A Short History of French Literature
characteristic part of it, is not bulky; it consists partly of folksongs
slightly modernised, partly of sonnets, partly of miscellaneous poems.
But, if the expression 'prose poetry' be ever allowable, which has been
doubted, it is seldom more applicable than to much of Gerard de Nerval's
work, both in his description of his travels and in avowed fiction.
Some minor names remain to be mentioned. Mery, one of the most fertile
authors of the century, was a writer of verse as well as of prose, and
displayed much the same talent of brilliant improvisation in each
capacity. Auguste Brizeux, a Breton by birth, made himself remarkable by
idyllic poetry (_Marie_, _La Fleur d'Or_) chiefly dealing with the
scenery and figures of his native province. Amedee Pommier is a fertile
and not inelegant verse writer, of no very marked characteristics.
Charles Dovalle, who was shot in one of the miserable duels between
journalists so common in France, at the age of twenty-two, would
probably have done remarkable work had he lived. Hegesippe Moreau, to
whom a life but very little longer was vouchsafed, devoted himself
partly to bacchanalian and satirical work, for which he had not the
slightest genius, but produced also some poems of country life, which
rank among the sweetest and most natural of the century. Much of his
work is little more than a corrupt following of Beranger. In the same
way the imitation of Lamartine was not fortunate for Victor de Laprade
(_Psyche_, _Les Symphonies_, _Les Voix de Silence_). This imitation is
not so much in subject (for M. de Laprade was a philosopher rather than
a sentimentalist) as in manner and versification. His verse is also much
more strongly impregnated than Lamartine's with classical culture. With
due allowance for difference of dates and countries, there is a
considerable resemblance between Laprade and Southey. Both had the same
accomplishment of style, the same unquestioning submission to the dogmas
of Christianity, the same width of literary information. It is
unfortunate for France that Laprade was somewhat deficient in humour, a
rare growth on her soil at all times.
[Sidenote: Curiosites Romantiques.]
[Sidenote: Petrus Borel.]
[Sidenote: Louis Bertrand.]
All these names are more or less widely known, but there is a class of
'oublies et dedaignes,' as one of their most faithful biographers has
called them, who belong to the movement of 1830, and whose numbers are
probably, while their merit is certainly, greater than is the case at
any other literary epoch. Few of them can be mentioned here, but those
few are worthy of mention, and it may perhaps be said that the native
vigour of most of them, though warped and distorted for the most part by
oddities of temperament or the unkindness of fortune, equals, if it does
not surpass, that of many of their more fortunate brethren. The first of
these is Petrus Borel, one of the strangest figures in the history of
literature. Very little is known of his life, which was spent partly at
Paris and partly in Algeria. He was perhaps the most extravagant of all
the Romantics, surnaming himself 'Le Lycanthrope,' and identifying
himself with the eccentricities of the _Bousingots_, a clique of
political literary men who for a short time made themselves conspicuous
after 1830. Borel wrote partly in verse and partly in prose. His most
considerable exploit in the former was a strange preface in verse to his
novel of _Madame Putiphar_; his best work in prose, a series of wild but
powerful stories entitled _Champavert_. His talent altogether lacked
measure and criticism, but it is undeniable. Auguste Fontaney was born
in 1803 and died in 1837, having, like many of the literary men of his
day, served for a short time in diplomacy. He was a frequent contributor
to the early Romantic periodicals, and somewhat later to the _Revue des
Deux-Mondes_. His work is very unequal, but at its best it is saturated
with the true spirit of poetry. Felix Arvers, like our own Blanco White,
has obtained his place in literary history by a single sonnet, one of
the most beautiful ever written. Auguste de Chatillon was both poet and
painter; his chief title to remembrance in the former capacity being a
volume of cheerful verse entitled _A l'Auberge de la Grand' Pinte_.
Napoleon Peyrat, who, after the fashion of those times (in which Auguste
Maquet, a fertile novelist, and a journalist, and a collaborateur of
Alexandre Dumas, called himself Augustus Mackeat, and Theophile Dondey
anagrammatised his surname into O'Neddy), dubbed himself Napol le
Pyreneen, survives, and justly, in virtue of a single short poem on
_Roland_, possessed of extraordinary _verve_ and spirit. Last of all has
to be mentioned Louis Bertrand, a poet possessed of the rarest faculty,
but unfortunately doomed to misfortune and premature death. Born at Ceva
in Piedmont, in 1807, and brought up at Dijon, he came to Paris, found
there but scanty encouragement, and died in a hospital in 1841. His only
work of any importance, _Gaspard de la Nuit_, a series of prose ballads
arranged in verses something like those of the English translation of
the Bible, and testifying to the most delicate sense of rhythm, and the
most exquisite power of poetical suggestion, did not appear until after
his death. He and Borel perhaps only of the names contained in this
paragraph represent individual and solid talent: the others are chiefly
noteworthy as instances of the extraordinary stimulating force of the
time on minds which in other days would probably have remained indocile
to poetry, or at least unproductive of it.
[Sidenote: Second Group of Romantic Poets.]
Three distinct stages are perceptible in French poetry since the date of
the Romantic movement, and we have now exhausted the remarkable names
belonging to the first. Another opens with those poets who, being born
in or about 1820, came to years of discretion in time to see the first
force of the movement spent, and found the necessity of striking out
something of a new way for themselves. Of this group three names stand
pre-eminently forward, those of Baudelaire, Banville, and Leconte de
Lisle, while some others may be mentioned beside them.
[Sidenote: Theodore de Banville.]
Theodore de Banville was born in 1820, of a good family, his father
being an officer in the navy. He began to write very early with the
_Cariatides_, and continued for fifty years to be active in prose and
poetry. M. de Banville displayed at once a remarkable mastery of rhyme
and rhythm, and it is in the exhibition of this that he chiefly
excelled. Under his auspices not merely the graceful metrical systems of
the Pleiade, but the older forms of the mediaeval poets, Ballades,
Rondeaux, Triolets, etc., were once more brought into fashion. But M. de
Banville was by no means only a clever versifier. His serious poetry
(_Cariatides_, _Stalactites_, _Odelettes_, _Les Exile's_, _Trente-six
Ballades_) is full of poetical language and sentiment, his lighter verse
(_Occidentales_, _Odes Funambulesques_) is charming, his prose is
excellent, and he was no mean hand at drama (_Gringoire_).
[Sidenote: Leconte de Lisle.]
As M. de Banville sought for poetical novelty in an elaborate
manipulation of the formal part of poetry, so M. Leconte de Lisle has
sought it in a wide range of subject. He is a great translator of Greek
verse. But in his original poems (_Poesies Antiques_, _Poesies
Barbares_, _Poemes et Poesies_) he has gone not merely to the classics
but to the East and to mediaeval times for his inspiration. A tendency
to load his verse with exotic names in unusual forms (he was one of the
first Frenchmen to adopt the fashion of spelling Greek names with a
strict transliteration) has brought, not perhaps altogether
undeservedly, the charge of affectation on M. Leconte de Lisle. But he
is a poet of no small power, not merely in outlandish subjects such as
_Le Massacre de Mona_, _Le Sommeil du Condor_, _Le Runoia_, etc., but in
much simpler work, such as the beautiful _Requies_.
[Sidenote: Charles Baudelaire.]
Charles Baudelaire had a more original talent than either of these.
Although a very careful writer, he is not studious of bizarre rhythm,
nor are his subjects for the most part outlandish. He chose, however, to
illustrate a peculiar form of poetical melancholy by dwelling on
subjects many of which would have been better left alone, while others
were treated in a manner unsuited to the time. His _Fleurs du Mal_,
therefore, as his chief work is entitled, had to undergo expurgation
before it was allowed to be published, and has never been popular with
the general public. But its best pieces, as well as the best of some
singular _Petits Poemes en Prose_, partly inspired by Louis Bertrand,
have extraordinary merit in the way of delicate poetical suggestion and
a lofty spiritualism. Baudelaire was also a very accomplished critic,
his point of view being less exclusively French than that of almost any
other French writer of the same class. He translated Poe and De Quincey.
[Sidenote: Minor Poets of the Second Romantic Group.]
[Sidenote: Dupont.]
The minor poets of this second Romantic school may again be grouped
together. Charles Coran, a miscellaneous poet of talent, anticipated the
school of which we shall shortly have to give some notice, that of the
_Parnassiens_. Josephin Soulary is remarkable for the extreme beauty of
his sonnets, in devoting himself to which form he anticipated a general
tendency of contemporary poets both English and French. Auguste
Vacquerie, better known as a critic, a dramatist, and a journalist,
began as a lyrical and miscellaneous poet, and achieved some noticeable
work. Gustave Le Vavasseur attempted, not without success, to revive the
vigorous tradition of Norman poetry. Pierre Dupont, better known than
any of these, seemed at one time likely to be a poet of the first rank,
but unfortunately wasted his talent in Bohemian dawdling and disorder.
His songs were the delight of the young generation of 1848, and two of
them, _Le Chant des Ouvriers_ and _Les Boeufs_, are still most
remarkable compositions. Louis Bouilhet (whose best poem is _Melaenis_)
has some resemblance to M. Leconte de Lisle, though he went still
further afield for his subjects. He had no small power, but the defect
of the old descriptive poetry revived in him, and in some of his
contemporaries and followers, the defect necessarily attendant on
forgetfulness of the fact that description by itself, however beautiful
it may be, is not poetry. With these may be mentioned Gustave Nadaud, a
song-writer pure and simple, free from almost any influence of school
literature, a true follower of Beranger, though with much less range,
wit, and depth.
[Sidenote: The Parnasse.]
Except Dupont and Nadaud, all the poets just mentioned may be said to
belong more or less to the school of Gautier--the school, that is to
say, which attached preponderant importance to form in poetry. Towards
the middle of the Second Empire a crowd of younger writers, who had
adopted this principle still more unhesitatingly, grew up, and formed
what has been known for some years, partly seriously, partly in
derision, as the _Parnassien_ school. The origin of this term was the
issue, in 1866 (as a sort of poetical manifesto preluding the great
Exhibition of the next year), of a collection of poetry from the pens of
a large number of poets, from Theophile Gautier and Emile Deschamps
downwards. This was entitled _Le Parnasse Contemporain_, after an old
French fashion. Another collection of the same kind was begun in 1869,
interrupted by the war, and continued afterwards; and a third in 1876:
while the _Parnassien_ movement was also represented in several