He has done, sketchily and brilliantly, for French literature a work not incomparable to what Flaubert was doing for "France" in _Bouvard and Pécuchet_, if one may compare the flight of the butterfly with the progress of an ox, both proceeding toward the same point of the compass. He has dipped his wings in the dye of scientific terminology. Pierrot _imberbe_ has
The tyro can not play about with such things. Verbalism demands a set form used with irreproachable skill. Satire needs, usually, the form of cutting rhymes to drive it home.
Chautauquas, Mrs. Eddy, Dr. Dowies, Comstocks, Societies for the Prevention of All Human Activities, are impossible in the wake of Laforgue. And he is therefore an exquisite poet, a deliverer of the nations, a Numa Pompilius, a father of light. And to many people this mystery, the mystery why such force should reside in so fragile a book, why such power should coincide with so great a nonchalance of manner, will remain forever a mystery.
Que loin l'âme type Qui m'a dit adieu Parce que mes yeux Manquaient de principes!
Elle, en ce moment. Elle, si pain tendre, Oh! peut-être engendre Quelque garnement.
Car on l'a unie Avec un monsieur, Ce qu'il y a de mieux, Mais pauvre en génie.
Laforgue is incontrovertible. The "strong silent man" of the kinema has not monopolized all the certitudes.
Corbière seems to me the greatest poet of the period. "La Rapsode Foraine et le Pardon de Sainte-Anne" is, to my mind, beyond all comment. He first published in '73, remained practically unknown until Verlaine's essay in '84, and was hardly known to "the public" until the Messein edition of his work in '91.
LA RAPSODE FORAINE ET LE PARDON DE SAINTE-ANNE
Bénite est l'infertile plage Où, comme la mer, tout est nud. Sainte est la chapelle sauvage De Sainte-Anne-de-la-Palud....
De la Bonne Femme Sainte Anne, Grand'tante du petit Jésus, En bois pourri dans sa soutane Riche ... plus riche que Crésus!
Contre elle la petite Vierge, Fuseau frêle, attend l'_Angélus_; Au coin, Joseph, tenant son cierge, Niche, en saint qu'on ne fête plus...
C'est le Pardon.--Liesse et mystères-- Déjà l'herbe rase a des poux.... _Sainte Anne, Onguent des belles-mères!_ _Consolation des époux!_