And then the generation of 1900--Alexander Mercereau, Henri Hertz, Sébastien Voirol, Pierre Jaudon, Jacques Nayral, Fernand Divoire, Tancrède Visan, Strentz, Giraudoux, Mandin, Guillaume Apollinaire--all workers in the vast inane, dwellers on the threshold of the future. The past and present bearings of the Academy Goncourt are carefully indicated. Thus far nothing extraordinary has come from it. Balzac is still the mighty one in fiction. Thus far the names of Anatole France, Paul Adam, the brothers Rosny, Pierre Mille--a brilliant, versatile man--still maintain their primacy.
Thus far, among the essayists, Remy de Gourmont, Camille Mauclair, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, J. H. Fabre, Jules Bois--now sojourning in America and a thinker of verve and originality--and Henry Houssaye, hold their own against the younger generation.
In the theatre there are numerous and vexing tendencies: Maeterlinck, loyally acknowledging his indebtedness to gentle Charles van Lerburghe, created a spiritual drama and has disciples; but the theatre is the theatre and resists innovation. Ibsen, who had his day in Paris, and Antoine of the Free Theatre were accepted not because of their novelty, but in spite of it. They both were men of the theatre. There is a school of Ideo-realism, and there are Curel, Bataille, Porto-Riche, Maeterlinck, Trarieux, and Marie Leneru; but the technique of the drama is immutable.
In the domain of philosophy and experimental science we find Emile Boutroux, and such collective psychologists as Durckheim, Gustave le Bon, and Gabriel Tarde; names such as Binet, Ribot, Michel Savigny, Alfred Fouillée, and the eminent mathematician, Henri Poincaré--who finally became sceptical of his favourite logic, philosophy, and mathematics. This intellectual volte-face caused endless discussion. The truth is that intuition, the instinctive vs. intellectualism--what William James called "vicious intellectualism"--is swaying the younger French thinkers and poets.
There is, if one is to judge by the anthologies, far too much of metaphysics in contemporary poetry. Poetry is in danger of suffocating in a misty mid-region of metaphysics. The vital impulse, intuitionalism, and rhythmic flow of time in Bergson caught the fancy of the poets. Naturally enough. Literary dogmatism had prevailed too long in academic centres. Now it is the deliquescence of formal verse that is to be feared. Vers-libre, which began with such initiators as that astonishing prodigy, Arthur Rimbaud, has run the gamut from esoteric illuminism to sonorous yawping from the terrace of the brasseries. Have frogs wings? we are tempted to ask. Voices they have, but not bird-like voices.