Poems by Théophile Gautier [pp. 180-183]

APPLEE TONS' JO URNAL.
POEMS BY THE OPHILE GA4 UTIER.
[To those who watch the ebb and flow of the
currents of critical opinion it is evident that since
the death of Thdophile Gautier, now more than six
years ago, his writings have steadily risen in the appreciation of all English and American students of
French poetry. During his life, and even for a time
after his death, many were prejudiced against him
by the evil report of his novel, "Mademoiselle de
Maupin "-an early indiscretion which arose up
against him in later years, and effectually barred
him from the chair in the French Academy, which
was surely his by right of genius. This prejudice
has ceased to operate, and Gautier is now receiving
more of the study he deservs so abundantly.
Gautier has a fourfold claim to posthumous survival. He was romancer, traveler, critic, and poet.
In the first two capacities he has been again and
again before the American public in adequate translations. His novel "Spirite" has-appeared in Appletons' "Collection of Foreign Authors," and his
travels in Russia and to Constantinople are both accessible to the American reader in accurate translations. As a critic, either of the acted drama or of
art, plastic and pictorial, his work is so voluminous
that it has not as yet, even in France, been wholly
gathered into volumes from the newspapers in which
he scattered it with the royal liberality of lavish genius. But as a poet his work was of necessity far
less-indeed, the best of it, his poetic testament to
posterity, is gathered into the one book by which he
wished to be judged, " Emaux et Camdes." It is
fortunately possible to give good English renderings
of some of the best and most characteristic of these
poems, and in so far to reveal Gautier as a poet to
those who can not read him in the original. In the
admirable criticism which Mr. Henry James, Jr., in
his "French Poets and Novelists," has given us of
Gautier, he says of this volume of "Enamels and
Cameos": "Every poem is a masterpiece; it has
received the author's latest and fondest care; all, as
the title indicates, is goldsmith's work. In Gautier's
estimation, evidently these exquisite little pieces are
the finest distillation of his talent; not one of them
but ought to have outweighed a dozen academic
blackballs. Gautier's best verse is neither senti mental, satirical, narrative, nor even lyrical. It is
always pictorial and plastic-a matter of images,
'effects,' and color. Even when the motive is an
idea-of course, a slender one-the image absorbs
and swallows it, and the poem becomes a piece of
rhythmic imitation." Nearly all his metrical work
was clearly chiseled verse, carved in fine lines, with
many a curious and recondite suggestion. A su preme master of style, and worshiping with an Athe nian idolatry the severe beauty of form, he reveled
in the richness of his unrivaled vocabulary-unri valed except, it may be, by Victor Hugo's, which is
not as deftly and delicately handled as was his
younger friend and follower's. Obviously a poet of
this sort is most difficult of translation, and a happy
rendering of his work in another language is almost
as much a matter of inspiration as the writing of the
original poem. No one man, however gifted, could
sit down to the translation into English of the whole
of "Enamels and Cameos" with any hope, however
slight, of success. But it happens-and this is but
another instance of the growth of the more general
appreciation referred to above-that various English
poets reading Gautier have felt an impulse to bring
over into English verse, as best they might, or this
or that poem which at the moment struck a responsive chord in them. There are a dozen or more representative poems of Gautier's translated into English by as many different writers, with varying success, of course, but still giving a fairly adequate
presentation of the French poet's work. Among
the English poets who have made this attempt are
Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Frederick Locker, Mr. A.
C. Swinburne, and Sir Francis Hastings Doyle.
Mr. Dobson, whose chaste style and clear-cut workmanship make him akin to Gautier, has given rather
a paraphrase than a close translation of the final
effort of Gautier's metrical skill-the beautiful poem
on "Art." Mr. Swinburne's lyric fervor echoes the
graceful severity of Gautier's song with less aptness; he, too, has given us an imitation rather than an
exact rendering. It is to be remembered, as giving
an added interest to this lyric, that Mr. Swinburne
contributed, to the volume of poetic requiems chant ed by the French choir over the grave of Gautier,
poems in Greek, Latin, French, and English-surely
one of the most extraordinary tributes ever paid by
one poet to the memory of another. We have made
also one selection from Mr. Harry Curwen's collec tion of "French Love-Songs."]
LOVE AT SEA.
We are in Love's Land to-day;
Where shall we go?
Love, shall we start or stay,
Or sail or row?
There's many a wind and way,
And never a May but May;
We are in Love's Land to-day Where shall we go?
Our land-wind is the breath
Of sorrows kissed to death
And joys that were;
Our ballast is a rose,
Our way lies where God knows
And love knows where We are in Love's Land to-day.
180