Au verger où sifflent les sylphes d'automne mignonne Isabelle est venue de Venise et veut cueillir des cerises et des pommes. * * * * * * * *
He was writing rhymed vers libre in 1903, possibly stimulated by translations in a volume called "Poésie Arabe." This book has an extremely interesting preface. I have forgotten the name of the translator, but in excusing the simplicity of Arab songs he says: "The young girl in Germany educated in philosophy in Kant and Hegel, when love comes to her, at once exclaims 'Infinite!', and allies her vocabulary with the transcendental. The little girl in the tents 'ne savait comparer fors que sa gourmandise.'" In Klingsor for 1903, I find:
Croise tes jambes fines et nues Dans ton lit, Frotte de tes mignonnes mains menues Le bout de ton nez; Frotte de tes doigts potelés et jolis, Les deux violettes de tes yeux cernés, Et rêve. Du haut du minaret arabe s'échappe La mélopée triste et brève De l'indiscret muezzin Qui nasillonne et qui éternue, Et toi tu bâilles comme une petite chatte, Tu bâilles d'amour brisée, Et tu songes au passant d'Ormuz ou d'Endor Qui t'a quittée ce matin En te laissant sa légère bourse d'or Et les marques bleues de ses baisers.
Later he turns to Max Elskamp, addressing him as if he, Klingsor, at last had "found Jesus":
Je viens vers vous, mon cher Elskamp Comme un pauvre varlet de cœur et de joie Vient vers le beau seigneur qui campe Sous sa tente d'azur et de soie. * * * * * * *
*However I believe Moréas was a real poet, and, being stubborn, I have still an idea which gor embedded in my head some years ago: I mean that Klingsor is a poet. As for the Elskamp phase and cult, I do not make much of it. Jean de Bosschère has written a book upon Elskamp, and he assures me that Elskamp is a great and important poet, and some day, perhaps, I may understand it. De Bosschère seems to me to see or to feel perhaps more keenly than any one else certain phases of modern mechanical civilization: the ant-like madness of men bailing out little boats they never will sail in, shoeing horses they never will ride, making chairs they never will sit on, and all with a frenzied intentness. I may get my conviction as much from his drawings as from his poems. I am not yet clear in my mind about it. His opinion of Max Elskamp can not be too lightly passed over. Vide infra "De Bosschère on Elskamp."