garment
she did weare
A brayded button fastned at hir gorget. All hir heare
Untrimmed in one only knot was trussed. From hir
left
Side hanging on hir shoulder was an Ivorie quiuer
deft:
1 Metamorphosis, by Arthur Golding, 1567. The Fyft booke.
Reprint of 300 copies by De la More Press, in folio.
2 Atalanta. The Eight booke.
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 199
Which being full of arrowes, made a clattering as she
went.
And in hir right hand she did beare a bow already
bent.
Hir furniture was such as this. Hir countnance and
hir grace
Was such as in a Boy might well be cald a Wenches
face.
THE HUNTING
Assoone as that the men came there, some pitched the
toyles,
Some tooke the couples from the Dogs, and some pur-
sude the foyles
In places where the swine had tract: desiring for to
spie
Their owne destruction. Now there was a hollow bot-
tom by,
To which the watershots of raine from all the high
grounds drew.
Within the compasse of this pond great store of Oys-
ters grew :
And Sallowes lithe, and flackring flags, and moorish
Rushes eke,
And lazie Reedes on little shankes, and other baggage
like.
From hence the Bore was rowzed out, and fiersly forth
he flies
Among the thickest of his foes as thunder from the
Skies.
200
DIVISIONS
FLIGHT FROM HIPPOMENES
... now while Hippomenes
Debates theis things within himself and other like to
these,
The Damzell ronnes as if her feete were wings. And
though that shee
Did fly as swift as arrow from a Turkye bowe: yit hee
More woonded at hir beawtye than at the swiftnesse
of her pace
Her ronning greatly did augment her beawtye and
her grace.
The wynd ay whisking from her feete the labells of
her socks
Uppon her back as whyght as snowe did tosse her
golden locks,
And eke thembroydred garters that were tyde be-
neathe her ham.
A redness mixt with whyght uppon her tender body
cam,
As when a scarlet curtaine streynd ageinst a playstred
wall
Doth cast like shadowe, making it seeme ruddye there-
with all.
Reality and particularization! The Elizabethans
themselves began the long series of sins against them.
In Ovid at least they are not divorced from sweeping
imagination as in the Fasti (v. 222):
Unius tellus ante coloris erat;
or in the opening of the Metamorphoses, as by Golding:
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 201
Which Chaos hight, a huge rude heape and nothing
else but even
A heavie lump and clottred clod of seedes
Nor yet the earth amiddes the ayre did hang by won-
drous slight
Just peysed by hir proper weight. Nor winding in
and out
Did Amphitrytee with her armes embrace the earth
about,
For where was earth, was sea and ayre, so was the
earth unstable.
The ayre all darke, the sea likewise to beare a ship
unable.
The suttle ayre to flickering fowles and birdes he hath
assignde.
I throw in the last line for the quality of one adjec-
tive, and close this section of excerpts with a bit of fun
anent Bacchus.
ADDRESS TO BACCHUS. IV
Thou into Sea didst send
The Tyrrhene shipmen. Thou with bittes the sturdy
neckes dost bend
Of spotted Lynxes : throngs of Fownes and Satyres on
thee tend,
And that old Hag that with a staff his staggering
limmes doth stay
Scarce able on his Asse to sit for reeling every way.
202
DIVISIONS
Thou comest not in any place but that is hearde the
noyse
Of gagling womens tatling tongues and showting out
of boyes.
With sound of Timbrels, Tabors, Pipes, and Brazen
pannes and pots
Confusedly among the rout that in thine Orgies trots.
III
The sin or error of Milton—let me leave off vague
expressions of a personal active dislike, and make my
yearlong diatribes more coherent. Honour where it is
due! Milton undoubtedly built up the sonority of the
blank verse paragraph in our language. But he did
this at the cost of his idiom. He tried to turn English
into latin; to use an uninflected language as if it were
an inflected one, neglecting the genius of English, dis-
torting its fibrous manner, making schoolboy translations
of latin phrases: "Him who disobeys me disobeys."
I am leaving apart all my disgust with what he has
to say, his asinine bigotry, his beastly hebraism, the
coarseness of his mentality, I am dealing with a tech-
nical matter. All this clause structure modelled on latin
rhetoric, borrowed and thrust into sonorities which are
sometimes most enviable.
The sin of vague pompous words is neither his own
sin nor original. Euphues and Gongora were before
him. The Elizabethan audience was interested in large
speech. "Multitudinous seas incarnadine" caused as
much thrill as any epigram in Lady Windermere's Fan
or The Importance of Being Earnest. The Dramatists
had started this manner, Milton but continued in their
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 203
wake, adding to their high-soundingness his passion for
latinization, the latinization of a language peculiarly
unfitted for his sort of latinization. Golding in the
ninth year of Elizabeth can talk of “Charles his wane”
in translating Ovid, but Milton's fields are "irriguous,"
and worse, and much more notably displeasing, his
clause structure is a matter of "quem's," "cui's," and
"quomodo's.”
Another point in defence of Golding: his constant use
of "did go," "did say,” etc., is not fustian and man-
nerism; it was contemporary speech, though in a present-
day poet it is impotent affectation and definite lack of
technique. I am not saying “Golding is a greater poet
than Milton”; these quantitative comparisons are in
odium. Milton is the most unpleasant of English poets,-
and he has certain definite and analysable defects. His
unpleasantness is a matter of personal taste. His faults
of language are subject to argument just as are the faults
of any other poet's language. His popularity has been
largely due to his bigotry, but there is no reason why
that popular quality should be for ever a shield against
criticism. His real place is nearer to Drummond of
Hawthorneden than to “Shakespear” and “Dante”
whereto the stupidity of our forbears tried to exalt
him.
His short poems are his defenders' best stronghold,
and it will take some effort to show that they are
better than Drummond's Phoebus Arise. In all this I
am not insisting on “Charles his wane” as the sole mode
of translation. I point out that Golding was endeavour-
ing to convey the sense of the original to his readers.
He names the thing of his original author, by the name
most germane, familiar, homely, to his hearers. He
is intent on conveying a meaning, and not on bemusing
204
DIVISIONS
them with a rumble. And I hold that the real poet is
sufficiently absorbed in his content to care more for the
content than the rumble; and also that Chaucer and
Golding are more like to find the mot juste (whether
or no they held any theories there-anent) than were for
some centuries their successors, saving the author of
“Hamlet."
Beside the fustian tradition, the tradition of cliché
phrases, copies on greek and latin clause structure
and phrase structure, two causes have removed the
classics from us. On one hand we have ceased to read
greek with the aid of latin cribs, and latin is the only
language into which any great amount of greek can be
in a lively fashion set over; secondly, there is no dis-
crimination in classical studies. The student is told
that all the classics are excellent and that it is a crime
to think about what he reads. There is no use pretend-
ing that these literatures are read as literature. An
apostolic succession of school teachers has become the
medium of distribution.
The critical faculty is discouraged, the poets are made
an exercise, a means of teaching the language. Even
in this there is a great deal of buncombe. It is much
better that a man should use a crib, and know the con-
tent of his authors than that he should be able to recite
all the rules in Allen and Greenough's grammar. Even
the teaching by rules is largely a hoax. The latin had
certain case feelings. For the genitive he felt source,
for the dative indirect action upon, for the accusative
direct action upon, for the ablative all other periphoric
sensation, i.e. it is less definitely or directly the source
than the genitive, it is contributory circumstance; lump
the locative with it, and one might call it the “circum-
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 205
stantial.” Where it and the dative have the same form,
we may conclude that there was simply a general indi-
rect case.
The humanizing influence of the classics depends more
on a wide knowledge, a reading knowledge, than on an
ability to write exercises in latin; it is ridiculous to
pretend that a reading knowledge need imply more
than a general intelligence of the minutiæ of grammar.
I am not assuming the position of those who objected
to Erasmus's "tittle-tattles,” but there is a sane order
of importance.
When the classics were a new beauty and ecstasy
people cared a damn sight more about the meaning of
the authors, and a damn sight less about their grammar
and philology.
We await, vei jauzen lo jorn, the time when the student
will be encouraged to say which poems bore him to
tears, and which he thinks rubbish, and whether there
is any beauty in “Maecenas sprung from a line of kings."
It is bad enough that so much of the finest poetry in the
world should be distributed almost wholly through class-
rooms, but if the first question to be asked were: “Gen-
tlemen, are these verses worth reading ?” instead of
"What is the mood of 'manet'?” if, in short, the pro-
fessor were put on his mettle to find poems worth read-
ing instead of given the facilem discensum, the shoot,
the supine shoot, of grammatical discussion, he might
more dig out the vital spots in his authors, and meet
from his class a less persistent undercurrent of convic-
tion that all latin authors are a trial.
The uncritical scholarly attitude has so spread, that
hardly a living man can tell you at what points the
latin authors surpass the greek, yet the comparison of
their differences is full of all fascinations. Because
206
DIVISIONS
Homer is better than Virgil, and Aeschylus, presumably,
than Seneca, there has spread a superstition that the
mere fact of a text being in greek makes it of necessity
better than a text written in latin—which is buncombe.
Ovid indubitably added and invented much which
is not in greek, and the greeks might be hard put to
find a better poet among themselves than is their dis-
ciple Catullus. Is not Sappho, in comparison, a little,
just a little Swinburnian?
I do not state this as dogma, but one should be open
to such speculation.
I know that all classic authors have been authorita-
tively edited and printed . by Teubner, and their word-
ing ultimately settled at Leipzig, but all questions con-
cerning the classics” are not definitely settled, cold-
storaged, and shelved.
I may have been an ensanguined fool to spend so
much time on mediæval literature, or the time so
“wasted” may help me to read Ovid with greater in-
sight. I may have been right or wrong to read renais-
sance latinists, instead of following the professorial
caution that “after all if one confined oneself to the
accepted authors one was sure of reading good stuff,
whereas there was a risk in hunting about among the
I am much more grateful for the five minutes during
which a certain lecturer emphasized young Icarus be-
gorming himself with Daedalus' wax than for all the
dead hours he spent in trying to make me a scholar.
modo quas vaga moverat aura,
Captabat plumas : flavam modo pollice ceram
Moliabat; lususque suo mirabile patris
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 207
“Getting in both of their ways.” My plagiarism was
from the life and not from Ovid, the difference is per-
haps unimportant.
Yet if after sixteen years a professor's words came
back to one, it is perhaps important that the classics
should be humanly, rather than philologically taught,
even in class-rooms. A barbaric age given over to edu-
cation agitates for their exclusion and desuetude. Edu-
cation is an onanism of the soul. Philology will be
ascribed to De la Sade.
And there is perhaps more hope for the débutante who
drawls in the last fashionable and outwearied die-away
cadence “Ayh! Trois Contes ? THAT'S a good buk,"
than for the connoisseur stuffed full of catalogues; able
to date any author and enumerate all the ranges of “in-
fluences."
IV
Meditation after further reading during which I
found nothing of interest:
Beauty is a brief gasp between one cliché and another.
In this case, between the "fourteeners” and the rhymed
couplet of "pentameter."
“C. M.” was a poet, likewise Golding, both facts al-
ready known to all “students of the period." Turbey-
ville or Turbeuile is not a discovery.
Horáce would seem to confer no boons upon his trans-
lators. With the exception of Chapman, the early trans-
lators of Homer seem less happy than the translators of
208
DIVISIONS
Ovid. Horace's Satires are, we believe, the basis of
much eighteenth century satire. The earliest English
version of any Horace that I have found is headed :
"A Medicinable Morall, that is 2 Bookes of Horace
his Satyres, Englyshed according to the prescription of
saint Hierome (Episto. ad Ruffin.) Quod malum est,
muta, Quod bonum est, prode. The Wailyngs of the
Prophet Hieremiah done into Englyshe verse also Epi-
grammes, by T. Drant. Perused and allowed according
to the Queen Madiesties Iniunctions, London 1566."
The mutation of the satires is not inviting. The Ars
Poetica opens as follows:
A Paynter if he shoulde adioyne
A long maires necke and overspread
the corpse in everye steade
the whole proportioned so
Without all good congruitye
the nether parts do goe
Into a fishe, on hye a freshe
Welfavord womans face:
My frinds let in to see this sighte
could you not laugh a pace?
By 1625 the Miltonic cliché is already formed. It is
perhaps not particularly Milton's. Sir T. Hawkins is
greeted by John Beaumont, but I do not find his transla-
tions very readable. I turn back, indeed, gratefully to
Corinna (Amores I. 5.) in a long loose gown
Her white neck hid with trells hanging downe
Resembling fair Semiramis going to bed
Or Layis of a thousand lovers spread.
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 209
“C. M.” gets quality even in the hackneyed topic:
What age of Varroes name shall not be told,
And Iasons Argos, and the fleece of golde,
Lofty Lucresius shall live that houre
That Nature shall dissolve this earthly bowre.
Eneas warre, and Titerius shall be read
While Rome of all the conquering world is head.
Till Cupid's bow and fierie shafts be broken,
Thy verses, sweete Tibullus, shal be spoken.
As late as 1633 Saltonstall keeps some trace of good
cadence, though it is manifestly departing.
Now Zephyrus warmes the ayre, the yeare is runne
And the long seeming winter now is done,
The Ramme which bore faire Hellen once away,
Hath made the darke night equall to the day.
Now boyes and girles do sweet Violets get,
Which in the country often grow unset,
Faire coloured flowers in the Meddowes spring,
And now the Birds their untaught notes do sing.
(Tristia XII.)
Turberuile in the 1567 edition of the Heroides does
not confine himself to one measure, nor to rhyme. I
think I have seen a mis-statement about the date of the
earliest blank verse in English. These eight lines should
prevent its being set too late. The movement is, to me
at least, of interest, apart from any question of scholastic
preciosity.
Aemonian Laodamia sendeth health,
And greeting to Protesilaus hir spouse:
And wisheth it, where he soiourns, to stay.
210
DIVISIONS
Report hath spread in Aulide that you lie
In rode, by meane of fierce and froward gale.
Ah when thou me forsookste, where was the winde,
Then broiling seas thine Oares should have with-
stood,
- That was a fitting time for wrathful waves.
ч,
His Phaedra has the “fourteener” measure.
“My pleasure is to haughtie hills
and bushie brakes to hie:
To pitch my hay, or with my Houndes
to rayse a lustie crie.”
But there is an infinite monotony of fourteeners, and
then there is an infinite plethora of rhymed ten syllable
couplets. And they are all “exactly alike.” Whether
they translate Horace or Homer they are all exactly
alike. Beauty is a gasp between clichés.
For every "great age” a few poets have written a
few beautiful lines, or found a few exquisite melodies,
and ten thousand people have copied them, until each
strand of music is planed down to a dulness. The Sap-
phic stanza appears an exception, and yet, .....
Greece and Alexandria may have been embedded knee-
deep in bad Sapphics, and it is easy to turn it to ridi-
cule, comical, thumping.
There is a certain resonance in “Certain Bokes of
Virgiles Aenaeis by Henry Earl of Surrey” (apud Ri-
cardum Tottel 1557).
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 211
They whisted all, with fixed face attent
When prince Aeneas from the royal seat
Thus gan to speak, 0 Queene, it is thy will,
I should renew a woe can not be told:
How that the Grekes did spoile and overthrow
The Phrygian wealth, and wailful realm of Troy,
Those ruthful things that I myself beheld,
And whereof no small part fel to my share,
Which to expresse, who could refraine from teres,
What Myrmidon, or yet what Dolopes ?
What stern Ulysses waged soldiar?
And loe moist night now from the welkin falles
And sterres declining counsel us to rest.
Still there is hardly enough here to persuade one to re-
read or to read The Aeneid. Besides it is “so Mil-
tonic.” Tho. Phaer, Docteur of Phisike in 1562, pub-
lished a version in older mould, whereof this tenebrous
sample:
Even in ye porche, and first in Limbo iawes done
wailings dwell
And Cares on couches lyen, and Settled Mindes on
vengeans fell
Diseases leane and pale and combrous Age of dompishe
yeres
As Scillas and Centaurus, man before and beast behind
In every doore they stampe, and Lyons sad with gnash-
ing sound
And Bugges with hundryd heades as Briary, and
armid round
Chimera fightes with flames and gastly Gorgon grim
to see,
Eneas sodenly for feare his glistering sword out toke.
212
DIVISIONS
He uses inner rhyme, and alliteration apparently with-
out any design, merely because they happen. Such
lines as “For as at sterne I stood, and steering strongly
held my helme" do not compare favorably with the
relatively free Saxon fragments. But when we come
to “The XIII BUKES of ENEADOS of the famose
Poete Virgill, translatet out of Latyne verses into Scot-
tish metir by the Reverend Father in God Mayster Gawin
Douglas Bishop of Dunkel, unkil to the Erle of Angus,
every book having hys particular prologe (printed in
1553 1)” we have to deal with a highly different mat-
ter.
The battellis and the man I will discrive
Fra Troyis boundis, first that fugitive
By fate to Italie, came coist lauyne
Ouer land and se, cachit with meikill pyne
By force of goddis above, fra every stede
Of cruel Juno, throw auld remembrit feid
Grete payne in battelles, sufferit he also
Or he his goddis, brocht in latio
And belt the ciete, fra quham of nobil fame
The latyne peopil, taken has thare name
His commas are not punctuation, but indicate his cae-
surae. Approaching the passage concerning the “hun-
dryd headed Bugges” of Dr. Phaer, Douglas translates
as follows:
Fra thine strekis the way profound anone
Depe unto hellis flude, of Acherone
1 Written about 1512, i.e. early in the reign of Henry VIII,
and by no means "Elizabethan,"
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 213
With holebisme, and hidduous swelth unrude
Drumly of mude, and skaldand as it war wode.
Thir riueris and thir watteris kepit war
Be ane Charone, ane grisly ferrear
Terribyl of schape, and sluggard of array
Apoun his chin feill, Chanos haris gray.
I am inclined to think that he gets more poetry out of
Virgil than any other translator. At least he gives one
a clue to Dante's respect for the Mantuan. In the first
book Aeneas with the "traist Achates” is walking by
the sea-bord:
Amid the wod, his mother met them tuay
Semand and made, in vissage and array
With wappinnis, like the Virginis of spartha
Or the stowt wensche, of trace Harpalita
Haistand the hors, her fadder to reskewe
Spediar than hebroun, the swift flude did persew.
For Venus efter the gys, and maner thare
Ane active bow, apoun her schulder bare
As sche had bene, ane wilde huntreis
With wind waffing, hir haris lowsit of trace.
This is not spoiled by one's memory of Chaucer's allu-
sion.
“Goyng in a queynt array
“As she hadde ben an hunteresse,
“With wynd blowynge upon hir tresse;
Douglas continues :
Hir skirt kiltit, till her bare knee
And first of other, unto them, thus speike sche.
214
DIVISIONS
From Aeneas answer, these lines:
Quhidder thou be diane, phebus sister brycht
Or than sum goddis, of thyr Nymphyis kynd
Maistres of woddis beis to, us happy and kynd
Relief our lang travell, quhat ever thow be.
And after her prophecy:
Vera incessu patuit dea.
Thus sayd sche, and turned incontinent
Hir nek schane, like unto the Rose in may
Hir heuinly haris, glitterand bricht and gay
Kest from her forehead, ane smell glorious and sueit
Hir habit fell doune, covering to her feit
And in hir passage, ane verray god did her kyith
And fra that he knew, his moder allwith.
But Venus with ane sop, of myst baith tway
And with ane dirk cloud closit round about
That na man sul tham se ............
Hir self op lyft, to paphum past swyth
To vesy her resting place, joly and blyth
There is hir tempill, in Cipirland
Quharin thare dois ane hundreth altaris stand
Hait burning full of saba, sence all houris
Ane smelland swete, with fresch garland and flouris.
Gawine Douglas was a great poet, and Golding has
never had due praise since his own contemporaries be-
NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 215
stowed it upon him. Caxton's Virgil (1490) is a prose
reduction of a French version. The eclogue beginning
"Tityrus, happilie thou lyste, tumbling under a beech
tree”
is too familiar to quote here.
The celebrated distych:
All trauellers doo gladlie report great praise of Vlysses
For that he knewe manie mens manners, and saw many
citties
is quoted by Wm. Webbe in 1586, as a perfect example
of English quantity, and ascribed to “Master Watson,
fellow of S. John's," forty years earlier. If Master
Watson continued his Odyssey there is alas no further
trace of it.
Conclusions after this reading:
1. The quality of translations declined in measure as
the translators ceased to be absorbed in the subject mat-
ter of their original. They ended in the “Miltonian”
cliché; in the stock and stilted phraseology of the usual
English verse as it has come down to us.
2. This “Miltonian” cliché is much less Milton's in-
vention than is usually supposed.
3. His visualization is probably better than I had
thought. The credit due him for developing the reson-
ance of the English blank verse paragraph is probably
much less than most other people have until now sup-
posed.
4. Gawine Douglas his works, should be made acces-
sible by reprinting
216
DIVISIONS
5. This will probably be done by some dull dog, who
will thereby receive cash and great scholastic distinc-
tion. I horrever shall die in the gutter because I have
not observed that commandment which says "Thou shalt
respect the imbecilities of thine elders in order that thy
belly shall be made fat from the jobs which lie in their
charge."
6. That editors, publishers, and universities loathe the
inquisitive spirit.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
THE SERIOUS ARTIST 1
It is curious that one should be asked to rewrite Sid-
ney's “Defence of Poesy” in the year of grace 1913.
During the intervening centuries, and before them, other
centres of civilisation had decided that good art was a
blessing and that bad art was criminal, and they had
spent some time and thought in trying to find means
whereby to distinguish the true art from the sham. But
in England now, in the age of Gosse as in the age of
Gossen we are asked if the arts are moral. We are asked
to define the relation of the arts to economics, we are
asked what position the arts are to hold in the ideal
republic. And it is obviously the opinion of many peo-
ple less objectionable than the Sydney Webbs that the
arts had better not exist at all.
I take no great pleasure in writing prose about
æsthetic. I think one work of art is worth forty prefaces
and as many apologiæ. Nevertheless I have been ques-
tioned earnestly and by a person certainly of good will.
It is as if one said to me: what is the use of open spaces
in this city, what is the use of rose-trees and why do you
wish to plant trees and lay out parks and gardens ?
There are some who do not take delight in these things.
1 From "The Egoist," a. d. 1913.
219
220
APPENDIX I
The rose springs fairest from some buried Cæsar's throat
and the dogwood with its flower of four petals (our dog-
wood, not the tree you call by that name) is grown from
the heart of Aucassin, or perhaps this is only fancy.
Let us pursue the matter in ethic.
It is obvious that ethics are based on the nature of
man, just as it is obvious that civics are based upon
the nature of men when living together in groups.
It is obvious that the good of the greatest number
cannot be attained until we know in some sort of what
that good must consist. In other words we must know
what sort of an animal man is, before we can contrive
his maximum happiness, or before we can decide what
percentage of that happiness he can have without caus-
ing too great a percentage of unhappiness to those about
him.
The arts, literature, poesy, are a science, just as chem-
istry is a science. Their subject is man, mankind and
the individual. The subject of chemistry is matter con-
sidered as to its composition.
The arts give us a great percentage of the lasting and
unassailable data regarding the nature of man, of imma-
terial man, of man considered as a thinking and sentient
creature. They begin where the science of medicine
leaves off or rather they overlap that science. The bor-
ders of the two arts overcross.
From medicine we learn that man thrives best when
duly washed, aired and sunned. From the arts we learn
that man is whimsical, that one man differs from another.
That men differ among themselves as leaves upon trees
differ. That they do not resemble each other as do but-
tons cut by machine.
From the arts also we learn in what ways man re-
sembles and in what way he differs from certain other
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
221
animals. We learn that certain men are often more akin
to certain especial animals than they are to other men
of different composition. We learn that all men do not
desire the same things and that it would therefore be
inequitable to give to all men two acres and a cow.
It would be manifestly inequitable to treat the ostrich
and the polar bear in the same fashion, granted that it
is not unjust to have them pent up where you can treat
them at all.
An ethic based on a belief that men are different
from what they are is manifestly stupid. It is stupid
to apply such an ethic as it is to apply laws and morals
designed for a nomadic tribe, or for a tribe in the state
of barbarism, to a people crowded into the slums of a
modern metropolis. Thus in the tribe it is well to be-
get children, for the more strong male children you have
in the tribe the less likely you are to be bashed on the
head by males of the neighbouring tribes, and the more
female children the more rapidly the tribe will increase.
Conversely it is a crime rather worse than murder to
beget children in a slum, to beget children for whom no
fitting provision is made, either as touching their phys-
ical or economic wellbeing. The increase not only afflicts
the child born but the increasing number of the poor
keeps down the wage. On this count the bishop of
London, as an encourager of this sort of increase, is a
criminal of a type rather lower and rather more de-
testable than the souteneur.
I cite this as one example of inequity persisting be-
cause of a continued refusal to consider a code devised
for one state of society, in its (the code’s) relation to
a different state of society. It is as if, in physics or
engineering, we refused to consider a force designed to
affect one mass, in its relation (i.e. the force's) to an-
222
APPENDIX I
other mass wholly differing, or in some notable way dif-
fering, from the first mass.
As inequities can exist because of refusals to con-
sider the actualities of a law in relation to a social
condition, so can inequities exist through refusal to con-
sider the actualities of the composition of the masses, or
of the individuals to which they are applied.
If all men desired above everything else two acres
and a cow, obviously the perfect state would be that
state which gave to each man two acres and a cow.
If any science save the arts were able more pre-
cisely to determine what the individual does actually
desire, then that science would be of more use in pro-
viding the data for ethics.
- In like manner, if any sciences save medicine and
chemistry were more able to determine what things were
compatible with physical wellbeing, then those sciences
would be of more value for providing the data of hy.
giene.
This brings us to the immorality of bad art. Bad
art is inaccurate art. It is art that makes false reports.
If a scientist falsifies a report either deliberately or
through negligence we consider him as either a crim-
inal or a bad scientist according to the enormity of his
offence, and he is punished or despised accordingly.
If he falsifies the reports of a maternity hospital in
order to retain his position and get profit and advance-
ment from the city board, he may escape detection. If
he declines to make such falsification he may lose finan-
cial rewards, and in either case his baseness or his pluck
may pass unknown and unnoticed save by a very few
people. Nevertheless one does not have to argue his
case. The layman knows soon enough on hearing it
whether the physician is to be blamed or praised.
e
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
223
If an artist falsifies his report as to the nature of
man, as to his own nature, as to the nature of his ideal
of the perfect, as to the nature of his ideal of this, that
or the other, of god, if god exist, of the life force, of
the nature of good and evil, if good and evil exist, of the
force with which he believes or disbelieves this, that or
the other, of the degree in which he suffers or is made
glad; if the artist falsifies his reports on these matters
or on any other matter in order that he may conform
to the taste of his time, to the proprieties of a sovereign,
to the conveniences of a preconceived code of ethics, then
that artist lies. If he lies out of deliberate will to lie,
if he lies out of carelessness, out of laziness, out of cow-
ardice, out of any sort of negligence whatsoever, he
nevertheless lies and he should be punished or despised
in proportion to the seriousness of his offence. His
offence is of the same nature as the physician's and ac-
cording to his position and the nature of his lie he is
responsible for future oppressions and for future mis-
conceptions. Albeit his lies are known to only a few,
or his truth-telling to only a few. Albeit he may pass
without censure for one and without praise for the
other. Albeit he can only be punished on the plane of
his crime and by nothing save the contempt of those who
know of his crime. Perhaps it is caddishness rather
than crime. However there is perhaps nothing worse
for a man than to know that he is a cur and to know
that someone else, if only one person, knows it.
We distinguish very clearly between the physician
who is doing his best for a patient, who is using drugs
in which he believes, or who is in a wilderness, let us
say, where the patient can get no other medical aid. We
distinguish, I say, very clearly between the failure of
such a physician, and the act of that physician, who
224
APPENDIX I
ignorant of the patient's disease, being in reach of more
skilful physicians, deliberately denies an ignorance of
which he is quite conscious, refuses to consult other
physicians, tries to prevent the patient's having access
to more skilful physicians, or deliberately tortures the
patient for his own ends.
One does not need to read black print to learn this
ethical fact about physicians. Yet it takes a deal of
talking to convince a layman that bad art is “im-
moral.” And that good art however "immoral", it
is, is wholly a thing of virtue. Purely and simply that
good art can not be immoral. By good art I mean art
that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most pre-
cise. You can be wholly precise in representing a
vagueness. You can be wholly a liar in pretending that
the particular vagueness was precise in its outline. If
you cannot understand this with regard to poetry, con-
sider the matter in terms of painting.
If you have forgotten my statement that the arts bear
witness and define for us the inner nature and condi-
tions of man, consider the Victory of Samothrace and
the Taj of Agra. The man who carved the one and the
man who designed the other may either or both of them
have looked like an ape, or like two apes respectively.
They may have looked like other apelike or swinelike
men.' We have the Victory and the Taj to witness
that there was something within them differing from
the contents of apes and of the other swinelike men.
Thus we learn that humanity is a species or genus of
animals capable of a variation that will produce the de-
sire for a Taj or a Victory, and moreover capable of
effecting that Taj or Victory in stone. We know from
other testimony of the arts and from ourselves that the
desire often overshoots the power of efficient presenta-
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
225
tion; we therefore conclude that other members of the
race may have desired to effect a Taj or a Victory. We
even suppose that men have desired to effect more beau-
tiful things although few of us are capable of forming
any precise mental image of things, in their particular
way, more beautiful than this statue or this building.
So difficult is this that no one has yet been able to
effect a restoration for the missing head of the Victory.
At least no one has done so in stone, so far as I know.
Doubtless many people have stood opposite the statue
and made such heads in their imagination.
As there are in medicine the art of diagnosis and the
art of cure, so in the arts, so in the particular arts of
poetry and of literature, there is the art of diagnosis
and there is the art of cure. They call one the cult of
ugliness and the other the cult of beauty.
The cult of beauty is the hygiene, it is sun, air and
the sea and the rain and the lake bathing. The cult of
ugliness, Villon, Baudelaire, Corbière, Beardsley are
diagnosis. Flaubert is diagnosis. Satire, if we are to
ride this metaphor to staggers, satire is surgery, inser-
tions and amputations.
Beauty in art reminds one what is worth while. I
am not now speaking of shams. I mean beauty, not
slither, not sentimentalising about beauty, not telling
people that beauty is the proper and respectable thing.
I mean beauty. You don't argue about an April wind,
you feel bucked up when you meet it. You feel bucked
up when you come on a swift moving thought in Plato
or on a fine line in a statue.
Even this pother about gods reminds one that some-
thing is worth while. Satire reminds one that certain
things are not worth while. It draws one to consider
time wasted.
226
APPENDIX I
The cult of beauty and the delineation of ugliness are
not in mutual opposition.
I have said that the arts give us our best data for
determining what sort of creature man is. As our
treatment of man must be determined by our knowl-
edge or conception of what man is, the arts provide data
for ethics.
These data are sound and the data of generalising
psychologists and social theoricians are usually unsound,
for the serious artist is scientific and the theorist is
usually empiric in the mediæval fashion. That is to
say a good biologist will make a reasonable number of
observations of any given phenomenon before he draws
a conclusion, thus we read such phrases as “over 1100
cultures from the secretions of the respiratory tracts
of over 500 patients and 30 nurses and attendants."
The results of each observation must be precise and no
single observation must in itself be taken as determining
a general law, although, after experiment, certain ob-
servations may be held as typical or normal. The seri-
ous artist is scientific in that he presents the image of
his desire, of his hate, of his indifference as precisely
that, as precisely the image of his own desire, hate or
indifference. The more precise his record the more last-
ing and unassailable his work of art.
The theorist, and we see this constantly illustrated
by the English writers on sex, the theorist constantly
proceeds as if his own case, his own limits and predi-
lections were the typical case, or even as if it were the
universal. He is constantly urging someone else to be-
have as he, the theorist, would like to behave. Now art
never asks anybody to do anything, or to think any-
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
227
thing, or to be anything. It exists as the trees exist,
you can admire, you can sit in the shade, you can pick
bananas, you can cut firewood, you can do as you jolly
well please.
Also you are a fool to seek the kind of art you don't
like. You are a fool to read classics because you are
told to and not because you like them. You are a fool
to aspire to good taste if you haven't naturally got it.
If there is one place where it is idiotic to sham that place
is before a work of art. Also you are a fool not to have
an open mind, not to be eager to enjoy something you
might enjoy but don't know how to. But it is not the
artist's place to ask you to learn, or to defend his par-
ticular works of art, or to insist on your reading his
books. Any artist who wants your particular admira-
tion is, by just so much, the less artist.
The desire to stand on the stage, the desire of plaudits
has nothing to do with serious art. The serious artist
may like to stand on the stage, he may, apart from his
art, be any kind of imbecile you like, but the two things
are not connected, at least they are not concentric. Lots
of people who don't even pretend to be artists have the
same desire to be slobbered over, by people with less
brains than they have.
The serious artist is usually, or is often as far from
the ægrum vulgus as is the serious scientist. Nobody
has heard of the abstract mathematicians who worked
out the determinants that Marconi made use of in his
computations for the wireless telegraph. The public,
the public so dear to the journalistic heart, is far more
concerned with the shareholders in the Marconi com-
pany.
The permanent property, the property given to the
race at large is precisely these data of the serious sci-
228
APPENDIX I
entist and of the serious artist; of the scientist as touch-
ing the relations of abstract numbers, of molecular en-
ergy, of the composition of matter, etc.; of the serious
artist, as touching the nature of man, of individuals.
Men have ceased trying to conquer the world, and
to acquire universal knowledge. Men still try to pro-
mote the ideal state. No perfect state will be founded
on the theory, or on the working hypothesis that all men
are alike. No science save the arts will give us the
requisite data for learning in what ways men differ.
The very fact that many men hate the arts is of
value, for we are enabled by finding out what part of
the arts they hate, to learn something of their nature.
Usually when men say they hate the arts we find that
they merely detest quackery and bad artists.
In the case of a man's hating one art and not the
others we may learn that he is of defective hearing
or of defective intelligence. Thus an intelligent man
may hate music or a good musician may detest very
excellent authors.
And all these things are very obvious.
Among thinking and sentient people the bad artist
is contemned as we would contemn a negligent physi-
cian or a sloppy, inaccurate scientist, and the serious
artist is left in peace, or even supported and encour-
aged. In the fog and the outer darkness no measures
are taken to distinguish between the serious and the
unserious artist. The unserious artist being the com-
moner brand and greatly outnumbering the serious va-
riety, and it being to the temporary and apparent ad-
vantage of the false artist to gain the rewards proper
to the serious artist, it is natural that the unserious
1 Blind optimism, a. d. 1913.
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
229
artist should do all in his power to obfuscate the lines
of demarcation.
Whenever one attempts to demonstrate the difference
between serious and unserious work, one is told that
“it is merely a technical discussion.” It has rested at
that-in England it has rested at that for more than
three hundred years. The people would rather have
patent medicines than scientific treatment. They will
occasionally be told that art as art is not a violation of
God's most holy laws. They will not have a specialist's
opinion as to what art is good. They will not consider
the “problem of style.” They want “The value of art
to life” and “Fundamental issues.”
As touching fundamental issues: The arts give us
our data of psychology, of man as to his interiors, as
to the ratio of his thought to his emotions, etc., etc., etc.
The touchstone of an art is its precision. This pre-
cision is of various and complicated sorts and only the
specialist can determine whether certain works of art
possess certain sorts of precision. I don't mean to say
that any intelligent person cannot have more or less
sound judgment as to whether a certain work of art is
good or not. An intelligent person can usually tell
whether or not a person is in good health. It is none
the less true that it takes a skilful physician to make
certain diagnoses or to discern the lurking disease be-
neath the appearance of vigour.
It is no more possible to give in a few pages full
instructions for knowing a masterpiece than it would
be to give full instructions for all medical diagnosis.
230
APPENDIX I
EMOTION AND POESY
Obviously, it is not easy to be a great poet. If it
were, many more people would have done so. At no
period in history has the world been free of people who
have mildly desired to be great poets and not a few
have endeavoured conscientiously to be such.
I am aware that adjectives of magnitude are held
to savour of barbarism. Still there is no shame in de-
siring to give great gifts and an enlightened criticism
does not draw ignominious comparisons betweeen Villon
and Dante. The so-called major poets have most of
them given their own gift, but the peculiar term “ma-
jor” is rather a gift to them from Chronos. I mean that
they have been born upon the stroke of their hour and
that it has been given them to heap together and ar-
range and harmonize the results of many men's labour.
This very faculty for amalgamation is a part of their
genius and it is, in a way, a sort of modesty, a sort of
unselfishness. They have not wished for property.
The men from whom Dante borrowed are remem-
bered as much for the fact that he did borrow as for
their own compositions. At the same time he gave of
his own, and no mere compiler and classifier of other
men's discoveries is given the name of "major poet”
for more than a season.
If Dante had not done a deal more than borrow
rhymes from Arnaut Daniel and theology from Aquinas
he would not be published by Dent in the year of grace
1913.
We might come to believe that the thing that mat-
ters in art is a sort of energy, something more or less
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
231
.
like electricity or radio-activity, a force transfusing,
welding, and unifying. A force rather like water when
it spurts up through very bright sand and sets it in swift
motion. You may make what image you like.
I do not know that there is much use in composing
an answer to the often asked question: What is the
difference between poetry and prose ?
I believe that poetry is the more highly energized.
But these things are relative. Just as we say that a
certain temperature is hot and another cold. In the
same way we say that a certain prose passage "is
poetry” meaning to praise it, and that a certain passage
of verse is “only prose” meaning dispraise. And at
the same time “Poetry!!!" is used as a synonym for
"Bosh! Rott!! Rubbish !!!” The thing that counts is
“Good Writing.”
And “Good writing” is perfect control. And it is
quite easy to control a thing that has in it no energy-
provided that it be not too heavy and that you do not
wish to make it move.
And, as all the words that one would use in writing
about these things are the vague words of daily speech,
it is nearly impossible to write with scientific preciseness
about "prose and verse” unless one writes a complete
treatise on the art of writing,” defining each word as
one would define the terms in a treatise on chemistry.
And on this account all essays about "poetry” are
usually not only dull but inaccurate and wholly useless.
And on like account if you ask a good painter to tell
you what he is trying to do to a canvas he will very
probably wave his hands helplessly and murmur that
“He- eh-eh-he can't talk about it.” And that if
you “see anything at all, he is quite-eh-more or less
eh-satisfied.”
232
APPENDIX I
Nevertheless it has been held for a shameful thing
that a man should not be able to give a reason for his
acts and words. And if one does not care about being
taken for a mystificateur one may as well try to give
approximate answers to questions asked in good faith.
It might be better to do the thing thoroughly in a
properly accurate treatise, but one has not always two
or three spare years at one's disposal, and one is dealing
with very subtle and complicated matter, and even so,
the very algebra of logic is itself open to debate.
Roughly then, Good writing is writing that is per-
fectly controlled, the writer says just what he means.
He says it with complete clarity and simplicity. He
uses the smallest possible number of words. I do not
mean that he skimps paper, or that he screws about like
Tacitus to get his thought crowded into the least pos-
sible space. But, granting that two sentences are at
times easier to understand than one sentence containing
the double meaning, the author tries to communicate
with the reader with the greatest possible despatch, save
where for any one of forty reasons he does not wish to
do so.
Also there are various kinds of clarity. There is
the clarity of the request: Send me four pounds of
ten-penny nails. And there is the syntactical simplicity
of the request : Buy me the kind of Rembrandt I like.
This last is an utter cryptogram. It presupposes a more
complex and intimate understanding of the speaker than
most of us ever acquire of anyone. It has as many
meanings, almost, as there are persons who might speak
it. To a stranger it conveys nothing at all.
It is the almost constant labour of the prose artist
to translate this latter kind of clarity into the former;
to say "Send me the kind of Rembrandt I like” in the
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
233
terms of "Send me four pounds of ten-penny
nails.”
The whole thing is an evolution. In the beginning
simple words were enough: Food; water; fire. Both
prose and poetry are but an extension of language. »
Man desires to communicate with his fellows. He de-
sires an ever increasingly complicated communication."
Gesture serves up to a point. Symbols may serye.
When you desire something not present to the eye or
when you desire to communicate ideas, you must have
recourse to speech. Gradually you wish to communi-
cate something less bare and ambiguous than ideas.
You wish to communicate an idea and its modifications,
an idea and a crowd of its effects, atmospheres, contra-
dictions. You wish to question whether a certain form-
ula works in every case, or in what per cent. of cases,
etc., etc., etc., you get the Henry James novel.
You wish to communicate an idea and its concomitant
emotions, or an emotion and its concomitant ideas, or
a sensation and its derivative emotions, or an impres-
sion that is emotive, etc., etc., etc. You begin with the
yeowl and the bark, and you develop into the dance and
into music, and into music with words, and finally into
words with music, and finally into words with a vague
adumbration of music, words suggestive of music, words
measured, or words in a rhythm that preserves some
accurate trait of the emotive impression, or of the sheer
character of the fostering or parental emotion.
When this rhythm, or when the vowel and consonantal
melody or sequence seems truly to bear the trace of emo-
tion which the poem (for we have come at last to the
poem) is intended to communicate, we say that this part
of the work is good. And “this part of the work” is
by now "technique." That “dry, dull, pedantic” tech-
234
APPENDIX I
nique, that all bad artists rail against. It is only a part
of technique, it is rhythm, cadence, and the arrange-
ment of sounds.
Also the “prose,” the words and their sense must be
such as fit the emotion. Or, from the other side, ideas,
or fragments of ideas, the emotion and concomitant emo-
tions of this “Intellectual and Emotional Complex" (for
we have come to the intellectual and emotional com-
plex) must be in harmony, they must form an organism,
they must be an oak sprung from one acorn.
When you have words of a lament set to the rhythm
and tempo of "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town
to-night” you have either an intentional burlesque or
you have rotten art. Shelley's “Sensitive Plant” is one
of the rottenest poems ever written, at least one of the
worst ascribable to a recognized author. It jiggles to
the same tune as “A little peach in the orchard grew.”
Yet Shelley recovered and wrote the fifth act of the
Cenci.
It is occasionally suggested by the wise that poets
should acquire the graces of prose. That is an exten-
sion of what has been said above anent control. Prose
does not need emotion. It may, but it need not, attempt
to portray emotion.
Poetry is a centaur. The thinking word-arranging,
clarifying faculty must move and leap with the ener-
gizing, sentient, musical faculties. It is precisely the
difficulty of this amphibious existence that keeps down
the census record of good poets. The accomplished
prose author will tell you that he “can only write poetry
when he has a belly-ache” and thence he will argue that
poetry just isn't an art.
THE SERIOUS ARTIST :
235
I dare say there are very good marksmen who just
can't shoot from a horse.
Likewise if a good marksman only mounted a few
times he might never acquire any proficiency in shoot-
ing from the saddle. Or leaving metaphor, I suppose
that what, in the long run, makes the poet is a sort of
persistence of the emotional nature, and, joined with
this, a peculiar sort of control.
The saying that “a lyric poet might as well die at
thirty” is simply saying that the emotional nature sel-
dom survives this age, or that it becomes, at any rate,
subjected and incapable of moving the whole man. Of
course this is a generality, and, as such, inaccurate.
It is true that most people poetize more or less, be-
tween the ages of seventeen and twenty-three. The
emotions are new, and, to their possessor, interesting,
and there is not much mind or personality to be moved.
As the man, as his mind, becomes a heavier and heavier
machine, a constantly more complicated structure, it
requires a constantly greater voltage of emotional energy
to set it in harmonious motion. It is certain that the
emotions increase in vigour as a vigorous man matures.
In the case of Guido we have his strongest work at fifty.
Most important poetry has been written by men over
thirty.
“En l'an trentiesme de mon eage,” begins Villon and
considering the nature of his life thirty would have seen
him more spent than forty years of more orderly living.
Aristotle will tell you that "The apt use of metaphor,
being as it is, the swift perception of relations, is the
true hall-mark of genius.” That abundance, that readi-
ness of the figure is indeed one of the surest proofs that
the mind is upborne upon the emotional surge.
By “apt use," I should say it were well to under-
1
236
APPENDIX I
stand, a swiftness, almost a violence, and certainly a
vividness. This does not mean elaboration and compli-
cation.
There is another poignancy which I do not care to
analyze into component parts, if, indeed, such vivisec-
tion is possible. It is not the formal phrasing of Flau-
bert much as such formality is desirable and noble. It
is such phrasing as we find in
“Era gìa l'ora che volge il disio
Ai naviganti”...
Or the opening of the ballata which begins:
“Perch 'io non spero di tornar già mai
Ballatetta, in Toscana.”
Or:
“S'ils n'ayment fors que pour l'argent,
On ne les ayme que pour l'heure.”
Or, in its context:
“The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,”
or, in its so different setting,
“Ne maeg werigmod wyrde widhstondan
ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman:
for dhon domgeorne dreorigne oft
in hyra breostcofan bindath faeste."
These things have in them that passionate sim-
plicity which is beyond the precisions of the intellect.
THE SERIOUS ARTIST
237
Truly they are perfect as fine prose is perfect, but they
are in some way different from the clear statements of
the observer. They are in some way different from that
so masterly ending of the Herodias: “Comme elle était
très lourde ils la portaient alternativement,” or from
the constatation in St. Julian Hospitalier: “Et l'idée
lui vient d'employer son existence au service des autres."
The prose author has shown the triumph of his intel-
lect and one knows that such triumph is not without its
sufferings by the way, but by the verses one is brought
upon the passionate moment. This moment has brought
with it nothing that violates the prose simplicities. The
intellect has not found it but the intellect has been
There is little but folly in seeking the lines of divi-
>
use that line as any other. In the verse something has
come upon the intelligence. In the prose the intelli-
gence has found a subject for its observations. The
poetic fact pre-exists.
In a different way, of course, the subject of the prose
pre-exists. Perhaps the difference is undemonstrable,
perhaps it is not even communicable to any save those
of good will. Yet I think this orderliness in the great-
est poetic passages, this quiet statement that partakes
of the nature of prose and is yet afloat and tossed in the
emotional surges, is perhaps as true a test as that men-
tioned by the Greek theorician.
La poésie, avec ses comparaisons obligées, sa mythologie
que ne croit pas le poète, sa dignité de style à la
Louis XIV., et tout l'attirail de ses ornements ap-
pelés poétiques, est bien au-dessous de la prose dès
238
APPENDIX I
qu'il s'agit de donner une idée claire et précise des
mouvements du coeur; or, dans ce genre, on n'émeut
que par la clarté. —Stendhal.
And that is precisely why one employs oneself in
seeking precisely the poetry that shall be without this
flimmery, this fustian à la Louis XIV., “farcie de
comme." The above critique of Stendhal's does not ap-
ply to the Poema del Cid, nor to the parting of Odysseus
and Calypso. In the writers of the duo-cento and early
tre-cento ire find a precise psychology, embedded in a
nor almost unintelligible jargon, but there nevertheless.
If we cannot get back to these things; if the serious
artist cannot attain this precision in verse, then he must
either take to prose or give up his claim to being a
serious artist.
It is precisely because of this fustian that the Parnas-
siads and epics of the eighteenth century and most of the
present-day works of most of our contemporary versifiers
are pests and abominations.
As the most efficient way to say nothing is to keep
quiet, and as technique consists precisely in doing the
thing that one sets out to do, in the most efficient man-
ner, no man who takes three pages to say nothing can
expect to be seriously considered as a technician. To
take three pages to say nothing is not style, in the seri-
ous sense of that word.
• There are several kinds of honest work. There is the
thing that will out. There is the conscientious formu-
lation, a thing of infinitely greater labour, for the first
is not labour at all, though the efficient doing of it may
There is the “labour foregoing,” the patient testing
of media, the patient experiment which shall avail per-
TIIE SERIOUS ARTIST
239
y
haps the artist himself, but is as likely to avail some
successor.
The first sort of work may be poetry.
The second sort, the conscientious formulation, is more
than likely to be prose.
The third sort of work savours of the laboratory, it
concerns the specialist, and the dilettante, if that word
retains any trace of its finer and original sense. A
dilettante proper is a person who takes delight in the
art, not a person who tries to interpose his inferior pro-
ductions between masterwork and the public.
I reject the term connoisseurship, for "connoisseur-
ship” is so associated in our minds with a desire for
acquisition. The person possessed of connoisseurship is
so apt to want to buy the rare at one price and sell it at
another. I do not believe that a person with this spirit
has ever seen a work of art. Let me restore the foppish
term dilettante, the synonym for folly, to its place near
the word diletto.
The dilettante has no axe to grind for himself. If
he be artist as well, he will be none the less eager to
preserve the best precedent work. He will drag out
“sources” that prove him less original than his public
would have him.
As for Stendhal's stricture, if we can have a poetry
that comes as close as prose, pour donner une idée claire
et précise, let us have it, “E di venire a ciò io studio
quanto posso ... che la mia vita per alquanti anni
duri." . . . And if we cannot attain to such a poetry,
noi altri poeti, for God's sake let us shut up. Let us
“Give up, go down,” etcetera; let us acknowledge that
our art, like the art of dancing in armour, is out of date
and out of fashion. Or let us go to our ignominious
ends knowing that we have strained at the cords, that
240
APPENDIX I
we have spent our strength in trying to pave the way
for a new sort of poetic art-it is not a new sort but an
old sort—but let us know that we have tried to make it
more nearly possible for our successors to recapture this
art. To write a poetry that can be carried as a com-
munication between intelligent men.
To this end io studio quanto posso. I have tried to
establish a clear demarcation. I have been challenged
on my use of the phrase "great art” in an earlier article.
It is about as useless to search for a definition of “great
art” as it is to search for a scientific definition of life.
One knows fairly well what one means. One means
something more or less proportionate to one's experi-
ence. One means something quite different at different
periods of one's life.
It is for some such reason that all criticism should be
professedly personal criticism. In the end the critic
can only say “I like it,” or “I am moved,” or something
of that sort. When he has shown us himself we are
able to understand him.
Thus, in painting, I mean something or other vaguely
associated in my mind with work labelled Durer, and
Rembrandt, and Velasquez, etc., and with the painters
whom I scarcely know, possibly of T’ang and Sung-
though I dare say I've got the wrong labels—and with
some Egyptian designs that should probably be thought
of as sculpture.
And in poetry I mean something or other associ-
ated in my mind with the names of a dozen or more
writers.
On closer analysis I find that I mean something like
"maximum efficiency of expression”; I mean that the
writer has expressed something interesting in such a
THE SERIOUS ARTIST 241
way that one cannot re-say it more effectively. I also
mean something associated with discovery. The artist
must have discovered something—either of life itself or
of the means of expression.
Great art must of necessity be a part of good art. I
attempted to define good art in an earlier chapter. It
must bear true witness. Obviously great art must be an
exceptional thing. It cannot be the sort of thing any-
one can do after a few hours' practice. It must be the
result of some exceptional faculty, strength, or percep-
tion. It must almost be that strength of perception
working with the connivance of fate, or chance, or what-
ever you choose to call it.
And who is to judge? The critic, the reviewer, how-
ever stupid or ignorant, must judge for himself. The
only really vicious criticism is the academic criticism
of those who make the grand abnegation, who refuse
to say what they think, if they do think, and who quote
accepted opinion; these men are the vermin, their treach-
ery to the great work of the past is as great as that of
the false artists to the present. If they do not care
enough for the heritage to have a personal conviction,
then they have no licence to write.
Every critic should give indication of the sources and
limits of his knowledge. The criticism of English poetry
by men who knew no language but English, or who
knew little but English and school-classics, has been a
marasmus.
When we know to what extent each sort of expres-
sion has been driven, in, say, half a dozen great litera-
tures, we begin to be able to tell whether a given work
has the excess of great art. We would not think of let-
ting a man judge pictures if he knew only English pic-
242
APPENDIX I
tures, or music if he knew only English music-or only
French or German music for that matter.
The stupid or provincial judgment of art bases itself
on the belief that great art must be like the art that it
has been reared to respect.
APPENDIX II
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO "THE DIAL”
THERE is no culture that is not at least bilingual. Yet
in 1912 or 1913 we find an American editor who writes
of Henri de Regnier and M. Remy de Gourmont as
"these young men.” The rest of his sentence is to say
that their work is unknown to him. This lacuna in his
mental decorations does not in the least chagrin him.
He has no desire to add to his presumably superabundant
knowledge.
His confrère was the "new editor” of another maga-
zine recommended to me as a “progressive.” Here are
some of his words:
"We wish to make the fiction in this magazine come
as near to truth as circumstances permit ..."
Second example:
"The contributors make the magazine and the maga-
zine makes the contributors."
Are we still to believe that literature will come through
the magazines? Has any first-class work of any sort
ever been done to the specifications of a machine for
pleasing the populace ?
Is America to produce real literature or to continue,
as she is at the present moment, a joke, a byword in lit-
erature for the ridiculous ?
243
244
APPENDIX II
Investigate the standards and the vitality of the stand-
ards of the “best editorial offices," and see what spirit
you find there. Do they believe that art is, in any
measure, discovery? Is there any care for good letters,
or even enough care for good letters to make them in
any way concerned in trying to find out what consti-
tutes and what makes for, good letters ?
They have called Henry James European. Yet a
deal of his work is about American subjects. Is a man
less a citizen because he cares enough for letters to
leave a country where the practice of them is, or at least
seems, well-nigh impossible, in order that he may be-
queath a heritage of good letters, even to the nation
which has borne him?
It is not that the younger generation has not tried to
exist “at home." It is that after years of struggle, one
by one, they come abroad, in search of good company
and good conversation, or send their manuscripts abroad
for recognition; that they find themselves in the pages
even of the "stolid and pre-Victorian Quarterly” be-
fore "hustling and modern America" has arrived at
tolerance for their modernity.
APPENDIX III
EZRA POUND FILES EXCEPTIONS
London, Eng., July 30, 1916.
Editor of Reedy's Mirror:
In the interests of accuracy:
I was not born in Utah, “it is immaterial," but still
I am not to be confused with “Ezra, the Mormon,” how-
ever charming and sympathetic or fictitious he may have
been. I was born in Idaho, in Hailey, in the residence
now occupied by Mr. Plughoff” (unless he has moved).
There is, so far as I know, no memorial tablet.
I am not the "head of the vorticist movement." I
said quite clearly in my memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska that
the vorticist movement implied no series of personal
subordinations. The pleasure of the vorticist movement
was to find oneself at last inter pares. Mr. Wyndham
Lewis is a man of so marked a genius, of such swift and
profound intuitions that it would be ridiculous to speak
of anyone else as being his “head.” I cannot picture
either Brzeska or Etchells considering himself as any.
one's elbow or shin-bone. As an active and informal
association it might be said that Lewis supplied the
volcanic force, Brzeska the animal energy, and perhaps
that I had contributed a certain Confucian calm and
245
246
APPENDIX III
reserve. There would have been no movement without
Lewis. .
At any rate, if you are irrevocably wedded to the
phrase, “head of the movement,” you would be more
correct in applying the title to Lewis than to anyone
else.
Let us come to your remarks about Gaudier-Brzeska's
sculpture in your issue for July 14:
A
You say it seems to you “a new language known only
to the sculptor.”
Has any new light ever come in the arts or in the
sciences save through a new speech known, at first, only
to the artist or the inventor?
There was a language known only to abstract mathe-
maticians (I believe to the men who experimented in
“determinants”). This language gradually became
known to physicists, or to a physicist, and you have now
the very popular wireless telegraph, which is still “in-
comprehensible” to a very great number of people.
The intelligent man will learn as much as he can
rather than pretend to be more ignorant than he is.
Ві
You ask: “What is formless form?” And then you
rush on to talk about “mutually agreed upon symbols."
I have not talked about “formless form." But try to
follow me for a moment.
A circle or a triangle has just as much form as the
Albert Memorial. Its form is simpler, to be sure.
EZRA POUND FILES EXCEPTIONS 247
ST
Some centuries ago John Heydon professed to derive
æsthetic satisfaction from the perfection of simple geo-
metrical forms. There is the fable of Giotto's circle. I
do not base an argument on these records. I adduce
them simply to persuade you that it is possible to dis-
tinguish between a simple form and a “formless form.”
The latter term is your own. I do not profess to under-
stand it.
Now it is manifestly ridiculous to say that you can-
not take pleasure in a form merely because it is not the
form of a man, an animal or a bunch of asparagus.
Many forms, such as those of the stone zoological gar-
den on the Albert Memorial, are incapable of delighting
us by the mere fact that they portray easily recognizable
flora and fauna.
The perspective of arches as one looks toward the
Koran niche in the Mosque of Cordova gives one in-
finitely more pleasure than the idiotic representative
slush which “ornaments" St. Paul's Cathedral. The
so-called ornaments obviously represent certain "saints”
(behold your "mutually agreed upon symbol.” The
damn things are "saints," models of virtue, sacred ef-
figies of deceased Orientals). The form of this statuary
suggests nothing so much as plates of decomposed ice
cream on a warm day, or soiled clothes dumped out of
a hamper.
The arches in Cordova have, however, no form save
the form of very beautiful arches. They do not repre-
sent anything else. The combination or composition is
interesting. It required more skill to arrange this series
of arches than to make one beautiful arch. If I claim
an architectural pleasure in seeing this series of arches
no one will call me fanatic or even fantastic. Yet this
pleasure is a pleasure in form, in unadulterated form.
248
APPENDIX III
Ultimately all sculpture is judged by its form. As
music is judged by its sound.
If sculpture were judged by the closeness with which
it copies pre-existing material objects, the plaster cast
or mould of the object would be the apex of the achieve-
ment.
You do not demand that the musician copy natural
sounds. You permit him to start with a simple melodic
form and develop his fugue, his harmony, or whatever
he chooses.
In the case of Gaudier's “Dancer,” you find your
"themes given you' with the utmost clarity and dis-
tinctness. You have the circle on the breast and the
triangle on the face. These two forms become animate,
move, interplay, an increasing suggestion of power and
movement in their various positions, distortions, culmi-
nating in the great sweep of the shoulders, the back of
the statue, the arm thrown over the head.
It seems to me foolish to talk of this as the "power-
fully crude suggestions of the beginning of sculpture.”
If, however, it did not suggest even to you the adverb
“powerfully,” I should think it failed through being
over-intellectual, over-civilized in its concept, lacking
in the emotional energy of great art.
There is in this work nothing of the “Rodin impres-
sion of emergence” theory.
When you write, “Without interposition of symbol,
without ornament,” you are right. When you add
(without proportion or form,” you are in error.
Brzeska's statues have form. No material object can
escape it. My contention is that they have very inter-
esting and expressive forms. It is not necessary that
EZRA POUND FILES EXCEPTIONS 249
one should associate their form or forms with the forms
of anything else. It is for the spectator to decide
whether the forms of this sculpture are in themselves
delightful. There is no need of referring the form of
the statue to the form of something extraneous.
As to proportion: "The Boy with a Coney” has
“scale.” Perhaps I had better define that last term.
Scale is a very skillful sort of proportion. We say that
a statue or a painting has “scale” when its proportions
are so finely arranged that it might be reproduced in
various sizes without the destruction of its beauty. This
process is not infinite. It is not necessary that every
work of art should possess it.
Still, when a novelist says by way of praise that a six-
line poem has the “form of a novel” or that it is like
a good novel” or “contains” a novel, he is making an
interesting criticism of the poet's sense of proportion
and balance and "form" (if one be permitted to use the
word as it were metaphorically).
When a statue one foot high could be reproduced at
forty times that size and still remain finely proportioned,
this possibility is an interesting commentary on the
sculptor's sense of "proportion.”
D
So let us leave Hamlet's clouds which were so “like”
something or other. The musician Eric Satie once wrote
a prelude which he called “Prelude in the shape of a
pear.” It served as a designation.
E
As for understanding and “mutually agreed upon
symbols” and the general “intelligibility,” I open a
250
APPENDIX III
A
weekly abomination and find a reproduction of a piece
of sculpture labeled, “Figure Representing Aspiration.”
It displays a plump, lolling female and an infant de-
ficient in the spankable parts. One can go down to the
"Tate” in peace time and see messy pictures by the
late Mr. Watts called “Hope,” “Love," etc. These
works do not please me. I never see why "Hope"
mightn't just as well be something else. And as for the
figure "representing” Aspiration. Does it represent
“Aspiration’'? I never saw aspiration looking like
that. But I have seen spaghetti piled on a plate and
the form was decidedly similar. A great deal of “re-
presentational” sculpture is, in form, not unlike plates
of spaghetti. .
In conclusion, I would advise the patient to look care-
fully at the illustrations to the “Gaudier-Brzeska.” I
would then advise him to get the local art gallery to pro-
vide him with Wyndham Lewis' "Timon” portfolio. I
would then ask him to go forth again into the world
and see what he can see where before he saw little or
nothing.
The great mass of mankind are ignorant of the shape
of nearly everything that they see or handle.
The artisan knows the shape of some of his tools.
You know the shape of your pen-handle, but hardly the
shape of your typewriter. The store of forms in the
average man's head is smaller than his meager verbal
vocabulary
Yours,
EZRA POUND.
APPENDIX IV
VORTOGRAPHS
THE tool called the vortescope was invented late in
1916. Mr. Coburn had been long desiring to bring
cubism or vorticism into photography. Only with the
invention of a suitable instrument was this possible.
In vortography he accepts the fundamental principles
of vorticism, and those of vorticist painting in so far as
they are applicable to the work of the camera.
The principles of vorticism have been amply set forth
by Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound and Gaudier-Brzeska.
The immediate ancestry is given in two quotations in
Blast: Pater's “All arts approach the conditions of
music”; and Whistler's “We are interested in a paint-
ing because it is an arrangement of lines and colours."
Cezanne began taking “impressions” of masses. The
term "mass" or "form" has been more prominent than
the term “line" in recent discussions.
The vorticist principle is that a painting is an expression
by means of an arrangement of form and colour in the
same way that a piece of music is an expression by
means of an arrangement of sound. In painting the
form has only two dimensions (though it may suggest
or “represent" a third dimension). In sculpture one
uses three dimensions.
251
252
APPENDIX IV
Or to put it another way: Painting makes use of colour
arranged on a surface; Sculpture of masses defined by
planes.
In vortography colour is practically excluded. There
can be suggestion of colours. There can be a variety
in the colour of the paper on which the vortograph is
printed. But the medium of the vortographer is prac-
tically limited to form (shapes on a surface) and to
a light and shade; to the peculiar varieties in lightness
and darkness which belong to the technique of the
camera.
THE CAMERA IS FREED FROM REALITY
A natural object or objects may perhaps be retained
realistically by the vortographer if he chooses, and the
vortograph containing such an object or objects will not
be injured if the object or objects contribute interest to
the pattern, that is to say, if they form an integral and
formal part of the whole.
The vortoscope is useless to a man who cannot recognise
a beautiful arrangement of forms on a surface, when his
vortoscope has brought them to focus. His selection
may be almost as creative as a painter's composition.
His photographic technique must be assumed. It does
not form a part of this discussion, though it is extremely
important, and all, or most, of the qualities of the black
and white, of light and dark, will depend upon it.
These things, however, can be discussed by any intel-
ligent photographer, assuming that such persons exist.
There is no need of any special foreword about this part
of the technique.
VORTOGRAPHS
253
Vorticism has reawakened our sense of form, a sense
long dead in occidental artists. Any person or animal
unable to take pleasure in an arrangement of forms as
he or she takes pleasure in an arrangement of musical
notes, is thereby the poorer. People are sometimes
tone-deaf and colour-blind. Other people, perhaps more
numerous, are form-blind. Some ears cannot recognise
the correct pitch of a note, and some eyes get no pleasure
from a beautiful or expressive arrangement of forms.
Until recently people enjoyed pictures chiefly, and often
exclusively because the painting reminded them of
something else. Numerous contemporaries have passed
that state of development.
The modern will enjoy vortograph No. 3, not because
it reminds him of a shell bursting on a hillside, but
because the arrangement of forms pleases him, as a
phrase of Chopin might please him. He will enjoy
vortograph No. 8, not because it reminds him of a
falling Zeppelin, but because he likes the shape and
arrangement of its blocks of dark and light.
Obviously vortographs will lack certain interests that
are to be found in vorticist paintings. They bear the
same relation to vorticist painting that academic photog-
raphy bears to academy painting. Almost any fool can
paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot
off a Kodak.
Certain definite problems in the æsthetics of form may
possibly be worked out with the vortescope. When
these problems are solved vorticism will have entered
that phase of morbidity into which representative paint-
254
APPENDIX IV
ing descended after the Renaissance painters had de-
cided upon all the correct proportions of the human
body, etc., etc., etc. That date of decline is still afar
off.
Vortography stands below the other vorticist arts in that
it is an art of the eye, not of the eye and hand to-·
gether. It stands above photography in that the vor-
tographer combines his forms at will. He selects just
what actually he wishes, he excludes the rest. He chooses
what forms, lights, masses, he desires, he arranges them
at will on his screen. He can make summer of Lon-
don October. The aereën and submarine effects are got
in his study. All these vortographs were done in two
or three rooms. The dull bit of window-frame (vorto-
graph No. 16) produces “a fine Picasso,” or if not a
“Picasso” a “Coburn." It is an excellent arrange-
ment of shapes, and more interesting than most of the
works of the bad imitators of Lewis.
Art photography has been stuck for twenty years.
During that time practically no new effects have been
achieved. Art photography is stale and suburban. It
has never had any part in æsthetics. Vortography may
have, however, very much the same place in the coming
æsthetic that the anatomical studies of the Renaissance
had in the æsthetics of the academic school. It is at
least a subject which a serious man may consider. It is
not for me to decide whether there can be a mathematical
harmony of form, angles, proportions, etc., arranged as
we have had a mathematical “harmony" arranged for
us in music.
I am not concerned with deciding whether such a mathe-
matical schedule is desirable or would be beneficent.
VORTOGRAPHS
255
But if it is possible, then the vortescope could be ex-
tremely useful, and may play a very important part in
the discovery of such a system.
Such a system would be of æsthetics and not merely of
physics and optics. It would “depend” on the science
of optics as much and as little as musical harmony de-
pends on the physiology of the ear.
Impressionism sought its theoretic defence in, if it did
not arise from, Berkeley's theory of the minimum visible,
i.e., of the effect of points of light and colour on the
retina.
Pleasure is derivable not only from the stroking or push-
ing of the retina by light waves of various colour, BUT
ALSO by the impact of those waves in certain arranged
tracts.
This simple and obvious fact is the basis of the "mod-
ern" "art" "revolution.”
The eye likes certain plainnesses, certain complexities,
certain arrangements, certain varieties, certain incite-
ments, certain reliefs and suspensions.
It likes these things irrespective of whether or no they
form a replica of known objects.
APPENDIX V
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 1
It was better to dig up the bas-reliefs of Assur-
banipal's hunting than to have done an equal amount
of Royal Academy sculpture. There are times when
archæology is almost equal to creation, or when a resur-
rection is equally creative or even more creative than
invention. Few contemporary composers have given
more to to-day's music than has Arnold Dolmetsch.
His first realization was that music made for the
old instruments could not be rendered on the piano.
This proposition is exceedingly simple. You may play
the notes of a violin solo on a piano or a banjo, but it
will not be the same music. You may play the notes
written for clavichord and harpsichord on the piano,
or the pianola, but you will not make the same music.
The first necessity, if one were to hear the old sounds,
was a reconstruction of instruments, a multiplication
of reconstructions; and this, as every educated person
well knows, Arnold Dolmetsch has effected.
The next step was the removal of general misunder-
standings of the old musical notation. This Mr. Dol-
metsch has also triumphantly done in his “Interpretation
of the Music of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen-
turies” (Novello, London, and H. W. Gray Co., New
York). Not only this, but he has opened the way for
a reconciliation between musicians and "the intelligent."
1 Egoist. 1917.
256
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
257
This last act is extremely important; the reconstruction
of old music is an activity which might end in itself. A
possible re-fusion of intelligence with that other curious
thing commonly known as “musical intelligence” con-
tains many possibilities for the future; for the imme-
diate future, the part of it chiefly concerning us and
our mortal enjoyments.
All people have terms of abuse. Among artists and
literati it is customary to excuse a man's stupidity by
saying “He is a musician.” Among musicians they
say “Oh, that is a singer,” implying depths of ignorance
inconceivable to all but musicians.
Dolmetsch strikes at the root of the trouble by show-
ing how music has been written, more and more, for the
stupid; how the notators have gradually ceased to trust
to, or to expect, intelligence on the part of interpreters;
with the result that the whole major structure of music,
of a piece of music, is obscured; the incidental elements,
the detail show on the score equally with the cardinal
contentions of the composer
The neophyte is taught notes one by one, is taught
scales. In the old way he would have been given the
main structural points, he would have played the bare
form of the piece, and gradually have filled in with the
details.
There is more in Dolmetsch's “Section 14, on Divi-
sions,” than in a long course of practice and exercises ;
more I mean for the intelligent person to whom the
mysteries of music have always seemed rather a jum-
ble, a sort of pseudo-psychism practised by, and prac-
ticable for, people otherwise mentally inefficient.
I cannot demonstrate all this on a page. If Dol-
metsch would write a shilling manual, simply dogma,
leaving out his proofs and his explanations, and if
258
APPENDIX V. i
people would use it on children and on themselves, we
might have an almost immediate improvement, for a
big book travels slowly, and few have the patience to
understand anything, though many will obey a com-
mand.
The technical points I can scarcely go into, but they
are there in Dolmetsch's book for musicians, and for
those who have unsatisfied curiosities about music.
The general reflections stirred by his writing I may,
however, set down.
FIRST: It seems to me that in music, as in the other
arts (beginning in the eighteenth century, and grow-
ing a poison from which we are not yet free), greater
rigidity in matters of minutiæ has forced a break-up
of the large forms; has destroyed the sense of main
form. Compare academic detail in one school of paint-
ing, and minute particularization about light and colour
in another.
Any work of art is a compound of freedom and order.
It is perfectly obvious that art hangs between chaos on
one side and mechanics on the other. A pedantic in-
sistence on detail tends to drive out "major form.” A
firm hold on major form makes for a freedom of detail.
In painting men intent on minutiæ gradually lost the
sense of form and form-combination. An attempt to re-
store this sense is branded as "revolution.” It is revo-
lution in the philological sense of the term.
The old way of music, teaching a man that a piece
of music was a structure, certain main forms filled in
with certain decorations, stimulated his intelligence,
spurred on his constructive faculty. You might play
the same lute-piece as many others, but you thought
about playing it differently (i.e. with different notes),
of playing it better. In a sense that is true of any per-
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
259
former, but the contemporary way of approach lays
stress on having a memory like a phonograph; the
reflex-centres are as highly thought of as is the main
conception. Thematic invention has departed.
Naturally the best musicians escape the contagion.
A few good artists in any period always do escape
whatever contagion may be prevalent. In any age also,
a few learned men must always support the poet against
the music-teacher; the artist who creates against the
machine for the vending of pictures; the inventive
writer against the institutions of publishing and dis-
tribution. The modus is exceedingly simple. Some one
must know that the fashion of the last forty years is not
the eternal law of the art, whatever art it may be.
The heretic, the disturber, the genius, is the real per-
son, the person stubborn in his intelligent instinct or
protected by some trick of nature, some providential
blindness, or deafness even, which prevents his being
duped by a fashion; some stubbornness, some unsocial
surliness which prevents him from pretending to be
duped, from pretending to acquiesce.
When I, for emphasis, say above, "providential blind-
ness or deafness," one must remember that in the case
of the artist—if there be some such trick played on him
by nature for the preservation of art, the blindness or
deafness or whatever apparent protective insensitiveness
there may be—there is always a compensating sensitive-
ness or hyper-sensitiveness, enforced it may be by some
involuntary or half-voluntary concentration, which
keeps him interested, absorbed in the art.
Nature and humanity will never in the long run be
bilked by the music-teacher and the academician. They,
nature and humanity, abhor an unreasoning setness ;
haste is also in their abomination. There also the artist
260
APPENDIX V
scores, for the most brilliant,” the most apparently
sudden, great artist is always a plodder. He alone can
afford to wait. The singer of late nineteenth-century
ballads must get through with his job at once: ditto for
the actor, for the successful society portraitist.
In nothing has invention been slower than in the
notation of music; it took centuries to find even a Not-
ker, a Gui d'Arezzo. To-day the man who desires to
comprehend first and make his noise afterward comes
upon the idiotic mess of unexplained, unexplainable
scale-playing. The days when a consort arranged itself
while you waited your turn at the barber's appear purely
legendary. Our ears are passive before the onslaught
of gramophones and pianolas. By persuading ourselves
that we do not hear two-thirds of their abominable grind,
we persuade ourselves that we take pleasure in the re-
mainder of what they narrate. We feign a deafness
which we have not, instead of developing our faculty
for the finer perception of sound.
We pride ourselves on having exact transcripts of
Arabic and Japanese and Zulu and Malay music; we
take a sentimental pleasure in being reminded (in spite
of the drone and wheeze, in spite of shriek and squeak),
that we once heard the voice of Chaliapine. And as for
the structure of music!...
We turn to the printed page; the eye is confused
by the multitude of ornamental notes and trappings;
lost in the maze; each note is written as importantly
as any other. And “Modern" music is so much a fuzz,
a thing of blobs and of splotches—sometimes beautiful,
and probably the best of it is more beautiful to those
who know exactly what fixed lines it avoids.
But the structure of music? ... "Technicalities”
..“Artists don't enjoy their art as much as people
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH
261
who just enjoy it without trying to understand." That
last quotation is one of the prize pieces of buncombe
that the last generation indulged in. There is no com-
parison between the artist's enjoyment and the enjoy-
ment of the layman. Only the artist can know this, for
he is an artist in his own art and layman in all the rest,
thus he can get some sense of proportion. He knows
the difference between enthusiasm with vague half-com-
prehension, and enthusiasm plus an exact understand-
ing. If the expert rejects 95 per cent of all examples
of an art presented to him, he has more pleasure in the
remainder than the layman can get from the lot with
vague and omnivorous liking.
What we know of any art is mostly what some mas-
ter has taught us. We may not know him in the flesh,
but the masterwork, and only the masterwork, discon-
tents us with mediocrity, or rather, it clarifies our dis-
contentment; we may have suspected that something was
wrong, been uninterested, worried, found the thing dull;
the masterwork diagnoses it.
Dolmetsch has also made a fine diagnosis. He has
incidentally thrown a side-light on metric, he has said
suggestive things about silence d'articulation, about the
freedoms of the old music. When I say suggestive,
I do not mean that we are to get a jargon out of these
things, to use in artistic controversy; but there is enough
in them to prevent fools from interfering with, or carp-
ing at, rhythms achieved by the artist in his own way.
Art is a departure from fixed positions; felicitous de-
parture from a norm. It is a fight against mechanics.
In music the trouble may well have begun with an at-
tempt to write music for the insensitive and the block-
head.
1 Vide note on Vers Libre and Dolmetsch.
262
APPENDIX V
If we are to regain a thematic sense, or a sense of
thematic invention or of structure, if we are to have
new music, or to have the old music beautifully played;
if we are to have a clearer comprehension of what we
do hear, we may owe a good deal to Mr. Dolmetsch.
Finis
HORARIS
YO WISZ
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SIUV
VOIRE
118
U
?
CAN.
DATE DUE
JAN
1982
MICAL

HUOLI
APR 2 1 183
MIUFUS
118
N: SI

ce
com ini medicina internet
CHIC
QUIS
F MICH
MAR 26 1985
PO LLI
Spa
1988
NIVERS
M
THED
LUNU
A. THE
1811
JUN 0 2 2002
* LIBRA
VERSITY
JH UNILE
L. LIB
IBRAR
SHUV
OF MIC
L18
INS
NIVERS
CRITA
VER
THE UN
MICHIGA
CHIGAN
GAN SA
MICHIGAN
6.LIBRA
1817
ORARIES
vaart
MY OF M
, SIIN
VERSITE
SITY OF

BRA
1!1
!
i'r lui
!A!!,1411,4!
11 L111 11
11
LIII1
TIN
LU
1
11
11
IN
111
TITI
ITA
3 9015 00865 6228"
THE UND
M
TILL
ANY
.
.
UNIVER
: GHLY
AN.SE
BRARIES
HIGAN
MICNI
HOW
- MICH
CHIGAN
CHIGAN
RIIE UNIT
A PHE UMA
. THE UN
r. THE
UNIVJ
1.THA
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD
ICHIGAN
UNIVER
L. SE
- MIS

-
1
,
"
--
.
.
“
“.
-
.
..
,气​!”
青年学者
​,
ur,
,
·
中
​重量​,
-
,
.
音量​:
;
車費
​+
,
;
"
"
"""
"
-
1
,
re
·
i
·
. .
者
​「
是 ​..
111
..
.させてして
​…
.
.
,
老
​,
中青​:
.11
:
本書
​:
看​,
*
:
,
4
:
:
.
.
華
​:非常實在
​中
​車​。
4
,,
由​"
-
5
"
年
​-,
,
|
r..
串
​“
上
​事实
​,
,.
學
​等
​,
」
」
是
​「
|
。
“
.
f事​!
.等
​:
售4
:
.
|
.
中村
​:
…\.
.
:
.
.
.
.
|青​,圣
​r
世上本
​車
​書​;全本
​-
平
​事上
​Airit
青
​和各r
要​”
鲁青生
​:
老年要
​基本上
​。
等
​其
​.
-
re
1
.
|
,
' ll,
十l -
1.
“
*
掌中
​書
​he'
,sh
·
.
畢​,
出
​.
..
::
1.
是
​.
:
个却半
​其主要
​重量
​14
1,
--
在
​上it
注十七
​主 ​:
- 学生
​重量
​与基于
​.
.
「
。
者事​,
1.
事本​,,
上了​,
11.
料​:
市事
​。
建立于
​-
-
_
4重建事工​。
高​,中华体育
​-
。
4
.
其他
​事
​五十年
​全
​“
,
#
|
事
​。
3
「
.
,
,
.
,
,
-
-
H
,
.
。
,
事
​,
一
​4
“
*.
,
,
4
「
事​。
為
​實
​:
"
.
A
产
​..
“
是​”。
.
it 1
在
​,=,
=
1,
“
是啊​。再重車
​|
中​,要
​“中中考
​上​:
售了​。」
,
,
.
鲁青
​,
,
,
,
a,b
,
倍
​1.4
,
,然
​;
电
​.
事了
​者​,
本
​“
“
.
#
..
中
​-
#*
クされました​!
**
ANSHINE
|
|
L
身
​。
4
重量​:
さいたままで
​,
,
身
​产
​,
中
​.
1
|
-
1.4
%
里程
​。
「
」
中产
​,
L
..
:
-
-
:
星塞​,
-
」
事​。
| 世​” 事业单
​:
-
-
.
."
,
1.重量
​」
車車場出
​重重重重
​::中国​“
鲁鲁​“有
​2.
學車​」
一
​IT产​,基本
​,
步
​#
中市 ​-
t
'
,
1
1
.
事
​1
,1'-
一
​T
重售
​主學
​#
r-
-
+
事
​:
G”中
​“
| 1.
.
1.
”
..
1.董事書
​::
.
| s-
雪非Y
,
,
,
Tel:
「
.
.
--
-
1
十十一十二
​.事​,事事事​,萬事
​事件​,事生日
​::
:
.
**
星重量​,
-
.
-
-
-..
鲁
​.
- rh.1
a
.
中
​.
-
u
.
t
.
.
:
.
.
,..
..
.
.
|
第三重​:
有事​。
手動產事事
​」事事​,
一半
​么事
​1
,
.
f
'
',
,
·章
​*
:
下事​,titut
FFFF
科技​,
:是學會年會
​| 1
.
4
」,