Part 17

And it is towards this point that all the words of this book tend. Maeterlinck, unlike most men ("What is man but a God who is afraid?"), is not "miserly of immortal things." He utters the most divine secrets without fear, betraying certain hiding-places of the soul in those most nearly inaccessible retreats which lie nearest to us. All that he says we know already; we may deny it, but we know it. It is what we are not often at leisure enough with ourselves, sincere enough with ourselves, to realise; what we often dare not realise; but, when he says it, we know that it is true, and our knowledge of it is his warrant for saying it. He is what he is precisely because he tells us nothing which we do not already know, or it may be, what we have known and forgotten. The mystic, let it be remembered, has nothing in common with the moralist. He speaks only to those who are already prepared to listen to him, and he is indifferent to the "practical" effect which these or others may draw from his words. A young and profound mystic of our day has figured the influence of wise words upon the foolish and headstrong as "torches thrown into a burning city." The mystic knows well that it is not always the soul of the drunkard or the blasphemer which is farthest from the eternal beauty. He is concerned only with that soul of the soul, that life of life, with which the day's doings have so little to do; itself a mystery, and at home only among those supreme mysteries which surround it like an atmosphere. It is not always that he cares that his message, or his vision, may be as clear to others as it is to himself. But, because he is an artist, and not only a philosopher, Maeterlinck has taken especial pains that not a word of his may go astray, and there is not a word of this book which needs to be read twice, in order that it may be understood, by the least trained of attentive readers. It is, indeed, as he calls it, "The Treasure of the Lowly."

CONCLUSION

Our only chance, in this world, of a complete happiness, lies in the measure of our success in shutting the eyes of the mind, and deadening its sense of hearing, and dulling the keenness of its apprehension of the unknown. Knowing so much less than nothing, for we are entrapped in smiling and many-coloured appearances, our life may seem to be but a little space of leisure, in which it will be the necessary business of each of us to speculate on what is so rapidly becoming the past and so rapidly becoming the future, that scarcely existing present which is after all our only possession. Yet, as the present passes from us, hardly to be enjoyed except as memory or as hope, and only with an at best partial recognition of the uncertainty or inutility of both, it is with a kind of terror that we wake up, every now and then, to the whole knowledge of our ignorance, and to some perception of where it is leading us. To live through a single day with that overpowering consciousness of our real position, which, in the moments in which alone it mercifully comes, is like blinding light or the thrust of a flaming sword, would drive any man out of his senses. It is our hesitations, the excuses of our hearts, the compromises of our intelligence, which save us. We can forget so much, we can bear suspense with so fortunate an evasion of its real issues; we are so admirably finite.

And so there is a great, silent conspiracy between us to forget death; all our lives are spent in busily forgetting death. That is why we are active about so many things which we know to be unimportant; why we are so afraid of solitude, and so thankful for the company of our fellow-creatures. Allowing ourselves, for the most part, to be but vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art; each a forgetfulness, each a symbol of creation; religion being the creation of a new heaven, passion the creation of a new earth, and art, in its mingling of heaven and earth, the creation of heaven out of earth. Each is a kind of sublime selfishness, the saint, the lover, and the artist having each an incommunicable ecstasy which he esteems as his ultimate attainment, however, in his lower moments, he may serve God in action, or do the will of his mistress, or minister to men by showing them a little beauty. But it is, before all things, an escape: and the prophets who have redeemed the world, and the artists who have made the world beautiful, and the lovers who have quickened the pulses of the world, have really, whether they knew it or not, been fleeing from the certainty of one thought: that we have, all of us, only our one day; and from the dread of that other thought: that the day, however used, must after all be wasted.

The fear of death is not cowardice; it is, rather, an intellectual dissatisfaction with an enigma which has been presented to us, and which can be solved only when its solution is of no further use. All we have to ask of death is the meaning of life, and we are waiting all through life to ask that question. That life should be happy or unhappy, as those words are used, means so very little; and the heightening or lessening of the general felicity of the world means so little to any individual. There is something almost vulgar in happiness which does not become joy, and joy is an ecstasy which can rarely be maintained in the soul for more than the moment during which we recognize that it is not sorrow. Only very young people want to be happy. What we all want is to be quite sure that there is something which makes it worth while to go on living, in what seems to us our best way, at our finest intensity; something beyond the mere fact that we are satisfying a sort of inner logic (which may be quite faulty) and that we get our best makeshift for happiness on that so hazardous assumption.

Well, the doctrine of Mysticism, with which all this symbolical literature has so much to do, of which it is all so much the expression, presents us, not with a guide for conduct, not with a plan for our happiness, not with an explanation of any mystery, but with a theory of life which makes us familiar with mystery, and which seems to harmonise those instincts which make for religion, passion, and art, freeing us at once of a great bondage. The final uncertainty remains, but we seem to knock less helplessly at closed doors, coming so much closer to the once terrifying eternity of things about us, as we come to look upon these things as shadows, through which we have our shadowy passage. "For in the particular acts of human life," Plotinus tells us, "it is not the interior soul and the true man, but the exterior shadow of the man alone, which laments and weeps, performing his part on the earth as in a more ample and extended scene, in which many shadows of souls and phantom scenes appear." And as we realise the identity of a poem, a prayer, or a kiss, in that spiritual universe which we are weaving for ourselves, each out of a thread of the great fabric; as we realise the infinite insignificance of action, its immense distance from the current of life; as we realise the delight of feeling ourselves carried onward by forces which it is our wisdom to obey; it is at least with a certain relief that we turn to an ancient doctrine, so much the more likely to be true because it has so much the air of a dream. On this theory alone does all life become worth living, all art worth making, all worship worth offering. And because it might slay as well as save, because the freedom of its sweet captivity might so easily become deadly to the fool, because that is the hardest path to walk in where you are told only, walk well; it is perhaps the only counsel of perfection which can ever really mean much to the artist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES

The essays contained in this book are not intended to give information. They are concerned with ideas rather than with facts; each is a study of a problem, only in part a literary one, in which I have endeavoured to consider writers as personalities under the action of spiritual forces, or as themselves so many forces. But it has seemed to me that readers have a right to demand information in regard to writers who are so often likely to be unfamiliar to them. I have, therefore, given a bibliography of the works of each writer with whom I have dealt, and I have added a number of notes, giving various particulars which I think are likely to be useful in fixing more definitely the personal characteristics of these writers.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

(1799-1850)

La Comédie Humaine

_Scènes de la Vie Privée_

_Préface. La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote,_ 1829; _Le Bal de Sceaux,_ 1829; _Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées,_ 1841; _La Bourse,_ 1832; _Modeste Mignon,_ 1844; _Un Début dans la vie,_ 1842; _Albert Savarus,_ 1842; _La Vendetta,_ 1830; _La Paix du ménage,_ 1829; _Madame Firmiani,_ 1832; _Étude de femme,_ 1830; _La Fausse maîtresse,_ 1842; _Une Fille d'Eve,_ 1838; _Le Message,_ 1832; _La Grenadière,_ 1832; _La Femme abandonnée,_ 1832; _Honorine,_ 1843; _Beatrix,_ 1838; _Gobseck,_ 1830; _La Femme de trente ans,_ 1834; _La Père Goriot,_ 1834; _Le Colonel Chabert,_ 1832; _La Messe de l'Athée,_ 1836; _L'Interdiction,_ 1836; Le _Contrat de mariage,_ 1835; Autre _étude de femme,_ 1839; La _Grande Bretêche,_ 1832.

_Scènes de la vie de Province_

_Ursule Mirouët,_ 1841; _Eugénie Grandet,_ 1833; _Le Lys dans la vallée_, 1835; _Pierrette,_ 1839; _Le Curé de Tours_, 1832; _La Ménage d'un garçon,_ 1842; _L'illustre Gaudissart,_ 1833; _La Muse du département,_ 1843; _Le Vieille fille_, 1836; _Le Cabinet des Antiques,_ 1837; _Les Illusions Perdues,_ 1836.

_Scènes de la Vie Parisienne_

_Ferragus,_ 1833; _Là Duchesse de Langeais,_ 1834; _La Fille aux yeux d'or,_ 1834; _La Grandeur et la Décadence de César Birotteau,_ 1837; _La Maison Nucingen,_ 1837; _Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,_ 1838; _Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan,_ 1839; _Facino Cane,_ 1836; _Sarrasine,_ 1830; _Pierre Grassou,_ 1839; _La Cousine Bette,_ 1846; _Le Cousin Pons,_ 1847; _Un Prince de la Bohème,_ 1839; _Gaudissart II,_ 1844; _Les Employés,_ 1836; _Les Comédiens sans le savoir,_ 1845; _Les Petits Bourgeois,_ 1845.

_Scènes de la Vie Militaire_

_Les Chouans,_ 1827; _Une Passion dans le désert,_ 1830.

_Scènes de la Vie Politique_

_Un Épisode sous la Terreur,_ 1831; _Une Ténébreuse Affaire,_ 1841; _Z. Marcos,_ 1840; _L'Envers de l'Histoire contemporaine,_ 1847; _Le Député d'Arcis._

_Scènes de la Vie de Campagne_

_Le Médecin de campagne,_ 1832; _Le Curé de village,_ 1837; _Les Paysans,_ 1845.

_Études Philosophiques_

_La Peau de Chagrin,_ 1830; _Jésus-Christ en Flandres,_ 1831; _Melmoth réconcilié,_ 1835; _Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu,_ 1832; _Gambara,_ 1837; _Massimilla Doni,_ 1839; _La Recherche de l'Absolu,_ 1834; _L'Enfant Maudit,_ 1831; _Les Maranas,_ 1832; _Adieu,_ 1830; _Le Réquisitionnaire,_ 1831; _El Verdugo,_ 1829; _Un Drame au bord de la mer,_ 1834; _L'Auberge rouge,_ 1831; L'_Élixir de longue vie,_ 1830; _Maître Cornélius,_ 1831; _Catherine de Médicis,_ 1836; _Les Proscrits,_ 1831; _Louis Lambert,_ 1832; _Séraphita,_ 1833.

_Études Analytiques_

_La Physiologie du mariage,_ 1829; _Petites misères de la vie conjugale._

_Théâtre_

_Vautrin, Drame_5 _Actes,_ 1840; _Les Ressources de Quinola, Comédie_ 5 _Actes,_ 1842; _Paméla Giraud, Drame_5 _Actes,_ 1843; _La Marâtre, Drame_5 _Actes,_ 1848; _La Faiseur (Mercadet), Comédie_ 5 _Actes,_ 1851; _Les Contes Drolatiques,_ 1832, 1833, 1839.

PROSPER MÉRIMÉE

(1803-1870)

_La Guzla,_ 1827; _La Jacquerie,_ 1828; _Le Chronique du Temps de Charles IX,_ 1829; _La Vase Etrusque,_ 1829; _Vénus d'Ille,_ 1837; _Colomba,_ 1846; _Carmen,_ 1845; _Lokis,_ 1869; _Mateo Falcone,_ 1876; _Mélanges Historiques et Littéraires,_ 1855; _Les Cosaques d'Autrefois,_ 1865; _Étude sur les Arts au Moyen-Age,_ 1875; _Les Faux Démétrius,_ 1853; _Étude sur l'Histoire Romaine,_ 1844; _Histoire de Dom Pedro,_ 1848; _Lettres à une Inconnue,_ 1874.

GÉRARD DE NERVAL

(1808-1855)

_Napoléon et la France Guerrière, élégies nationales,_ 1826; _La mort de Talma,_ 1826; _L'Académie, ou les Membres Introuvables, comédie satirique en vers,_ 1826; _Napoléon et Talma, élégies nationales nouvelles,_ 1826; _M. Dentscourt, ou le Cuisinier Grand Homme,_ 1826; _Elégies Nationales et Satires Politiques,_ 1827; _Faust, tragédie de Goethe,_ 1828 (suivi du second _Faust,_ 1840); _Couronne Poétique de Béranger,_ 1828; _Le Peuple, ode,_ 1830; _Poésies Allemandes, Morceaux choisis et traduits,_ 1830; _Choix de Poésies de Ronsard et de Régnier,_ 1830; _Nos Adieux à la Chambre de Députés de Van_ 1830, 1831; _Lénore, traduite de Burger,_ 1835; _Piquilo, opéra comique_ (with Dumas), 1837; l'_Alchimiste, drame en vers_ (with Dumas), 1839; _Léo Burckhardt, drame en prose_ (with Dumas), 1839; _Scènes de la Vie Orientale,_ 2 vols., 1848-1850; _Les Monténégrins, opéra comique_ (with Alboize), 1849; _Le Chariot d'Enfant, drame en vers_ (with Méry), 1850; _Les Nuits du Ramazan,_ 1850; _Voyage en Orient,_ 1851; _L'Imagier de Harlem, légende en prose et en vers_ (with Méry and Bernard Lopez), 1852; _Contes et Facéties,_ 1852; _Lorely, souvenirs d'Allemagne,_ 1852; _Les Illuminés,_ 1852; _Petits Châteaux de Bohème,_ 1853; _Les Filles du Feu,_ 1854; _Misanthropie et Repentir, drame de Kotzebue,_ 1855; _La Bohème galante,_ 1855; _Le Rêve et la Vie; Aurélia,_ 1855; _Le Marquis de Fayolle_ (with E. Gorges), 1856; _Œuvres Complètes,_ 6 vols. (1, _Les Deux Faust de Goethe;_ 2, 3, _Voyage en Orient;_ 4, _Les Illuminés, Les Faux Saulniers;_ 5, _Le Rêve et la Vie, Les Filles du Feu, La Bohème galante;_ 6, _Poésies Complètes),_ 1867.

The sonnets, written at different periods and published for the first time in the collection of 1854, "Les Filles du Feu," which also contains "Sylvie," were reprinted in the volume of _Poésies Complètes,_ where they are imbedded in the midst of deplorable juvenilia. All, or almost all, of the verse worth preserving was collected, in 1897, by that delicate amateur of the curiosities of beauty, M. Remy de Gourmont, in a tiny volume called _Les Chimères,_ which contains the six sonnets of "Les Chimères," the sonnet called "Vers Dorés," the five sonnets of "Le Christ aux Oliviers," and, in facsimile of the autograph, the lyric called "Les Cydalises." The true facts of the life of Gérard have been told for the first time, from original documents, by Mme. Arvède Barine, in two excellent articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes,_ October 15 and November 1, 1897, since reprinted in _Les Névrosés,_1898.

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(1811-1872)

_Les Poésies,_ 1830; _Albertus, ou l'âme et le péché,_ 1833; _Les Jeunes-France,_ 1833; _Mademoiselle de Maupin,_ 1835; _Fortunio,_ 1838.

_La Comédie de la Mort,_ 1838; _Tras les Montes,_ 1839; _Une Larme du Diable,_ 1839; _Gisèle, ballet,_ 1841; _Une Voyage en Espagne,_ 1843; _Le Péri, ballet,_ 1843; _Les Grotesques,_ 1844.

_Une Nuit de Cléopâtre,_ 1845; _Premières Poésies,_ 1845; _Zigzags,_ 1845; _Le Tricorne Enchanté,_ 1845; _La Turquie,_ 1846.

_La Juive de Constantine, drama,_ 1846; _Jean et Jeannette,_ 1846; _Le Roi Candaule,_ 1847.

_Les Roués innocents,_ 1847; _Histoire des Peintres,_ 1847; _Regardez, mais n'y touche pas,_ 1847; _Les Fêtes de Madrid,_ 1847; _Partie carrée,_ 1851; _Italia,_ 1852; Les _Émaux et Camées,_ 1852; L'Art _Moderne,_ 1859; _Les Beaux Arts_ en _Europe,_ 1852; _Caprices et Zigzags,_ 1852; Ario _Marcella,_ 1852; Les _Beaux-arts en Europe,_ 1855; _Constantinople,_ 1854; _Théâtre de poche,_ 1855; Le _Roman de la Momie,_ 1856; _Jettatura,_ 1857; _Avatar_, 1857; _Sakountala, Ballet,_ 1858; Honoré de Balzac, 1859; Les Fosses, 1860; _Trésors d'Art de la Russie,_1860-1863; _Histoire de l'art théâtrale en France depuis vingt-cinq ans,_ 1860; Le _Capitaine Fracasse,_ 1863; Les _Dieux et les Demi-Dieux de la peintre,_ 1863; _Poésies nouvelles,_ 1863; _Loin de Paris,_ 1864; _La Belle Jenny,_ 1864; _Voyage en Russie,_ 1865; _Spirite,_ 1866; _Le Palais pompéien de l'Avenue Montaigne,_ 1866; _Rapport sur le progrès des Lettres,_ 1868; _Ménagère intime,_ 1869; _La Nature chez Elle,_ 1870; _Tableaux de Siege,_ 1871; _Théâtre,_ 1872; _Portraits Contemporaines,_ 1874; _Histoire du Romantisme,_ 1874; _Portraits et Souvenirs littéraires,_ 1875; _Poésies complètes,_ 1876: 2 vols.; _L'Orient,_ 1877; _Fusins et eaux-Fortes,_ 1880; _Tableaux à la Plume,_ 1880; _Mademoiselle Daphné,_ 1881; Guide de _l'Amateur au Musés du Louvre._ 1882; _Souvenirs de Théâtre d'Art et de critique,_ 1883.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

(1821-1880)

_Madame Bovary,_ 1857; _Salammbô,_ 1863; _La Tentation de Saint Antoine,_ 1874; _L'Education Sentimentale,_ 1870; _Trois Contes,_ 1877; _Bouvard et Pécuchet,_ 1881; _Le Candidat,_ 1874; _Par les Champs et par les Grèves,_ 1886; _Lettres à George Sand,_ 1884; _Correspondances,_ 1887-1893.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

(1821-1867)

_Salon de_ 1845, 1845; _Salon de_ 1846, 1846; _Histoires Extraordinaires, traduit de Poe,_ 1856; _Nouvelle Histoires Extraordinaires,_ 1857; _Les Fleurs du Mal,_ 1857; _Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym (Poe),_ 1858; _Théophile Gautier,_ 1859; _Les Paradis Artificiels: Opium et Haschisch,_ 1860; _Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris,_1861; _Euréka: Poe,_1864; _Histoires Grotesques: Poe,_ 1865; _Les Épaves de Charles Baudelaire,_ 1866.

EDMOND and JULES DE GONCOURT

(1822-1896; 1830-1870)

_En_ 18, 1851; _Salon de_ 1852, 1852; _La Lorette,_ 1853; _Mystères des Théâtres,_ 1853; _La revolution dans les Mœurs,_ 1854; _Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Revolution,_ 1854; _Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Directoire,_ 1855; _Le Peinture à l'Exposition de Paris de_ 1855, 1855; _Une Voiture des Masques,_ 1856; _Les Actrices,_ 1856; _Sophie Arnauld,_ 1857; _Portraits intimes du XVIII Siècle,_ 1857-1858; _Histoire de Marie Antoinette,_ 1858; _L'Art du XVIII Siècle,_ 1859-1875; _Les Hommes de Lettres,_ 1860; _Les Maîtresses de Louis VI,_ 1860; _Sœur Philomène,_ 1861; _Les Femmes au XVIII Siècle,_ 1864; _Renée Mauperin,_ 1864; _Germinie Lacerteux,_ 1864; _Idées et Sensations,_ 1860; _Manette Salomon,_ 1867; _Madame Gervaisais,_ 1869; _Gavarni,_ 1873; _La Patrie en Danger,_ 1879; _L'Amour au XVIII Siècle,_ 1873; _La du Barry,_ 1875; _Madame de Pompadour,_ 1878; _La Duchesse de la Châteauroux,_ 1879; _Pages retrouvées,_ 1886; _Journal des Goncourts,_ 1887-1896, 9 Vols.; _Préfaces et manifestes littéraires,_ 1888; _L'Italie d'hier,_ 1894; _Edmond de Goncourt: Catalogue raisonée de l'œuvre peinte, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau,_ 1873; _Catalogue de l'œuvre de P. Proudhon,_ 1876; _La Fille Élisa,_ 1879; _Les Frères Zemganno,_ 1879; _La Maison d'un Artiste,_ 1881; _La Faustin,_ 1882; _La Saint-Hubert,_ 1882; _Chérie,_ 1884; _Germinie Lacerteux, pièce,_ 1888; _Mademoiselle Clairon,_ 1890; _Outamoro, le peintre des maisons vertes,_ 1891; _La Guimard,_ 1893; _A bas le progrès,_ 1893; _Hokouseï,_ 1896.

VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM

(1838-1889)

_Premières Poésies,_1859; _Isis,_ 1862; _Elën,_ 1864; _Morgane,_ 1865; _Claire Lenoir_(in the _Revue des Lettres et des Arts),_ 1867; _L'Evasion,_ 1870; _La Révolte,_ 1870; _Azraël,_ 1878; _Le Nouveau Monde,_ 1880; _Contes Cruels,_ 1880; _L'Eve Future,_ 1886; _Akëdysséril,_ 1886; _L'Amour Suprême,_ 1886; _Tribulat Bonhomet,_ 1887; _Histoires Insolites,_ 1888; _Nouveaux Contes Cruels,_ 1889; Axël, 1890; Chez les Passants, 1890; _Propos d'Au-delà,_ 1893; _Histoires Souveraines,_ 1899 (a selection).

Among works announced, but never published, it may be interesting to mention: _Seid, William de Strally, Faust, Poésies Nouvelles (Intermèdes; Gog; Ave, Mater Victa; Poésies diverses), La Tentation sur la Montagne, Le Vieux de la Montagne, L'Adoration des Mages, Méditations Littéraires, Mélanges, Théâtre_ (2 vols.), _Documents sur les Règnes de Charles VI. et de Charles VII., L'Illusionisme, De la Connaissance de l'Utile, L'Exégèse Divine._

A sympathetic, but slightly vague, Life of Villiers was written by his cousin, Vicomte Robert du Pontavice de Heussey: _Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ 1893; it was translated into English by Lady Mary Lloyd, 1894. See Verlaine's _Poètes Maudits,_ 1884, and his biography of Villiers in _Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui,_ the series of penny biographies, with caricature portraits, published by Vanier; also Mallarmé's _Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ the reprint of a lecture given at Brussels a few months after Villiers, death. _La Révolte_ was translated by Mrs. Theresa Barclay in the _Fortnightly Review,_ December, 1897, and acted in London by the New Stage Club in 1906. I have translated a little poem, _Aveu,_ from the interlude of verse in the _Contes Cruels_ called _Chant d'Amour,_ in _Days and Nights,_ 1889. An article of mine, the first, I believe, to be written on Villiers in English, appeared in the _Woman's World_ in 1889; another in the _Illustrated London News_ in 1891.

LÉON CLADEL

(1835-1892)

_Les Martyrs Ridicules. Preface par Charles Baudelaire,_ 1862; _Pierre Patient,_ 1862; _L'Amour Romantique,_ 1882; _Le Deuxième Mystère de l'Incarnation,_ 1883; _Le Bouscassié,_ 1889; _La Fête-Votive de Saint Bartholomée Porte-Glaive,_ 1872; _Les Vas-nu-Pieds,_ 1874; _Celui de la Croix-aux-Bœufs,_ 1878; _Bonshommes,_ 1879; _Ompdrailles Le Tombeau des Lutteurs,_ 1879; _N'a q'un Œil,_ 1885; _Tity Foyssac IV,_ 1886; _Petits Chiens de Léon Cladel,_ 1879; _Par Devant Notaire,_ 1880; _Crête-Rouge,_ 1880; _Six Morceaux de la Littérature,_ 1880; _Kerkades Garde-Barrière,_ 1884; _Urbains et Ruraux,_ 1884; _Léon Cladel et ses Kyrielle des Chiens,_ 1885; _Héros et Pantins,_ 1885; _Quelques Sires,_ 1885; _Mi-Diable,_ 1886; _Gueux de Marque,_ 1887; _Effigies d'Inconnus,_ 1888; _Raca,_ 1888; _Seize Morceaux de Littérature,_ 1889; _L'ancien,_ 1889; _Juive-Errante,_ 1897.

EMILE ZOLA

(1840-1902)

Les _Rougon-Macquart,_ 1871-1893; _La Fortune des Rougons,_ 1871; _La Curée,_ 1872; _Le Ventre de Paris,_ 1873; _La Conquête de Pluisans,_ 1874; _La Faute de l'abbé Mouret,_ 1875; _Son Excellence Eugène Rougon,_ 1876; _L'Assommoir,_ 1876; _Une Page d'Amour,_ 1878; _Nana,_ 1880; _Pot.-Bouille,_ 1882; _Au Bonheur des Dames,_ 1883; _La Joie de Vivre,_ 1884; _Madeleine Fer at,_ 1885; _La Confession de Claude,_ 1886; _Contes à Ninon,_ 1891; _Nouveaux Contes à Ninon,_ 1874; _Le Capitaine Burle,_ 1883; _La joie de vivre,_ 1884; _Les Mystères de Marseilles,_ 1885; _Mes Haines,_ 1866; _Le Roman Expérimental,_ 1881; _Nos Auteurs dramatiques,_ 1881; _Documents littéraires,_ 1881; _Une Compagne,_ 1882. _Théâtre: Thérèse Raquin, Les Héritiers Rabourdin, La Bouton de Rose,_ 1890; _L'Argent,_ 1891; _L'Attaque du Moulin,_ 1890; _La Bête Humaine,_ 1890; La _Débâcle,_ 1892; _Le Doctor Pascal,_ 1893; _Germinie,_ 1885; Mon Salon, 1886; Le _naturalisme au Théâtre,_ 1889; _L'Œuvre,_ 1886; _Le Rêve,_ 1892; _Paris_, 1898; _Rome,_ 1896; _Lourdes,_ 1894; _Fécondité,_ 1899; _Travail,_ 1901; _Vérité_, 1903.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ

(1842-1898)

_Le Corbeau_ (traduit de Poe), 1875; _La Dernière Mode,_ 1875; L'_Après-Midi d'un Faune,_ 1876; _Le Vathek de Beckford,_ 1876; _Petite Philologie à l'Usage des Classes et du Monde: Les Mots Anglais,_ 1877; _Poésies Complètes_ (photogravées sur le manuscrit), 1887; _Les Poèmes de Poe,_ 1888; _Le Ten o'Clock de M. Whistler,_ 1888; _Pages,_ 1891; _Les Miens: Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,_ 1892; _Vers et Prose,_ 1892; _La Musique et les Lettres_ (Oxford, Cambridge), 1894; _Divagations,_ 1897; _Poésies,_ 1899.

See, on this difficult subject, Edmund Gosse, _Questions at Issue,_ 1893, in which will be found the first study of Mallarmé that appeared in English; and Vittorio Pica, _Letteratura d'Eccezione,_1899, which contains a carefully-documented study of more than a hundred pages. There is a translation of the poem called "Fleurs" in Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_1893, and translations of "Hérodiade" and three shorter poems will be found in the first volume of my collected poems. Several of the poems in prose have been translated into English; my translation of the "Plainte d'Automne," contained in this volume, was made in momentary forgetfulness that the same poem in prose had already been translated by Mr. George Moore in _Confessions of a Young Man._ Mr. Moore also translated "Le Phénomène Futur" in the _Savoy,_ July, 1896.

PAUL VERLAINE

(1844-1896)

_Poèmes Saturniens,_ 1866; _Fêtes Galantes,_ 1869; _La Bonne Chanson,_ 1870; _Romances sans Paroles,_ 1874; _Sagesse,_ 1881; _Les Poètes Maudits,_ 1884; _Jadis et Naguère,_ 1884; _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf,_ 1886; _Louise Leclercq_ (suivi de _Le Poteau, Pierre Duchatelet, Madame Aubin),_ 1887; _Amour,_ 1888; _Parallèlement,_ 1889; _Dédicaces,_ 1890; _Bonheur,_ 1891; _Mes Hôpitaux,_ 1891; Chansons _pour Elle,_ 1891; _Liturgies Intimes,_ 1892; _Mes Prisons,_ 1893; _Odes en son Honneur,_ 1893; _Elégies,_ 1893; _Quinze Jours en Hollande,_ 1894; _Dans les Limbes,_ 1894; _Epigrammes,_ 1894; _Confessions,_ 1895; _Chair_, 1896; _Invectives,_ 1896; _Voyage en France d'un Français_ (posthumous), 1907.