JULES ROMAINS
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he reader who has gone through Spire, Romains, and Vildrac, will have afair idea of the poetry written by this group of men. Romains has alwaysseemed to me, and is, I think, generally recognized as, thenerve-centre, the dynamic centre of the group, Les marchands sont assis aux portes des boutiques;Ils regardent. Les toits joignent la rue au cielEt les pavés semblent féconds sous le soleilComme un champ de maïs.Les marchands ont laissé dormir près du comptoirLe désir de gagner qui travaille dès l'aube.On dirait que, malgré leur âme habituelle,Une autre âme s'avance et vient au seuil d'eux-mêmesComme ils viennent au seuil de leurs boutiques noires. We are regaining for cities a little of what savage man has for theforest. We live by instinct; receive news by instinct; have conqueredmachinery as primitive man conquered the jungle. Romains feels this,though his phrases may not be ours. Wyndham Lewis on giants is nearerRomains than anything else in English, but vorticism is, in the realm ofbiology, the hypothesis of the dominant cell. Lewis on giants comesperhaps nearer Romains than did the original talks about the Vortex.There is in inferior minds a passion for unity, that is, for a confusionand melting together of things which a good mind will want keptdistinct. Uninformed English criticism has treated Unanimism as if itwere a vague general propaganda, and this criticism has cited some ofour worst and stupidest versifiers as a corresponding manifestation inEngland. One can only account for such error by the very plausiblehypothesis that the erring critics have not read "Puissances de Paris." Romains is not to be understood by extracts and fragments. He has feltthis general replunge of mind into instinct, or this development ofinstinct to cope with a metropolis, and with metropolitan conditions; inso far as he has expressed the emotions of this consciousness he ispoet; he has, aside from that, tried to formulate this newconsciousness, and in so far as such formulation is dogmatic, debatable,intellectual, hypothetical, he is open to argument and dispute; that isto say he is philosopher, and his philosophy is definite and defined.Vildrac's statement "Il a changé la pathétique" is perfectly true. Manypeople will prefer the traditional and familiar and recognizable poetryof writers like Klingsor. I am not dictating people's likes anddislikes. Romains has made a new kind of poetry. Since the scrapping ofthe Aquinian, Dantescan system, he is perhaps the first person who haddared put up so definite a philosophical frame-work for his emotions. I do not mean, by this, that I agree with Jules Romains; I am preparedto go no further than my opening sentence of this section, concerningour growing, or returning, or perhaps only newly-noticed, sensitizationto crowd feeling; to the metropolis and its peculiar sensations. Turn toRomains: Je croyais les murs de ma chambre imperméables.Or ils laissent passer une tiède bruineQui s'épaissit et qui m'empêche de me voir,Le papier à fleurs bleues lui cède. Il fait le bruitDu sable et du cresson qu'une source traverse.L'air qui touche mes nerfs est extrêmement lourd.Ce n'est pas comme avant le pur milieu de vieOu montait de la solitude sublimée.
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