Joyce Kilmer

At a recent meeting of the English Poetry Society, Mlle. Coppin, a distinguished Belgian poetess, who now, like so many of her compatriots, is a refugee in London, said: “I believe we have been too prosperous, too fond of pleasure. We are being purged, and in our adversity we have found our nationality. If ever England, France, and Russia make a new Belgium, we shall be more simple and hard-working.”

Those of us who believe that the character of a nation is, to a great extent, revealed in its literature cannot doubt that Mlle. Coppin’s words are true. Surely the sick fancies of Maurice Maeterlinck (to mention the most conspicuous of Belgian men of letters) could come into being only in a land suffering from over-much civilisation, in a land whose citizens are too sophisticated for common and wholesome delights. Even more than the elaborate obscenities of Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud, Maeterlinck’s morbid studies of mental, spiritual, and physical degradation belong to that sort of literature which is called “decadent.” And decadent literature usually is produced for and by people who need to be, in Mlle. Coppin’s words, “more simple and hard-working.”

That the great tragedy which has overtaken Belgium will have a beneficial effect upon its literature is not to be doubted. Of course, the first result is an almost total cessation of creative activity; one cannot handle a rifle and a pen at the same time. But with the return of peace must come the development of a new Belgian literature, a literature which is not an echo of the salon-philosophies of Paris and Berlin, but a beautiful expression of the soul of a strong and brave race.

It is possible that when the poets of a re-created Belgium are singing their clear songs, the world, comparing them with Gilkin, Giraud, Maeterlinck, and the Verhaeren of Les Débâcles and Les Flambeaux Noirs, will say: “Now, for the first time, Belgian poetry deserves the attention of those who are interested in other than the pathological aspects of literature! Not until the land had been purified by blood and flame did the Spirit of Beauty come to dwell in Flanders!”

But this criticism will be unjust. Great literary movements do not spontaneously come into being; they develop slowly and surely through the centuries. If all the poetry of Belgium were the work of charlatans and vicious men, then, not even this tremendous war could stimulate it into healthy life. The fame of Maeterlinck’s dismal dramas, and of the least worthy poems of Emile Verhaeren, should not make us oblivious of the fact that Belgium has, and has always had, its small, but brilliant, company of sincere and gifted writers, men who have not debased their art, but have held in honour the sacred traditions of their high calling. He who, neglecting the productions of the symbolists, decadents, and similar phantasists, turns his attention to the authentic literature of the Belgian people, finds a strain of poetry white and beautiful, and as fervently Catholic as the immortal songs of Crashaw and Francis Thompson. It is not the disciples of Baudelaire and Mallarmé who have planted the seeds of poetry that soon shall burst into splendid bloom, but men like Thomas Braun and Georges Ramaekers, men who, serving faithfully their Muse, have never wavered in their allegiance to the Mistress of all the Arts, the Catholic Church.

It must not be thought that these poets write only religious poems. They have, indeed, produced such masterpieces of devotional verse as Braun’s Livre des Bénédictions and Ramaekers’ Le Chant des Trois Regnes. But when their poetry is not religious it is not, at any rate, irreligious; they “utter nothing base.” And surely even the lightest of secular poems may do its author’s Catholicism no discredit. As Francis Thompson said of poetry in the eloquent appeal to the “fathers of the Church, pastors of the Church, pious laics of the Church” with which his most famous essay begins, “Eye her not askance if she seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives glory to God though it sings only of its own innocent loves.... Suffer her to wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot of the Cross!”

Indeed, what is true of much modern English verse is true also of that of Belgium, there are Catholic poets who seldom in their work refer directly to their faith, and there are infidel poets who have laid impious hands on the Church’s treasures and decorate their rhymes with rich ecclesiastical imagery and the fragrant names of the Saints. So we find, for example, Emile Verhaeren using the first chapters of Genesis as the theme of a poem that is anything but edifying, while that pious Catholic, Thomas Braun, writes a volume of verses about postage stamps.

There are certain optimistic persons who believe that the general use in literature of sacred names and traditions augurs well for the spread of faith. A member of an Anglican religious order, who two years ago delivered a series of lectures in New York City, prophesied a mighty recrudescence of religion among the poets of England, and based his prophecy, apparently, on the fact that Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie and other brilliant young writers have made ballads out of some of the most picturesque of the legends about the Saints. He did not see that Mr. Abercrombie selected his themes solely because of their literary value. There are many poets who eagerly avail themselves of the stores which are the Church’s heritage, who introduce the name of the Blessed Virgin into their verses exactly as they would introduce that of Diana, or Venus or any creature of fable. Personally, I have never been able to enjoy the recital, however skillful, of a sacred story by a poet who did not believe in it, and therefore I cannot grow enthusiastic over the knowledge that many Belgian poets, whose philosophies are hostile to the Church, like to write about monstrances and chalices and altars, and to tell ostentatiously “human” stories about sacred people in general and St. Mary Magdalen in particular. I find Thomas Braun’s poems about postage stamps more edifying.

The modern Catholic poets of Belgium may be roughly divided into two groups, the mystics and the primitives. These terms are here used merely for the purposes of this classification, and cannot perhaps be justified by scientific criticism. Among the mystics I would include such writers as Georges Ramaekers, the brilliant editor of Le Catholique, and perhaps Max Elskamp, who use elaborate and complicated symbols, and, in general, may be said to do in verse what the late Joris Karl Huysmans, after his conversion to Catholicism, did in prose. Among the primitives I would place such poets as Victor Kinon and Thomas Braun, who look for their inspirations to the ancient religious life of Flanders, in all its picturesque simplicity, and are more concerned with celebrating the piety of simple Flemish peasants than with endeavouring to penetrate high mysteries.

It is to that valued friend of Belgian letters, Mr. Jethro Bithell, of Birbeck College, London, whose translation of Stefan Zweig’s book on Verhaeren has recently earned him the gratitude of the English-speaking public, that we owe this excellent version of Thomas Braun’s The Benediction of the Nuptial Ring, taken from this poet’s The Book of the Benedictions. The directness and sincerity of this poem suggest the work of George Herbert.

THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL KING

“That she who shall wear it, keep faith unchanged with her husband and ever live in mutual love.”

In many of Thomas Braun’s poems is to be found a quality suggestive of the folk song. Like the Verhaeren of Les Flamandes, Braun writes of those huge, boisterous farmers and merchants who live for us on the canvases of Brauwer and Jan Steen. But he writes of them, it need scarcely be said, in a very different spirit. Verhaeren saw only their gluttony, drunkenness, and coarseness; Braun sees their courage, industry, good-nature, piety. In fact, Verhaeren saw their bodies, Braun sees their souls.

In an essay on Verhaeren recently printed, I called attention to the fact that while Verhaeren wrote of the Flemings with enthusiasm, and with repulsively careful attention to detail, he did not write of them with sympathy. He does not join in the revels about which he writes; he is interested in his loud purple-faced peasants, but with his interest is mingled a certain scorn. Thomas Braun, on the other hand, is thoroughly in sympathy with the life of which he writes; the reader feels that such a poem as The Benediction of Wine, for example, was written by a man who is artist enough to share actually in the strong simple piety of the keeper of the vineyard. The quaintness of Thomas Braun’s poems, which is emphasized by the woodcuts made to accompany them by his brother who is a Benedictine monk, is not an affectation, it is a quality proper to the work of a man who, like Wordsworth, sees beauty chiefly in simplicity. Like Coventry Patmore, he has “divine frivolity,” he is acquainted with the mirth of the Saints. In his own beautiful words, he knows how to play in the straw with the Child of Bethlehem.

Georges Ramaekers is a poet whose verse is for the most part too obscure to lend itself readily to translation. He will write a poem, for example, on mushrooms, and the reader will think after several minutes that he is being told merely about the common fungi. Then it comes to him that it is the Tree of Life that these maleficent growths are attacking; then they cover the columns of the Church and actually reach the Host Itself. The poem is, it seems, a denunciation of certain heresies, or of sloth, indifference, and other spiritual evils, but its meaning cannot adequately be given in an English translation.

Here is a similar poem, which, in Mr. Bithell’s translation, shows Georges Ramaeker’s symbolic method at its best and clearest.

THE THISTLE

Victor Kinon, like that very different poet, Albert Giraud, the chief Belgian disciple of Baudelaire, is of Walloon descent. Mr. Bithell calls this poet a “fervent Roman Catholic,” but the poems which he has selected for translation are entirely secular in theme and treatment. They show, however, that their author is free from the vices of extreme realism and hysteria, which afflict many of his contemporaries. Sometimes it is fair to judge a poet’s whole attitude toward life from his love poems. When decadence and feverish eroticism are in fashion, it is refreshing to come upon a poet sane enough to write so honest and delicate a poem as this of Victor Kinon.

HIDING FROM THE WORLD

In Victor Kinon’s poetry is shown a knowledge of nature like that possessed by that American poet whose death the world of letters has not ceased to mourn, Madison Cawein. He sketches a landscape in a few vigorous lines, and the picture is vivid and true. This little poem might be a lyrical rendition of a Monet painting.

THE SETTING SUN

It is difficult to resist the temptation to read into the Catholic fold many Belgian poets who do not, perhaps, belong there. There is scarcely a man of letters in Belgium who does not owe his introduction to literature to the Catholic Church. The Catholic schools and universities of Belgium have given a knowledge of art and poetry to many a poet who now pays for the gift his little stanzas of abuse. But some of them, and among them must be counted Emile Verhaeren, seem to be thinking of their old faith, now that the need of faith has become terribly apparent to them. Verhaeren, especially, seems to be about to stop in his weary flight from the Hound of Heaven. For many years he was a writer of poems that seemed to betray a mind absolutely diseased. There were realistic studies of human vice that seemed like pages of Zola done into verse, and there were extraordinary attempts (of which Stefan Zweig speaks approvingly) to “chisel a new face of God.” But since his retirement to his little cottage at Caillou-qui-Bique, he has written poems that are for the most part exaltations of pure love, as lofty in thought as they are finished in composition. Mr. Bithell’s translation of this little song of wedded love shows that Verhaeren has left far behind him the grossness of Les Flamandes and the morbidness of Les Flambeaux Noirs.

THIS IS THE GOOD HOUR WHEN THE LAMP IS LIT

But the poem which indicates most clearly the tremendous change that his nation’s tragedy has brought to Verhaeren, is that inspired by the demolition of the Cathedral of Rheims. A year ago, it may be, Verhaeren would have thought of this cathedral merely as a beautiful piece of architecture, as an ancient and lovely landmark. Now that it has suffered from the cannon of an invading army, he remembers suddenly the high use for which it was intended, the destruction of the sacred images and vessels reminds him, in spite of all his sophistry, that these things were not mere works of art. Once more, as in those far-away years when, with Georges Rodenbach, Charles Van Lerberghe, and Maurice Maeterlinck, he learned of literature and life at the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, he is able to understand that most necessary of all acts, worship. The poem is so significant, so important to all who desire an insight into the psychology of Verhaeren and of literary Belgium, that I venture to quote here my own translation of it. It by no means does justice to the beauty of the original.

THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS

Of Verhaeren’s school-fellows at Sainte-Barbe, one, Maurice Maeterlinck, is already enjoying a fame which exceeds his deserts and is not likely to endure. Georges Rodenbach, who died in 1898, wrote, like Verhaeren, of Flemish peasants, but he gave them a romantic glamour which has alienated critics who admire naturalistic poetry. Stefan Zweig has little use for him, and Jethro Bithell speaks of his “weary Alexandrines,” and says that his reputation has waned considerably since his death. But Charles C. Clarke, of the Sheffield Scientific School, in the course of an illuminating article on Belgian literature, says that Rodenbach’s poems have considerable vogue in France. From his discussion of Rodenbach I quote this felicitously phrased paragraph:

Another school-fellow of Verhaeren, Charles Van Lerberghe, can scarcely, I believe, be called a Catholic poet, although, like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose disciple he was, his verse is filled with Catholic symbolism. In a country like Belgium, in which nearly all the education is Catholic, and in which nearly every poet is, at any rate nominally, a Catholic, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between writers who have a genuinely devotional spirit, and those who merely like to play with mysticism. There are, for example, the amazing poems of Max Elskamp. He writes simple and charming poems about the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child, and seems, indeed, to have the hardy faith of his Flemish ancestors. But the simplicity of his poems is not always convincing; the reader remembers that the late William Sharpe wrote, as “Fiona MacLeod,” poems that seemed to flame with all the piety of the Gael. And William Sharpe was, as he took care to let the world know, a “pagan.” The feeling that Elskamp’s interest in religion is chiefly literary is strengthened when we learn from Mr. Bithell that most of the sacred names in his poems have a symbolic meaning, that the Blessed Virgin means merely “the pure woman,” and the Christ Child simply “the delicious infancy.” Intellectual caprices like this seldom accompany genuine devotional feeling.

But at any rate there is nothing to disgust or pain the reader in Elskamp’s verse; whether or not he believes in the sacred personages of whom he writes, he does not treat them irreverently. His Catholicism, however, is not so convincing as is that of Thomas Braun and Georges Ramaekers.

It is good to find that in Belgium, a country the literature of which must inevitably reflect from time to time the strange fashions of Germany and France, there has been preserved through the years the poetry of Catholic tradition. Belgian poetry must become more and more spiritual; the poets have seen and felt things mighty and terrible, and they can no longer concern themselves with erotic fancies and the nuances of their own emotions. In days to come, historians of literature will perhaps see that on the thought of Belgium as on the thought of all Europe, this war has had a clarifying and strengthening effect. Good still comes from evil, sweetness from force, and honeycomb out of the lion’s carcass. Belgium may say, in the words of one of the truest poets of our time: