Part 15
I expected a revel of delight from Verhaeren’s _Helen_. I did not get it. At the same time I admired its reason, logical unfolding, keeping in key; few lines of color and great passion, wisely distributed. Verhaeren is best in lyrics, occasional poems, which picture Flanders. In this, if I mistake not, he is great. _Les Flamands_ is a masterpiece. And so is _Villes Tentaculaires_. What can equal those portraits of the monks! He paints with words as Flemish artists painted, The van Ostade, (Adrian and Isaac), the Brothers Maris, later, for example. Nothing too humble.
He has given me pleasure. For forty years Flanders has had an increasingly talented company of men, in the novel, short story, verse, and in the history of art and art criticism, they have such commanding and accomplished figures as Dr. Josef Muls, whose books are available in most of the countries of the Continent in adequate translations. They are too little known, on this side the Atlantic. No one can count, it seems, the vagaries of editors who accept translations. Couperus, the Hollander, and Ibañez, the Spaniard, are not representative of the races to which they belong. Both, however, have been heralded as that by American editors.
As an editor Mr. Kreymborg is not a success. But I admire his individual work. It is genuine. It is original. It is unblushingly itself. I think Mr. Kreymborg a man of power in a new field. He has a strange, queer, colorless daintiness. He fine-foots it, with muffled vowels like a learned fugue of long ago. He is as afraid of their bold, gay, brass blatancy, as a small boy of a scare-crow, in a cherry garden. A quaint, low-voiced, dull-hued, crotchety, somewhat ill-tempered little figure, dreaming of conjuring worlds into vision, with dim, small gestures. May he multiply and grow fat!
Stuart Merrill dedicates a volume of poems to Verhaeren, whom I admire, with two lines so noble they should not be forgotten. He speaks of him as a
_Nom qui sonne comme un fracas d’armes Qu’un roi barbare aurait laissé choir dans la nuit._
Albert Samain gives me something the sensation of those warmly lucid, those golden, early evenings of Lorraine which hold out life’s pitiful false promise of perfection. The same distilled imagined richness of the past! The picture of the pagan world snared his heart. His verse keeps the sensations of _un beau soir d’Italie_. It is a magnificent antique world he saw, and knows how to show.
_Chariot d’Or_, by Samain, presents a way to journey with the mind, a little while, delightfully. Imagine if you can that this book of his went through eighteen editions, with speed, in France. What kind of verse-book could do that in America? Not one of _this_ class! You can not serve your soul and an editor’s taste, at the same time. _And greed!_ In America gold must be served. And then _family_!
Of his sonnet sequences I enjoy the _Versailles Sequence_ best. He learned how to make it from Heredia. But a good thing is good, bastard or honest-born. Lines cling to memory. Such for instance as:
_Ce mépris de la mort, comme une fleur aux levres!_
But it should not have closed with an exclamation point. Perhaps it did not! My memory is at fault. There is no need of blowing a trumpet after such a line.
Silvá, like Venice, is a phantom of delight, I can never forget. He was _an exquisite_, on a level with Petronius, and he lived in a city to which patrician memories and the royal pride, of that royal race, the Spanish, had been transplanted, Bogotá.
He loved butterflies and childhood and the first early nights of May; fleeting things, light lovelinesses which pause only long enough to die. He loved the flight of swallows which he liked to call the wings of Spring.
I have read verses of his which give me exactly the same sensation as verses of the Greek Anthology.
Old windows were another passion of his. Very frequently occur the words, _vieja ventana_.
_En la estrecha calle una muy vieja ventana colonial_
_Penetrando al traves de los rejas de antigua ventana_
_El cantor ... de la vieja ventana se asiò a la barra_
_Per la antigua ventana que de sobre al jardin—_
... _del espacio la negra sombre flitran por la ventana rayos de luna_ ...
I think of him as the _poet of windows_. I wonder why they fascinated him so? Were they symbols of escape? Or did they spread out vistas for him? Always in his lines, for me, there is some maddening, unseizable beauty, which holds me helpless like a magnet, makes me a speechless, but willing prisoner.
His little posthumous book of verse (The greater number of his poems together with all his short stories and most of his prose, were lost in shipwreck on the Venezuelan coast.) is a musicale diary of his days, _alas! so few_. Here transformed, then preserved in beauty, we find fact.
A new use of recurrent sound, with him wholly personal, spots phrases with weird echoes, insistent wild, wayward emotion. There slips over us continually the sad shiver of faint, far fairy bells.
There are rhythms like the clash of armor-resonant; and rhythms like the shrill song of little yellow birds at dawn. He says that among verse-forms, the sonnet is king.
He can give perfectly the aroma of the season of the year. _A few words_.... I smell the winds of autumn in a high mountain-land and taste the purpling grape. All from three chained words of Silvá! Then I see white mist distort the meadows and feel the frost. He witches back the spirit of what has vanished, and with a lordly gesture. The past, perhaps, perfumed his dreams. The trembling fragility of his sensations is something almost beyond comprehension. I have received tremendous emotion from the haunting beauty of old windows, in old grey, stone-stucco, tinted, crumbling palaces of the _conquistadores_—after Silvá has taught me to see.
Silvá’s _Nocturns_ are as rich as the twilights of Chopin. I wish I knew how to hand on his charm to others, in my colder English tongue! But no one will ever do it. Behind each word lie layer after layer of emotion, vision, all the hauntingly sweet, indefinite horizons of great poets, who have suffered.
No one could snare twice (I am thinking of the work of the translator) the suggestive charm of all these unseen landscapes of the soul, of space, of time, and over them the perfume of divine, unspeakable regret. The _Nocturns_ are windows, the windows of his soul, open upon forlorn and fanciful worlds, which allure too greatly, with some sad, not sufficiently forbidden fatality. The greater the poet, the richer his evocativeness.
He loved the faint blue light of tardy twilights; and white luminous August, with its restless clouds. He kept always a lingering backward glance toward the magic valleys of childhood.
In many languages I have read the poets of the world, but none have touched me quicker to the keen emotion which blasts the present, and whirls on toward the deeps. Like Goya in painting, he was one of the first to take the important step from the old to the new. In verse-forms, he was one of the path makers. Coll said he had built Silvá an altar in his heart.
I do not understand how a man could write such a charming book as Jacques Blanche wrote in _De David à Degas_, and follow it with such inane useless things as the _Cahiers d’un Artiste_. I regret I wasted money on a copy of the last set. I haven’t money to waste.
He wrote the art criticisms for love. He knew what he was talking about. He talked well.
He wrote the last for money, bolstered up by a questionable sense of duty to say something about war. He said it. His friends regret it.
The introduction to the book on art, is by Marcel Proust. It is delightful; fresh, spontaneous, joyous. I read it three times.
_De David à Degas_ is a book of perceptions, just appreciations, knowledge. I was surprised, however, in his article on Whistler that he should omit the influence of incomparable Chinese and Japanese draftsmen. He can see but one influence, of course, _France_. He does not relish the genius of Whistler; he gives us to understand he was not so much, _in Paris_. He feels about Whistler as Conrad feels when he thinks of Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Maupassant. Conrad was never really great. He merely coquetted with greatness. No page of Conrad ever satisfied my thirst for beauty! Perhaps English was not the proper garment with which to dress his soul!
Blanche writes entertainingly of two Englishmen: Beardsley and Condor. One can not be too gracious to Condor! He was an unacknowledged _point de départ_ for modernism. There is some unexplained law operative why a man of such genius as Condor can not grasp what is his during life. Is it envy of the base? Is it envy of the little ones? The little are always so greatly in the voting majority.
The portraits by Jacques Blanche in oil, are not more alluring than some he draws with pen. For instance, listen to this about Manet: ... _ce joli homme blond, gracieux, elegant, à la cravate Lavalière bleue, à pois blancs_. Does not that make you feel as if a friend said hello over the telephone, or a speckled trout nibbled your bait, on a bright blond morning of May? He makes delightful Fantin live again. He declares that after Courbet, Manet was the last painter of tradition.
Papini, wild-eyed Italian youth, with surprised up-standing hair, who edited _Lionardo_ in Florence is, in my opinion of slight consequence as poet, prose writer, philosopher. To put the cart before the horse, his philosophising is acute indigestion from too much Nietzsche, Kant, Jungs-Stilling, Hegel, _et cetera ad infinitum_. In this melange of German mind and northern morals, he was unable to see his surprised way, or anybody’s way. He read. He suffered. He vomited words. His philosophy is account of the peregrenations of a nostalgic, young and ambitious mind. His early verse might be called pretty, puerile, powerless. Lines like these are not great poetry:
_Quaderno bianco, principio di giorno, Conto vergine pagina prima— non si parli di ritorno che in cima all’ultima cima._
His verse is weak. His twenty little reasonings about verse are no better. There does not seem to be reason for being. They possess neither logic of art nor life, nor discrimination for the dull. However, in South America, in Buenos Aires (or as they say down there, B. A.), and in Rio, they prize him. I respect their opinion, those Spanish and Portuguese _literati_. It may be _mea culpa_! They are ahead of us in appreciation of arts of the Old World.
I enjoy André Gide. And he lacks sense of form which belongs to Frenchmen. Few have written better of Verlaine. His _Les Nourritures Terrestres_ contained lines I liked. Once in a while there flashes from his pages, a touch of the fine prose of France.
_Nene_ which won a _Prix Goncourt_, is finely simple, without pose. It is sincere. The rejuvenating breath of fields is in this story of peasant life. Perhaps that is what French prose must do, like the giant in the fable of antiquity, go back to the soil, in order to leap up renewed, strengthened. The descriptions of nature have an unsought charm: _Le soir tombait, un soir d’octobre_....
Evening fell, an evening of October, lovely as an evening of summer, but holding keener, more grievous beauty, something more intimate that makes the soul shiver.
It has the poignancy, poetry I recall in early peasant scenes by Cazin, the same glory of yellowing fields; the same sadly serene peace of the sky.
_El Encanto de Buenos Aires_, by Gomez Carillo, is attractive. He is the Spanish Loti. Not so wonderful as master of words, of course, but worth consideration. He was one of that band of brilliant Spaniards who helped Rubén Darío edit _Mundial_, in Paris, the lamented Amado Nervo being of the number.
The book is well printed, pleasing typographically. Carillo, like Loti, loves the souls of far cities. He says in the introduction: ... _mi alma siente la gracia de ciertas ciudades con una intensidad que los grandes ministros y los grandes periodistos desdeñan_. Like Loti, he is a stylist, if not such a commanding one. I have followed him in various quarters of the globe. One I recall happily, is Egypt. He says he likes to watch resplendent stars he has never seen, rise from the lonely depths of oceans. Sometimes he forgets and becomes sentimental. It is easy to forgive, because so many times he forgets and then becomes artist. He has more than a little of Loti’s distinguished manner. He has sympathy, too!
His impression of New York pleases me. By New York I suppose he means America in general. The educated Spaniard, as a rule, keeps fine disdain of us, what he terms _those new uncultivated people_, up north, _known as Americans_. Hear him: _La vida ahi es un vertigo, y el hombre un iluminado o un automata, una maquina, o un delirio. De arte, de gusto, de armonia, de medida, de distincion, ni siquiera una idea tiene la metropoli norte americana en su existio callejero._ There is some truth in this!
What makes this more interesting is that nowhere is there more what he calls _vertigo_, than in B. A., Rio. I read all their magazines. They are brilliant, just as aggregated diamonds are brilliant. This, what he has just been saying, is what Spanish and Portuguese neighbors think of us. I could not count the number who have said something similar to me. In it there is unconscious aristocratic disdain of king-lovers for a young, ill-bred, free, and too noisy people who boast of democracy when they do not boast of dollars. We bow our heads to the superiority of Latin culture. They swung a long time from Caesar’s coat-tail. We did not. In fact, we are just beginning to swing. And not from Caesar’s. The Spanish-Americans write noble, flexible prose. Carillo’s prose has rhythms both ample and fine.
He sends stinging arrows, some of which hit, at New York, Chicago, America. He is of the opinion that cities that are beautiful, (meaning those of the Old World), are dirty and uncomfortable. Our _comfortable_ clean cities, on the other hand, are ugly. They are something with which he does not like to profane fine, sensitive eyes. He hates Broadway. His sensuous, sumptuous soul loves the lasting summer of rich hued tropic lands, their languid, their sapphire seas, and perfected luxury of living.
His description of what he calls _Oxford of the Argentine_, makes me wish I were a boy, young, so I could go there. It is a magnificent idea, which the Spaniards have put into execution in this school, an idea worthy the dramatic genius of Latin peoples.
He becomes lyric over the avenues, parks, of Buenos Aires, in one of which he remembers to tell us he found Rodin’s _Thinker_.
Carillo is learned. He possesses charm with power of distinguished seeing. I have read him for years. He is seldom disappointing, unless he writes a story. In the story he lacks architectural sense-structure.
_La Lampara Maravillosa_, by Valle-Inclán is a charming piece of book-making; richly illustrated, printed in two colors, red and black, and from the Sociedad General Española de Libreria, Madrid. I have seen lovely books from there! I wish I could buy them all. Even if one could not read them, they are pleasant to look at, like objects of art.
Valle-Inclán is a dreamer, a maker of poetic prose. I recall a merry caricature of his long, thin, black, owl-eyed, glasses-berimmed Spanish face in a magazine of Mexico. Probably the magazine was _Tricolor_.
_The Magic Lamp_, in this book, renews memory, a memory rich with the accumulation of a thousand years. It has charm, inventive grace. There is a touch to be sure here and there in the prose of the Spanish church-fathers; something monastic, shadowed, hieratic, a trifle pedantic. The gesture of a priest, in short, a lingering, regretful, graceful gesture, for beauty of a world which is passing, and which he should not pause too often to see. His prose is great enough to serve as a model for writers.
He visited Mexico. I read his articles. His reactions to the new country interested me. This dreaming scholar sees best with eyes of the mind. The eyes of his body have weakened. In his heart he loves the beauty of Greece, Rome, the pagan world. At the same time, by birth, he is a priest of the Inquisition. He has their face, too; long, thin, pale ascetic. A long list of books, sensitive, delicately and powerfully written, stand to his credit. He is one of the most accomplished stylists.
Villaespesa, of _El Espejo Encantado_, was in Mexico at about the same time. His fancy was touched to furious flame by pre-historic, Toltec Mexico; the Indian past. He wrote sonnets about it. He reconstructed the romantic twilights of long ago, by fanciful, flower-burdened lakes in that land of fabulous forgotten wealth, and prodigious palaces where, from ears of stone statues, scattered carelessly in gardens, pink pearls hung the size of pecans; and emeralds, gold, gems, had no value. He seemed especially able _to savor_ its sumptuousness, then to pass on the sensation to others. He has written well, too, of the African desert. He writes novels, plays, verse. Villaespesa is poet of old Spain, _España vieja_. He might be great. I do not know why he is not. He has power over words, and vision.
_L’Atlantide_, whose originality or non-originality they have quarreled over happily in French journals, is a peculiar novel for a Frenchman to write, because it is excellent example of what is known as Teutonic imagination. As to originality, referring to his idea of injecting something into bodies of living people which would turn them to stone, this was subject of a story by myself, called _The Painter of Dead Women_. It was first printed in the _Smart Set_ many years ago and later made one of a book of short stories called _Dear Dead Women_, published by Little, Brown & Company. It is the same thing, _even in details_, in which it is carried out. And my book, of course, never came to notice of the Frenchman. It is a case of two people having the same idea, which is not impossible. Many of us bend at the same moment over the great grey, shining, reflecting pool which is universal mind across which, in time, all pageants pass.
There are good sentences in Benoit’s novel, pleasant pictures of Africa. The old story of _Lost Atlantis_ continues to fascinate like the faces of blond women. It is a dream of vanished delight which has floated over the world. In both that novel and _Pour Don Carlos_, Benoit proves he knew better than almost any Frenchman today, how to handle the gripping moment.
I have had happiness with André Salmon’s _L’Art Vivante_. It is not a great book. Instead it is a satisfying one. I commend it to people who care to know painters of the new school.
He knows how to characterize. Please listen to this about Van Dongen, the Hollander who paints women so luxuriously: _Anacreon venu de pays des Kermesses, petit-neveu de Ruben’s, ignorant des mythologies, matelot ivre fournissant une pacotille galant aux sirènes, Van Dongen est un peu tout cela_.
I hope I shall never by accident, as I know I shall not by intention, wander into sad village streets of Vlaminck! They are things of astonishing power. The first one I saw made me suffer like a nightmare. Some stern, grief-tempered soul I trust I shall be spared the misery of meeting, looks out of his canvasses. The vision of Vlaminck is hard, cruel, tears the world to pieces. The tragedies that have been written can not equal the imagined terrors of what must go on within those shabby dwellings whose sad exteriors, he doubles, then redoubles, by hard reflection in cold, clear surfaces of ill-kept canals, or lonely rivers.
The water is deep, clean, magnificently reflecting. The sky is angry, threatening, or else profoundly sad, as if from many tears. But the colors are fresh, insistent, ringing, proud. The brushing is joyous. It is sure and powerful. The structural similarity of his pictures is unusual. But his range is slight, and limited. His blues, greens, have primitive simplicity that contrasts with the too sophisticated structure. The inelasticity of melancholy, of depressing winters by sullen unhappy seas of the north that wearily await spring is here.
I found, the other day, a Gauguin, that is magnificently savage. Two standing women; fine, bare, brown bodies, wearing twisted about the waist, one dark blue, the other high, haunting red that keep the key of their flesh. An acrid yellow-green background with a dark, gum-pink hill. Splendid color pattern! There is something about it that renews the senses. I can drink of it with my eyes then feel good. In this same collection there was a luscious autumn by Guillamin. It reminded me of delicate flesh of tropic melons which I have seen but could not name, in lonely islands, by the Carib Sea. A level foreground, delicately tufted; dry, dull orange-yellow; faint, red-touched violet. A line of plaintive trees; one or two green, round, fat, the others faint; fragile ghosts of gold. A sky that balances daintily but deliberately both green and blue; with trailing, regretful clouds of autumn; grey, yellow, violet.
The harsh, quick assertiveness of Matisse was here; large-patterned, aggressive in hue; but strong, resonant.
Toulouse Lautrec has four portraits which are infinitely sophisticated of line, quick of touch, crisp. Memorable work; too disillusioned, but kept carefully in a low key.
Salmon, writing usually in the grand manner of French prose of the past, about men in paint of the present, who do not believe in the grand manner (stage sweat and swagger), nor the great gesture, says startling things. Hear! Hear! _Et dans sa demi-retraite André Derain achevant les œuvres peut-être les plus vastes de son temps_ and so forth. (André Derain putting the finishing touches to works which perhaps are the most vast of the age.) Derain’s figure paintings are unlike his landscapes. The figure paintings are of the past; the landscapes of today.
I recall a canvas by Derain I saw in Paris: A road in the south of France somewhere, magic in simplicity; not easily disentangled charm. I carry it in my memory. It is massive, with God-like mastery of some vast disturbing chaos. Troubling! The world’s new eyes are sometimes things to consider. And with care.
_Adonis is dead and the Loves are lamenting!_
I quote Greek song in honor of Apollinaire, to whose pen-magic moderns in the plastic arts owe introduction first to fame, secondly, to dollars, then dinners, in regular, non-dwindling succession.
_Ah, Apollinaire!_ delightful vagabond of art. Apollo’s second son and namesake! I regret you! My consolation must be to buy as many of your earlier writings as I can. _Nineveh_ I long for as the hungry for food. Please page _Nineveh_, Apollinaire, for me in your bright Paradise! I am sure _Nineveh_ is there. And you too!
Strangest of contrasts in Apollinaire, is that he, leader of the moderns, should have liked old-fashioned, sentimental, romantic writers of Germany such as Chamisso.... _The longing for something afar_....