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Instigations Part 14

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DE BOSSCHeRE'S STUDY OF ELSKAMP[4]

I confessed in my February essay my inability to make anything of Max Elskamp's poetry, and I have tacitly confessed my inability to find any formula for hawking De Bosschere's own verse to any public of my acquaintance; De Bosschere's study of Elskamp, however, requires no advocacy; I do not think it even requires to be a study of Max Elskamp; it drifts as quiet ca.n.a.l water; the protagonist may or not be a real man.

"Ici, la solitude est plus accentuee: souvent, pendant de longues minutes, les rues sont desertes.... Les portes ne semblent pas, ainsi que dans les grandes villes, s'ouvrir sur un poumon de vie, et etre une cellule vivante de la rue. Au contraire, toutes sont fermees. Aussi bien, les facades de ce quartier sont pareilles aux murs borgnes. Un mince ruban de ciel roux et gris, a peine bleu au printemps, decoupe les pignons, se tend sur le marche desert et sur le puits profond des cours."

From this Antwerp, De Bosschere derives his subject, as Gautier his "Albertus" from

Un vieux bourg flamand tel que peint Teniers;

trees bathing in water.

"Son univers etait limite par: 'le grand peuplier'; une statue de Pomone, 'le grand rocher,' et 'la grand grenouille'; ceci etait un coin touffu ou il y avait de l'eau et ou il ne vit jamais qu'une seule grenouille, qu'il croyait immortelle." De Bosschere's next vision of Elskamp is when his subject is pointed out as "le poete decadent," for no apparent reason save that he read Mallarme at a time when Antwerp did not. The study breaks into a cheerful grin when Elskamp tells of Mallarme's one appearance in the sea-port:

"Le bruit et les cris qui furent pousses pendant la conference de Mallarme, l'arreterent plusieurs fois. L'opinion du public sur sa causerie est contenue en ces quelques mots, dits par un general retraite, grand joueur de billard, et qui du reste ne fit qu'une courte absence de la salle de jeu, pour ecouter quelques phrases du poete. 'Cet homme est ivre ou fou,' dit il fort haut, on quittant la salle, ou son jugement fit loi. Anvers, malgre un leger masque de sn.o.bisme, qui pourrait tromper, n'a pas change depuis. Mallarme, meme pour les _avertis_, est toujours l'homme ivre ou fou."

The billiard player is the one modern touch in the book; for the rest Elskamp sails with sea-captains, apparently in sailing s.h.i.+ps to Constantinople, or perhaps one should call it Byzantium. He reads Juan de la Cruz and Young's Night Thoughts, and volumes of demonology, in the properly dim library of his maternal grandfather, "Sa pa.s.sion en rhetorique fut pour Longfellow, il traduisait 'Song of (sic) Hiawatots.'"

The further one penetrates into De Bosschere's delightful narrative the less real is the hero; the less he needs to be real. A phantom has been called out of De Foe's period, delightful phantom, taking on the reality of the fict.i.tious; in the end the author has created a charming figure, but I am as far as ever from making head or tail of the verses attributed to this creation. I have had a few hours' delightful reading, I have loitered along slow ca.n.a.ls, behind a small window sits Elskamp doing something I do not in the least understand.

II

So was I at the end of the first division "Sur la Vie" de Max Elskamp.

The second division, concerned with "Oeuvre et Vie," but raised again the questions that had faced me in reading Elskamp's printed work. He has an undercurrent, an element everywhere present, differentiating his poems from other men's poems. De Bosschere scarcely helps me to name it.

The third division of the book, at first reading, nearly quenched the curiosity and the interest aroused by the first two-thirds. On second reading I thought better of it. Elskamp, plunged in the middle ages, in what seems almost an atrophy, as much as an atavism, becomes a little more plausible. (For what it is worth, I read the chapter upon a day of almost complete exhaustion.)

"Or, quand la vision lache comme une proie videe le saint, il demeure avec les hommes."

"Entre le voyant et ceux qui le sanctifient il y a un precipice insondable. Seul l'individu est beatifie par sa croyance; mais il ne peut _l'utiliser_ au temporel ni la partager avec les hommes, et c'est peut-etre la forme unique de la justice sur terre."

The two sentences give us perhaps the tone of De Bosschere's critique "Sur le Mysticisme" of Elskamp.

It is, however, not in De Bosschere, but in _La Wallonie_ that I found the clue to this author:

CONSOLATRICE DES AFFLIGeS

Et l'hiver m'a donne la main, J'ai la main d'Hiver dans les mains,

et dans ma tete, au loin, il brle les vieux etes de canicule;

et dans mes yeux, en candeurs lentes, tres blanchement il fait des tentes,

dans mes yeux il fait des Sicile, puis des iles, encore des iles.

Et c'est tout un voyage en rond trop vite pour la guerison

a tous les pays ou l'on meurt au long cours des mers et des heures;

et c'est tout un voyage au vent sur les vaisseaux de mes lits blancs

qui houlent avec des etoiles a l'entour de toutes les voiles,

or j'ai le got de mer aux levres comme une rancur de genievre

bu pour la tres mauvaise orgie des departs dans les tabagies;

puis ce pays encore me vient: un pays de neiges sans fin....

Marie des bonnes couvertures, faites-y la neige moins dure

et courir moins comme des lieres mes mains sur mes draps blancs de fievre.

_--Max Elskamp in "La Wallonie_," 1892.

The poem appears in Van Bever and Leautaud's anthology and there may be no reason for my not having thence received it; but there is, for all that, a certain value in finding a man among his native surroundings, and in finding Elskamp at home, among his contemporaries, I gained first the advantage of comprehension.

ALBERT MOCKEL AND "LA WALLONIE"[5]

I recently received a letter from Albert Mockel, written with a graciousness not often employed by English and American writers in communication to their juniors. Indeed, the present elder generation of American "respectable" authors having all their lives approached so nearly to death, have always been rather annoyed that American letters did not die utterly in _their_ personal desiccations. Signs of vitality; signs of interest in, or cognizance of other sections of this troubled planet have been steadily and papier-macheedly deprecated. The rubbish bins of _Harper's_ and the _Century_ have opened their lids not to new movements but only to the diluted imitations of new movers, etc.

_La Wallonie_, beginning as _L'Elan Litteraire_ in 1885, endured seven years. It announced for a full year on its covers that its seventh year was its last. Albert Mockel has been gracious enough to call it "Notre _Little Review_ a nous," and to commend the motto on our cover, in the letter here following:

109, _Avenue de Paris_ 8 _mai_, 1918 _La Malmaison Rueil_ _Monsieur et cher confrere,_

Merci de votre amiable envoi. La _Little Review_ m'est sympathique a l'extreme. En la feuilletant j'ai cru voir renaitre ce temps dore de ferveur et de belle confiance ou, adolescent encore, et tatonnant un peu dans les neuves regions de l'Art, je fondai a Liege notre _Little Review_ a nous, _La Wallonie_. Je retrouve justement quelques livraisons de cette revue et je vous les envoie; elles ont tout au moins le merite de la rarete.

Vous mon cher confrere, deja ne marchez plus a tatons mais je vous soupconne de n'etre pas aussi terriblement, aussi criminellement jeune que je l'etais a cette epoque-la. Et puis trente ans ont pa.s.se sur la litterature, et c'est de la folie d'hier qu'est faite la sagesse d'aujourd'hui. Alors le Symbolisme naissait; grace a la collaboration de mes amis, grace a Henri de Regnier et Pierre M. Olin qui dirigerent la revue avec moi, _La Wallonie_ en fut l'un des premiers foyers. Tout etait remis en question. On aspirait e plus de liberte a une forme plus intense et plus complete plus musicale et plus souple, a une expression nouvelle de l'eternelle beaute. On s'ingeniait on cherchait....

Tatonnements? Certes et ils etaient inevitables. Mais vif et ardent effort, desinteress.e.m.e.nt absolu, foi juvenile et surtout "No compromise with the public taste".... N'y a-t-il point la quelques traits de ressemblance avec l'uvre que vous tentez aujourd'hui en Amerique, et, a trente annees d'intervale, une sorte de cousinage? C'est pourquoi mon cher confrere, j'ai lu avec tant de plaisir la _Little Review_ dont vous avez eu la gentillesse de m'adresser la collection.

Croyez-moi sympathiquement votre,

ALBERT MOCKEL.

With a native mistrust of _la belle phrase_; of _"temps dore,"

"ferveur," "belle confiance"_, etc., and with an equally native superiority to any publication not printed LARGE, I opened _La Wallonie_. The gropings, "tatonnements," to which M. Mockel so modestly refers, appear to have included some of the best work of Mallarme, of Stuart Merrill, of Max Elskamp and Emile Verhaeren. Verlaine contributed to _La Wallonie_, De Regnier was one of its editors.... Men of since popular fame--Bourget, Pierre Louys, Maeterlinck--appeared with the rarer spirits.

If ever the "amateur magazine" in the sense of magazine by lovers of art and letters, for lovers of art and letters, in contempt of the commerce of letters, has vindicated itself, that vindication was _La Wallonie_.

Verhaeren's "Les Pauvres" first appeared there as the second part of the series: "Chansons des Carrefours" (Jan., '92).... The Elskamp I have just quoted appeared there with other poems of Max Elskamp. Mallarme is represented by the exquisite:

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Instigations Part 14 summary

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