French Lyrics | Page 6

in obliterating its traces entirely, and if he achieved a calm that justifies the epithet impassible, given so freely to him and to his followers, it is at the cost of a struggle that still vibrates beneath the surface of his lines. Presently emotion asserted its authority again, more discreetly and under the restraint of an imperious intellect in SULLY PRUDHOMME, readily taking the form of sympathy with the humble, in FRAN?OIS COPPéE, or returning to the old communicative frankness of self-revelation with VERLAINE. With VERLAINE we reach a conscious reaction from the objective and impersonal art of the Parnassiens. That art found its end in the perfect rendering of objective reality. The reaction sought to get at the inner significance and spiritual meaning of things, and looked at the objective reality as a veil behind which a deeper sense lies hidden, as a symbol which it is the poet's business to penetrate and illumine. It also moved away from the clear images, precise contours, and firm lines by which the Parnassiens had given such an effect of plasticity to their verse, and sought rather vague, shadowy, and nebulous impressions and the charm of music and melody (cf. VERLAINE'S poem, _Art poétique_, p. 288). This is in general the direction taken by the latest generation of poets, symbolists, decadents, or however otherwise they are styled, for whom VERLAINE'S influence has been conspicuous. They make up rather an incoherent body, whose aims and aspirations, more or less vague, are by no means adequately indicated by this brief statement of their tendency. They have by no means said their last word. But the accomplishment of their movement hitherto has been marred, and its promise for the future is still threatened, by a fatal and seemingly irresistible tendency toward unintelligibility.
Notes:
[1] Special commendation may be given to the large work by various scholars under the direction of Petit de Julleville now in process of publication, and also to the shorter histories, in one volume, of Gustave Lanson (1895) and F. Brunetière (1897). An English translation of the latter is published by T. Y. Crowell & Co., New York.]
[2] A large number of the chansonniers are represented in the collection by Dumersan and Noel Ségur, _Chansons nationales et populaires de France_, 2 vols., 1566, to which an account of the French chanson_ is prefixed. Specimens of the _chanson populaire may be read in T.F. Crane’s Chansons populaires de la France, New York, Putnam, 1891: an excellent historical sketch and a bibliography make this little volume a good introduction to the reading of French popular poetry.
Anthologies and collections : Crépet, _les Poètes Fran?ais_, 4 vols., 1887; G. Masson, _la Lyre fran?aise_, London (Golden Treasury Series); G. Saintsbury, French Lyrics_, New York, 1883; P. Paris, le Romancero fran?ais_, 1833; K. Bartsch, Romanzen und Pastourellen, Leipzig, 1870; Bartsch and Horning, _la Langue et la Littérature fran?aises depuis le IXe jusqu'au XIVe siècle_, 1887; L. Constans, _Chrestomathie de l'ancien fran?ais à l'usage des classes_, 1884; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. xxiii; Darmesteter and Hatzfeld, _le Seizième siècle en France_, 1878; F. Godefroy, _Histoire de la littérature fran?aise depuis le XVIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours_, 6 vols., 1867; Lemerre, _Anthologie des poètes du XIXe siècle_, 1887-88; le Parnasse contemporain, 3 series, 1866, 1869, 1876.
For reference: Good historical and critical notices may be found in several of the above, especially in Crépet, Darmesteter and Hatzfeld, and the _Histoire littéraire_; Jeanroy, _Origines de la poésie lyrique en France_, 1889; G. Paris, _Origines de la poésie lyrique en France_, Journal des Savants, 1891, 1892; G. Paris, _la Poésie fran?aise au XVe siècle_ (le?on d'ouverture), 1886; Sainte-Beuve, _Tableau historique et critique de la poésie au XVIe siècle_; F. Brunetière, _l'évolution des genres_, vol. i, 1890; Villemain, _Tableau de la littérature fran?aise au XVIIIe siècle, passim_; Th. Gautier, _étude sur les progrès de la poésie depuis 1830_ (in Histoire du romantisme); C. Mendès, _Légende du Parnasse contemporain_, 1884; F. Brunetière, _évolution de la poésie lyrique au XIXe siècle_, 2 vols., 1894; J. Tellier, _Nos poètes_, 1888.
VERSIFICATION.
The rules of French versification have not always been the same. The classical movement of the seventeenth century in its reforms proscribed certain things, like hiatus, overflow lines, mute _e_ before the caesura, which had been current hitherto, and the Romanticists of this century have endeavored to give greater diversity and flexibility to verse-structure both by restoring some of these liberties and by introducing new ones. Especially have great innovations been advocated in the last few years by the youngest school of poets, but they have as yet found no general acceptance.
The unit of French versification is not a fixed number of long and short, or accented and unaccented, syllables in a certain definite arrangement, that is, a foot, but a line. A line is a certain number of