Art; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism; Music -- History and criticism
addition to these, and Dufour, Kahn, De Gourmont and Felix Feneon, we
have in English essays by George Moore, Arthur Symons, Philip Hale,
the critic of music, and Aline Gorren. Mr. Moore introduced Laforgue
in company with Rimbaud to the English reading world and Mr. Symons
devoted to him one of his sensitive studies in The Symbolist Movement
in Literature. Mr. Hale did the same years ago for American readers in
a sympathetic article, The Fantastical Jules Laforgue. He also
translated with astonishing fidelity to the letter and spirit of the
author, his incomparable Lohengrin, Fils de Parsifal. I regret having
it no longer in my possession so that I might quote from its delicious
prose. As to the verse, I know of few attempts to translate the
untranslatable. Perhaps Mr. Symons has tried his accomplished hand at
the task. How render the sumptuous assonance and solemn rhythms of
Marche Funebre: O convoi solennel des soleils magnifiques?
III
"Je ne suis qu'un viveur lunaire
Qui faits des ronds dans les bassins
Et cela, sans autre dessin
Que devenir un legendaire...."
Sings our poet in the silver-fire verse of L'Imitation de Notre-Dame
la Lune, wherein he asks--Mais ou sont les Lunes d'Antan. This Pierrot
lunaire, this buffoon of new and dusty eternities, wrote a sort of
vers libres, which, often breaking off with a smothered sob,
modulates into prose and sings the sorrows and complaints of a world
peopled by fantastic souls, clowns, somnambulists, satyrs, poets,
harlots, dainty girls, Cheret posters, pierrots, kings of pyschopathic
tastes, blithe birds, and sad-coloured cemeteries. The poet is a
mocking demon who rides on clouds dropping epigrams earthward, the
earth that grunts and sweats beneath the sun or cowers and weeps under
the stellar prairies. He mockingly calls himself "The Grand Chancellor
of Analysis." Like Nietzsche he dances when his heart is heavy, and
trills his roundelays and his gamut of rancorous flowers with an
enigmatic smile on his lips. It is a strange and disquieting music, a
pageantry of essences, this verse with its resonance of emerald.
Appearing in fugitive fashion, it was gathered into a single volume
through the efforts of friends and with the Moralites legendaires
comprises his life-work, for we can hardly include the Melanges
posthumes, which consist of scraps and fragments (published in 1903)
together with some letters, not a very weighty addition to the dead
poet's fame. His translations of Walt Whitman I've not seen. Perhaps
his verse is doomed; it was born with the hectic flush of early
dissolution, but it is safe to predict that as long as lovers of rare
literature exist the volume of prose will survive. It has for the
gourmet of style an unending charm, the charm en sourdine of its
creator, to whom a falling leaf or an empire in dissolution was of
equal value. "His work," wrote Mr. Symons, "has the fatal evasiveness
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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