Bouvard and Pécuchet, part 2

Preface to the Last Songs

(POSTHUMOUS POEMS)

OF

LOUIS BOUILHET

IT WOULD perhaps make criticism easier, if, before giving our opinion, we should make known our preferences. To omit this preliminary distinction is a great injustice, as every book contains a peculiarity pertaining to the writer himself, which, independently of the execution, will charm or irritate us according to our preferences. We are never completely charmed unless a book appeals to our feelings and our intellect at the same time.

First, let us discuss the object of the book. “Why this novel, this drama? Of what use is it? etc.” Instead of following the author’s idea, instead of pointing out to him where he failed of his aim, and how he should have gone about to attain it, we bicker with him on a thousand things outside of his subject, always declaring the contrary of what he meant to express. If a critic’s sphere extends beyond the author’s province, he should first of all look to the æsthetics and the moral.

It is impossible for me to warrant either of these concerning the poet in questions. As for writing his life, it has been linked so closely with mine, that I shall be brief on this subject; individual memoirs belong only to great men. Besides, has not research been exhausted? History will soon absorb all literature. In studying too closely what makes up the author’s atmosphere, we fail to give the originality of his genius due consideration. In La Harpe’s time, when a masterpiece appeared, we were convinced, – thanks to certain rules! – that it was under no obligation whatsoever; whereas now, after we have examined everything about it, we still wish to discover its right to exist.

I have another scruple. I do not wish to betray the modesty that my friend constantly maintained. At an epoch when insignificant mediocrity aspired to fame, when typography was the medium of all affectations, and the rivalry of the most insipid personalities became a public pest, he was proud of being modest. His photograph was never displayed on the boulevards. No article, no letter, not a single line from him, was ever published in the papers. He did not even belong to the academy of his province. Yet no life is more deserving of praise than his. He lived nobly and labouriously. Though poor, he remained free. He was as strong as a blacksmith, mild as a child, intellectual without being paradoxical, noble without affectation; and those who knew him well will say that I have not praised him enough.

Louis Hyacinthe Bouilhet was born at Cany (Seine Inférieure), the 27th day of May, 1822. His father, chief of ambulances in the campaign of 1812, swam the Bérésina, carrying on his head the regiment’s chest, and died quite young from wounds received. His maternal grandfather, Pierre Hourcastremé, dabbled in legislation, poetry, and geometry, received congratulations from Voltaire, corresponded with Turgot and Condorcet, spent nearly all his money buying shells, produced Les Aventures de Messire Anselme, an Essai sur la Faculté de Penser, Les Etrennes de Mnémosyne, etc., and after being a lawyer in Pau, a journalist in Paris, administrator of the navy at Havre, and a schoolmaster at Montvilliers, died almost a centenarian, bequeathing to his grandson the memory of a strange but charming old man, who powdered his hair, wore knee-breeches and cultivated tulips.

The child was sent to Ingouville, to a boarding-school on a high cliff, and went to the college of Rouen at twelve, where he was usually at the head of his class. He was not a model pupil, however; this term applies to mediocre natures and a calmness of spirit which was rare in those days.

I do not know what students admire nowadays, but our dreams were wildly imaginative. The most enthusiastic dreamt of violent courtships, with gondolas, and fainting ladies carried away in stagecoaches by masked ruffians. Some, more gloomily disposed (admirers of Armand Carrel, a countryman), preferred the clash of the press and the court-room, or the glory of conspiracy. A rhetorician wrote an Apologie de Robespierre, which reached a certain gentleman and so scandalised him that it brought on an exchange of notes, followed by a challenge to a duel, in which the said gentleman did not play a very creditable part. One good-natured fellow always wore a red cap; another swore to live as a Mohican; one of my intimate friends aspired to the honour of serving under Abd-el-Kader. Apart from being troubadours, insurgents and Orientals, we were, above all, artists. After studies, we wrote, and read novels till late in the night. Bar … declaring he was tired of life, shot himself; and And … hanged himself with his cravat. We certainly deserved little praise for our follies; but we hated platitudes; our minds soared towards noble things. How we revered the masters! How we admired Victor Hugo!

Among this group was Bouilhet, the elegist, the poet of moonlight and ruins. When he was nearly twenty, this affectation disappeared, to give place to a virulent democracy, so genuine that he was about to join a secret society.

He received his bachelor’s degree, and was told to choose a profession. He chose medicine, settled his small income on his mother, and taught for a living. His life became painfully labourious; he combined the duties of poet, tutor and saw-bones. Two years later, he was appointed interne at l’Hôtel Dieu in Rouen, under my father’s orders. As he could not attend during the day, his turn came oftener than others for night watch. He did not mind it, however, as he had no other time in which to write. All his poems of love, flowers and birds were written in those winter nights, amidst the sick and suffering, or on Sundays in summer, while the patients walked under his window. Those years of sadness were not useless; the contemplation of suffering humanity, the dressing of wounds, the dissecting-table, gave him a better knowledge of mankind. Some would have given way under the strain, the disgust, the torture of having to follow a vocation unsuited to him; but, thanks to his physical and mental health, he stood it cheerfully. Some still remember meeting in the streets of his native city, this handsome though somewhat timid youth, with flowing blond hair, who always carried a note-book, in which he wrote his verses as they came to him; sometimes while teaching, at a friend’s house, in a café, during an operation, anywhere. Poor in worldly wealth, but rich in hope, he gave them away. He was a real poet in the classical sense of the word.

When we met again after four years’ separation, he read to me three of his plays. The first, entitled Le Déluge, described a lover clinging to his beloved, while he watched with anguish the ruins of the fast disappearing world: “Hark to the crashing of the palm-trees on the heights, and to the agonizing cries of Earth!” It was somewhat prolix, and too emphatic, but was replete with force and passion. The second, a satire against the Jesuits, was more resolute and in an entirely different style: “Smile, priests of the boudoir and gather poor feminine souls in your golden nets!” “Charming ministers in the confessional, inflicting penance with love-words on their lips! Heroes of the Gospel, impleading the Lord with flowery language, and treading each day, holy martyrs! on soft carpets the via crucis!” “These merchants, at the foot of the cross, casting lots and dividing, piece by piece, O Lord, Thy robe and Thy cloak! These fakirs of holy relics, selling, oh, wonder! Thy heart as amulets, and phials of Thy blood.”

We must not forget the disturbances of the times, and must remember that the author was only twenty-two. The play was dated 1844.

The third was an invective to “An author who sold his poems”:

“ ’Tis the greedy Plutus, with his purse full, who quotes smiling, human honesty!”

“Destiny is the bag full of gold into which we plunge our greedy hands with rapture! It is corruption which flaunts before our eyes its alluring breast! It is fear, the silent spectre that disturbs the coward in the hour of danger!”

“Your prudent Apollo, no doubt, passed through the stock exchange to reach the Parnassus? We often see, in the political sky, the morning sun die out before night. Look through your telescope, do you not see Guizot waning and Thiers coming to light? Do you base your changeable faith and your flexible probity on the mobility of the weather?”

“Avaunt! Greek, whose servile words lauded Xerxes the night before Thermopylæ!” He continued in the same rough tone against the administration. He sent his play to the Reforme, hoping they would print it; but they refused peremptorily, not wishing to expose themselves to a law suit – for mere literature.

It was near the end of 1845, when my father died, that Bouilhet gave up the practice of medicine. But he continued to teach, and, with the aid of a partner, obtained bachelorships for their pupils. The events of 1848 disturbed his republican faith. He now became a confirmed littérateur, fond of metaphors and comparisons, but indifferent to all else.

His thorough knowledge of Latin (he wrote as fluently in Latin as in French) inspired the few Roman sketches, as in Festons et Astragales and the poem Melœnis, published in the Revue de Paris, on the eve of a political crisis. The moment was badly chosen. The public’s fancy and courage were considerably cooled, and it was not disposed, neither were the powers, to accept independent genius; besides, individual style always seems insurrectionary to governments and immoral to commoners. The exaltation of vulgarism, the banishment of poetry, became more than ever the rage. Wishing to show good judgment, they rushed headlong into stupidity; anything above the ordinary bored them.

As a protest, he took refuge in forgotten places and in the far East; and thence came the Fossiles and different Chinese plays.

However, the provincial atmosphere stifled him; he needed a vaster field; and severing his connections, he came to Paris; but at a certain age one can no longer acquire the Parisian judgment; the things that seem simple to a native of the boulevards, are impracticable to a man of thirty-three arriving in the great city, having few acquaintances and no income, and unaccustomed to solitude. Then his bad days began.

His first book, Madame de Montarcy, received on approval at the Théâtre Français, and refused at the second reading, lingered for two years and was only accepted at the Odéon in November, 1856. The first performance was a rousing success. The applause often interrupted the action of the play; a whiff of youth permeated the atmosphere; it was a reminiscence of 1830. That night he became known; his success was assured. He could have collaborated, and made money with his name; but he preferred the quietness of Mantes, and went to live in a little house near an old tower, at the turn of the bridge, where his friends visited him on Sundays.

As soon as his plays were written, he took them to Paris; but the whims and fancies of the managers, the critics, the belated appointments, and the loss of time, caused him much weariness. He did not know that art, in a question of art, held such a trifling place! When he joined a committee against the unfair dealings at the Théâtre Français, he was the only member that did not complain of the rates of authors’ royalties.

With what pleasure he returned to his daily distraction, the study of Chinese! He pursued it ten years, merely as a study of the race, intending to write a grand poem on the Celestial Empire. Days when his heart was too full, he relieved himself by writing lyrical verses on the restrictions of the stage. His luck had turned, but with the Conjuration d’Ambroise it returned, and it lasted all winter.

Six months later he was appointed conservator of the municipal library of Rouen; and his old dream of leisure and fortune was realized at last! But soon afterward a dullness seized him – the exhaustion from too long a struggle. To counteract this he resumed the Greek tragic style and rapidly composed his last play, Mademoiselle Aïssé, which he never corrected. An incurable disease, long neglected, was the cause of his death, which took place on the 18th of July, 1869. He passed away without pain, in the presence of a friend of his youth and her child, whom he loved as if he were his own son. Their affection had increased towards the last, but two other persons marred their happiness. It seems that in a poet’s family there are always bitter disappointments. Annoying quarrels, honeyed sarcasms, direct insults to art, the million and one things that make your heart bleed, – nothing was spared him while he lived, and these things followed him to his death-bed.

His fellow-countrymen flocked to his funeral as if he had been a public man; even the less educated knowing full well that a superior intellect had passed away. The whole Parisian press joined in this universal sorrow; even the most hostile expressed their regrets; a Catholic writer alone spoke disparagingly. No doubt the connoisseurs in verse deplore the loss of such a poetical spirit; but those in whom he confided, who knew his powerful spirit, who benefited by his advice, they alone know to what height he might have risen.

He left, besides Aïssé, three comedies in prose, a fairy-scene, and the first act of Pélerinage de Saint-Jacques, a drama in verse, in ten tableaux. He had outlined two short poems: Le Bœuf, depicting the rustic life of Latium; and Le Dernier Banquet, describing the Roman patricians poisoning themselves at a banquet the night the soldiers of Alaric are entering Rome. He wished also to write a novel on the heathen of the fifth century, the counterpart of the Martyrs; but above all, he desired to write his Chinese tale, the scenes of which are completely laid out. It was his supreme ambition to recapitulate modern science, to write the De natura rerum of our age!

Who has the right to classify the talents of his contemporaries, and, thinking himself superior to all, say: “This one comes first, that one second, and this other third”? Fame’s sudden changes are numerous. There are irretrievable failures; some long, obscure periods, and some triumphant reappearances. Was not Ronsard forgotten before Sainte-Beuve? In days gone by, Saint-Amant was considered inferior as a poet to Jacques Delille. Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Manon Lescaut, La Cousine Bette and other masterpieces, have never had the success of Uncle Tom. In my youth, I heard comparisons made between Casimir Delavigne and Victor Hugo, and it seems that “our great national poet” was declining. Let us then be careful, or posterity will misjudge us – perhaps laugh at our bitterness – still more, perhaps, at our adulations; for the fame of an author does not spring from public approbation, but from the verdict of a few intellects, who, in the course of time, impose it upon the public.

Some will say that I have given my friend too high a place; but they know not, no more do I, what place he will retain. Because his first book is written in stanzas of six lines each, with triple rhymes, like Naouma, and begins like this: “Of all the men that ever walked through Rome, in Grecian buskins and linen toga, from Suburra to the Capitoline hill, the handsomest was Paulus,” somewhat similar to this: “Of all the libertines in Paris, the first, oldest and most prolific in vice, where debauchery is so easily found, the lewdest of all was Jacques Rolla,” without more ado, and ignoring the dissimilarity of execution, poetry, and nature, it was declared that the author of Melœnis imitated Alfred de Musset! He was condemned on the spot; a farce – it is so easy to label a thing so as to be able to put it aside.

I do not wish to be unfair; but where has Musset, in any part of his works, harmonized description, dialogue, and intrigue in more than two thousand consecutive rhymes, with such results of composition, such choice of language, in short, where is there a work of such magnitude? What wonderful ability was needed to reproduce Roman society, without affectation, yet keeping within the narrow confines of a dramatic fable!

If you look for the primitive idea, the general element in Louis Bouilhet’s poems, you will find a kind of naturalism that reminds you of the Renaissance. His hatred of commonplace saved him from platitudes; his inclination towards the heroic was tempered by his wit – he was very witty. This part of his talent was almost unknown; he kept it somewhat in the shadow, thinking it of no consequence; but now nothing hinders me from acknowledging that he excelled in epigrams, sonnets, rondeaux and other jests, written for distraction or pastime, and also through sheer good-nature. I discovered some official speeches for functionaries, New-Year verses for a little girl, some stanzas for a barber, for the christening of a bell, for the visit of a king. He dedicated to one of our friends, wounded in 1848, an ode on the patron of The Taking of Namur, where emphasis reached the pinnacle of dullness. To another who killed a viper with his whip he sent a piece entitled: The struggle of a monster and a genius, which contained enough imperfect metaphors and ridiculous periphrasis to serve as a model or as a scarecrow. But his best was a masterpiece, in Béranger’s style, entitled The Nightcap! His intimate friends will always remember it. It praised glory, the ladies, and philosophy so highly, – it was enough to make all the members of the Caveau burst with the desire of emulating him.

He had the gift of being entertaining – a rare thing for a poet. Compare his Chinese with his Roman plays, Neera with Lied Norman, Pastel with Clair de Lune, Chronique de Printemps with Sombre Eglogue, Le Navire with Une Soirée, and you will see how productive and ingenious he was.

He has dramatised all human passions; he has written about the mummies, the triumphs of the unknown, the sadness of the stones, has unearthed worlds, described barbaric peoples and biblical scenes, and written lullabies. The scope of his imagination is sufficiently proven in Les Fossiles, which Théophile Gautier called “the most difficult subject ever attempted by any poet!” I may add that it is the only scientific poem in all French literature that is really poetical. The stanzas at the end, on the future man, show how well he understood the most transcendent utopias. Among religious works, his Colombe will perhaps live as the declaration of faith of the nineteenth century. His individuality manifests itself plainly in Dernière Nuit, A Une Femme, Quand vous m’avez quitté, Boudeuse, etc., where he is by turns dismal and ironical; whereas in La fleur rouge it bursts out in a singularly sharp and almost savage manner.

He does not look for effect; follows no school but his own individual style, which is versatile, fluent, violent, full of imagination and always musical. He possesses all the secrets of poetry; that is the reason that his works abound with good lines, good all the way through, as in Le Lutrin and Les Châtiments. Take, for instance: “Is long like a crocodile, with bird-like extremities.” “A big, brown bear, wearing a golden helmet.” “He was a muleteer from Capua.” “The sky was as blue as a calm sea.” “The thousand things one sees when mingling with a crowd.”

And this one of the Virgin Mary: “Forever pale from carrying her God.”

In one sense of the word, he is classical. His l’Oncle Million is written in the most excellent French. “A poem! Make rhymes! It is insanity! I have seen saner men put into a padded cell! Zounds! Who speaks in rhymes? What a farce! Am I imaginative? Do I make verses? Do you know, my boy, what I have had to endure to give you the extreme pleasure of watching, lyre in hand, which way the winds blow? Wisely considered, these frivolities are well enough at odd moments. I myself knew a clerk that wrote verses.”