Un couchant des Cosmogonies!
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t, du plus vrai qu'on se souvienne,Comme on fut piètre et sans génie.... What is the man in the street to make of this, or of the _Complainte desBons Ménages_! L'Art sans poitrine m'a trop longtemps bercé dupe.Si ses labours sont fiers, que ses blés décevants!Tiens, laisse-moi bêler tout aux plis de ta jupeQui fleure le couvent. Delicate irony, the citadel of the intelligent, has a curious effect onthese people. They wish always to be exhorted, at all times no matterhow incongruous and unsuitable, to do those things which almost any onewill and does do whenever suitable opportunity is presented. As HenryJames has said, "It was a period when writers besought the deep blue sea'to roll.'" The ironist is one who suggests that the reader should think, and thisprocess being unnatural to the majority of mankind, the way of theironical is beset with snares and with furze-bushes. Laforgue was a purge and a critic. He laughed out the errors ofFlaubert, i.e., the clogging and cumbrous historical detail. He left_Cœur Simple, L'Education, Madame Bovary, Bouvard_. His _Salome_makes game of the rest. The short story has become vapid because sixtythousand story writers have all set themselves to imitating DeMaupassant, perhaps a thousand from the original. Laforgue implies definitely that certain things in prose were at an end,and I think he marks the next phase after Gautier in French poetry. Itseems to me that without a familiarity with Laforgue one can notappreciate--i.e., determine the value of--certain positives and certainnegatives in French poetry since 1890. He deals for the most part with literary poses and _clichés_, yet hemakes them a vehicle for the expression of his own very personalemotions; of his own unperturbed sincerity.
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