'There is in a word, in a verb, something sacred that forbids our making out of them a mere game of chance. The skilful handling of language is the practice of a suggestive kind of sorcery. For it is thus that colour speaks with deep and thrilling voice; that buildings stand up in sharp prominence on the depths of space; that the - equivocal grimace of those animals and plants representative of ugliness and evil becomes articulate; that a perfume calls up its corresponding thought and recollection; that passion murmurs or roars in its ever changeless language.' Having undertaken to distil the poetry of modern Parisian life, Baudelaire had recourse to Gautier as to the master-writer, who combined in his style relief and exactitude. Baudelaire first made his mark through the precision of his pictures; some of his poems (for example 'Don Juan ') are absolute bas-reliefs. The curious thing is that it is not so much this side of Baudelaire that interests us to-day, but rather that other aspect-the Baudelaire of the Invitation au Voyage; not the subtle artist who gives us the sensation of the thing achieved, but rather he who gives us the impression of what lies beyond. As for the art-for-art theory, if Baudelaire borrowed it from Gautier he also transformed it; for though in Baudelaire's work it leads him to love of artifice, he sees the limits of Gautier's theory. Touching this subject he wrote: 'The puerile art-for-art theory by its exclusion of all ethics, and often even passion, was of necessity sterile. It put itself into fragrant contradiction with all the spirit of humanity. In the name of those higher principles which constitute universal life we have the right to declare it guilty of heterodoxy.' And we have already quoted a vigorous passage on the danger of excessive consideration of form. Baudelaire was always fascinated by the mystery of beauty: the exterior is for him only the closed window, whose charm lies in the conjectures to which it gives rise concerning what exists on the other side of the glass. Gautier, on the contrary, cares only for the exterior; he does not wish to penetrate into the interior; he tells us, 'I have always been very much affected by externals, that is why I avoid the society of old men.'. Unlike Baudelaire again, his wish is que le soleil entre partout, which is far from the Baudelairian ideal, which makes melancholy an inseparable attribute of beauty. A good example of Gautier's views on this subject is his 'Bûchers et Tombeaux': 'Le squelette était invisible Aux temps heureux de l'Art païen. Pas de cadavre sous la tombe, l'art versait son harmonie Sur la tristesse du tombeau. Les tombes étaient attrayantes : Comme on fait d'un enfant qui dort, La mort dissimulait sa face Aux trous profonds, au nez camard, Les chimères du cauchemar. Reviens, reviens, bel art antique, De tan Paros étincelant which is quite the contrary of Baudelairism. Gautier said of himself: 'Je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe,' but, as Mr. Ransome well remarks, Baudelaire is a man 'pour qui le monde invisible existe,' and the truth of this holds for all the true Baudelairians, and this is the marked line that divides them from Théophile Gautier. POSTERITY I VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM We have now to pass on and consider the influence of Baudelaire on his posterity-we will study it first in France and then in England, and the first figure with whom we have to deal, following chronological order, is Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Villiers de l'Isle Adam was born in Brittany at St. Brieuc in November 1838. He came to Paris in 1857, and by 1858 had already composed a volume of Premières Poésies, which, considering their author's age, are remarkable enough. Naturally, considering the period, there is an exotic note, and we find an Indian Prayer' with the motto dear to the Romantic 'foul is fair,' and are told therein of the powerful allegiance of good with evil : 'A genoux, le brahmane Dit en courbant le crâne Fais que ma course sainte 123 |