Let us begin with Jammes' earlier work:
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'aime l'âne si douxmarchant le long des houx.Il prend garde aux abeilleset bouge ses oreilles;et il porte les pauvreset des sacs remplis d'orge.Il va, près des fossesd'un petit pas cassé.Mon amie le croit bêteparce qu'il est poète.Il réfléchit toujours,Ses yeux sont en velours.Jeune fille au doux cœurtu n'as pas sa douceur. * * * * * * The fault is the fault, or danger, which Dante has labeled "muliebria";of its excess Jammes has since perished. But the poem to the donkey can,in certain moods, please one. In other moods the playful simplicity, atleast in excess, is almost infuriating. He runs so close tosentimentalizing--when he does not fall into that puddle--that there arenumerous excuses for those who refuse him altogether. "J'allai àLourdes" has pathos. Compare it with Corbière's "St. Anne" and thedecadence is apparent; it is indeed a sort of half-way house between thebarbaric Breton religion and the ultimate deliquescence of FrenchCatholicism in Claudel, who (as I think it is James Stephens has said)"is merely lying on his back kicking his heels in it."
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