Jules Renard
Man rises early and walks through deserted roads and lanes; he fears neither dew nor brambles, nor the action of the branches of hedges. He gazes, listens, smells, pursues the birds, the wind, flowers, images. Without haste, but nevertheless anxiously, for she has a delicate ear, he seeks nature, whom he would surprise in her refuge; he finds her, she is there; then, the twigs gently brushed away, he contemplates her in the blue shadow of her retreat and, without having wakened her, closing the curtain, he returns to his home. Before falling asleep, he counts his images: “gently they are reborn at the beck of memory.”
Jules Renard has given himself this name: the hunter of images. He is a singularly fortunate and privileged hunter, for alone among his colleagues, he only captures, beasts or little creatures, unpublished prey. He scorns the known, or knows it not; his collection is only of the rare and even unique heads, but which he is in no trouble to put under lock, for they belong to him in such wise that a thief would purloin them in vain. So penetrating and attested a personality has something disconcerting, irritating and, according to some envious persons, extravagant. “Do then as we do, take the old accumulated metaphors from the common treasury; we go swiftly and it is very convenient.” But Jules Renard disbelieves in going swiftly. Though unusually industrious, he produces little, and especially little at a time, like those patient engravers who carve steel with geologic slowness.
When studying a writer, one loves (it is an inveterate habit bequeathed us by Sainte-Beuve) to discern his spiritual family, enumerate his ancestors, establish learned connections, and note, at the very least, the souvenirs of long readings, traces of influence and the mark of the hand placed an instant on the shoulder. To whoever has traveled much among books and ideas, this task is simple enough and often easy to the point that it is necessary rather to refrain from it, not to vex the ingenious arrangement of acquired originalities. I have not had this scruple with Renard, but have wished to draw a sketch book; but the odd animal is shown alone, and the leaves only contain, among the arabesques, empty medallions.
To be begotten quite alone, to owe his mind only to himself, to write (since it is a question of writing) with the certitude of achieving the true new wine, of an unexpected, original and inimitable flavor, that is what must be, to the author of l’Écornifleur a legitimate motive of joy and a very weighty reason for being less troubled than others about posthumous reputation. Already, his Poil-de-Carotte, that so curious type of the intelligent, artful, fatalistic child, has entered into the very form of speech. The “Poil-de-Carotte, you must shut the hens in each evening” equals the most famous words of the celebrated como dies in burlesque truth, and he is at once Cyrano and Molière and will not be robbed of this claim.
Originality being undeniably established, other merits of Jules Renard are distinctness, precision, freshness; his pictures of life, Parisian or rural, have the appearance of dry-point work, occasionally a little thin, but well circumscribed, clear and alive. Certain fragments, more shaded off and ample, are marvels of art, as for instance, Une Famille d’Arbres.
“It is after having traversed a sun-parched plain that I meet them.
“Because of the noise, they do not stand by the road’s edge. They inhabit the unploughed fields, near a fountain, like lone birds.
“From afar they seem inscrutable. When I approach, their trunks relax. They discreetly welcome me. I can repose and refresh myself, but I divine that they observe and mistrust me.
“They live together, the oldest in the center, and the little ones, whose first leaves have just appeared, almost everywhere, without ever dispersing.
“They take long to die, and they protect the standing dead until they fall to dust.
“They caress each other with their long branches to be assured that they are all there, like the blind. They gesticulate with rage, if the wind puts itself out of breath trying to uproot them. But among themselves, no dispute. They only murmur agreement.
“I feel that they should be my real family. I will forget the other. These trees by degrees will adopt me, and to merit this, I understand what must be known.
“Already I know how to gaze at passing clouds.
“I know, too, how to rest in a spot.
“And I almost know how to be silent.”
When the anthologies will hail this page, they will hardly have an irony so fine and a poetry so true.