The opposite of Lewis's giant appears in:
Je suis l'esclave heureux des hommes dont l'haleine Flotte ici. Leur vouloirs s'écoule dans mes nerfs; Ce qui est moi commence à fondre.
This statement has the perfectly simple order of words. It is the simple statement of a man saying things for the first time, whose chief concern is that he shall speak clearly. His work is perhaps the fullest statement of the poetic consciousness of our time, or the scope of that consciousness. I am not saying he is the most poignant poet; simply that in him we have the fullest poetic exposition.
You can get the feel of Laforgue or even of Corbière from a few poems; Romains is a subject for study. I do not say this as praise, I am simply trying to define him. His "Un Etre en Marche" is the narrative of a girls' school, of the "crocodile" or procession going out for its orderly walk, its collective sensations and adventures.
Troupes and herds appear in his earlier work:
Le troupeau marche, avec ses chiens et son berger, Il a peur. Çà et là des réverbères brûlent, Il tremble d'être poursuivi par les étoiles. * * * * * * * La foule traine une écume d'ombrelles blanches * * * * * * * La grande ville s'évapore, Et pleut à verse sur la plaine Qu'elle sature.
His style is not a "model," it has the freshness of grass, not of new furniture polish. In his work many nouns meet their verbs for the first time, as, perhaps, in the last lines above quoted. He needs, as a rule, about a hundred pages to turn round in. One can not give these poems in quotation; one wants about five volumes of Romains. In so far as I am writing "criticism," I must say that his prose is just as interesting as his verse. But then his verse is just as interesting as his prose. Part of his method is to show his subject in a series of successive phases, thus in L'Individu:
Je suis un habitant de ma ville, un de ceux Qui s'assoient au théâtre et qui vont par les rues * * * * * * *
*Je cesse lentement d'être moi. Ma personne Semble s'anéantir chaque jour un peu plus C'est à peine si je le sens et m'en étonne.
His poetry is not of single and startling emotions, but--for better or worse--of progressive states of consciousness. It is as useless for the disciple to try and imitate Romains, without having as much thought of his own, as it is for the tyro in words to try imitations of Jules Laforgue. The limitation of Romains' work, as of a deal of Browning's, is that, having once understood it, one may not need or care to re-read it. This restriction applies also in a wholly different way to "Endymion"; having once filled the mind with Keats' color, or the beauty of things described, one gets no new thrill from the re-reading of them in not very well-written verse. This limitation applies to all poetry that is not implicit in its own medium, that is, which is not indissolubly bound in with the actual words, word music, the fineness and firmness of the actual writing, as in Villon, or in "Collis O Heliconii."