(_Le monsieur s'en va, puis le poète sort._)
The troubles of the Larribeau family, Larribeau and the _bonne_, the visit of the "Comtese de Pentacosa," who is also staved off with ten francs, are all worth quoting. The whole small town is "Spoon-Rivered" with equal verve. "Existences" was written in 1900.
It must not be thought that these very "modern" poets owe their modernity merely to some magic chemical present in the Parisian milieu. Moréas was born in 1856, the year after Verhaeren, but his Madeline-aux-serpents might be William Morris on Rapunzel:
Et votre chevelure comme des grappes d'ombres, Et ses bandelettes à vos tempes, Et la kabbale de vos yeux latents,-- Madeline-aux-serpents, Madeline. Madeline, Madeline, Pourquoi vos lèvres à mon cou, ah, pourquoi Vos lèvres entre les coups du hache du roi! Madeline, et les cordaces et les flûtes, Les flûtes, les pas d'amour, les flûtes, vous les voulûtes, Hélas! Madeline, la fête, Madeline, Ne berce plus les flots au bord de l'île, Et mes bouffons ne crèvent plus des cerceaux Au bord de l'île, pauvres bouffons. Pauvres bouffons que couronne la sauge! Et mes litières s'effeuillent aux ornières, toutes mes litières à grand pans De nonchaloir, Madeline-aux-serpents....
A difference with Morris might have arisen, of course, over the now long-discussed question of vers libre, but who are we to dig up that Babylon? The schoolboys' papers of Toulouse had learnt all about it before the old gentlemen of _The Century_ and _Harper's_ had discovered that such things exist.
One will not have understood the French poetry of the last half-century unless one makes allowance for what they call the Gothic as well as the Roman or classic influence. We should probably call it (their "Gothic") "medievalism," its tone is that of their XIII century poets, Crestien de Troies, Marie de France, or perhaps even D'Orléans (as we noticed in the quotation from Vielé-Griffin). Tailhade in his "Hymne Antique" displays what we would call Swinburnism (Greekish). Tristan Klingsor (a nom de plume showing definite tendencies) exhibits these things a generation nearer to us:
Dans son rêve le vieux Prince de Touraine voit passer en robe verte à longue traîne Yeldis aux yeux charmeurs de douce reine. * * * * * * *
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