Paul Verlaine

Charles Morice's Book and a Reminiscence

ARTHUR SYMONS

WHEN one's tabernacle of lies is shaken down, one must be set back again upon a strong foundation of all the manly and original virtues. Certain books tumble the world upside down, for a brief space or for centuries. Take the creations of Aristophanes, Petronius, Rabelais, Villon and Verlaine; all these, in their separate ages have tumbled the world upside down; and the world, that is to say the world that reads and understands, is all the wiser for having read them. I add to these Shakespeare and Balzac.

Charles Morice (who was born in 1861 and who died on the eighteenth of March of this year) had, certainly, none of this luck. Yet his book, La Literature de tout a l'heure, that he gave me in Paris, was almost the revelation of a new Gospel. They said of him "Morice fut le plus grand pretre de Vinacheve—et peutetre de Vinachevable" In Verlaine there dwelt always a spirit of abstract joy, plucked naked (to use an image) like the algebraic symbol, but still joyful. I do not think Verlaine was "homme avant d'être homme," as Morice says in his admirable book: he was equally man and poet.

PASSION, wisdom, creative genius, the power of mystery or colour, it has been wisely said, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither assimulated nor learned. For good and evil—for he was a mixture of evil and good—Verlaine possessed all these qualities.

Verlaine is always faithful to himself, to the two sides of himself, and he has thus succeeded in rendering, as no one ever has before, the whole homo duplex, the eternal conflict of humanity. And the verse which he has fashioned to his use with such finesse, the verse which can sing as French verse has never yet sung, which can express the last fine shade of emotion and of sensation, has, in opening up a new future for French verse, become in his hands the vehicle of a new kind of truth. Verlaine has often protested against the fallacy which attributes to him a school. He has shown others, it is true, that verse can have a new texture, as Whistler, for instance, has shown that paint can be handled in a new way. But he has done so incidentally, and where he is most himself he is least of all to be followed, for with Verlaine, as with every great writer, the style is the man.

The Visit to Verlaine

THE first time I saw Paul Verlaine was one hot night at the end of April. Charles Morice, the poet, from whose book on Verlaine I have already quoted, was dining with me, and he had been talking in his usual vein, fluent, a trifle ecstatic, rather mad, full of charm and surprise. When we had had our coffee Morice turned to me, in his gentle and urbane way, bending his great bland head a little, and proposed that we should look in a.t the Cafe Francois Premier, and see if Verlaine was there. I cannot remember in the least what Morice was saying as we strolled, in the slow French fashion, up the Boulevard SaintMichel. I do not think I knew at the time. I was very much excited at the thought of meeting, at last, this extraordinary creature, whom I expected to find very much like his caricature in the Hommes d'Aujourdhui: en diable, ending in a green tail. We passed cafe after cafe, flaring with lights, filled with men and girls. The weather was warm, and the terrasses were crowded, the black coats interspersed with the cheerful colours of a bonnet. Students filled the pavement, swarming to and fro with that noisy, pleasant gaiety of the Boul' Mich' after dark. Gradually, as we mounted, the throng became less dense, the lights fainter.

Verlaine and His Friends

AT last we reached the corner at which stands the François Premier. Morice pushed open the door and went forward, I following. There, seated at a table, surrounded by a crowd of young men, was Verlaine, smiling benevolently. He came forward to greet us, and then we sat down opposite to him at the table. On one side of me was Jean Moreas, who has since then made so amusing a success with his Pelerin Passionne; a Greek, with the dark features, blue-black hair, and half-savage, half-sullen black eyes which characterize the modern Athenian. Near by was Charles Vignier, the writer of a book of verses called Centon, with his pale, elegant, perverse face, his bland plausibility, the veiled sneer of the lips. Opposite to him was Fernand Langlois, a young artist, incredibly tall and thin and youthful, with an air already of exhaustion, a tired, grey look upon his features.

But Verlaine! at the time I had eyes only for Verlaine. He was shabbily dressed, without a collar, a white scarf round his neck, a grey hat pushed back on his head. I had seen many portraits of him, not very nice to look at, and I had read the most unpleasant accounts of his appearance. What I saw was something totally different. The face was a strange, contradictory one, with its spiritual forehead, its animal jaw, its shifting faun's eyes. But it was quite genial, and it had a singularly manly air; a really gentlemanly air, I might add. The eyes were certainly curious: oblique, constantly in movement, with gestures (there is no other word) of the lids and brows.

But Verlaine is all gesture: his hands, his arms, his whole body, gesture, violent, sudden, convincing, not French gesture at all. It is there that one sees the power, genial and ferocious, of the man. As he explodes into conversation his whole body seems to translate his meaning into movement; it is the gesture that one seems to see in his work. With that, a natural dignity, an ineradicable refinement; a sincerity and simplicity, too, which impress one at once; an entire absence of pose, of voulu extravagance; the extravagance, when it came as it did often enough, being natural and on the spur of the moment. He talked of England, of his admiration for Tennyson, for Swinburne, for—wonder of wonders!—the English Sunday, so religious, he said, and began to pull an imaginary bell-rope.

Then, without transition, he told some stories, rather shocking, in which he interrupted himself to find the exact English equivalents for the most unspeakable French words. Then, addressing himself exclusively to me, he recounted certain facts in his life, the most dubious ones, in the most matter-of-fact and impersonal manner, with the good-humoured tone of a man who simply tells a curious story which may interest one. He asked me to come and see him the next night, and wrote down his address for me-^Hotel des Mines, 65, Boulevard St. Michel, chambre No. 4.

The next night, I set out for the Hotel des Mines. I was rather late, and inquired of the concierge for "chambre numero 4." "M. Verlaine," I added, "est-il chez lui?"

The woman's face darkened; she evidently had no regard for the inhabitant of "chambre numero 4". "Non," she said, jerking her head away, "non, monsieur, il n'est pas ici." Somewhat surprised I turned away, and began to stroll down the boulevard. I had not gone far before I saw him dragging himself along, leaning on the arm of the honest-looking little shabby man who seemed to look after him. We saluted, and he began to talk at once, ramblingly repeating the same remark several times with increasing emphasis—and the emphasis of Verlaine is tremendous. He had left his memory at the bottom of his glass, and it was some time before he could remember his invitation. The little man got the candle and key, and led the way.

The Room in the Hotel des Mines.

WE crossed a court, and began to climb a narrow staircase. Verlaine apologised for the time he took in getting up the stairs, stopping several times on the way to explain at greater length. The room was small and mean; the few things that were in it were in disorder, but there was not much opportunity for being disorderly. On the wall, facing the bed, hung several pencil and crayon portraits of himself. Below, on a chest of drawers, were a few books, apparently his entire library. There was a Bible, and there were one or two of his own books confided to me that he had just been getting some money, a rare event with him. "I have got money: I will have pleasure," he said, in the difficult, accentuated English into which he dropped from time to time, every word a hoarse jerk. He took out his purse: it contained a two-franc piece.

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There was a knock at the door, and in came the tall, feminine-looking young artist, Fernand Langlois, whom I had seen the day before at the cafe. He curled himself up, in his feline way, on the bed; the little man perched himself on the chest of drawers; I was honoured with a chair, and Verlaine began to move restlessly about the room. Presently the little man was sent out with the two-franc piece; he came back with a bottle of rum and some glasses.

THEN Verlaine sat down and began to talk, sometimes in English. I noticed that he sipped his rum very slowly, often raising the glass half-way to his lips and holding it there while he finished his sentence, or his string of sentences, sometimes putting it down again untasted. He was by turns argumentative and explosive; his facial pantomime was more frantic than ever; and now and again he would get up, perhaps to show me his Bible, which he did with great unction, patting it, turning it over, pointing out the name of the translator, a Protestant, assuring me what an excellent book it was, and what a religious man he was himself. "Je suis Catholiquel" he said over and over again; "mais," he added, fondling the Bible with the hand which did not hold the glass of rum, "Catholique du moyen-agel"

"But all the same it is hard," writes Verlaine himself, "after a life of work, set off, I admit, with accidents in which I have had a large share, catastrophes perhaps vaguely premeditated — it is hard, I say, at forty-seven years of age, in full possession of all the reputation (of the success, to use the frightful current phrase) to which my highest ambitions could aspire—hard, hard, hard indeed, worse than hard, to find myself —good God!—to find myself on the streets, and to have nowhere to lay my head and support an ageing body save the pillows and the menus of a public charity, even now uncertain, and which might at any moment be withdrawn—God forbid!—without, apparently, the fault of anyone, oh! not even, and above all, not mine."

IT is indeed hard, and it is equally. when one considers the matter, inevitable. The rules of the society in which we live, the rules of every society, are made by normal people foi normal people. The poet, the man oi genius, is fundamentally abnormal, for genius itself, we were once told figuratively, we are now assured scientifically, is a form of madness. It is the poet against society, society against the poet, an irreconcilable antagonism, the shock of which, however, it is often possible to avoid by some admitted compromise. So much license is allowed on the one side, so much liberty foregone on the other. The consequences are not always of the best, art being generally the loser. But there are certain natures to which compromise is impossible, and never was there a nature more absolutely impelled to act itself out, more absolutely alien to every conceivable convention, than that of Verlaine.

"THE soul of an immortal child", to quote once more from Charles Morice, "that is the soul of Verlaine, with all the privileges and all the perils of being that: with the sudden despairs so easily distracted, the vivid gaieties without a cause, the excessive suspicions and the excessive confidences, the whims so easily outwearied, the deaf and blind infatuations; with, especially, the unceasing renewal of impressions in the incorruptible integrity of the personal vision and sensation. Years, influences, instructions, may pass over a temperament such as this, may irritate, may fatigue it; transform it, never—never so much as to alter that particular unity which consists in a dualism, in the division of its forces between the longing after what is evil and the adoration of what is good; or rather, in the antagonism of spirit and flesh. Other men 'arrange' their lives, come to a decision, take this way or that; Verlaine lingers over this choice, which seems to him monstrous, for, with the integral naivete of the irrefutable human truth, he cannot resign himself, how strong soever may be the doctrine, how enticing soever may be the passion, to the necessity of sacrificing one to the other, and from the one to the other he oscillates without a moment of repose."