The Man of Genius

Et, comme j’étais faible et bien méchant encore,
Aux mains lâches, les yeux éblouis des chemins,
Elle baissa mes yeux, et me joignit les mains
Et m’enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore.

…

Et tous ces bons efforts vers les croix et les claies,
Comme je l’invoquais, Elle en ceignit mes reins.’

“His piety inspires him with some very sweet lines: —

“ ‘Écoutez la chanson bien douce
Qui ne pleure que pour vous plaire.
Elle est discrète, elle est légère:
Un frisson d’eau sur de la mousse!..

Elle dit, la voix reconnue,
Que la bonté c’est notre vie,
Que de la haine et de l’envie
Rien ne reste, la mort venue…

Accueillez la voix qui persiste
Dans son naïf épithalame.
Allez, rien n’est meilleur à l’âme
Que de faire une âme moins triste!..

Je ne me souviens plus que du mal que j’ai fait.

Dans tous les mouvements bizarres de ma vie,
De mes “malheurs,” selon le moment et le lieu,
Des autres et de moi, de la route suivie,
Je n’ai rien retenu que la grâce de Dieu.’

“But, even in the Poëmes Saturniens, we already meet with pieces of an oddity difficult to define – pieces which seem to belong to a poet who is slightly mad, or perhaps to one who is only half awake, and whose brain is darkened by the fumes of his dreams, or of drink; so that external objects only appear to him through a mist, and the indolence of his memory prevents him from getting hold of the right words. Take this for an example: —

“ ‘La lune plaquait ses teintes de zinc
Par angles obtus;
Des bouts de fumée en forme de cinq
Sortaient drus et noirs des hauts toits pointus.

Le ciel était gris. La bise pleurait
Ainsi qu’un basson.
Au loin un matou frileux et discret
Miaulait d’étrange et grêle façon.

Moi, j’allais rêvant du divin Platon
Et de Phidias,
Et de Salamine et de Marathon,
Sous l’œil clignotant des bleus becs de gaz.’

“That is all. What is it? It is an impression – the impression of a gentleman who walks about the streets of Paris at night, and thinks about Plato and Salamis, and thinks it funny to think of Plato and Salamis ‘sous l’œil des becs de gaz.’ Why should it be funny? I cannot tell.

“ ‘Aimez donc la raison: que toujours vos écrits
Empruntent d’elle seule et leur lustre et leur prix.’

“One might almost say that Paul Verlaine is the only poet who has never expressed anything but sentiment and sensation, and has expressed them for himself, and for no one else,[356 - M. Jules Tellier has not inaptly called him, in Victor Hugo’s style, “l’homme-frisson.”] which dispenses him from the obligation of showing the connection between his ideas, since he knows it. This poet has never asked himself whether he should be understood, and he has never wished to prove anything. This is why (Sagesse excepted) it is almost impossible to give a résumé of his collections, or to state their main idea in a succinct form. One can only characterise them by means of the state of mind of which they are most frequently the rendering – semi-intoxication, hallucination which distorts objects, and makes them resemble an incoherent dream; uneasiness of the soul which, in the terror of this mystery, complains like a child; then languor, mystic sweetness, and a lulling of the mind to rest, in the Catholic conception of the universe accepted in all simplicity.

“There is something profoundly involuntary and illogical in the poetry of M. Paul Verlaine. He scarcely ever expresses movements of full consciousness or entire sanity. It is on this account, very often, that the meaning of his song is clear – if it is so at all – to himself alone. In the same way, his rhythms, are sometimes perceptible by no one but himself. I do not refer here to the interlaced feminine rhymes, alliterations, assonances within the line itself, of which none has made use more frequently or more successfully than he.

“But there are two sides to him. On one, he looks very artificial. He has an Ars Poetica of his own, which is entirely subtle and mysterious, and which, I think, he was very late in discovering: —

“ ‘De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l’impair
Plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air,
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.

Il faut aussi que tu n’ailles point
Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:
Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
Où l’indécis au précis se joint…

Car nous voulons la nuance encor,
Pas la couleur, rien que la nuance!
Oh! la nuance seule fiance
Le rêve au rêve, et la flute au cor…’

“On the other side, he is quite simple: —

“ ‘Je suis venu, calme orphelin,
Riche de mes seuls yeux tranquilles,
Vers les hommes des grandes villes:
Ils ne m’ont pas trouvé malin.’

“Or, elsewhere: —

“ ‘J’ai peur d’un baiser
Connue d’une abeille.
Je souffre et je veille
Sans me reposer,
J’ai peur d’un baiser.’ ”

Thus far Lemaître.

It will be seen that the décadents correspond exactly to the diagnosis of literary mattoids, in all their old vacuity, but with the appearance of novelty. At the same time, there are among them, real men of genius who – amid the (frequently atavistic) oddities of mattoidism – have struck an original note.

All these cases show us that the gradations and transitions between sanity and insanity are far from being as hypothetical as Livi asserts them to be. Moreover, all this is in perfect harmony with the eternal evolution which we see going on in the ample realm of nature, which, as has been well said, never proceeds by leaps, but by successive and gradual transformations.

Now, it is natural that, as these gradations exist in this very strange form of literary insanity, they should also be found in the forms of criminal insanity, and that, in consequence, many of those asserted to be guilty or mad, are only half responsible, although no human thought can trace the limits with entire certainty.