Francis Vielé-Griffin
I do not wish to say that Vïelé-Griffin is a joyous poet; nevertheless, he is the poet of joy. With him, we share the pleasures of a normal, simple life, the certitude of beauty, the invincible youthfulness of nature. He is neither violent, sumptuous nor sweet: he is calm. Though very subjective, or because of this, for to think of oneself is to think of oneself completely, he is religious. Like Emerson he is bound to see “images of the most ancient religion” in nature, and to think, again like Emerson: “It seems that a day has not been entirely profane, in which some attention has been given to the things of nature.” One by one he knows and loves the elements of the forest, from the “great gentle ash trees” to the “million young plants,” and it is his very own forest, his personal and original forest:
Sous ma forêt de Mai fleure tout chèvrefeuille,
Le soleil goutte en or par l’ombre grasse,
Un chevreuil bruit dans les feuilles qu’il cueille,
La brise en la frise des bouleaux passe,
De feuille en feuille.
Par ma plaine de mai toute herbe s’argente,
Le soleil y luit comme au jeu des épées,
Une abeille vibre aux muguets de la sente
Des hautes fleurs vers le ru groupées.
La brise en la frise des frênes chante....
(Tr. 11)
But he knows other flowers than those which are common to glades; he knows the flower-that-sings, she who sings, lavendar, sweet marjoram or fay, in the old garden of ballads and tales. The popular songs have left refrains in his memory which he blends in little poems, and which are their commentary or fancy:
Où est la Marguerite,
O gué, ô gué,
Où est la Marguerite?
Elle est dans son château, coeur las et fatigué,
Elle est dans son hameau, coeur enfantile et gai,
Elle est dans son tombeau, semons-y du muguet,
O gué, la Marguerite.
(Tr. 12)
And this is almost as pure as Gerard de Nerval’s Cydalises:
Où sont nos amoureuses?
Elles sont su tombeau;
Elles sont plus heureuses
Dans un séjour plus beau....
(Tr. 13)
And almost as innocently cruel as this round which the little girls sing and dance to:
La beauté, a quoi sert-elle?
Elle sert à aller en terre,
Être mangée par les vers,
Être mangée par les vers....
(Tr. 14)
Vielé-Griffin has used the popular poetry discreetly—that poetry of such little art that it seems increate—but he would have been less discreet had he misused it, for he has the sentiment and respect for it. Other poets, unfortunately, have been less prudent and have collected the rose-that-talks with such clumsy or rough hands that we wish an eternal silence had been conjured around a treasure now sullied and vilified.
Like the forest, the sea enchants and intoxicates Vielé-Griffin; he has called it all things in his earliest verses, that already remote Cueille d’Avril; the insatiable devouring sea, abyss and tomb, the savage sea with triumphal haughty swell, the sea wantoning after voluptuous voids, the furious sea, the heedless sea, the stubborn, dumb sea, the envious sea painting its face with stars or suns, dawns or midnights—and the poet reproaches it for its flown glory:
Ne sens-tu pas en toi l’opulence de n’être
Que pour toi seule belle, ô Mer, et d’être toi?
(Tr. 15)
then he proclaims his pride at not having followed the sea’s example, at not having sued glory with happy reminiscences or bold plagiarisms. It must be recognized that Vielé-Griffin, who before did not lie, has since kept his word. He has indeed remained himself, truly free, truly proud and truly wild. His forest is not limitless, but it is not a banal forest, it is a domain. I do not speak of the very important part he has had in the difficult conquest of free verse; my impression is more general and deeper and concerns itself not only with the form, but with the essence of his art. Through Francis Vielé-Griffin there is something new in French poetry.