Robert de Montesquiou
Upon the first appearance of his Chauves-Souris in violet velvet, the question was seriously put whether de Montesquiou was a poet or an amateur of poetry, and whether the fashionable world could be harmonized with the cult of the Nine Sisters, or of any one of them, for nine women are a lot. But to discourse in such fashion is to confess one’s unfamiliarity with that logical operation called the dissociation of ideas, for it seems elementary logic separately to evaluate the worth or beauty of the tree and its fruit, of man and his works. Whether jewel or pebble, the book will be judged in itself, disregarding the source, the quarry or the stream from which it comes, and the diamond will not change its name, whether hailing from the Cape or from Golconda. To criticism the social life of a poet matters as little as to Polymnia herself, who indifferently welcomes into her circle the peasant Burns and the partician Byron, Villon the purse-snatcher and Frederick II, the king: Art’s book of heraldry and that of Hozier are not written in the same style.
So we will not disturb ourselves with unraveling the flax from the distaff, or ascertaining what of illusiveness de Montesquiou and his status of a man of fashion have been able to add to the renown of the poet.
The poet, here, is “a précieuse”.
Were those women really so ridiculous, who, to place themselves in the tone of some fine and gallant poets, imagined new ways of speech, and, through a hatred of the common, affected a singularity of mind, costume and gesture? Their crime, after all, was in not wishing to conform with the world, and it seems that they paid dearly for this, they—and the entire French poetry which, for a century and a half, truly feared ridicule too much. Poets at last are freed from such horrors; in fact they are now allowed to avow their originality; far from forbidding them to go naked, criticism encourages them to assume the free easy dress of the gymnosophist. But some of them are tattooed.
And that is really the true quarrel with de Montesquiou: his originality is excessively tattooed. Its beauty recalls, not without melancholy, the complicated figurations with which the old Australian chieftains were wont to ornament themselves; there is even an odd refinement in the nuances, the design, and the amusing audacities of tone and lines. He achieves the arabesque better than the figure, and sensation better than thought. If he thinks, it is through ideographic signs, like the Japanese:
Poisson, grue, aigle, fleur, bambou qu’un oiseau ploie,
Tortue, iris, pivoine, anémone et moineaux.
(Tr. 54)
He loves these juxtapositions of words, and when he chooses them, like those above, soft and vivid, the landscape he seeks is quite pleasantly evoked, but often one sees, relieved against an artificial sky, hard unfamiliar forms, processions of carnival larvae—Or rather, women, girls, birds,—baubles deformed by a too Oriental fancy; baubles and trinkets:
Je voudrais que ce vers fût un bibelot d’art,
(Tr. 55)
is the aesthetics of de Montesquiou, but the bauble is no more than an amusing fragile thing to be placed under a glass case or closet,—yes, preferably in a closet. Then, disburdened of all this grotto work, all this lacquer, all this delicate paste, and as he himself wittily says, all these “shelves of infusoria,” the poet’s museum would become an agreeable gallery, where one would pleasantly muse before the many metamorphoses of a soul anxious to give a new nuance-laden grace to beauty. With the half of the Hortensias bleus one could make a book, still quite thick, which would be almost entirely composed of fine or proud or delicate poetry. The author of Ancilla, of Mortuis ignotis, and of Tables vives would appear what he truly is, excluding all travesty,—a good poet.
Here is a part of the Tables vives, whose title is obscure, but whose verses have beautiful clarity, despite the too familiar sound of some too Parnassian rimes and some verbal incertitudes:
... Apprenez à l’enfant à prier les flots bleus,
Car c’est le ciel d’en bas dont la nue est l’écume,
Le reflet du soleil qui sur la mer s’allume
Est plus doux à fixer pour nos yeux nébuleux.
Apprenez à l’enfant à prier le ciel pur,
C’est l’océan d’en haut dont la vague est nuage.
L’ombre d’une tempête abondante en naufrage
Pour nos coeurs est moins triste à suivre dans l’azur.
Apprenez à l’enfant à prier toutes choses:
L’abeille de l’esprit compose un miel de jour
Sur les vivants ave du rosaire des roses,
Chapelet de parfums aux dizaines d’amour....
(Tr. 56)
In short, de Montesquiou exists: blue hortensia, green rose or white peony, he is of those flowers one curiously gazes upon in a bed of flowers, whose name one asks and whose memory one cherishes.