French Lyrics | Page 6

and
making up for a certain lack of spontaneity by intellectual fervor and
strong repressed emotion.
But the rights of subjective personal emotion could not long be denied
in lyric poetry. Even LECONTE DE LISLE had not succeeded 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 FRANÇOIS 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 Français_, 4 vols.,
1887; G. Masson, _la Lyre française_, London (Golden Treasury
Series); G. Saintsbury, French Lyrics_, New York, 1883; P. Paris, le
Romancero français_, 1833; K. Bartsch, Romanzen und Pastourellen,
Leipzig, 1870; Bartsch and Horning, _la Langue et la Littérature
françaises depuis le IXe jusqu'au XIVe siècle_, 1887; L. Constans,
_Chrestomathie de l'ancien français 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 française 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 française au XVe
siècle_ (leçon 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 française 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